I suppose I could have called this post Moghali-Style Chicken with Spinach, Almonds, and Raisins. I want to say so much about this dish, but I don’t think that I have the words to fully convey the delciousness. I got up and ate the remains of this for breakfast, cold right out of the fridge, out of the container. It was that good. The recipe came from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer.
Raghavan, I think I love you.
I always go on and on about how much I love Bon Appetit magazine. The quiet, unsung magazine in my collection, though is Cooking Light. These are tasty, yet reasonable recipes. You pretty much know when you peruse the pages that you won’t be in a situation where you feel like you want to slice open your stomach, scrape out the contents, and try again, this time being far less naughty.
Thank you, Cooking Light, for this recipe.
This post is for the writing group. According to this, I write like a man…and Stephanie Meyer. As people who have read my work, you’ll have to be the ones to tell me if it’s true.
I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!
This is for “Yoga”, “The Rite”, and “Cupid.”
This is for “Soul King.”
This is for “Clapper.”
This is for “Hypercolor.” Funny, someone in the group said this story was like Henry Miller on acid.
This is for Traffic and for Taste.
One of the things that happens when you’re always trying new recipes and you have a household of limited members is the accumulation of ingredients. Sometimes.
So there I was with a big chunk of red onion, and feta cheese. I tend to keep things like rye-berries on hand, and nuts in the freezer. Already, an idea was coming together. For some reason I can’t even remember, I had a half lemon in the fridge and I had (and still have some) snow peas and sugar snap peas from my CSA share. I also had a bunch of cilantro. Always there is olive oil and honey in the pantry. That and salt and pepper. So, I put all the parts together and got this great salad.
Hearty lunch for the hungry.
As I close in on the end of the birthday goal period, I realized that I haven’t been cooking nearly as much as I usually do should. My jeans came back from the dryer with the same verdict. That combined with the fact that going into this weekend I was at 84 of the 100 new recipes I was to try. So, what did I do? Consult Bon Appetit.
This time, however, I was unfaithful to my cooking magazine love. I poked around in some other magazines. Everyday Food is the magazine that brought me this delicious stone fruit compote. I am already imagining a breakfast of Greek yogurt, the compote and a few walnuts.
The Dilled White Bean and Grape Tomato Salad recipe did come from Bon Appetit. This salad was ridiculously fast to throw together and was quite delicious. Alex wants to take some for his lunch tomorrow.
Here you see a serving of Sugar Snap Pea and Summer Berry Salad. This recipe actually came from Family Circle. It was also a success in the Turner/Augustine household. Since my CSA share brought me the peas and a bunch of red romaine lettuce, it seemed perfect. Alongside it you see Frittata Bites With Chard Sausage and Feta. Alex also wants to take some of this in his lunch. This frittata deviates a bit from the recipe and includes kale as well as swiss chard. The choice was heavily influenced by the content of my CSA share.
And finally, I finished off the cooking spree with a failure! The Lime Tart with Blackberries and Blueberries. Number 1, I think that I might only like various curds on oatmeal and on plain yogurt. As the base of a dessert, whoa! Number 2, while my crust was light, it could not withstand being transferred. Boo! However, this dessert served as a good bribe for Alex who needed to finish reading a book (talk about slow going) and take a bath before he could try it. Yay!
And more yay is that I can clearly see the finish line with my try 100 new recipes goal. I have almost 2 months to try 11 recipes.
So, while Alex says that he likes school, getting him to practice reading is like pulling teeth from the inflamed gums of a carnivorous mammal who once had an impacted tooth extracted with no meds when he thought he was going to get a sanguine treat.
As fate would have it, he needs the practice.
In addition to mild bribery, I have been looking for other incentives. I think I found one that works.
The chalkboard wall. I wrote him a letter which he actually read with me without making faces, pouting or otherwise threatening a breakdown of some sort. Hmm.
I have learned through this that Alex is rather discerning about his knock knock jokes.
I will draw full-scale comics on his wall if that’s what it takes for him to break the reading code.
A mama’s gotta do what a mama’s gotta do.
It has been more of a challenge to me to keep up with the CSA vegetables than I thought it would. I mean, I really like veggies.
What I don’t eat though, is a bunch of salad. So some of the lettuces have been going slimy on me before I can eat them. The dark greens though don’t stand a chance. I devoured my breakfast rainbow chard before I even thought to photograph them.
Today, though, I faced the veggies and came up with a stir fry. It was a simple one involving a couple of garlic scapes and green onions, snow peas, carrots and shrimp. I kissed it with lemon juice and a dinner was born. There’s even enough for lunch tomorrow.
I decided to take a dance lesson this evening. I had been wanting to try samba for a little while and a local dance studio happened to be offering the class.
I’ve done dancing of one sort or another for many years. I took dance classes as a young youngster and more recently have been dancing some of the Latin dances. I am very much a dance club type dancer at heart.
This studio was very much a ballroom dancing kind of place.
But, the people were really nice. The samba class went well, and I was persuaded by a woman who saw me putting my street shoes back on after the class to stay for the open dancing afterwards. I am very glad that I did. I got to dance some dances that I know, like salsa, merengue and cha-cha. But, I also got to try some new-to-me dances. I danced a foxtrot, which is a sentence I never thought would be true, a rumba and a bit of swing dancing.
I also got to watch a lot of down-to-earth people dance. Among these were a couple dressed alike who I watched do a pretty sexy tango. He looked like Jimmy Carter, well, what Jimmy Carter will look like in 10 years. And she…let’s just say, if I can kick my leg in the air when I’m her age, I’ll be happy.
Believe it or not, I have never ever had 7-up Cake before today.
I was trying to deal with the magazine infestation that has plagued me for some time when I came across a recipe for the cake in an old issue of Cooks Illustrated. Sounded good. So I clipped the recipe and bought the ingredients.
Then, I promptly lost the clipping, though I have the other things I kept from that issue of the magazine. So I found a different recipe online.
A cake was born.
I love images of construction and big trucks. There is just something about it that attracts me, and I can’t stop taking pictures.