Indian Butter Chicken

Well, so much for getting caught up! I plan to try another new recipe today, which will put me two behind. Oh well.

Recipe 9: Indian Butter Chicken

The recipe this week is courtesy of my cousin, who posted some delicious looking pictures of this meal when he made it last month.

I jumped on the chance to get a new butter chicken recipe. I had made it in the past, but it was really labor intensive, and involved simmering a sauce made of butter and heavy cream, so I generally managed to "break" it. (For anyone who hasn't broken a sauce here is a good example and instructions on how to fix it.)

This recipe still required multiple steps, but was much easier to complete. I mostly followed the instructions, but I got paranoid about the chicken not cooking completely in six minutes, so I covered it while it cooked. I don't think this was actually necessary, and did make the yogurt mixture the chicken cooked in look a little strange. I also cooked the chicken in the same pan I had cooked the sauce in (does it freak anyone else out when people call sauce that isn't made from fat drippings "gravy"?), I just wiped it out in between steps. I should also mention that I couldn't find Tandoori BBQ mix, so I used Tandoori Marsala mix instead.

The resulting dish was very satisfying, and quite a bit spicier than butter chicken I've made in the past. I had so much sauce (probaby in part because i heated it *very* gently) that a few days later I mixed it into stir fried rice, and got another large and satisfyingly spicy meal out of it. I also wasn't sure how much ginger to buy, and ended up getting twice what I needed, so I have three ounces frozen in cubes in the freezer for the next time I make stir fry.

Plus, now I have a new website to mine for recipes!

Slow Cooking the Winter Away

Alright! Let's power through a couple of posts and catch up!

Recipe 8:  Slow cooker White Chicken Chili

This is yet another recipe fromBudget Bytes.

I decided to make this before going to the store a few weeks ago, but was apparently not committed enough to actually read the instructions before picking up ingredients. So, some winging occurred.

I have a pretty large crock pot, so I doubled the recipe, as recommended. The main change I made was to use five bone-in chicken legs instead of two breasts. Four servings off one chicken breast? I like Budget Bytes, but I'm not willing to cut back my meat intake to save money to the same extent the author is. Even my mother isn't that Scottish. 

I also bought canned green chilies instead of salsa verde, so I had to add a cup of red salsa to compensate. This made the chili more tea colored then white, but didn't taste too out of place. I also used a yellow bell pepper instead of a jalapeño, because I wanted to be able to offer the chili to my baby.

I also took this opportunity to use up the rest of the great northern beans I had purchased for the White Beans and Sausage. I remembered to soak them overnight this time, and cooked them all day in the crock pot, but they were still a little waxy for my taste. I guess that is just how they are. 

The yeild on this recipe was very good. I believe we ate two dinners and a lunch from it, without really adding sides. I thought it was a little bland at first, so when I reheated it, I added some lime juice, which perked it up. I'm completely willing to conceed that my alterations are probably what made it bland in the first place, so I'll have to try it again sometime with the right ingredients. Since winter seems to be lingering where I live, I'm sure I'll have an opportunity sooner rather than later.

Muffins, muffins everywhere

Well, I've gotten pretty far behind on updating, although I've done alright on the cooking new food front. My husband has been sick in a pretty serious way, although he is getting better now, so hopefully the rhythm of the house will go back to normal. (Edit: Aaaaand, now our son is sick...)

Recipe 7:  Blueberry Muffins Two Ways

I made these at the same time, so I'm going to count them as one recipe now, although I might come back and count them separately if I come up short at the end of the year.

Recipe 7.1:  Blueberry and Banana Whole Wheat Muffins

I like baking with whole wheat because it feels healthier and more satisfying. These muffins, however, did end up a bit heavy and mealy, which can be the downside of whole wheat. They were also bit bland. I'm not sure whether to blame that on the lack of additional sugar, or the complete lack of salt. They were fine, but more "mature", I guess, and tasted like health food. They also started to mold after only a few days on the counter.

Oh, final caveat: this recipe fit just fine in 12 muffin cups. If I had spread the batter between 18 cups as recommended, I think they would have been disappointingly small.

Recipe 7.2: Blueberry Applesauce Whole Wheat Muffins

These turned out much better. They were both sweeter (not surprising, since they have 3/4 cup sugar), and lighter. They had more of the springy, cake-like texture I want in a muffin. While I think the other recipe will be left on the shelf, this will probably make it into the pre-planned breakfast rotation.

Crafts: Magnets from Christmas 2014

This blog is the thing I do when I don't feel like cleaning my house, so I'm going to start a second update for this week.  I doubt that I'll finish it on the day I start it, so I'll get to avoid mopping for several days!  Lucky me! (Edit:  Yep, I started this update before Valentine's Day.)

Anyway!  On to the meat and potatoes of this update.  I want to bring this blog back to its roots with this one, and make an update on some of the crafts I've completed recently.

Since I stopped working, my husband and I have been a little bit more careful with our gift giving, and the past two years we hand made our Christmas gifts.  The year before last I baked biscotti, which went over well (although I forgot my sister is allergic to almonds ... sorry), but this past Christmas I wanted to step it up a notch and make something permanent.  When we brought out son up north to visit relatives last year, I had seen my mother-in-law do some decoupage, and it looked super fun. I had made my sister a decoupaged box for her birthday, so I figured I would do something similar for Christmas.

After much hemming and hawing (and wandering around the craft store), I decided to do magnets.  They are small enough to be easy to make, are nominally useful, and wouldn't be a big knickknack for the recipients to deal with storing or displaying.

I used sheets of foam as the backing, and to make various foreground images stand out.  The pictures were cut out of fashion magazines.  For all of the magnets, the base is wrapped with images to hide the foam, but the foam is visible on the sides of the raised images.  The magnets came as a roll with a paper backing and built in adhesive.  These were okay, but refused to be flattened even after being pressed under books.  I had to resort to super glue to get them to stop separating from the picture.  In the future, I would use the magnets that come in little sheets instead.

For:  My Brother

 

This one is the first one I made, and I'm afraid it shows in the wrinkly paper and foam peaking out from behind the letters.  Overall, though, I have to say I like it. The image (which I will credit if I can find the photographer) is just the strangest, coolest picture, and totally appropriate for my brother. The text, "PQMR" is kind of an inside joke.  I figured a weird picture and some nonsense deserved a background made a few different types of leopard print. Overall, it's not the most perfect magnet, but interesting.

For:  My Dad

 

This is a set of magnets on a piece of cardboard to make wrapping it easier.  I used origami paper for the background because I couldn't find an image in the magazines that looked nice, and I think the geometric pattern is more masculine anyway.  This one was hard to make because finding interesting looking words and letter is surprisingly difficult.  "Everything looks bad if you remember it" is from the Insanity Pepper episode of The Simpsons, and I remember it was a favorite of my father's.  So, there you go. 

For:  My Father-in-Law

Finding this image was a huge score, since my father-in-law likes The Wizard of Oz. For the background I used a scarf, a smear of lipstick, one of those lip balms that looks like an egg, and crushed blush.  I like how the different textures in the background work together to make the image pop.

For:  My Grandparents-in-Law

This is a combined gift for my husband's maternal grandparents.  They have a pretty good collection of "boozy" decorations around their house, including a pillow that reads "Life is too short to drink bad wine".  So I thought this would be appropriate.  You can also see how I started making magnets that were much too large as I started finding larger images. I think this one measures something like 3" by 4". So it's more a fridge decoration than a functional magnet.

For:  My Sister-in-Law

When I asked my husband what I should make for his sister, he said, "Anything with attitude."  This is another 3x4 behemoth, and really not for any good reason. I thought it would look crowded if I made the background smaller, but really, I could have put a quarter inch on each side and been fine. The picture is of Naomie Harris from a shoot she did after Skyfall. The background is a variety of sequined clothes. I should have probably used more blue/silver pieces for the background, because I think it looks a little flat. This was definitely a learning experience.

For:  My Mother-in-Law

All of the images in this magnet are hair, which I think is neat. I was hoping it would look a bit like wood, and I think to some extent it does. This is the only specifically holiday themed magnet I made - a holly and mistletoe wreath. I will admit that all of my knowledge of Yule comes from the internet, but my much more knowledgeable mother-in-law seemed pleased, so I must not have missed the mark too badly. The one thing I would do differently here is use lighter pieces for the holly leaves, so they pop a little more. 

For: My Sister

My sister and I weren't raised to be girly-girls, and while I still struggle to not dress myself like a teenage boy, she has blossomed into quite the fashionista. I liked how fancy the lipsticks looked, and the smile (I think it is from one of Pink's ads) is just so happy. This is another big one - three inches across - but I don't think it would look as cool if it were smaller.

For:  My Paternal Grandma

This was the second magnet I made. For my Dad's mom I wanted something simple and nice. This turned out a little "sweeter" than I wanted. I would also probably move the flower up a bit next time. I think I got the middle of the flower in the middle of the background, but because it is lopsided, it looks a bit off.

For:  Bunka (My Maternal Grandma)

I went with the same sort of design for this one as for my other Grandma, but with a little more edge. The background is all leather, which amuses me. I also drew and cut the oval background freehand, which turned out pretty nice, I think.

For: My Mom

This one is my favorite. Like the one for my mother-in-law, all of the pictures are hair. The heart in the middle of the tree say "GMA", for Grandma. The one issue I see with it is that the ground isn't straight, which is aggravating because I did draw guide lines. Other than that, I really couldn't be happier.

I will definitely be making more decoupage stuff in the future. It is really relaxing to gather the images, the process is pretty easy, and the results are nice.

A (Work) Week of Meat

I try to give the whole meat department a good once over, when I go to the store, and a few weeks ago that paid off when I found 7.5 lbs of Boston Butt pork roast for $13.30.  This was actually the smallest cut I could find, and I left without buying it on the first trip because that is a seriously daunting amount of meat.  I was lured back, though, by the promise of not having to cook more than once, and getting to brag about it on this blog.

Recipe 6:  Crock Pot Boston Butt Roast

I wanted to fuss with this thing as little as possible, and make it as versatile as I could, so I used this recipe.  It's so simple, I'll just paraphrase it here:  Put the roast into a pot with onions, crushed garlic, and Worcestershire sauce.   The recipe was for a 4 lb roast, so I doubled everything.

 

Here it is, in all of it's porky glory.  I put it in the crock pot with all of the wrapping still on, just to make sure it would fit. 

 

And it did.  Barely.  

The meat was marbled with fat, which meant that it turned out rather "rich" (read:  greasy) when everything melted.  Unlike with beef shoulder roasts, where I can generally remove a good amount of the fat after it has cooked, that wasn't really an option here.  While it was heavy, I didn't find it unpleasant.

Below are pictures of the meals we made with the behemoth.

Night 1:  Pork on a plate.

For the first night, I just served a chunk of the roast on a plate with the onions on the side. It was extremely tender, and while the meat itself was a little bland, the onions soaked up the Worcestershire sauce nicely. A bite of the pork with a little onion and a little potato was a nice mouthful.

After the first meal, I shredded the rest, which left a good amount of shredded pork.

Night 2:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I love sandwiches to stretch meat, because you can use just a little and it still feels like a satisfying meal. 

Night 3:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches ... the Revenge!

I was actually smart enough to put barbecue sauce in the meat while I was reheating it this time.  I should mention that I also drained as much fat as possible from the meat while I was heating it.  That didn't prevent the last few bites of role from being soggy, but it helped.

For the next several days, I made taco meat out of the remaining pork.  To do this I heated it in the microwave enough to pour most of the fat off, then mixed in cumin, seasoning salt, chili powder, and garlic powder before heating it in the oven to finish drying it out.  The first night I let it sit a little too long in the oven, and the edges got too crispy.  Below is a picture of the more successful second attempt.

Night 4:  Taco Salad

Okay, I'll admit, this isn't much of a salad.  Most of the time, I'll put a lot more green in a salad, but I didn't realize we were almost out until after I was committed.  At least the pepper added a few more veggie points.

Night 5:  Quesadillas

And finally, the last of the pork went into quesadialls.  This was a pretty heavy meal, and I probably could have scraped one more dish out of it, but I figured it was time to just be done an move on.

At the end of the day, I would definitely pick up this cut of meat again.  The food all turned out fine, and it was nice to be able to throw something together each night, and not have too many dishes at the end of it. 

Sorry it took so long to write this update.  The boy has been sick, and he's been less tolerant of me using the computer while he sleeps, and I've been less willing to try to type all of this on my tablet.  I will try to put out at least one more post this week (I've already done the next set of recipes).  Thank you for all of the views - it has been very motivating to stick with this blog.

Curried Lentils

Some weeks, I have a lot of banter stored up, but not today, so I'll just cut to the chase:

Recipe 5:  Curried Lentils

For this recipe, I turned once again to Budget Bytes.  I had seen the recipe for curried lentils a few weeks ago, and kept it in mind. Last week I picked up a pack of chicken legs on sale, and had too many for one pot of chicken and dumplings, but too few for two meals with chicken as the main protien. Lentils + chicken seemed like the perfect solution.

I was happy to have an excuse to try the recipe, because we are a lentil eating family. Generally, I'll throw a bag of lentils in the crock pot with some carrots, onions, a bay leaf or oregano, and some broth or bullion. Top that with two pieces of bacon, and you've got a hearty, nutritious
(if somewhat unappealing looking) soup. We are moving out of winter, though, and soon earthy flavors will seem a bit heavy. So another use for lentils was very welcome.The dish went together pretty easily. Often, I find that my cooking times are longer than the recipe calls for, which I think is because I'm still getting used to cooking on stainless steel, so I use lower heat than I really should. In addition to cooking the vegitables longer, I had to boil the lentils maybe 10 minutes longer than recommended, and they were still a bit unevenly cooked. Next time, I might try using a bigger pot or keeping the temperature up a bit (I turned it down to three). I could just be overcooking my lentils when I do them in the crock pot, of course, so maybe they are supposed to retain a bit of resistance.

The flavor was very nice. Two tablespoons of curry powder is quite a bit, so each bite had a nice slow burn. Our son didn't have much that day, but did have some when I ate the leftovers cold as a snack (of course, that may have had more to do with needing to mooch on Mom's food than actually enjoying the flavor).

To me, the one flaw was the amount of tomato sauce. It ended up feeling a bit thick, and I thought the tomato flavor was a little overwhelming. Because the recipe calls for one can of sauce, the next time I make it, I might try doubling all of the other ingredients, and maybe save a little of the liquid the lentils cooked in to thin it a bit.

Overall, though, it was a nice dish that I think will make it into the regular rotation of recipes to make when meat is expensive.

It tastes like burning...

Hey there. I know I said that I would write again on Monday, but life has been a bit hectic. Our son is sick, and hasn't been napping well. I'm trying to be extra quiet so that this nap lasts as long as possible. Let's see if I can get a blog post out before he wakes up! (Edit: I didn't make it, but he is sleeping peacefully for the night after starting antibiotics for an ear infection.)

Recipe 4:  Caramelized Turnips

During my first search for new recipes, I came across one for something like pork shanks and turnips. It made me realize that in my thirty years on earth, I have never knowingly eaten a turnip. So last week when I was at the grocery store I decided to remedy that problem. It is pretty obvious that HEB does not do a brisk business in turnips. The tiny bin in the unfashionable corner of the produce department was half full of dented, topless bulbs, but I felt committed, so I took home four of the nicer looking specimens.

Turnips in hand, I found this recipe.  This is my kind of recipe. Simple ingredients, and the instructions are basically "don't let the food burn".
At this point, I realized that I don't really know if all of the turnip root is edible, so I once again turned to the Internet for answers. This site let me know that I didn't have to peal turnips ... and that I was probably in for some trouble. The mangy roots I had picked up didn't seem to fit the bill of firm, small, young turnips that they recommend. Still, maybe they would turn out okay with sugar on them.
The recipe went together just fine (the one real change I made was to use honey - based on a recommendation from the comments on allrecipes - instead of sugar).  My husband liked it enough to finish his serving. The texture came out like a firm potato or boiled carrot. The flavor as he described it was like a raw broccoli stem. I totally get that description. I also think "peppery" is fair. To my mouth, though, the best comparison is to poison. After about ten bites, I had to stop eating. As soon as I put a bite in, my body had a strong "this is not food" reaction.

So, I'm not going to be rushing out to try turnips again any time soon. I think the fault is mostly in these individual turnips. They were probably too old and too large for a turnip novice like me. At least according tomy favorite nutrition data site I'm not missing much. I'm pretty sure there are more fun ways to get vitamin C and fiber.