Heatwave + Crabby Baby = leftover night

Nothing cooking tonight.  And that's probably for the best, since all of my Pyrex is currently housing leftovers from the many meals of the past week.

The Thai Curry last night was tasty!  Very, very tasty!  I doubled the amount of chili paste in the recipe, because I live dangerously like that.  It was spicy and that was probably good, because it made us drink a lot of water.  The baby had none of it - it was just too spicy for her.

Overall, we probably liked the Indian Curry better, though we still very much enjoyed the Thai Curry.   I think the Indian Curry will end up being a staple in my meal rotations, and I think it would also be good if you left the chicken out and plopped an extra sweet potato in there - so I have a another gluten and soy free vegan standby for when our vegan friends come over for dinner that Will and I can also enjoy.

And it is HOT here.  Like dangerously so.  The news keeps telling us about it.  So we are inside for the rest of the afternoon (when we're not picking up our new - hopefully not wilted - CSA veggies) because I am A HUGE WUSS when it comes to the heat.

or the cold.  or too much sun.  or too much rain.


i know.  i am difficult. 

ANYWAYS, the baby is cutting yet another molar.  Or maybe it's the same one.  In any case, we're fussy and crabby and FINALLY down for our nap.  Beyond searching for a few more chicken recipes for my upcoming challenge or contemplating the meal plan for next week, I'm just milling about the house and trying hard not to snack out of boredom.  


...which is actually easier to do at home because my darn overly-thoughtful co-workers were oh-so-good at bringing in doughnuts or cookies or ice cream or all sorts of snacks and leaving them dangerously close to my desk... 


Happy Thursday to you all!

Recipe round-up!

I tried a bunch of new things this week.  And another new thing is in the crockpot right now.

So here's the recap:

Monday:

I made this recipe from the crockpot blog that I really like.

And here's the verdict: it's decent.

And I hate beans.  Like, really really really hate beans.  There aren't many foods I hate as much as beans.

But I can't get over how cheap they are (even organic beans are cheap!) and how much fiber they have and how much nutrition they pack.  And Will needs a lot of food to feel full every day, and he's always bugging me to make stuff like this for him so he doesn't feel badly for eating so much expensive meat and fruits/veggies/etc. 

So I made it.  And I even willingly ate it.  (The baby also had about a dozen bites.  She doesn't appear to love beans, but she will eat them.)

It's best with some hot sauce, as the actual recipe isn't too spicy, but I think I shall make this again.  Will loved it.

I also made chicken legs with yogurt and vindaloo curry sauce that night, which was, of course, beyond delicious.  And another apple-sort-of-dessert-but-not-really (mostly just spiced apples).

And Tuesday (yesterday):

Chicken curry in the crockpot!  It's a Rachael Ray recipe that she gave to the crockpot Mom.  

This was DELICIOUS.  The baby even ate it - mostly the sweet potato, but also a decent amount of "organzo garbonic" (my exhausted, two glasses of wine-induced pronunciation of organic garbanzo beans that will never, ever be forgotten by my husband) and she even ate some green bell pepper! 

Tonight we're having company, and I made the Thai crockpot curry recipe that Rachael Ray gave to the crockpot Mom.  It smells delicious.  (And I've always been interested in learning how to make more Thai foods - I even bought the fish sauce so I'm prepared to try more now!)

And anyways, beyond that, we're just settling into a nice routine here.  I am making yogurt in my yogurt maker right now (actually, I dumped the ingredients in the yogurt maker.  The yogurt maker is now making yogurt, not me.) and the baby and I will probably play outside in the shade when she wakes up from her nap.

Will continues to work way too many hours (went to bed at midnight and got up at 4 AM - who DOES that, anyways?!?) but our daily  life is much less hectic, so it's allowing him the opportunity to really focus on work, which he needs to do right now.  I try to just pack his bag full of good food every morning, which is fairly easy because I keep cramming my crockpots full of yummy goodness.

.... dinner smells AMAZING.

The Month of the Chicken!

Well, we have less than two weeks left in July.  Which means I'm hard at work (well, not really. but I am talking about it a lot) on my August 2011 challenge: make a chicken dish every day.

A year seemed like a bit much.  (We like chicken, but not that much.  And I can't expect to take over my sister-in-law's kitchen come the holidays.  So a month seemed just right.)

Now, I'm not just going to do standard crockpot recipes or take the easy way out.

I really want to learn how to cook chicken.  Like, really cook it.  (Spoiler alert: there may or may not be some Julia Child recipes in the mix already.)  And we'll be using all different parts of the chicken.

This should be fun.  I'm excited about this.  Will is excited, too, even though I told him I probably won't be cooking any other time of the day, and he might have to eat cold cereal or chicken leftovers for breakfast.  He was okay with that.

I fully expect some flops or some mistakes in the kitchen.  That's okay.  I'll be brutally honest about the recipes and the mistakes that I made that sent us to the phone to call for delivery.  I promise to take pictures and post them daily, but only if you promise not to mock my photography skills.

(please.  no mocking.)

August 1, here we come!

Shhhhhhh......

All three crackpots are full, bubbling away with dinner. Will post tomorrow with the results.

The baby is napping.

Shhhh...... instead of cleaning and paying bills, I'm napping today, too.

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Oh, my. MORE rules.

Another cooking/food no-no in the house, courtesy of the "I know way too much about obscure medical things" husband.

I was getting super excited about cooking fish in the crockpot, because it's super easy, doesn't require any oil and I can do one packet of fish with some sort of spicy and sweet rub for the adults and another packet of plain fish for the baby.  I have some salmon in the crockpot for tonight with a dry rub I made that's similar to the like I posted here.

...which made me realize I use a lot of spices, and I need to buy more because for some reason, I'm out of paprika.  Who runs out of paprika, anyways?  

Anywho, I was telling Will how much I love cooking fish this way, but he asked me to not do it very much, because there's inconclusive but intriguing evidence to suggest that cooking with aluminum foil is linked to certain neurological disorders.  It's nothing the FDA would warn against, but it joins the list of no soy, no non-organic dairy, etc. that my husband keeps for our kitchen.

Argh.

Foiled again!  (zing!!  but a sad zing this time.)

Beet and Fennel Soup?

Well, it looks pretty.

I had some beets, which I would normally roast and put in a salad.  But I also had some fennel, which I had no idea what to do with. 

So what did I do?

I found the boldest and most bizarre recipe for both ingredients I possibly could and decided to make it.

It was okay.  Bold.  Different.  Very fennel-ish.

I put some crumbled goat cheese on top of it and I couldn't decide if it made it better or worse.

But I did eat all of it.  And so did Will.  (He actually drank it.)

I don't think I will make it again, though I did save the leftovers and I do plan on eating them.

I am, however, very interested in making more soups with beets.... stay tuned!

This week's produce CSA haul!

Stay tuned for the recipes to come from this bounty of yumminess!