20 Minute Chickpea Curry

Tonight I’m trying out a new recipe from lecremedelacrumb.com.  20 minute Chickpea Curry.  So far it’s true to it’s name.  You just have to remember that when serving it over rice it may take a little longer.  Thankfully, I now have a rice cooker so as soon as I remembered that I needed rice with tonights dinner, I put it on.  🙂   The only prep for this meal is dicing the onion, slicing the pepper, mincing the garlic and opening a few cans.  The veggies sauté nicely and then you add in the coconut milk and the rest of the ingredients.  It’s simmering on my stove right now waiting for my husband to get home so we can eat.  It smells really good and the tasting I’ve done so far gets me hopeful that I both made it right and that it tastes good.  And there’s rice, so at least the kids will eat something.

No photo, sorry.  It doesn’t look very appealing just sitting on my stove.  Check out the original website, those pictures are gorgeous!

 

It’s Vegan night!!

Trying out a new recipe from Yup, it’s Vegan. It looks good in theory.. We’ll see how it tastes.

We’re going gluten free vegan! Well, sort of.

So my family has been egg free for awhile.  For over a year now at least.  It hasn’t been that hard at home, but when we’re out at restaurants, it’s a challenge.  We’re not egg free by choice, it’s out of necessity for a family member.  And now we’re retaking the next step and trying gluten free. Again, not by choice but necessity.

My little guy has had irregular bowel movements pretty much his whole life.  It hasn’t been a huge issue, doesn’t seem to cause him much pain etc, but if I want any chance of getting him potty trained.  Something has to change. Without going into too much detail, his #2 isn’t solid like a normal toddlers.  If anyone that doesn’t know his situation changes him, they might think he was sick.  😦  He doesn’t seem to be bothered, but I am.

We’re not going to jump in with both feet on both things.  We’re going to do the gluten free for at least a week if we see a difference in Josh.  The vegan thing might be most of the time, but we still do love our meat.  It’s just going vegan is the easiest option to avoid eggs along with eating healthy.

We’ve found a lot of recipe’s on vegweb.com and have made a few of them already with great success.  Earlier this week I made a dish called Tomato, Basil and Pine Nut Penne that was really good.  Stay tuned on here for that recipe and review later.

If anyone has any tips or recipe’s they would like to offer, please do!  It’ll be a challenge but I think we’re ready.

I think more visits to PCC and Whole Foods are in our very near future.

Sweet, Sticky and Spicy Chicken

So last week I made something with chicken (surprise!)   This is one of those recipe’s that isn’t too difficult and if you have all of the ingredients, pretty quick to make.  I found it on allrecipes.com.  I’m not sure how long ago, but definitely since we’ve lived here in WA.

The ingredients are pretty standard.

• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger root
• 2 teaspoons chopped garlic
• 2 tablespoons hot sauce
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves – cut into 1/2 inch strips
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

One thing I’ve learned – fresh ginger and garlic are better and it’s not necessary to include the hot sauce.  But…. your husband might add his own sriracha later.

For full directions, please click on the link to allrecipies above.  I can say though, that you simply mix all of the ingredients together into a sauce, add them to the cooked chicken and let it thicken.

Now… for the fail part of this post. 😦  I usually serve this meal over rice.  I always double the amount of rice that I make, simply because it’s good for leftovers, etc.  Well, I didn’t cook it long enough.  We usually use Jasmine rice and it just ended up really watery.  😦  I also didn’t read through many of the reviews of this recipe to see where almost every review says to dredge the chicken in flour first.  You don’t really get the sticky part of this recipe if you don’t.  So, I’ll try that next time.

All in all, it’s a great recipe, but I will definitely try some things differently next time.

I know… my presentation is lacking.  Maybe I need to get some more colorful plates?

Easy Baked Ziti

This is one of my latest favorites.  It’s easy, common ingredients and it tastes good.

I’m not sure how I came upon this recipe, but I found it on 10minutedinners.com.  Besides the ricotta cheese, I usually have all of the ingredients in my kitchen.  I tend to buy multiple boxes of pasta, then put them into uniform rubbermaid containers in my cupboards.  The 5 types that I always have on hand are farfalle (butterfly), elbows, rotini and penne and thin spaghetti.  This recipe calls for ziti, I have used a mixture of penne and rotini before when I have been low on one and it doesn’t make a difference in taste.  The beauty of this recipe too, is that you can use any type of pasta sauce you want.  If you pick a chunkier sauce, it will have more texture in the dish, and if you use a thinner sauce, you can add more italian seasoning, or other seasonings as you wish.     It makes plenty of servings so that there are always leftovers and the best part of all, is that you can just throw everything in and then put it in the oven.  No pre-cooking of the noodles needed! (My favorite part)

Ingredients

• 1 jar favorite tomato-based pasta sauce (26 ounces)
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 container ricotta cheese (15 ounces)
• 1/4 grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 package grated mozzarella cheese (8 ounces)
• 1 box ziti (8 ounces)
• 1 tb. Italian seasoning *
• Minced garlic*
• garlic salt, garlic powder *
• *optional

For further instructions please follow the link below or check our her site from the link above.

– See more at: http://10minutedinners.com/easy-baked-ziti-recipe/#sthash.IMkx0bmy.dpuf

Very tasty and with minimal prep, very easy to make with 2 children running around.  Just be aware in your menu planning that it does take 55 minutes to cook.  It will also be very hot when it comes out so be sure to let it sit for awhile before feeding it to kids.

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

This recipe comes from one of my families favorite cook books.  The $7 A Meal Slow Cooker Cookbook.  We’ve made several recipe’s from there and generally loved them all.  I had typed this into my meal planning program Plan to Eat and decided on using it based on the type of meat that I had in the fridge that needed to leave in order to make space for a large quantity of chicken (more on that later).

It’s a pretty simple meal that didn’t take too long to prep.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 pound beef top round steak (cut into 1-inch pieces)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 1 tablespoon mustard
• 1 cup Beef Stock
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch

Prep involves cutting the steak and tossing it with the flour, salt and pepper.

You put the onion, garlic and carrots into the slow cooker and put the meat on top.  Let it cook on HIGH for 8-9 hours.

When those first hours are almost up, you can prepare the sauce.

Medium bowl – combine sour cream and cornstarch with 1 cup of the liquid in the crock pot.

*this was a little trick since I didn’t have much

you mix it well, put it back into the crock pot and cook on high another 25-30 min.

We served it over rice, but for a more true stroganoff you could do noodles.

 

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff

It was delicious and will definitely be making again!