Curried Chicken Soup (and Variations)

As my Facebook friends will tell you (since I've been whining about it ad nauseum), our family has had a cold for the past 2 weeks. We don't often get sick, but when we do, I'm not courageous. I also crave soup. Lots of soup, usually with chicken. My husband does *NOT* crave soup; in fact, it repels him. So usually my soups are simple blends of chicken broth, chicken breasts, potato, carrots, and onions. I eat it for a few days, I feel better, end of story.

Peanut-Sesame Chicken

Tonight I got stuck with dinner duty. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking. But it's nice to have a husband who usually does the kitchen work (he's all mine!). I lost the scissors/paper/rock battle this time, so I burrowed through the fridge like a good girl.

Calming Rose Tea

I woke up this morning with the virtual palpitations--my term for the feeling I sometimes get when my mind shoots around at a mile-a-minute. Sometimes it's fun--I feel exhilirated and energized. Today, when I want to focus, it's hard. Since it usually comes after I have too much caffeine, or eat something weird, I know it will only last about a day or so. But how to function until it gets better?

Fortunately, I'm a master herbalist, which in practice means I can forage through my cupboards better than most people for medicinal foods. Today I found my decaffeinated green tea (which helps the digestive side of things) and my food-grade rose petals (which are calming and soothing). I put a couple of rosebuds into a teaspoon of tea, and made a cuppa.

It's only been 5 mintues, but I can already feel myself calming down. If you're having unwelcome exhiliration, try a cup today!


Photo by BenDad

Curried Chicken and Squash Over Millet

Sometimes we just get bored with our usual food choices. When that happens, I rummage in the cupboards and see what's around. Last week we had too many meals consisting of chicken and cabbage, or hamburger and pasta, or anything over rice, and something just snapped. I remembered my once-favorite grain, millet. Since we had also just found our stash of spices (which we misplaced in our move in April), I also had  the lovely mild curry powder we buy from our local Indian market. Problem solved.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Cake

Stay with me, here! I did my time eating carob cakes trying to be chocolate, and whole wheat indiscriminately substituted for regular flour where it had no business. So I'm not trying to force chocolate cake into some sort off unnatural healthfulness.

Here's the problem. We moved about a week ago. When we move, it's not pretty:

Thankfully, our place is not that bad now, but it's not a lot better. Which means most of our life is still in boxes. We also haven't taken time to go to the grocery store and really stock up since we moved. So when I get a craving for something sweet, and don't want to leave home to get it, I have to scrounge a little to make it work.

Creamy Brussels Sprouts

These Brussels sprouts are delicious, easy, and something a little different. If you have picky eaters who won't try them if they recognize them, shred the brussels sprouts. 

Cannot Stoppa This Tapa! Polenta and Guacamole

I haven't used polenta in years, and recently it showed up in our pantry. Here's what I came up with:

These lovely tapas are polenta with guacamole, cilantro, and greek yogurt. It is amazingly simple to make.

It's LEFTOVER MADNESS!!!!!

So. . .I wanted to do a posting on uses of tahini that didn't involve hummus. Now I love hummus, but decided I didn't need to showcase it again. Because I've done that. More than once. But the information I found pretty much involved odd recipes that probably tasted great, but didn't sound wonderful (one for Sesame Flapjacks With Tahini-Maple Syrup was intriguing, but didn't sound like me), or using thinned tahini as a sauce for almost anything, which seemed basic to me, and I'm feeling kind of sophisticated today. My husband always laughs when I say that, but you may not know me, so I might get away with it here.