cooking

ColorLESS food…BLAH

Posted on by Lady CAS

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OMG i never thought I cared so much until now. I absolutely feel embarrassed and cannot stand to see my plate have all one color on it now. I enjoy seeing a colorful plate. I know it means healthier options and more effort and time went into my meal. It’s not just a fried mess or starchy concoction. I do not even like to grab a pre-made salad anymore. I prefer to make one if they have a salad bar where this is the option. I like to choose what I put in it. I prefer baby spinach instead of lettuce of any type. I enjoy a bit of just about everything in my salad. in small portions. Even if it’s only a small tablespoon amount. It makes me happy to know it’s in there. I feel like a queen when I eat it.

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When people see it they tell me how great my salad looks. Considering the fact that I do not eat very much all day long the salad may have about 500-800 calories due to cheese, eggs, bacon bits, and sometimes pasta or meat, and dressing I add. Most everything else carries little calories content. The salad I had today probably had less than usual because I barely had anything that has high calorie content lots of veggies. I had 2 cups of spinach, 1 cup of broccoli, a few slices of cucumber, 2 ounces of cheese, 2 eggs, 1 cup of grape tomatoes, 1 ounces of sunflower seeds, 3 green olives, 1 ounces of bacon bits, and 2 ounces of ranch dressing.

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It was delicious and colorful. I was excited about my salad. People kept asking me where I got it and I kept reminding them that our cafeteria at work does have a salad bar, LMBO. That they did not have to buy the pre-made salads with lettuce and whatever was in them.

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For my next meal in about 3 hours I have a BLAH meal that I had to throw together this morning…shifty wannabe chicken alfredo. I had leftover noodles from spaghetti the other night added some alfredo sauce and some canned chicken and there ya go, LOL. It will stave of hunger but it’s all one color and a bit fattening. So I am not happy. I feel like it set me back a bit. I feel like I need some green things to fall into it and garnish it at least. Oh well. I cook really well when I have time and when I do not this happens. I get salty or fattening meals that are not take out at least which is better than usual but they are not exactly the best either.

My Love Affair With Spices

Posted on by Lady CAS

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Lately I have been obsessed with the the world of difference that one spice can make in a dish. I mean people just do not understand how using one different spice can change the way a dish smells and tastes and puts the whole atmosphere into a completely abstract state of mind.

By adding vanilla you can have a warm sensual or romantic sense. By adding a touch of chili powder a daring edge. Or by adding chamomile the relaxing effect you are proving. The point is that everything you add should have a purpose, not just thrown together. I feel like lately when I cook I am cooking with purpose and if I am not then I do not want to cook that night and it’s my husband’s night to cook. Then he can do as he wishes, which usually has no rhyme or reason, but his goal is to make sure your belly is full. Though I do try to coach him a bit.

When I was younger I always loved Italian food. I loved the intense aromatic spices of the peppers, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, and so on. I still do. However, since college my shift has been middle eastern and Asian. I have fallen in love with cumin, turmeric, curry, coriander and the like. I have found these flavors and scents soothing and delicious. They have great benefits to the body as well. Such as antioxidants and anti-inflammitories. I enjoy sharing them with my family and my husband.

Have you ever seen the movie Mistress of Spices? It’s about a woman who harnesses the magic power of spices and helps her clients find the spices they need to be successful in their endeavors in life (healing sick people, keeping relationships healthy, finding love, etc) however, she is not allowed to fall in love because her only love is that of the spices.

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You get the idea it’s a good movie little movie if you ever want to watch a little romantic movie and fellows score romance points with your lady. It’s not a comedy just a love story. Sorry fellas.  I mean the scene where she runs her hands through her spices sifting and touching them; I love doing the same thing. I would love to go to a bazaar or farmers market and just buy spices buy the bagful and jar them. I would be so tickled. (i know that sounds a bit silly but I would, it’s exciting me as I think about it). I am already looking for jars for the bags I bought at the store in the ethnic aisle and the Asian supermarket recently. It’s cheaper than buying regular spices of brands Americans know that would cost $5-8 for 1-3oz. When I get 1lb and pay $2-3 for a well known brand that you eat in the Asian restaurant or overseas. I prefer authenticity.

Anyways. The point is I felt like her, I feel like with my spices I can do anything. I can smell them and put my hands on anything in my pantry and put something together. It is quite empowering and so far it has opened up my husband’s picky “I don’t eat this or that” attitude quite a bit. He eats quite a bit more than he would normally eat thanks to my spices and experimentation.

Tonight I will have him make spaghetti, but instead of his usual brown some hamburger and then add sauce and simmer style, I will help him make homemade meatballs which he has never done and I did for the first time last week (but he wasn’t there to get any). So he will get to try and make them and eat them. This helps us grow together and have some fun as well. I can already smell the fresh Italian spices filling my nose. I can’t wait to get dirty, lol. Aprons ON! LET’S COOK!

Orange Curried Pork Chops

Posted on by Lady CAS

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**Before I begin you should know that pork is not a traditionally Indian meal or curried dish. We also served it with plain white rice instead of the traditional basamti rice just because it was what we had on had at the moment.

Ingredients

1 h 4 servings

  • 1 cup orange marmalade (we use the type with actual orange zest pieces in it which was delicious)
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder (this was not enough for us so we doubled it for more spice)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup water (or chicken broth)
  • 4 bone-in chicken breast halves, with skin (or in my case pork)

 

  • Prep

15 m

  • Cook

45 m

  • Ready In

1 h

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. In a small bowl combine the marmalade, curry powder, salt and water. Mix together. Place chicken pieces, cut side down, in a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking dish and spoon marmalade mixture over chicken.
  3. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 minutes, spooning sauce over chicken several times. (Note: If sauce begins to stick to the baking dish, add an additional 1/4 cup water).
  4. Remove chicken from baking dish and skim fat off of the sauce. Serve sauce hot with the chicken.
  • Tip
  • Aluminum foil can be used to keep food moist, cook it evenly, and make clean-up easier.

 

My FOOD Epiphany

Posted on by Lady CAS

 

So my sister is always telling me how she has baked a concoction (her words not mine) that tasted pretty good. I believed her. I mean though my sister is single, she lived for a while with my parents before moving out on her own after graduating form grad school as did I. And you learn two things from that experience; 1) how to survive on your own (save your money and be responsible so you can be on your own) and 2) how to make more than 4 dishes once you leave, LMBO. Because my parents love their staples. They have no problem eating the same things but it will drive you crazy if you have an adventurous palate. I had to learn how to cook. My parents teach you basics, but they laugh at some of the things I desired to cook. I became way to adventurous for them (my mom’s skin crawls when she thinks of some of the things I eat, lol). All I will say is I love Andrew Zimmern’s Bizzare Foods on Travel Network. I try things just  because he says you must!

After I learned how to cook, I had to learn how to buy the proper utensils to make it happen easier and to make it look presentable. These are the things I am now teaching my older sister. She definitely has the cooking adventurously thing down, but now she has to learn how to buy the right supplies to make things easier on herself and her dishes. Sometimes you have to swap out (and slowly over time if money is an issue) your dishes to higher quality ones as well or buy additional things that may help like parchment paper so you do not have to chisel your goodies off your baking sheet and nibble on them piece by piece, LOL. She said they were yummy but when you cannot take a picture and they did not look like the yummy balls you planned for and then you had to chisel and chip them to snack on them I sort of giggled because it reminded me of my earlier projects.

I was determined to eat them because regardless of how they looked, they tasted WONDERFUL. I just could not take one picture because they were surely pinterest fails in that looks department. So she asked me, how do you make your baked goodies? She asked if I just followed the recipes? I said yes at first then I thought about it and said no, actually I don’t. I always fudge it. I always either do double with a ‘bump’ (I may add an extra pinch or splash of everything –no actual measurement just literally another pinch or splash here and there until I am happy) or eyeball certain ingredients that I believe would make the recipe better. So if I want it to look like the pinterest picture and to still taste good I try to add equal parts of everything even if I’m only eyeballing it but sometimes I may add a bit more flavor of something I like just to give it a punch.

So far I guess you can call it luck but the trick it tasting your food. Get in there. Smell it and taste it while it’s going if you can. The more you cook and bake the more you will become familiar with measurements and what they look like and with how certain smells/ flavors mingle and what you feel you would like to taste and create. This will help you find or add ingredients accordingly. I mean there are times I do not have something and I will either leave it out or substitute it with somethings random and it works out perfectly and my husband never knows, LOL. I even sneak in things he swears he doesn’t eat (he’s not allergic, he just doesn’t like the taste he says). It’s hilarious. That’s the sign of a good cook.

 

Halloween brings Christmas

Posted on by Lady CAS

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Well as usual we get through Halloween and know that as soon as the day comes the next day will bring Christmas! Kids no longer say thanksgiving is next they only know that on television every toy they want is advertised and Santa is everywhere and well why try to tell them anything different. The stores changed their whole design overnight, LITERALLY, so that this is the case. To go from Halloween to Christmas. They feel there are no real thanksgiving songs or ambassadors like Santa or the Easter bunny so you aren’t really missing out anyway right!?! SO sadly it’s unless you are older and desire to see family, want toe vacation, desire the glorious foods, or truly want to give thanks for all that you still have that year you could care less about Thanksgiving!

I personally enjoy thanksgiving because I like to make a dish or two each year now and see how people enjoy it! I am glad to see my dishes finished off. I have started to make 2 of the same dish at home so that I can have it when I get home too. I have learned that sometimes I don’t get enough of it with my family if at all or that sometimes I just plain want MORE it was so good! This year I have to actually make a choice of what I want to cook since I have bought this new cookbook of crockpot recipes. I have already made several and so far I have loved them all. I know one is very thanksgiving oriented and then there I am trying to decide if I will do a desert as well.

I am excited! I won’t have that much time though since I will be traveling and returning from vacation just hours before thanksgiving this year so I need to be sure I have it all together ahead of time (the more thanksgiving parts so they are sold out). I’m so glad my MG is under control so I can eat as I wish without swallowing issues!

I still cannot believe it is November already!

One of My Favorite Things…MG Tools

Posted on by Lady CAS

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One of my favorite MG tools is my crockpot. Though this is a tool that helps save time for most anyone whether you have MG or not. If you asked me if I EVER saw myself using one when I was younger I would have said NEVER. The reasons were because they were hard to clean back in the day due to them being all in one and never having and the type of material that they were made of. Moreover, I also thought of them as preparing old people foods such as soups, roasts, and the like. I like soups but I am not a fan of roasts really.

However, now with the invention of crockpot liners, ceramic crockpots, and the fact that they are able to be in more than one piece so you can wash them more easily helps me want to use them even more so. Furthermore, I have found some of the most amazing recipes lately that I have been cooking up a storm in the last year. Most people, women, do not ask their husbands for a crockpot for their anniversary but I did. I wanted to be able to cook more and was tired of not being able to do more around the house. I am very used to doing th majority of the house work and cooking so when I get super tired and could not I was not happy with eating out all the time. So I started doing research adn looking on one of my favorite websites (allrecipes.com). They had all these slowcooker/ crockpot recipes and recipes I knew I could modify to become crockpot recipes. So I did. I could put food in there in the morning and when I got home it would be a meal. And on the days I wanted to be an ‘old’ person I could have soup, lol.

My husband was thrilled and he enjoyed the  news things I created and of all the things I asked for it was one of the cheapest things a person could ask for it more than paid for itself. At this point he is like you need a bigger one so he can have bigger portion sizes, LOL. He bought me a 6 quart one and that can feed a family easily but he eats so many servings in one setting sometimes that I have to make extra food over the course of two days. The man is a very thin and works hard but can put it away and only God knows where!

I have learned that some of my favorite recipes on the stove can be put in the crockpot now so that I can reserve my energy and that has made me a happy camper and my husband as well. I have gotten in a good rhythm and I am so happy that I am able to do better with balancing work and home chores.

Cooking and MG

Posted on by Lady CAS

Cooking is one of those things that we all say we either love or hate doing, can or cannot do! But I can do it and I love it when I create something that fills my belly and tastes amazing it makes me want to cook something else. Even if I just ate just to eat it for later, LOL. The problem is that with MG I struggle to make certain dishes especially baking dishes because it can require a lot of mixing and mashing. I end up not being able to be as authentic as I would like and that can taint ‘clean’ my dish is. I like to cook healthy and I like to know what is going into my food. Though I do not always garden my dad does sometimes and so do some friends and they give us fresh veggies and fruits at times.

THE PROBLEM

With MG repetitive motions cause extreme fatigue and results in what I call the dead muscle syndrome. I end up with a muscle that was used too much unable to be used again for hours and sometimes not properly for days. If it was my hand or wrist I am in trouble because then I cannot properly use it for a days at a time and your hands are needed for quite a lot of things aren’t they. I struggle to open drinks, cars, put on my clothes, push up on things, pull the seat belt, do my hair, brush my teeth, and the list goes on. My hand begins to tremble just trying to hold carrot.

THE SOLUTION

I have bought more tools to help me. Many people buy tools they never use in their kitchen because they either do not cook often or they just do not use them. I on the other hand have no choice if I am to be able to function in normal life. I want to have it all. So my mom heard my cry when I said I was going to buy a mixer and beat me to the punch, lol. She bought me a new blender and a food processor. I can hardly wait for it to get here. I already have the ingredients for a no bake peanut butter pie!

Next few things on the menu with be some dips, hummus, and stuffed meats! YUM!