Feeds many
boil, cool and chop 5 pounds red potatoes.
While the potatoes are cooking/cooling make the sauce.
3/4 cup plain yogurt (or more or less)
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tbl vegetable oil
1 bunch of green onions sliced thin
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped small
1/4 cup golden raisins
vegetable oil
1 tbl or more Penzeys Garam Masala
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 pinch amchoor (optional, i just happen to have it)
Mayonaise
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/4 – 1/2 cup frozen peas (thawed)
heat the 1/2 tbl veg oil in a small frying pan. Add cumin, mustard, fenugreek and turmeric. Heat, stirring constantly until the seeds stard popping. Dump the whole thing into the yogurt and mix well.
Saute raisins, onions and garlic in as little oil as you can get away with.
Add to the yogurt.
Add the rest of the spices and let this sit so the spices and the yogurt can get it on in their own special way.
When the potatoes are ready, add the yogurt sauce, and peas and gently mix.
Add as much mayo as you need to make sure everything is sauced. You could go with all yogurt, that’s cool, but I found that people like the added dimension of the mayo flavor or something.
Garnish with the chopped cilantro that I forgot to buy or chopped pistachios or whatever strikes your fancy.
Category Archives: Delicious
Just How Evil
I woke up Wednesday morning with my grumblepots face on, disappointed that all the planning that went into my world domination scheme was lost. I was so down. How come Satan never showed up? Why had the prophecy not come true? Why did I have absolutely no clean clothes to wear?
David cheered me up by pointing out that an army of winged demons was probably more trouble than it was worth. They’re just a bunch of assholes and they don’t really follow directions all that well and they probably have really high vet bills. What I don;t need in my life right now are stubborn assholes with high vet bills, I have enough of that as it is.
Someone else pointed out that you’d have to be pretty damned evil to have satan skip out on an appointment with you. That made me feel better too. I’m so badass that I get the best birthday AND satan is scared of me. Go me!
Speaking of high vet bills…
Maddie is getting better (yet again). Her kidneys and her liver are functioning as they should be, she does not hav parasites and she shows no sign of infection. SO she’s either allergic to her food or the 5 weeks of antibiotics killed all the bacteria in her belly making it hard to digest food. We have her on a half mushy, half crunchy diet. She seems to be eating it and it seems to be coming out in a manner pleasing to those in the know.
You know?
Birthday party fun being planned for this weekend. I’m staying out of the planning (except to bug people to rsvp). I’m leaving the planning to David and my sister. I’m tired of planning parties, i want someone to plan the party instead!
And the obligatory food bit for Auntie Sue:
Made sweet corn and butternut squash enchiladas last night. The filling was spiced with deep, rich low tones, cinnamon, oregano, ancho chiles, raisins, cardamom, cumin and coriander. The sauce was tomatoes, tomatillos and cilantro. I left that as a bright, high note affair seasoning it with salt, lime juice, sanaam peppers and a touch of cumin. As I was assembling the dish I thought the sauce might be too watery, but it ended up being just right. The bright flavor of the sauce interplayed with the hominess of the filling. Will I make them again? hell yeah!
Flat skinny round
Maddie is not longer vomiting all over the floor or shitting blood everywhere but she’s still not eating her regular food, only soft stuff. She’s lost so much weight. I may have to take her back to the vet. I’m so worried about her. She’s so thin it’s painful to look at her. David suggested having her teeth looked at, maybe she has a sore tooth and that’s keeping her from eating.
I bought a lot of soft food today and will make another meat and rice stew, this time with a blade roast I have in the freezer.
This morning we went to one of Pablo’s cereal parties where I ate two bowls of chocolate peanut butter cap’n crunch with whole milk. All that sugar and fat made me sick.
I made up for it though, I made a spinach/sweet potato/chick pea korma with mock duck, a veggie masala with spaghetti squash, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans and tomatoes. I also made garlic/onion naan for david and potato/pea naan for myself. So healthy I could have died!
Of course I chased it down with a cocktail made of tangerine orange juice and my grandfather’s homemade cherry cordial.
So essentially, it was a day of food. Either Maddie’s food and wondering what food will make it better, or my food and wondering if I can’t just spend every hour of every day cooking for people.
To Heal
Today is my last day before I go back to work. Strangely I am really looking forward to going back. I miss it, I miss having structure in my day, I miss talking to different people.
Today I slept late and got nutty on the quality of my dreams. I love zoloft dreams, it’s like the best benefit of being on this pill. I’ll be sad to let them go when I finally get around to finding a better pill. Today, I also cooked and knitted.
My hand is getting better and more useful, though I do use it more often than I should and every night as I go to bed it aches, but I don’t mind. Currently, it is still in worse shape than pre-surgery, but I know it will get better.
Today I cooked because I missed cooking. I cooked like a mad woman sentenced to a lifetime without pans! It started last night when I made the perennial favorite snack treat “Bear Turds” (oatmeal, cocoa, peanut butter, sugar, butter unbaked cookies). Then today I made a dense porridge for maddie consisting of chicken thighs, carrots and rice cooked completely to death. It smells great but is completely bland.
She loved it. I hope it helps her get better. I know it made me feel better to be able to do something for her.
For dinner I made this:
1 head roasted garlic, skinned and mashed
2 thinly sliced green onions
1/4 cup basil cut in a fine chiffonade
1 good handful parsley rough chopped
1/4 chopped canned artichoke hearts
1 14 ounce can Muir Glen fire roasted crushed tomatoes
1 15.8 ounce can great northern beans rinsed and drained
S&P to taste
1 tube ready made polenta sliced to 1/4 inch slices and fried to crispy edges.
saute garlic and onions in a bit of olive oil until they start to brown a bit. Add tomatoes. Stir. Add everything else and maybe a bit of water. simmer for 20 minutes. Serve over polenta.
It was awesomely good. I loved it, David loved it. My soul loved it.
Then I made a wheatberry salad with wheatberries, green onion, grapes, fried tofu, carrots, parsley, tamari almonds, some other stuff and a raspeberry vinaigrette. That will be for lunches. I felt more productive than I have in weeks.
Crunk Juice
The problem with having my cast off is that I can now move my wrist more than before (even though I am supposed to wear my brace to prevent that but it gets all sweaty and hot and smelly in there) and that makes it hurt way more. It hurt before but now it hurts with an aching on the inside.
The obvious answer is “wear the fucking brace you tardbake” but I never listen to the obvious answer.
My insomnia has come back full force. I think there are a number fo factors in here: sore arm, change in the weather, jesus hates me, but the biggest reason (I think at least) is that I have not been to work in over a week and I am not on vacation. I do things around the house and I go out but there’s nothing really stimulating, no problems to solve, no one to hate just for being there, it’s just movies and coffee and cigarettes and dental appointments and shopping. So there, I said it, i need to work. damn.
To help with the insomnia I took a trazadone and a vicodin last night. the traz just does not work on its own anymore and that’s just sad. Needless to say, I was way way slow moving this morning.
Marshall and I met my dad for lunch today then we shopped Mall of America. It was not exciting but I got two pairs of capris and a shirt. wooodoggy…no wonder I can’t sleep.
This evening, Mary picked me up and we went to Al Vento for dinner. Totally lovely. We started with the roasted beet salad, roasted beets, chevre, chopped pistachios, and mixed bitter greens with a fennel vinaigrette. She had the agnolotti in tomato sauce that was divine. The tomato sauce was almost buttery in its richness. I had the gnocchi with spring vegetable in a brown butter sage sauce. The vegetables were super fresh and tasty, peas, pattypan squash, tiny asparagus, tomatoes, and ferns. I had the pistachio semifreddo for dessert, wonderfully light and bursting with pistachio flavor but they did it no favors by drizzling excess amounts of chocolate sauce and powdered sugar on the plate. I think the intensity of the pistachio flavor would have been better served by allowing it to be a singularity OR by adding just a thin slice of melon to the side as a light counterpoint. Mary had the creme brulee trio, pistachio (i think it’s high pistachio season around here or something), orange lavender, chocolate espresso. She spoke highly of them. I tried the orange lavender as it piqued my curiosity. the texture was divine, lightly custardy without being watery, smooth and uncurdled. The flavor surprised me. I’m not a fan of lavender, not of its flavor or its scent. It’s too FLORAL, i just don’t care for it, but I wanted to try this and it was very good. They’d managed to capture the essence of the lavender without overpowering everything with the floral heaviness. It was almost a spring green flavor with little bright sparks of lavender and gracious undertones of citrus.
And that’s my day. I’ve been eating out too often this week and that needs to stop. I miss cooking and I have the ingredients for a number of tasty meals. Who wants to come over for indian food or pasta with fresh mozzarella, sd tomatoes, basil and asparagus?