Crockpot Curry

I modified this a lot from a recipe I found online from Cooking Light. I think this recipe could be adjusted a great deal to use whatever vegetables and legumes are available.

Crockpot Vegetable Curry

• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 cup carrot slices
• 2 Tbsp. curry powder
• 1 Tbsp. Garam Masala
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. fresh ginger, minced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 serrano chile, seeded and minced
• 2 (14.5 oz.) cans chickpeas, drained
• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 eggplant, unpeeled and cubed
• 1 cup fresh green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 3 cups fresh baby spinach
• 1 (14.5 oz.) can light coconut milk
• lime wedges, plain yogurt, chopped cucumber for garnish

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion and carrot and cook, covered, for five minutes. Add curry powder, Garam Masala, sugar, ginger, garlic, and chile. Cook one minute, stirring constantly.

Place onion mixture in a 5-quart electric slow cooker. Stir in chickpeas and all following ingredients listed through the vegetable broth. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or until vegetables are tender. Stir in coconut milk and spinach until spinach wilts.

Serve with lime wedges and top with plain yogurt and chopped hothouse cucumber, with rice, couscous, or other grain of choice.

A Very Yellow Dinner

Slept in a little today - because it's Sunday (my day off every week) and because I stayed up late last night and because it was sooooo warm and cozy in my bed with my Christmas pajamas on.

Wasn't hungry when I woke up so just had some coffee. Went out shopping and bought nice food at Trader Joe's and Safeway - plus some great cookbooks (and other books, and a sweater, and an orange wristwatch) at the thrift store which was having half-off everything in the store while I was there! Came home and put a bunch of stuff into the crockpot for a curry recipe I found online.

Around 4.00 I was feeling kind of headachey and realized I still hadn't eaten anything all day, so I made an Amy's burrito. I love these burritos, but they're kind of pricey at $3 each for just a bean & rice burrito (which I can easily make myself for much, much less) so I kind of save them for situations when I really don't feel like cooking. I always top them with some Trader Joe's Greek yogurt and my favorite salsa. Makes them into a filling meal instead of just a little burrito.

Curry was ready in time for dinner and it came out yummy! As I was making it, I realized it was going to be a very yellow meal because I used yellow Roma tomatoes instead of red, sweet potato instead of white, and an orange bell pepper instead of a green one...mostly because this was what I had. I guess I'll be getting my requirement of beta carotene today! I don't really like sweet potatoes but I'm trying to work them into my diet because they're so good for me, so I kind of "sneak" them into recipes like this where the flavor is less pronounced because of all the other ingredients. The curry had chickpeas, yellow tomatoes, bell pepper, sweet potato, green beans, spinach, carrots, eggplant, curry powder, and coconut milk. I'll post the recipe in another post because it was good and easy - I'll totally make it again.

Decided to continue the yellow theme and made yellow rice to go with it instead of using the pilaf I had planned to use. I used a pre-packaged mix by Goya (yes, I know that's more Spanish flavored than Indian but I figured it would be good and it was) and added some cashews and green peas. Topped the curry with a dollop of Greek yogurt and some hothouse cucumber for coolness. Seriously delicious, all around!

I have a ton leftover of all of it, so you'll be seeing this dish again and again in the next week.

GRE tomorrow afternoon! I hope I do decently. And I can't wait until it's over...

A little stressed out

I'm taking the GRE on Monday and I'm stressed - really wish I had studied more for it. At least it will be done and then I can move on the stressing over my statement of purpose for my grad school application due January 1st.

Breakfast was an egg white omelet with red & yellow bell peppers, spinach, some chopped up turkey bacon, a little lowfat cheese and salsa. More iced Gingerbread Coffee with the end of the Cinnamon Bun creamer - I need to go stock up on the holiday flavors of creamers before they leave the stores for the season. Luckily they're made with so many creepy fake ingredients that they don't expire for like 2-3 months after purchase, hehe.

I had some more of my roasted vegetables for lunch. Then I had the end of my Crockpot Beans & Rice before going to work - I definitely need to do some cooking this week so I have easy things to warm up again!

Went out with a friend after work and had two margaritas. This picture isn't mine, I found it online, but it looks exactly like the drinks I had! Well, except mine were in a sort of dive-neighborhood bar and this one looks like it was in a much fancier place, lol. But they were super yummy - I love margaritas and the really nice bartender at the place we go sometimes after work makes them perfectly for me.

Wasn't hungry when I got home at 2 a.m. so I kind of drunkenly grabbed a few handfuls of All Bran Garlic & Herb crackers, gulped down a packet of Trader Joe's version of Emergen-C to ward off a hangover and went to bed.

Friday, December 19th

Not my finest eating day on Friday. Went to an early appointment with just a big diet soda and it lasted forever. Got home around noon and had some Turkey Meatball & Barley soup (the last of it, so sad) and later in the afternoon a Clif Blueberry Crisp bar. First I had two bites of a Larabar, which I had never tried before - Cherry Pie flavor - and REALLY didn't like it so I threw it away.









Went to work and ended up getting home late again, like midnight - it's been a late week all around. I was pretty tired and didn't feel like eating so I had a few handfuls of All Bran Garlic & Herb crackers and another Clif Bar, mostly because I was kind of pouty over a few things not going great at work and felt like eating something sweet. It was a Black Cherry Almond flavor which I've never had before and it was super yummy. Oops, almost forgot that I had a premade chocolate protein shake, too. But, yeah, that's not the most nutritionally balanced day. Oh well.

One Week Until Christmas?!

Wow, how is it possible that Christmas is only a week from today? Every year I say I'm going to enjoy the holidays, and every year they seem to fly by before I even realize that they're here.

Breakfast today was Trader Joe's Greek Yogurt with blackberries...yum. Had a little iced Gingerbread Coffee from Trader Joe's, too, but I guess I wasn't really in a coffee mood.

Went to lunch at Pei Wei with a friend. I had a broccoli ginger thing with tofu over brown rice. Didn't take pictures at the restaurant (was thinking my friend might find it a little insane if I started snapping photos of my food, but then I decided on the way home that I don't care and from now on am going to take pictures of restaurant food, too) so here's a picture of the leftovers I brought home. It was pretty good, nothing amazing, but we had fun which is more the point of going out for lunch in my opinion.

Stopped at my favorite local natural foods store on the way home for a few things and decided to get a little treat. I love yogurt covered pretzels but tend to limit them because they're not exactly super-healthy, but they have them in Christmas tree shapes right now! Look how cute they are! So I got a little bag of them from the bulk bin and had a few.

I ate the rest of the Pei Wei before going to work. Got home from work pretty late again - it's been busy this week with company holiday parties and the such, but at least it's been good money. Just had some more Crockpot Beans & Rice after work. I need to be up early in the morning for an appointment so hopefully I can sleep pretty soon.

Turkey Meatball & Barley Soup

I made this the other day, sort of following a recipe but with some big modifications (of course...I hardly ever follow a recipe to the letter). It came out really, really good.

Turkey Meatball & Barley Soup

• 1-1.5 lbs. ground turkey
• 1 cup uncooked barley
• 8 cups broth (I used turkey broth but I'm sure chicken would be fine)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1 onion, chopped (or a bunch of pearl onions, peeled and left whole)
• 6 stalks celery, chopped
• 6 carrots, peeled and chopped
• Couple big handfuls of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
• Bit of olive oil

In a large stockpot, saute the onion, carrots, and celery in olive oil until slightly softened. Add the barley and saute for a few more minutes. Add the broth and simmer covered for about 15-30 minutes, until the barley is cooked.

Meanwhile, in a bowl combine the turkey with the eggs, breadcrumbs, and a bit of salt and pepper. Roll with hands into small meatballs (mine were about the diameter of an American quarter). Add to the simmering soup after the barley is cooked. Continue cooking for 8-10 minutes until the meatballs are cooked all the way through. Mix in the spinach and turn off the heat on the stove but cover the pot again so the spinach just wilts into the soup.

Crockpot Beans & Rice

• This is one of my favorite easy recipes. I don't generally use the crockpot much because I feel like it turns everything into an overcooked mush of grey yuck, but I modified this recipe from one I found in a book and it's great. I can eat it breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It has canned soup in it, but you don't get that weird canned-cream-of-whatever-soup-1950s-casserole taste at all. I also doubled the proportions of the original recipe because I like to make a lot of this as it reheats really well, but if you want less it would obviously come out well with halving the recipe.
  
  

Crockpot Southwestern Beans & Rice

• 5-6 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 bell peppers (I usually use red for the color), chopped
• 1 chopped onion
• 1½ cup brown rice (I use Trader Joe's Brown Rice Medley which has brown rice, black barley, and daikon radish seeds, but plain brown rice works just fine)
• 3 cups vegetable stock
• 2 cans cream of celery soup
• 2 cans black beans
• 2 cans green chiles
• 2½ cups cheddar cheese (I use Trader Joe's lowfat Mexican cheese blend and kind of wing it on how much I add, usually less than the amount the recipe suggests)
• 1-2 Tbsp. taco seasoning
  
  Saute onion, celery, and other veggies until translucent. Add rice and sauté for 4 minutes, stirring. Add vegetable stock and celery soup, mix until smooth. Stir in black beans and taco seasoning. Pour into crockpot and cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. Mix in green chiles and cheese, cook for ½ hour longer.

Testing this thing out...

So I've decided to start blogging my daily foods. I generally enjoy cooking, eating healthy, concentrating on whole foods and discovering new foods and recipes. I've let my eating slide this past semester, fell into some bad habits of picking up frozen meals and even Taco Bell instead of cooking. It hasn't been the worst eating in the world...but I'm sick of it and ready to get back to cooking and feeling good about what I eat.

I think keeping this blog will help me stay excited and motivated about it. It's also a good place for me to record some of my favorite recipes and foods for myself, so I can look back over it when I'm uninspired and hopefully remember some great meal ideas.

I'm a student and I waitress at night. I like to cook in sort of big batches so I have things that are easy to microwave for dinner when I get home late from work. So I tend to eat the same things for a few days in a row. I doubt I'll take new pictures each time I have the same thing.

Okay, so this morning I had Crockpot Beans & Rice for breakfast. I like non-breakfast foods for breakfast, although I'll often have egg white omelets or oatmeal, too. You'll see these green-and-yellow bowls a lot...I tend to like foods that look like piles of mush and are eaten from bowls but taste delicious.

I had some iced coffee, too, with yummy Cinnamon Bun flavored creamer.

I guess my biggest vice (eating-wise) at this time in my life is artificial sweetener. I use Splenda in coffee and yogurt, and drink a decent amount of Diet Mountain Dew every day. I was eating disordered for a long time, used to smoke and drink too much alcohol, so in the grand scheme of things I don't worry too much about artificial sweetener considering how much other bad crap I've given up...but I don't feel too great about consuming it, either. At some point I'll try to quit. Maybe. :P

Mid-afternoon I had one of my favorite snacks: All Bran Garlic & Herb crackers topped with Laughing Cow Light Garlic & Herb cheese, slices of European cucumber and a few twists from the pepper mill. Yum. I also had a nice cup of Candy Cane Lane tea with a little fatfree Half & Half.

My eating times are a little odd because I go to work about 5.00 pm and get home between 10-11 pm. I never want to have a big dinner before I go because I run around like crazy at work and don't want to be too full. But I also usually get pretty hungry by 8 pm. So I generally put off lunch until late afternoon (hence the midday snack) and keep it fairly light, and then have a light dinner when I get home.

Today's late lunch was a big bowl of my Turkey Meatball & Barley soup which I posted the recipe for in another post and some of these delicious roasted veggies I made a big batch of the other day. Seriously, aren't those veggies pretty? Eggplant, yellow and red bell pepper, mushrooms, and pearl onions. You'll see those pearl onions popping up a lot in my foods...I just recently discovered them at Trader Joe's and have been putting them in everything.

LATE dinner tonight - had a late party as my last table at work so dinner was at midnight. Big bowl of lentil and barley soup that I had made a while ago and took out of the freezer earlier this week. Kind of heavy on legumes and barley today but it was just food that needed eating before it went bad. I really hate wasting food.

I'll probably have a medjool date or two for dessert. If I stay awake that long.