Tikka Masala

Hi, it's Rainbow. I'm too lazy to log out of my husband's account and log back in with mine to post this correctly.

I recently ran across a recipe for tikka masala that actually seemed like it could work out to be similar to my favorite paneer tikka masala dish from Biryani. I took a picture of the recipe from my friend's cookbook and made my version of it on Friday night. It turned out great!

I chopped an onion and added tomato sauce, yogurt, and paneer along with the spices from the recipe. I also added a little black pepper. We finished off the leftover's tonight for dinner.

I'm publishing this here because I'm hoping to not lose this recipe.

About half a year ago or so I found this fantastic recipe for ranchero sauce, as in huevos rancheros. I made a ton of it and put a bunch in the freezer. It's all gone now and I really would love to make more. But I can't figure out where I got the recipe. I think it was on one of my iphone recipe apps, but after spending a bunch of time trying to find it, I've finally given up. t's sad because it was so good.

Cooking and Cleaning

I've been using my free time to cook a lot lately.

Yesterday, was a day where I kept myself really busy all day long. I never had a moment of down time and was on my feet most of the day. It helped me sleep really well last night.

Today, I wasn't moving quite as fast. After I had breakfast, I fell asleep on the couch for an hour, and then I got up and have been doing stuff, albeit a little slower.

Yesterday, I made kimchi, yogurt and green curry for dinner. I ate some of the yogurt this morning, and it came out pretty good. I couldn't figure out how to "cook" it though after I added the cultures because our oven doesn't go that low. Instead I put a couple candles in the oven and hoped for the best. It seemed to work ok.

The kimchi was actually a lot of fun to make because I had to pound the crap out of all that vegetable matter. It's currently sitting on my counter fermenting right now and will sit there for a couple more days.

Right now I'm making ranchero sauce. We're having huevos rancheros for dinner tonight. I've always wanted to figure out how to make a decent ranchero sauce. It's not completely done yet, but so far it tastes great! I'm hopeful that I've found my recipe.

In other news I started reading "The Red Planet" by Robert Heinlein last night. It's pretty good and I'm about half way through. I'll need to find a new book soon.

Nourishing Traditions and the Attraction to What We Can't Have

The other day I was hanging out with Krista and she mentioned this nutrition cook book whose basic angle is that whole unmodified foods are best for you. And that our society's obsession with altering food formats (by homogenizing, sterilizing, or denaturing) is seriously detrimental to our digestion and general health. This book also promotes eating fermented foods.

While I was in college I got really into this type of nutrition; and was a huge advocate of this philosophy. My philosophy is still pretty closely aligned, however I am a vegetarian and this book isn't completely on board with that. I also feel strongly about only eating foods that have a low glycemic index.

As a side, there's been studies that have linked folks who eat fermented foods with less incidence of allergies. I've been taking a probiotic recently and my honeypot took it for some days. While he was taking it he had less issues with his body reacting to certain foods. Interesting, no?

I'm going to make yogurt today, and see how it goes. Wish me luck.

On another note, my serger has been breaking needles for several weeks now when it shouldn't be. I finally brought it in to get it fixed because the timing probably is off. It'll be gone for a week and now that it's gone I've come up with all of these projects that I want to do. Why are we attracted to things we can't have? I must be patient.

Busy Day

Today was an active day. Here's what I did.
-had breakfast with my honey
-clear out the walkway of overgrown plants
-swept the sidewalk on both sides of our house
-replaced my office desk with a table and got everything set up again
-made chocolate chip cookies
-cooked dinner
I also canned some red sauce last night, and canned some tikka masala as well.

My honey put our new toilet in the upstairs bathroom, played his guitar, and other things too.

Enchilada Sauce

There's this restaurant that I really like to get huevos rancheros at on the weekends. They have really good super hot habanero salsa too. The thing is that quite often they really under cook the eggs. I really don't like that. And it doesn't seem to matter how you order them.

So today I made huevos rancheros at home. And as part of that I found a recipe for enchilada sauce online and tried it out. I ended up doctoring the recipe some and it came out really good.

Yum!

Rainbow's Enchilada Sauce

• 2 cups water
• 3 Tbs veggie broth powder (from bulk at Berkeley Bowl)
  
• 4 Tbs ancholi chili powder
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 2 Tbs of minced raw garlic
  
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon (less than 1/16 tsp.)
• 1/3 tsp. sugar
• 5 Tbs. cold water
• 5 Tbs. white flour
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
  

Banana Corn Meal Muffins - 4.5 Stars

Several months ago I purchased this cookbook called Veganomicon. It's pretty special and has quite a few new ideas for creating good vegan food to eat.

Today I made my first recipe out of it. Well, sort of. I didn't have some of the ingredients, so I improvised and my mini muffins came out pretty good. The recipe, as I made it, is on the bottom of this post.

Also, last night I made my first Indian meal using the variety of spices that I bought while I was there. It had a tomato base with orange lentils, pine nuts, coconut milk, and a bunch of other stuff. I had some Aloo Paratha in the freezer so I made that too.

Banana Corn Meal Muffins
1 cup rice dream
1 tsp distilled white vinegar
1.5 bananas
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/4 cup garbanzo flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

mix the wet ingredients together after mashing the bananas on their own, mix the dry ingredients together separately, then mix them all together. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.