What a Week!

As in, this was a very fast moving week, but it was mostly things that everyone else but me would find very boring to hear about (my parents came to visit, we did nothing to celebrate the 4th of July, and now the weekend is here again).  Yup, we are party animals.  This is why it's taken me several days to write this post...slow news week.

Let's talk cooking for a second.  I've done a new recipe!  And, most impressive of all, I actually wrote it down!!!  And by wrote it down I mean I asked the hubs to take dictation while I made it.  Hey, this is an improvement for me.  This was a great use-up-what's-in-the-fridge recipe, as that's pretty much what I did.

Summer Corn and Potato Soup

4 bacon strips, diced
4 celery stalks, diced
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 lb red potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1" pieces
3 ears of corn, shucked and kernels cut from cob (reserve the cobs)
Salt and pepper to taste
4 cups broth
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
Cheddar cheese, shredded (optional)

Cook the bacon on medium heat in a pan until crispy.  Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and reserve about 1 tbsp of the fat.  Saute the celery in the bacon fat until it's soft.  Then add the garlic and saute for about 1 minute.  Add in all the other ingredients, raise the heat to high, and bring to a boil.  Now lower the heat to simmer and simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are fork-tender.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Serve with cheddar cheese if desired.

Sooooooo yummy and warm!  It's one of those dishes that just makes you feel good to eat.  And, yes, we had funky rolls because there was one GF hamburger bun left, which served our purposes very well.

And then there was the excitement with the kids the next day...

“Oh my goodness, your puppies had fun!”

— Sally, the BFF

I was not amused, not at all.  The children have since gotten into the trash can again, which makes three times now (there was an incident before with the hubs).  Three strikes and you lose privileges!  So my poor kids have lost some of their freedom when they're home alone.  Do not feel sorry for them; they are still the most spoiled fur-babies on the planet.

And back to cooking...I MADE MINCE PIES!  For any of my readers not familiar with this traditional British foodstuff, mince pies are like autumn and Christmas and joy and what love feels like and a sense of discovery wrapped up and baked into a simple shortcrust pastry.  Raisins and figs and allspice and cloves and apples and happiness make for a sweet and heavily spiced dessert.  They are my favorite!  Those of you who are familiar with mince pies may be wondering what the heck I'm doing making them in the middle of July?!  Well, dear readers, some friends of mine had a Christmas in July party.  I mean, I kind of had to. :-D  I use Alton Brown's recipe here, in case anyone is interested.  Also in case anyone is interested, I use bacon fat instead of beef suet because that's what I have on hand 100% of the time, as opposed to beef suet, which I have on hand 0% of the time.  Of course, you can always leave that out to make it vegetarian-friendly.

So, yeah, just some random stuff happened this past week.  Thanks for reading!

Currying Favor

First things first, BOOK GIVEAWAY!!!  To celebrate the fourth birthday of Skateboards, Magic, and Shamrocks, now thru July 10th, 2016 I will be giving away 10 signed copies via GoodReads.  Click here to enter (scroll down and click the Enter Giveaway button).

Now, about that blog title...I am so my father's daughter.  I've been working on creating a new recipe, which I think I've finally nailed down: Ultimate Curry.  A few years back, I cobbled together a curry recipe from a cooking demonstration I saw (which rudely did not include copies of the demonstrated recipes.  If you're going to show how to make delicious food, people, you'd better include instructions for later) and some things I found on the Internet.  It just looked like something yummy.  I loved it!  I've since found that my curry is one of those warm, comforting, restorative dishes that just makes me feel good inside and like all can be right in the world.  Food, like reading, has its own brand of magic.  Recently, though, I came across another curry recipe that I really liked: Shrimp Curry with Cauliflower.  Now, because I am neurotic, I don't want more than one curry recipe in my repertoire, so I endeavored to combine my favorite parts of both recipes.  Here is the result...

Ultimate Curry
2 Tbsp of canola oil
1 lg onion, chopped
Salt to taste
1 lb shrimp (cleaned, deveined, and tail off) or chicken thighs (cubed)
3 med sized tomatoes, chopped (or 2 cans of diced tomatoes)
2 tsp ground garlic or 5, finely minced cloves
1 Tbsp of ground cumin
2 tsp of ground coriander
2 tsp of ground chili (more if you want it spicier) or one serrano pepper, split lengthwise (seeds and ribs removed if you want it less spicy)
1 Tbsp of ground turmeric
1/2 tsp black peppercorns, finely ground
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
3 cup cauliflower florets
1 400 ml can of coconut milk
Cooked rice
Fresh cilantro, chopped

Heat a large straight sided sauté pan or medium pot over medium heat. Add oil. When it begins to shimmer, toss in onions and salt to taste. Sauté onions until they are soft, golden, and smell delicious, about 12 minutes. If using chicken, add now and add a little more salt. Cook chicken thighs until nearly done, 15 minutes. Add tomatoes and all the spices. Stir well to combine and increase heat to medium-high. Bring to a simmer and cook until tomatoes begin to thicken, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the vinegar, cauliflower, and coconut milk. Bring back to a simmer and cook for 10 to 15 more minutes or until everything has thickened and the cauliflower is fork tender. Stir often to prevent burning on the bottom of your pan. If using shrimp, add during the last 5 minutes of cooking and cook through. Serve over hot rice and top with cilantro to garnish.

*Vegetarian alternative: use two cans of chickpeas instead of chicken/shrimp

There's a farm really near my house where I buy a lot of fresh, local, organic veg.  These are the beauties I got the other week that ended up in my Ultimate Curry.

I wanted this recipe to utilize ingredients that a lot of people might already have around.  I also wanted to make it versatile in case someone didn't have, say, serrano peppers (I've used a jalepeno in a pinch instead) around or didn't have time to pop out to the store or something.  Thus, why I included chili powder as an option...because I pretty much never buy peppers and always have chili powder in my cabinet.  Likewise, the second curry recipe I found uses tamarind paste, which I was not able to find anywhere, so I just left that out.  Feel free to use this recipe, play around with it, tweak it to your liking.  Enjoy!

That is a lot of spices.  And they make this dish so deep and rich and...oh my goodness.  It just feels so good to eat it.

Tadaa!  There is the finished product. So many textures and flavors.  Side note, if you for some reason decide not to include the tomatoes, your curry will be the brightest, sunniest-yellow meal you will have ever eaten in your entire life.

Book Nook: I promised last week that I would talk about Seraphina, so here we are.  Overall, I really liked the book.  The concept was really interesting and addressed in a way I didn't expect - half dragons would be depicted as having pseudo-dragon characteristics all over, right?  Wrong.  I really like the angle that took.  I also liked that it was set in a medieval/Renaissance-type time period.  I don't think I would have taken so much notice of that except that it was handled extraordinarily well.  The saints were constantly on the lips of the people, superstition runs amok, specific and proper attire is used.  Seriously, this was really well thought out.

There was just one small thing I didn't like: the romance storyline.  It's a minor complaint, but a complaint nonetheless.  I just didn't feel the connection, and I think that's because one half of the pair was already spoken for.  I kind of have issues with that.  I understand it's an arranged marriage type of situation, but you really shouldn't tread in rice paddies that you know don't belong to you.  As I said, though, overall I really enjoyed it.  I shall be buying the next in the series, Shadow Scale, when it's available in paperback.  Remember that aforementioned neurosis where I said I didn't want more than one curry recipe?  Yeah, I've got the same kind of thing about my book covers: they must all match!  They must all be the same format!

That's all from me this week.  Cheers!

A Whole New Woooooorld!!!

New website!  Huzzah!  Raise your glasses with me!  And a blog...a blog...right.  Can someone be a natural blogger?  I mean, it doesn't happen in nature.  You don't see gazelles on the plains blogging about the hardships of life on the savannah...hipster gazelles.  That's a Disney movie waiting to happen.

Well, whether or not someone can be a natural or born blogger, I'm not one of them...unless nattering on about nothing counts.  Is that all blogging is?  The way people talk about it makes it sound so much more focused than that.  Whatever.  It's a thing I'm doing.

Speaking of new websites, it's Time to Opine (this might become a regular segment)!

Time to Opine: 1&1, website building platform and domain service provider - DO NOT USE THEM!  I repeat, do not use 1&1.  Why I dislike them will take for more time and space than I am willing to give them on this blog, but drop me a line and I will be happy to regale you with tales of the terrible.  On the other hand, Squarespace!  No, they don't pay me to say this, but they could.  I have loved them!!!  So great, so clean, so easy.  They have gobs of FAQs.  Guess how many I read?  Like, four.  Not because I'm super smart and know so much about web design.  No, I'm kind of an idiot that doesn't like to read instructions.  I like to charge forward and just start mucking about.  And I'm really pleased with the result!  Again, that's not as much a testament to my awesomeness (though I am pretty awesome at times) so much as a testament to how intuitive Squarespace has made their site.  Well done, Squarespace!  Round of applause!

Onto books!  What I'm reading right now seems like a good segment for an author.

Book Nook: Yes, I like the stupid rhymes.  My blog, my dumb names.  So I'm reading The Lunar Chronicles at the moment.  I've seen these books everywhere, all over social media, Amazon kept suggesting them to me.  The hipster in me resisted because everyone else seemed to be reading it, despite the fact that I ended up picking it up and looking it over every time I was in a bookshop.  I finally bought the first one, Cinder, while spending some birthday money, but it was still a couple of months before I read it.  I ended up reading it on the plane to San Diego.  Now, it'll help you to know that I really dislike flying.  I find it to be an incredibly stressful experience, and I have a powerful fear of crashing and dying.  I got so into Cinder during the flight, once we landed I avoided getting my stuff together as long as possible (before becoming an impediment to others) just so I could keep reading.  And I was barely nervous during the flight.  That, my friends, is the magic of reading!  Of course, I finished Cinder during the flight back and was then stuck for the next few hours without access to the next one.  I ended up reading Seraphina in between, but I'll talk about that in the next entry.  I'm just now getting into Cress, the third book in the series because I blew through the second one, Scarlet.

The series is so good!  I say I'm not generally a sci-fi fan, but I love Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who, so that may not be accurate.  The characters are all really well developed and distinctly written.  This can be especially difficult when you have a large cast of characters, as is the case in these books.  Meyer does such a great job setting scenes, and the story ranges all over the world, which is so exciting.  So far I've been in Asia, France, the Moon, and in between.  I have a particular penchant for fairytales as well, so anyone that is a folklore and fairytales junkie like me will super appreciate all the nods to the original stories that inspired the various characters.  Oh, and the dialogue is great too!  Really funny and realistic, which can also be difficult, especially if you're trying to convey a lot of information in a conversation or just complicated/convoluted plot stuff.  I love it so much.

My biggest regret is currently not having brought Cress with me to read as I wait for my car to be finished here at the shop.  Below is a link to preview of Cinder in case you're interested in seeing for yourself what that's all about.  Enjoy!