I'm also excited to be cooking again. I guess last semester was not a good set-up for cooking. I never brought enough food for lunch and then made poor choices when searching for food at school (say, in the vending machine perhaps). Now I'm on a mission to incorporate more fruits and vegetables in my diet.
Tonight's dish was an attempt at dressing up the good ol' rice and beans standby. I like rice and beans. Of all sorts. And being as I frequently forget to take meat out of the freezer, or I run out of meat, or just to shake things up a bit, I've decided to have more beans in my life.
I had a bag of brown jasmine rice on hand (yes, it is definitely worth it to switch over to whole grains from white processed stuff- it might just save your life...and waistline). So let's see...jasmine rice....great northern beans? Hmmm...no. Black beans? Nah. Hmmm....how about- the great garbanzo bean?! Aka, the chickpea. When saying the name of a recipe, chickpea sounds far more gourmet than garbanzo bean.
Now for the vegetables. I have to put vegetables (or fruit) in everything now. No more just plain meat and starches. Load up on the good stuff! Well, onion was a good start (yellow). Also for whatever reason I was thinking celery. I have too many carrots in my fridge right now, so I had to throw those in. How about some red bell pepper? Don't mind if I do.
The carrots I threw in with the rice to be sure they were soft. I browned the onions and then threw in the chickpeas.
Hmmm...flavoring, spices? This one was a little tough. No sugar allowed. Chili lime? I don't have chili powder so I just used red pepper and lime juice. Then I sniffed the pan. That's how I cook. Lots of sniffing. First sniff what you've got, then hold the next potential spice to your nose. Go back and forth sniffing them. Do they go well together? Do they smell good together or does going back and forth make your nose jump a bit?
I threw in some nutmeg...guess this thing is getting curried. In went the curry powder, cumin, turmeric, and salt. At this point I considered adding canned coconut milk. (By the way, you should always have some canned food on hand to make stuff- diced tomatoes, beans, coconut milk, etc) I decided the coconut milk would be a bit much for today, so I passed on that.
Meanwhile, the rice simmered in a bit of beef broth with the carrots.
Then I mixed it all together.
For a little added crunch and texture I threw in some raw, unsalted sunflower seeds at the end.
And voila! Dinner is served!
My next challenge is going to be making a meal out of fruit. Probably not until this weekend after I go grocery shopping again. Can you make a filling meal out of fruit that doesn't remind you of breakfast? Fruit and cheese plate aside?
I remember a day when I was a kid that my mother didn't feel like cooking (she was an amazing cook and was always coming up with new and exciting things...that I wasn't always thrilled about). So she declared we were going to have watermelon for dinner. And we did. That's all we had for dinner. We all ate watermelon until we were completely stuffed.
So how long is my adventures in food-land going to last this semester? Who knows, but I'll definitely forgive myself if I'm eating Pop Tarts out of the vending machine during midterms.
No comments:
Post a Comment