Curry Powder

Not all curries are the same. Anyone who has grown up eating buss-up-shot, doubles, or friedbake knows this. Curry, like chili is not made up of one ingredient, but is a wonderful orchestra of spices.

I’ve notice that a lot of people buy curry sauce from the grocery store and use that as a base, but a trick my mom taught me needs to start with dried, ground up spices. Normally I would buy a bottle of curry powder at the grocery, but a couple of years ago I thought it would be interesting to try making my own curry powder. I still keep a grocery store bought bottle of curry powder for those times I may be out of key ingredients to make my own.

A Few of My Favorite Kitchen Things - Part 2

Here are some more of my favorite kitchen things.

1. Cuisinart Hand Blender and Mini Food Processor - LOVE THIS! A friend of mine introduced me to the hand blender years ago and when I moved out of my parents' house it was one of the first things I purchased. It's easier to use, clean and store than regular hand blenders, and the extra food processor is so helpful for those times you don't need to chop 10 tomatoes.

2. Rice Cooker - My mom taught me how to make rice on the stove a long time ago. I had it down to an art, where it would turn out perfectly moist/dry every time. My husband who is of Asian persuasion got this little number from his mom, when he moved away from home, and it is by far the best method of cooking rice I've ever used. Regular stove top rice is a thing of the past.

Pinterest Connoisseur

I am a Pinterest Connoisseur. Many of my recipes have come from Pinterest, as well as some of my recent house cleaning habits. It is funny to see posts from those who tried a Pin out that didn’t work, but it’s annoying when it happens to you. So far I haven’t been so unlucky to have a Pin turn out so bad it wasn’t usable, but there have been a few that I won’t try again, or I need to revisit the method. Here are three attempts at Pins, each with a varying degree of success.

Paleo Sangria

PALEO/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT 

Sangria is one of my favorite ways to drink wine…actually it is my favorite way to drink wine, and home made is the best way to do it.

This was one of those recipes where I searched and found about a dozen variations and just decided to make one up that pulled from them all.

The reason this is a paleo recipe is because unlike most sangrias I didn’t use cane sugar. Instead I used coconut sugar. To find out more about coconut sugar check out a previous blog on my favorite kitchen things.

A Few of My Favorite Kitchen Things

Everyone has their favorite can't live without kitchen items, and food supplies. Sometimes that list includes a certain knife or wooden spoon, pot or plate. I have about a hundred little things I must have handy. If ever I find myself without one of these items after a move it immediately goes on my "to purchase" list.

Here are a few of my favorites to start.

1. Coconut Sugar - To avoid using the dreaded ingredient of regular sugar I have invested in a wonderful substitute, coconut sugar. The cheapest I've found it at is Amazon.

2. Measure All Cup - I got this from Pampered Chef. It's great for getting sticky ingredients out of your cup, like honey or coconut oil.

3. Labels and Containers - To get rid of the multiple open bags of various ingredients in my pantry I went on a hunt for low priced, easy to stack containers. I found some good ones at Wal Mart, and had some decent ones from Ikea as well.

4. Garlic Press - I also got this from Pampered Chef. I've had some nifty garlic choppers in the past, and really wanted another one. I had gotten invited to an Pampered Chef party and had asked about which of the garlic products were best. My salesperson recommended this one and I am happy I bought it. You can use it with the garlic clove peel still on, it's sturdy (I've had ones that have broken with too much force), and it has a nifty little brushy/hole poker thingy to clean it out.

Make-Up Brush Container

I don’t have as many brushes and make up supplies as most girls, but I have enough that it gets annoying to keep fishing through my makeup bag for individual brushes. I had for a long time used a set up of a square glass and coffee beans, an idea I found on Pinterest. I even had a small plant pot with rice. But these took up a lot of room on my bathroom counter, and there was no way to avoid dust getting into my brushes. Don’t’ want that on your face. Yuck!

Mushrooms Sautéed in Red Wine & Coconut Oil

VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL/PALEO/DAIRY FREE/SUGAR FREE

Mushrooms are my favorite! Well, one of many. I’m usually too lazy to do much more than simply sauté my mushrooms in coconut oil or add it to a scrambled omelet, but this recipe looked so intriguing I had to try it out.

I’ve been getting in wines of late especially since a friend of mine started her own wine tasting business. The only problem I’ve found with wine is what to do with the ones I don’t like but have already opened. Thankfully wine makes an awesome ingredient in lots of recipe.

Poached Salmon (Oven or Stove)

PALEO/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL/DAIRY FREE

This is our favorite meal…well my husband’s favorite meal, and one of my many favorites. I figured out the recipe on my own over a year ago when I had frozen salmon portions that I didn’t have time to thaw. I didn’t actually know what I was doing was called ‘poaching’, because I had never purposely poached anything before. (Felt pretty dumb in the moment I discovered what poaching was.) My mom had actually taught me this technique years ago with veggies, referring to it as steaming. Steaming is in a way an accurate description since the food being cooked wasn’t all the way submerged, and the portions on tops are cooked by the steam.

Tomato Clam Soup/Sauce

PALEO/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL/DAIRY FREE

HAPPY ACCIDENT! This was an awesome discovery just this week. I had a bag of frozen chopped clams that I only needed half of for a recipe I’ll post later. Unfortunately, at the time, the clams were all stuck together so I had to thaw it all out together. This meant having to make another clam dish within a couple of days or the rest of the thawed clams would go bad. I was looking for a good recipe, and thought I might try out a dairy free clam chowder, but didn’t have any potatoes. Finally I found a pasta sauce that looked promising, but instead of following the recipe I winged it and here’s what I came up with.

Red Clutch

Made a fabulous little red clutch for a Christmas party a couple of years ago. It worked very well and off set my peach outfit perfectly. 

Original Pattern 

A Puzzle Blanket of Memories

My second and biggest crochet project was a striped blanket for our living room couch. The stripes look random, and there isn’t a visible pattern to it, but there is meaning to every single stripe. I used special dates in our lives to decide on the number of crochet rows for each stripe. It’s been long enough since I made the blanket that I forgot what order I put the dates, and now it’s a puzzle every time I count the rows to figure out which represents what significant date. 

Other than my unusual way of determining stripes, there were 2 other stipulations: I wanted to make a blanket big enough for 2 people; and be super warm without having to fold it in half. That meant a whole lot of yarn (I don’t even remember how many skeins), and using a double crochet stitch. It took forever to make, but turned out just as I wanted.

Penne Pasta & Eggs

VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL

We added eggs to our almost vegan diet recently. I think we’re officially vegetarians who eat fish. J Since we added eggs I’ve been going a wonderful scavenge for egg-based dishes.

Since we cut out gluten as well, it’s been hard to find the perfect pasta. I’ve found some good rice based pastas, but the texture is a little too different from regular wheat pasta and is hard to truly appreciate as a pasta substitute. The best ones I’ve found are quinoa/corn based, and I just found a perfect blend of it at Costco. An organic/gluten free brand (Ancient Grains) has perfect texture and taste to replace wheat pasta.

Gluten Free Lemon Bars

VEGETARIAN/PALEO/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE/COCONUT OIL

The hardest thing to give up/find a replacement for is pie crust. I have already tried variations of almond crusts, but this one was by far the most effective and tasty. It worked very well for the lemon bars, and I will be trying it out with other fruit fillings.

To avoid using the dreaded ingredient of regular sugar I have invested in a wonderful substitute, coconut sugar. I order it off of Amazon. This is the cheapest I’ve found so far. Since I don’t use a lot of sugar in my cooking I don’t go through it too fast and can justify the cost. It’s not as sweet as regular sugar, but can be used 1:1, and has far less calories. If I want the recipe to be sweeter I sometimes add a little extra than called for.

Four Things l Figured Out When Going "Almost Vegan"

In my vegan/gluten and sugar free cooking adventures I figured out several things. The most immediate were.

1. It’s difficult to switch your diet all at once. For some it’s probably easier to change a few things at a time, rather than go all in. We had already tried out various combinations of diets and were fine with the drastic change. My only reservation was with having to get rid of all the meat in my freezer.

2. The key to making a drastic change like this work is to find easy to make recipes that you can enjoy having weekly.

3. Meat isn’t that special. Sure I like a good hamburger or steak when we’re celebrating or just feel like going ‘off the wagon’, but usually after the meal I don’t feel like I missed much.

4. People will judge you. They question where you get protein, vitamin B, etc. If you’ve done your research before making this change you will be able to properly supplement these areas of “lack”. As for a response to their judgment…my Mom always says, “Ignore the ignorant.” If you’re confident in your diet choices than what does it matter?

Banana Egg Pancakes

VEGETARIAN/PALEO/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE/COCONUT OIL/SUGAR FREE

Another wonderful discovery in my search for egg based vegetarian dishes. This recipe is just what it says, bananas and eggs. Super easy and quick to make. The texture takes getting used to, and if you’re my husband you’ll never like them.

Veggie Shepherd’s Pie

VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE/COCONUT OIL/SUGAR FREE

Shepherd’s pie is one of those wonderful, easy meat dishes that I used to make often prior to our change in diet. I figured out a way to make a vegan version that tastes just as wonderful. You can switch out the veggies however you like, the most important part is the potato, and if you want to have that meat texture mushrooms are the answer.

“Almost Vegan”

My husband and I went “almost vegan” about a year ago. This also included excluding gluten and all sugar where possible. I say “almost vegan” because we decided to keep fish in our diet (including shell fish), and have decided in the last month to add eggs back in. On special occasions (such as birthdays, holidays, etc.) we depart from the diet entirely and indulge in meat and wheat. We’ve found some other words to describe our diet, the closest being flexitarian, but what really matters to us is that we’re eating healthy, organic (where possible), non GMO (where possible) and that we’re happy.

The last year has been quite a culinary adventure.  Since ‘converting’ I’ve been experimenting with several recipes, trying to find those favorites I could replace my favorite non-vegan dishes with. I'm happy to say that we're over the "HOW ARE WE GONNA SURVIVE WITH NO MEAT" mentality, and have developed a healthy, consistent, fulfilling diet.