Before I get into the recipe, I would like to update on our cloth diaper adventures. I bought a few more BumGenius diapers (bumGenius One-Size Cloth Diaper Blossom
) and love them to death! I haven't converted completely, but I can already tell we are saving some diapers. Our disposable supply is lasting a lot longer! I was hesitant about the poop situation, but it turned out to be not so bad (mostly). Pee is no problem. I throw a pee-soaked insert (and a pee-soaked cover-- if necessary) into the washing machine. Come the end of the day, I run the washing machine and take the refreshed diapers out, lie them out to dry over-night, and voila! We've got a fresh batch of diapers ready for the morning. Poop
Yeah, it deserves it's own headline. The ideal poop situation is that my son poops solid. It's easy to shake into the toilet and throw the diaper set into the washing machine. If there is a poopy diaper in the wash, I will run hot water and let it soak in safe detergent. Come the end of the day, I run it and continue my routine as explained above. But, that's the... IDEAL... situation. Poop is poop. And it is far from ideal. I'm not sure about other kids, but my son is infamous for his foul mud-butt pies. So what happens when the insert is so soiled that when it comes time to shake it into the toilet... well... nothing comes off? This is WHY it should be standard to have sinks with hoses in laundry rooms. For those who don't have one of those snazzy things, you'll need to do what I've done. Run the shower on HOT and hose that sucker down. Make sure your shower is not going through a "clogging" phase, and in the end, you might want to put a little drano down there (for the paranoid, or phobic). The great thing is the fibers of the insert don't latch on to the poop, so the hot water does a great job. You don't need soap, but you can use it. It might help with future staining. When you are done, toss that baby in the wash and procede as usual. If your child is having an excessive poop day, after the third or fourth time of this process, you are about ready to jump the deck. On poop days, just use disposables. Hurt the planet, but save your sanity.
Recipe: Nikki's famous curry!
On a note on the other side of the spectrum, we now continue with something far more delectable. FOOD! Now, I have come up with this recipe after weeks of experimenting after searching out curry recipes online. There are a few indian grocery stores in the Antelope Valley. I tend to shop at India Spices, but there is also Masala Magic (which I am dying to go to simply because of the name, but just haven't made it yet!). After reviewing the recipes, I made a list of the ingredients and bought out India Spices. 80 bucks later, I realized I didn't need it all, so I am about to save you some money!
The best thing about this recipe is that it is about a thousand recipes in one. So, you can keep coming back to this recipe once a week and whip up something new every time!
Here's what you need:
Curry powder (of any level of spicy)
Tandoori Masala
Black pepper (if you want it)
White pepper (if you want it)
ground ginger
ground cinnamon
ground coriander
ground cloves
granulated garlic powder
granulated onion powder
parsley
paprika
chili powder (if you want it)
almond oil or olive oil
yogurt
milk
cream (milk and cream can be interchangeable. you can also skip out entirely on yogurt and do all cream, but the yogurt is less fattening!)
chicken tenderloins or salmon fillets
butter (preferrably unsalted)
vegetables (and fruit) that go well with this curry:
kale, potatoes, cranberries, raisins, pineapple, mango, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, peas, spinach, crushed almonds, cabbage, tomatoes, corn, squash, zuchini, mushrooms, etc... the list goes on. I try and put about 5 of these in to cover important areas of nutrition.
white rice, basmati rice, brown rice- whichever you've got! This sauce is so flavorful, that even if you aren't a fan of brown rice, it makes it better. This rule also applies to your least favorite vegetables. From a mom perspective, I love how I can get my son to eat ANY vegetable when it is covered in curry!
And here's how to prepare it:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
A mom with not a lot of time on her hands needs a way to cook fast. So here is what I do. You CAN take the time to make your sauce on the stove by itself blah, blah, blah... but let's be reasonable. When you are either trying to get the whole house in order and cook while your kid naps, or you've got a horde of kids tearing apart your houe and vying for your attention, you need a low-maintenance way to cook. So here is how I do it without skimping out on health:
the food-pile method: Get a standard-sized glass dish that can hold about 10-12 chicken tenderloins. Before you add the chicken, though, we make the curry right in the dish. Here are rough estimates of the measurements and in what order to do it all (I don't measure ANYTHING. I pretty much measure with my eyes and nose- if it smells good, it works!)
2 lbs. of yogurt
1 cup of milk or cream
mix and spread out evenly through out the dish
4-5 tblspoons of tandoori masala (start off with 4, after you mix it all, see if you want to add the fifth. it should be a pretty blush-sauce pinky orange color)
1 1/2-2 tblspoons of curry powder
2 tbspoons of ginger
1 tbsp. of cinnamon
1 tbps. of cloves (add an extra 2 tbsp. of this minus one tbsp. of the masala for a different kind of curry)
1 tblsp. of coriander
1 tblsp. of paprika
over the entire dish, sprinkle a thin layer of garlic and onion powders.
sprinkle parsley modestly over dish
add as much of the spicy stuff as you want. the white pepper is pretty intense. I get a mild-medium spicy curry, so I don't add any extra pepper. But if I use a non-spicy curry powder, I use a little black pepper. The chili pepper changes the flavor completely. Try your curry once with and once without to notice the difference. They are both nice! Add a tablespoon or two if you want to try it.
mix it up thoroughly till all of the ingredients blend into a rich color. If you added more cloves and chili powder, it will be darker. If the color still seems pretty white-ish, add that extra tandoori masala.
Then, add 1/2 cup of the oil of your choice.
Mix thoroughly, again.
Your sauce is done! Now it's time to add your vegetables. For the dish I made today, I sprinkled about 1/4 cup of dried cranberries, crushed a few handfuls of frozen kale (this freezes nicely if you plan on cooking in the future), 1/2 cup of peas, 1 cup of cauliflower, two small handfuls of crushed almonds, half cup of carrots, and 10 diced brown msuhrooms. I like to buy a lot of my veggies frozen. It saves us money. And this cooking method definitely works for frozen veggies.
Mix thoroughly.
Now, add your meat. Either 10-12 chicken tenderloins or 3-4 full length salmon filets. Again, they can be frozen. I usually cook with frozen meat. Then thinly slice 5 squares of butter and place them on top of the meat evenly spread thorugh out the dish. Just before I tossed mine in the oven, this is what it looked like:
Pull the foil off (but keep it if you want to cover it again in the future!) and bump it up to 450 and let it go for another 30-60 minutes. By now, the chicken is thawed and more maleable, so grab a spatula and flip the chicken and mix the sauce before popping it back in the oven. You really want to get that curry boiling now. Right after I get the curry ready to be on 450, I start my rice. I just use a rice cooker. It has the rice done in about a half hour nd keeps it amazingly hot for hours. After the 30 minutes, I usually pull the curry out and check and see if the meat is thoroughly cooked and the sauce isn't so watery. If it doesn't look as cooked as I'd like it, I can cook it longer, but I need to make sure I keep an eye on it every 10-15 minutes. Forgetting about it during this period can cause the sauce to dry up. Cooking it like this usually produces wonderfully soft and juicy meat. If you have the time, you can slow cook the curry at 300 for about 2 hours and then do the 400 for 30 minutes. The slower you do it, the nicer the chicken comes out!
after 1 1/2 hours on 350 and 30 minutes on 400 (initially forgot to do that extra 50 degrees :-P) and 15 mins on 450:
Multigrain rice: 2 1/2 cups of white rice, 2 cups brown rice, 1/4-1/2 cup of quinoa:
To top it off, I know India Spices sells frozen garlic naan. Throw that in the over for few minutes, and you suddenly feel like you are eating at a restaurant!
I know it's kind of vague, but like I said. I don't measure things. When I cook, I am constantly in a state of "winging it." But in the end, magic usually happens. As long as I don't forget about it, lol! And with elevation differences, the times and temps might be different. I live at about 2500 ft. above sea level.
A Healthy-tasty drink for dinner or any time!
Orange juice is an amazing juice. It is like the curry sauce of juices. You can hide just about anything in it and it will still taste fabulous! If you have a juicer, great. Juice a few veggies like carrots, cucumbers, celery, kale, parsley, cabbage, etc... and mix it with orange juice in a cup for you or your little one. (ratio: 2/3 OJ: 1/3 veggie juice). If you don't have a juicer, get a few cans of regular ol' V8 and do the same. They add salt as a preservative, so the taste is different, but my son will still hound down about 2 cups of it in the morning. Many kids go through some period of being a picky eater, so curry and sneaky OJ are great ways to hide those extra nutrients that our kids won't touch otherwise!
