Red Kidney Bean Curry

I love versatility in my dishes.  Most of what I cook can be fixed and eaten in a variety of ways – hot, cold, with or without, scaled up or down.  I also love to eat healthy food when I don’t have access to my kitchen.  Luckily, we have multiple microwaves at work, so I can bring food from home.

Enter curries.

I adore everything about a good curry. The slight kick of spice, the savory aroma, the full texture, and their versatility. It also doesn’t hurt that you can make a large batch to eat and freeze for future lunches or dinners.

I came across this recipe for Red Kidney Bean Curry on Smitten Kitchen a while ago, and it had been sitting in my bookmarks ever since.  I knew that I wanted to fix it, but it had taken a while to get to the point where I could (seeing as how I had to eat up the remnants of the previous black lentil curry).  Once I had the opportunity, I jumped right in and fixed it up the night before I had to go to work the next day.

It was easy.  It was quick.  It was delicious.  The mix of ginger, garlic and cilantro is heaven, and I love how I can dig right into this healthy and hearty meal and still feel like I’m at home.

Red Kidney Bean Curry from Smitten Kitchen

You can find the recipe here at Smitten Kitchen.  You can also view her much more brilliant pics to get a better idea of the delight that this curry possesses.

This recipe makes 6 servings, but I am the only one eating it so it’ll go much further.  I place about a half cup of curry with a cup of brown rice in a glass container for lunch.  It carries well and you don’t have to fridge it.

• One change I did make to the recipe was to swap out the 1/3 cup of oil with 1 tbsp of ghee.  The flavor was wonderful and I didn’t feel quite so icky about the amount of oil in the recipe.
• I also used the full 1/4 cup of ginger, and I highly recommend you doing so, too.  If you don’t like ginger, then follow her suggestions, but the ginger is what makes this a truly delicious dish.
• When I went to my grocery store, I realized that I was chili ignorant.  I know that a jalapeno is too hot for me and a serrano is just right.  The recipe calls for a green chili, but I wasn’t sure what constituted a “green chili” – my store had these massive peppers called green anaheim peppers that looked evil.  I was later to find out that they would have worked just fine.  I erred on the side of caution and used one medium serrano pepper with great results.
• The last thing I did was to use about a cup of chopped cilantro and I cooked it in the pot at the end.

Eat. Live. Be. for a Better 2011 – Challenge 17

To see my post explaining ELB 2011, my goals, and other participants, go here.

My Update:

In addition to eating with the owls, my lunch is shared with two snack breaks.  In days gone by, my typical lunch and snack breaks included the following:

•     peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a cheese/lettuce/mustard/mayo sandwich
•     chips
•     pudding
•     granola bar
•     banana
•     wheat crackers and a Laughing Cow wedge
•     cookies

With my new healthy eating habits, I had to re-evaluate what I was eating.  Notice the high amount of unhealhty carbs and calories?  Notice the sugary items?  Yeah, they had to go.  If I was going to consume carbs and sugar than they had better do double or triple duty.   I still needed a high-protein lunch to keep me going, so I thought about what filled me up but was still tasty and healthy.

So, here’s my new lunch and snack menu:

•     greek yogurt – snack
•     brown rice and black lentil dal or red kidney bean curry
•     banana
•     4 wheat thin and peanut butter “sandwiches” (I just spread and thin layer of pb between two thins)

And that’s it!   I was unsure whether the curry would fill me up enough since it’s the only thing I eat at lunch, but it’s been perfect.  Not only do I get a really good meal, but it makes me feel a bit more relaxed (rather than eating a quick sandwich).  I’m loving the home-cooked and scaled down lunch.

Am I hungry when I get home? Yes.  Unfortunately I’m all about food when I walk through the door.  I’ve been able to curb the cravings by eating an orange and one Weetabix.  This keeps me going until dinner after my exercises.

Challenge Week 17 Topic: I can’t live without…

Dessert.

And, yes, this makes the whole eating healthy thing a bit difficult.

This weekend was Easter and as such there were multiple desserts and cakes.  I tried my best to resist but I couldn’t stop myself from taking a cherry cupcake, ice cream, and a slice of mandarin whip cake.  It was all delicious.

Growing up,  we didn’t have many desserts.  We’d have the occasional fruit crumble or cobbler, but most of our desserts were of the snack variety – packaged, quick, and not all that good.  Of course, now that we’ve all moved out of the house, my mother is cooking desserts at every opportunity.  Jealous, me?  Very much. (I mean, what’s up with that??)

Now that I have control over the meals and the kitchen, I’ve found myself wanting some type of dessert after a meal.  We might have cookies, chocolate, fruit or brownies – I’m not picky.  I used to bake a lot just to have desserts at hand.  Now, however, I try not to bake as much.  This has resulted in fewer sweets, but not a cessation in dessert consumption.  It’s something I’m trying to work on, but I think we’re at a happy place now with regards to quantity and quality.

What am I baking next?  This lovely (and quick) Oreo and French Silk Cake

I Hoot for Gyros

This week has been tough.  I haven’t worked a “standard” full time job in, well, ever.  A year ago I did a year of full time teaching, which was an intense combination of teaching, grading, and office work.  The demands associated with teaching 4 courses, grading 80+ papers in continuous cycles, and keeping up with the daily chores meant that I was one tuckered cookie.  However, a perk of the job is what’s called clustering.  I was lucky enough to get all of my courses clustered onto 3 days of the week so therefore I was “off” two days (technically I was off but realistically I was grading, meeting with students and planning so it wasn’t really an “off” day).

While grading and teaching zap your energy in complex and multi-layered ways, I have never had the pleasure opportunity to work a typical 9-5 job.  Until now.  And I barely made it.  I feel like I’ve been run over, beaten up like a limp pillow and then sat on again.

And to top it all off, I eat my lunch with owls.

And not those cute, adorable owls that you know and love.  No, these are creepy, unblinking owls.

I'm staring at you...

The place I work at has these freaky owls sitting around the trees on poles to keep away geese.  I like to sit outside to eat my lunch, but it’s a bit disconcerting with a row of these owls bobbing in the wind.

Lemon Chicken Gyros with Tzatziki and  Feta by Andrea at Can You Stay For Dinner?

I tried (my own adaptation of) Andrea’s Baked Falafel with Lemon Tahini Sauce a week or so ago and it was delicious.  Not only was it simple, but it had the perfect balance of flavors and textures.  I was so excited by the results, that I couldn’t wait to try out her Lemon Chicken Gyros recipe (not to mention my Otria Cucumber Dill Feta Dip needed using up).  And, with my job making my mind feel like over-cooked grits, I wanted a recipe that was brainless and quick.

So, I went to my recipe bookmarks and printed our her Gyros recipe only to note that it held a few “surprises” that I had to work around (these wouldn’t have been surprises if it weren’t for my soggy brain).

1. The recipe calls for chicken – this wasn’t really a surprise, but I substituted 1 cup of Quorn Chik’n Tenders
2. The marinade required 1/4 cup of lemon juice – this seemed like a lot to me.  In fact, after reading over the recipe, I noticed that the marinade seemed to make more than I would need for the amount of Quorn I was going to be using.  So, I simply used 1 frozen ice cube of lemon juice (1 tbsp? 2 tbsp?) and halved the rest of the marinade ingredients.
3. It had pita/flatbread – I only had flour (taco sized) tortillas.
4. I didn’t have cucumber or feta – but I did have my dip (woot!)
5. It had parsley listed as a green – I don’t really care for parsley either way, so I substituted a few leaves (about 5?) of spinach.
6. The biggy – It says to marinate the “chicken” for 1 hour.  Darn. Being too tired and impatient, I skipped this entirely (and they still came out wonderful!).

Even though what I came up with was a bit different from the original recipe, I can honestly say that I was in Gyro heaven.  The lemon and herbs exploded in my mouth and mingled so happily with the spinach, tomato, dip and quorn.  The recipe also gave me 2 nice sized gyros and leftovers!  I bet I can make 2 more for another meal.   This is definitely a recipe that I’ll be making again.

Lemon  Quorn Gyros with Cucumber Dill Feta Dip

(Adapted from the original by Andrea that you can find here.)

See those lovely herby bits?

Marinade:

• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp – 1 tsp crushed garlic
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• 1 tbsp – 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp oil

Mix ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Fillings:

• 5 spinach leaves, torn into pieces
• diced tomato
• diced red onion
• 1 tbsp Cucumber Dill Feta Dip per gyro

Cook 1 cup of Quorn Chik’n tenders in a small frying pan until hot (medium heat).  Add marinade.  Cook until slightly browned (a couple of minutes).

Heat tortilla and layer fillings with marinated Chik’n tenders.  Inhale. Repeat.