I started my little experiment today instead of January first as I had planned. This was mostly due to the fact that James planned a nice dinner for me on Monday, January 5th - some high-class four-course meal with a drink paired with each course. This has been in the works since long before I decided to do this whole mess, and I didn't want to pull out so I figured I'd start now. This means I get two weeks of no eating out, then a nice meal out and a time for me to collect my thoughts about the time that had passed, and finally another two weeks of eating in.
I actually started last night with a big batch of pasta, though I wound up using jarred sauce (Newman's Own, not bad stuff) which probably has a good deal more sodium than I really need. I figure this will help me spruce up breakfasts and lunches here at the beginning, since I tend to eat leftovers for both of those pretty often. Making the hot cereal this morning was kinda nice, but made me later than I would've liked for work. This way I'll have more than just Saag until tomorrow :o)
I also went on a big huge shopping trip and spent more money than I really have, mostly on veggies and fruit, though I did buy rather a lot of cheese, since that's good for adding a lot of flavor to grains (wine soaked cheese, porter soaked cheese, mild cheddar with sage, plain sharp shredded cheddar, swiss, and feta, plus the block of gruyere I have left in the fridge). I got a few pomegranates, five pounds of clementines (though I forgot to get cranberries - I was going to make my just-fruit cranberry sauce), two yellow squash, a head of cabbage, a bunch of spinach, a bunch of kale, a thing of fennel, four leeks, a bag of onions, a pound of garlic bulbs, a thing of little tomatoes on the vine for some tomato sauce, two lemons and four limes, and two heads of broccoli. Also got a thing of chicken breast fillets, ovaltine, milk, eggs, chopped walnuts, steel cut oats, and yellow corn meal. I think that's about all I got, doesn't really matter, I'm sure if I missed something, it'll come up in the next few days.
Anyhow, on to the food:
<strong>10 Grain Cereal</strong>
1/4 cup ten grain cereal
3/4 cup water
1 Tbsp honey
Milk
Bring the cereal and water to a boil, stir, cover, and turn the element off (turn the heat down, for those of you with a stove made after 1963 :oP). Let sit for three to five minutes, stir, cuss at the stove for still burning the bottom, scoop into a bowl and drizzle with the honey, top the bowl up with milk.
<strong>Coffee</strong>
Make coffee. Add a healthy sprinkling of cinnamon to the grounds before you start :o9 fill half a cup with coffee, two and a half.. uh.. sugar spoon-fulls of sugar, fill the rest of the way with milk and half-and-half to placate your ulcer. Get heartburn anyway.
<strong>Saag with chicken</strong>
<em>This is a good base recipe if you remove the chicken. Feel free to use paneer, or boiled potatoes or cauliflower, or.. anything good :o9 To make it vegan, use oil instead of ghee, use 3/4 cup water and a can of regular (not light) coconut milk.</em>
2 Tbsp oil or ghee
1 bunch spinach, chopped (approx. 2 packs if you're using frozen)
1 onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, smashed and diced
1 cup water
3/4 cup yogurt
1 Tbsp sour cream
1 Tbsp curry powder
1 Tbsp curry paste (I know, I should've made my own. I lack the dried, fermented shrimp, though)
1 chicken breast, cubed
1/2 handful chopped walnuts
Lime juice and salt to taste
Heat the oil or ghee, add the chopped onion and chicken breast. Cook and stir over med-hi heat for a few minutes, until the chicken is mostly white. Add the garlic, curry powder, and curry paste and cook for a little while longer. Add the water and spinach, drop some on the stove, marvel at how bad spinach smells when it burns. Cook this for about ten to fifteen minutes, until the spinach starts looking pretty soupy. Don't stir too much! Pull the pan off the stove for a few minutes then dump everything into a food processor (or blender). Remember not stirring? That's so that you can pick the chicken chunks off the top of the mixture in the food processor bowl, since they should've been on the bottom of the pan. No need for pureed chicken. Pulse on and off for a little bit, until you get the consistency you desire. Dump everything back into the pan and bring to a simmer for another five or ten minutes. Finally, add the yogurt and sour cream, stir stir stir. Bring the saag back up to a simmer and immediately remove the pan from the heat. After cooling for a bit, it's ready to serve.
<strong>Matt's (almost) Fool-Proof Rice</strong>
<em>I say almost because I have forgotten about the rice right after turning on the heat and burned many batches this way. Also, if your stove is as crappy as mine is, turn one element on high, and another one on the lowest setting right when you start, then just move the pan to the low element. Just turning the first element down burns the rice just as effectively.</em>
<em>Feel free to add anything. For the saag, I added a bit of turmeric to color the rice like basmati, even though I was using plain, Korean rice. If you do add herbs, add a tiny bit of oil to disrupt the surface tension so that you don't wind up with a boil-over.</em>
A quantity of rice
A quarter again as much water
(for example, a cup of rice, a cup and a quarter of water; two cups of rice, two and a half cups. This is pretty flexible - because I have a 3/4 cup measuring cup, I use two of those for a cup and a half of rice, and just use two cups of water)
Put rice in pan.
Put water in pan.
Turn heat to high.
AS SOON AS IT BOILS stir the water and rice, cover, and immediately turn the burner as low as it can go.
Wait 15 minutes. NO PEEKING, NO STIRRING, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT THE RICE. Just set an alarm.
After 15 minutes, remove the pan from the heat, fluff the rice, re-cover and let sit for another two minutes.
Put rice in mouf.
<strong>Orangey Drink Thing</strong>
<em>Eggs are sterile inside, it's the shell that usually picks up the bugs, so make sure to wash the egg if you're going to use it raw. It's a chewy drink. Strain it if you don't like pith.</em>
2 clementines
1 slice of lime
1/2 a cup of yogurt
1 cup of milk
1 Tbsp honey
1 egg (optional)
Peel the clementines and the slice of lime, toss them in a blender. Add everything else and blend :D
