Tag Archives: Creativity

Banana Nut . . . Curry?!?

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That’s right.  You read it correctly.  Inspiration has struck my kitchen again with a concoction that promised to be either disastrous or delightful.  Thankfully, as you can probably guess since I am proudly sharing it with you, it fell decidedly in the delightful category.  I have had the privilege lately, thanks to my wonderful sitter, of having Thursday afternoons to myself for two full hours while my son goes to play group.  Sometimes I have taken that opportunity to run errands or do other personal things that can be SO very difficult to do with a toddler, but on more than one occasion now, I have taken that time to creatively cook.  When I have the time and energy to study ingredients, experiment with quantities, and develop ideas, then cooking becomes more than a refueling of the family.  It becomes art.  It is as creative as writing, playing music, or drawing and it provides the same sort of release.  And in the same way that I am passionate about sharing my other creative endeavors, I am also driven to share my culinary successes. So VOILA!  Banana Nut Curry.  But, as I have said before, I am very touchy-feely about amounts.  You have to do whatever looks, smells, tastes right to you, so please take all of my measurements with a grain of salt (pun very much intended).

Banana Walnut Curry
Chop Julienne Style:
1/2 large green bell pepper
1/2 large purple onion
Slice:
4 large mushrooms
1 medium yellow squash
healthy handful of chopped cilantro
healthy handful of chopped walnuts
2-4 Chicken breasts (depending on size) cut into small strips (as though you were julienning chicken)

Add all of the previous ingredients to large skillet and douse with olive oil.  Season with the following spices to taste. (Again, all the quantities listed are VERY approximate. Since I didn’t measure while I was cooking, I have to guess retrospectively.)
Yellow Curry Powder (2 TBSPs)
Red Curry Powder (1 TBSP)
Dill (1 TBSP)
Garlic Powder (One good sprinkle across pan)
Thyme (1 tsp)
Cinnamon (1 TBSP)
Ginger (1-2 tsp)

Saute over medium to high heat until chicken is fully cooked and vegetables are tender.  Reduce heat to low and add the following ingredients to make the sauce:
1 to 1 1/2 cups of Sour Cream (I use low-fat sour cream for heart health reasons.)
1/2 large sweet potato, cooked and mashed (I know this would be a pain to do separately, but I had leftover mashed sweet potatoes from a previous dinner and I knew it would work well.  So you could always cook the curry sometime after you do sweet potatoes, as I did.  But bear in mind, they have to be savory sweet potatoes and not candied.)
1/2 Banana, mashed (This ingredient was the most risky for me.  I stayed on the fence for a while about whether or not to add it, knowing it could either completely ruin or completely make the dish.  But we never get anywhere creatively if we don’t take risks, so in it went.  I am very glad I took the risk.)
Milk to desired consistency (I used skim, but you can use whatever you prefer)
Red Curry Powder (probably another TBSP)
A dash more Cinnamon and Garlic (to taste)

Server over Brown Rice or Pasta.  I would have chosen rice, but, unfortunately I did not have any, so I fixed pasta and was pleasantly surprised at how nicely it worked.

Stories Waiting to be Discovered

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Do you ever get the feeling that some things you encounter while going about your normal, day-to-day business, are just slightly too unusual to be part of REAL life.  And for a brief moment you feel certain, with perhaps only a shadow of a doubt, that these  . . . apparitions . . . have leaped straight from the pages of a story and have entered your world for the sole purpose of adding a little bit of intrigue to your otherwise mundane day?

Allow me to give you an example.  The other day, I was driving Aiden to his sitter’s house before heading to work.  It was a hot, muggy, 80 degree morning with very little breeze.  We had gone only two blocks from our house when I see a woman on a bicycle – something that shouldn’t give me any cause for a second thought.  But I knew, upon seeing this woman was that she was not an ordinary part of my day.  My very first thought when I saw her was that she was a witch in disguise.  Now, this is not something I purposefully conjured up, with my overly vivid imagination.  It was an immediate intuition.  There was nothing startlingly strange about her, but there were some oddities.  Her bicycle had a basket on the front.  She wore a drab brown hoodie with the hood pulled low over her head – bear in mind the weather – and large vintage looking sunglasses.  Her features were extremely defined and protruding and she DID have a large wort on her chin that I could see from my vantage point behind the wheel.  But for me to pass a complete stranger and think, “Huh, a witch.  I wonder what she’s doing in our world,” seems a bit neurotic.  I don’t know whether it was the fact that I was considering her so carefully, or perhaps there was some strange truth to my conjecture about her, but her eyes followed me till she was looking over her shoulder on her bicycle and I had turned the corner.  I have never seen her before or since in our neighborhood.  Why I had such a strong reaction to her, I’ll never know.  The logical side of my brain has convinced me, since that day, that what I saw was nothing more than a woman on a bicycle.  The fantastical side of my brain, however, begs to disagree and has spent the better part of several days’ quiet moments playing out stories in my mind about the witch in disguise. I’ll leave you to imagine what the details of those stories may be, but I will tell you they have made the last few days far more fun :)

So here’s to noticing oddities, never taking them for granted, and giving the childlike side of your mind leeway to believe the unbelievable, even if just for a moment.

A “Little” Dinner Inspiration

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There is something about new ideas, even ideas about such mundane things as cooking supper, that can fire me up for days.  Those of you who really know me will not be surprised to learn that making dinner in a muffin cup made me so excited and proud, that I took pictures to share with family and friends.  Roll your eyes if you like, but this supper is just too fun, too adorable, and much too delicious to not share.  So here it is:

I made teeny tiny meat pies in muffin cups!  And they turned out so well.  I was actually really surprised that they stayed together.  You could simply pop them out of their cups and onto a plate to enjoy.

The filling was made just as you would any pot pie recipe (I’ll give the specifics for mine in a minute for those of you who’d like to try it.)  Then I used crescent rolls from a CAN!  I use the reduced fat ones because of my cholesterol, but I’m sure the full fat one’s wouldn’t hurt the recipe :)  I laid each triangle of the crescent roll dough into the bottom of a muffin cup (sprayed of course), filled it with the filling, wrapped the three corners over the top, brushed with olive oil, parmesan cheese and italian seasoning, and baked (at the temp. on the roll package) for about 15 minutes!  Voila!

Let me tell you, it was delicious!  And easy to boot.  And much more fun that a big old casserole pot pie with never enough crust.  I encourage everyone to give it a whirl.  The recipe for the filling is below, but I am VERY loose with amounts so please do everything to your own taste.  These are just estimates.

About 1/2 lb of ground meat (I use turkey for my diet, but you can use beef if you prefer)
1/2 Small onion, diced
Minced Garlic (to taste)
1/2 Green Bell Pepper, diced
1 Small Bag of Frozen Mixed Veggies
1/2 Bag of Frozen Broccoli Florets
celery Salt, Italian Seasoning Blend, Ground Black Pepper, and additional seasonings as desired (all to taste)
Saute over Med/High heat until meat is fully cooked and veggies are tender.
Add 1-2 cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup to desired moisture (Again, I use the Heart Healthy, Reduced Fat kind and you cannot tell a difference.)
Thin with Milk as needed.
Add Mozzarella Cheese and stir till melted.
Fill muffin cups as described above and ENJOY!