Grass and Sky

I'm hosting a very small Thanksgiving gathering tomorrow for ani_no_mouse and me. Like I said, very small, which since I'm doing cooking this year for the first time, I'm pretty happy with. I picked up a few things yesterday at the local corner market but still needed some things that they don't carry. Conveniently, worked closed a couple hours early today so I had plenty of time to get to the grocery store.

After taking a bit of time to relax and eat, I got to work. Emptied the dish drainer, washed all the plastic food containers that had accumulated in the sink. Got the store-bought pie shells in the oven to brown. Made some cranberry sauce, mixed up the pumpkin mixture and got that in the oven, washed another round of mixing bowls and such, ran the dishwasher, cleaned the counters. That's all the food prep I'm doing tonight.

I thought it would be yummy to mix some apple in with the cranberry sauce, but couldn't find a recipe in the admittedly short amount of time I dedicated to the task of searching, yesterday, so I mostly just winged it.

Cranberry Sauce:

one bag of fresh cranberries
1/2 large apple, finely chopped
3/4 cup of sugar
approx 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup water

I let it boil a little too long, so it got a leeetle burned on the bottom. I'm hoping it doesn't set too hard or taste burned, but the little taste I had of it before I put it in the fridge to cool tasted nicely sweet and tart. The apple seems to have blended in well.

I spent today in the unusual (for me) pursuit of cooking. ( The recipe and the pic to prove it )

It's only noon and I'm already all tired out.

Because I'm lame and last week was exhausting (although hey, not expensive or terribly stressful) I was in bed by 9:30 last night, which meant I was awake by 6:30 this morning. Gave up the hope of going back to sleep by seven and went for a run, instead. The path through the park was not as bad as I feared it would be after yesterday's storm, but it did experience some damage and footing wasn't great. But I forced myself to take the long path and ran 3.25 miles.

After relaxing over breakfast, I went back out to get groceries, and I've just now put together some random ingredients in my crock pot. I was going to make chicken and sweet potato stew, since I liked that last time. Unfortunately, my sweet potato was nasty moldy (it was only a week old - if anything, it should have sprouted a few roots, but it definitely shouldn't have been moldy). I discovered this once I'd already cut up the chicken and put it in the pot. I've been thinking lately of making Redwing Stew (ani_no_mouse's lentil recipe) so I sort of combined that with the chicken, but I didn't really have everything I needed for that, either. So it's really a hybrid mutation of all sorts of scary.

Chicken and Lentils:

One pack of chicken tenders, cut into bite sized pieces
one (non-sweet) potato, cut into cubes
three garlic cloves (ANM's recipe calls for eight but that's a bit too much for me)
1 cup lentils
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can chick peas
1 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp curry
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
fresh ginger (maybe three-quarters of an inch cut off the root? the recipe called for a tsp of ground and I don't know how to translate that to fresh so I just cut off a chunk and minced it)
dash black pepper
a bit of extra water

ANM's recipe includes split peas (I subbed chick peas - not the same thing, but I like chick peas) and brown rice (I already had a potato cut up so no rice), and no chicken.

It is now cooking away and should be ready to take off the heat and pack away by the time eve11 picks me up for shenanigans at her place tonight.

I meant to cook up some rice and beans yesterday but I was hungry when I got home so I ended up just eating a sandwich and chips, and then got distracted by other things. So I'm doing it tonight.

Rice and Bean Thing:

2 cups of rice (most of which will be put aside for later in the week)
1/4 large onion
1/4 green pepper
1 clove garlic
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 can diced tomatoes, mostly drained
1/2 tbsp of cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I may have used a bit more or less than that - I was using a 1/2 tsp spoon)
dash of salt

I've got the rice mostly done in my big sauce pan.
I sauteed the onion, pepper and garlic (man, my kitchen smells like someone who knows how to cook is in there) and added it all to the can of black beans in my small sauce pan. Added in the spices and diced tomatoes and now it's all simmering together to let the flavors blend.

As with all of my cooking projects, this is a very big experiment. I got most of it off a Spanish Rice recipe, but I'm not cooking it like spanish rice. I have no idea how it will taste, but hopefully it will be edible, because I'm starving!

Update: Well, it's not awful, that's the good side. I maybe shouldn't have drained the tomatoes at all, as it was a little dry once combined with the jasmine rice. It was also just a little bit bland. Needs more of the spices to perk it up a bit. But it was good enough to take the leftovers to work tomorrow and that's a huge perk!

I'm attempting beef stew in the crockpot today.

Ingredients:

.68 lbs beef cubes
1 tbsp flour
salt
pepper
1 beef buillion cube in 1 cup water
two red skinned potatoes
1/2 large white onion
double handful babycut carrots
1 tomato

I wanted to spice it up with a bit of curry but it turns out I don't have any curry powder (my kitchen is woefully understocked due to the fact that I never cook). I have some tikka masala sauce in the cupboard, but that's for chicken and might not blend well. I'm debating. Any thoughts?