Recipe: Chipotle Shrimp Tacos with Avocado Salsa

One of N and I's favorite things to do together during visits (insert gripe about how much long-distance sucks here) is cook together. Neither of us are particularly avid cooks usually, and we both kind of get hangry, so we end up picking easy-medium recipes and divvying up the tasks. He doesn't like cutting raw meat, which I don't mind so much, and I don't like cutting garlic, which he doesn't mind, so basically we make a perfect team. This time around we went for this recipe for chipotle shrimp tacos with avocado salsa. In addition to the recipe, we added some cabbage mix, avocado slices, and mozzarella to the tacos. And, let me tell you, they turned out fantastically. Like so darn good that N ate nine of them in one sitting (don't tell him I told you that). I don't think my stomach's actually physically capable of eating nine tacos at once, but I can assure you that both of us needed some food-coma-rest-time after that. Point being, highly recommend. Eat on!

Recipe: Spinach, Avocado, Chicken Alfredo

Last week, I was having a week. Somehow I think I managed to strike that elusive work-life balance nearly perfectly and was feeling great! Among other things, that meant I did some proper cooking, including the following recipe adapted from various places (mainly because I am still too lazy to actually make my own Alfredo sauce).
Spinach, Avocado, and Chicken Alfredo Pasta
Servings: 2
1 avocado
2 cups spinach (I used frozen)
1/2 cup milk
3 cups alfredo sauce of your choice (about half a bottle)
lime juice
3-4 pieces of boneless chicken breast/thigh
cayenne pepper(or other spicening agent)
salt and pepper
pasta of your choice
garlic powder
grated romano cheese

Blend the spinach, milk, lime juice to taste, cayenne pepper to taste, half of the avocado, and the alfredo sauce together. Cut chicken into 1-inch pieces. Boil water and salt and add pasta. Boil, stirring occasionally until al dente. Add oil, garlic powder, cayenne, salt and pepper to taste and chicken to slightly-high-sided skillet on medium heat. Cook until chicken is almost done. Add sauce to the pan and bring sauce to a boil. Drain pasta. Serve in bowl with the rest of the avocado (sliced) and cheese on top! Enjoy (and trust me, you will enjoy)!

Sunday Brunch

Bright morning light,
Crisp cool air,
Just a little more lazy left.
There is nothing more divine and appropriate, in my opinion, than Sunday brunch. A giant meal on a morning where the weekend still feels like the weekend, but slowly fading and a little too fleeting. A couple more hours and then you have to do all that work you said you were going to do over the weekend but procrastinated until Sunday night. I love it. Dressed up or dressed down, dive-y diner or classy restaurant, whatever it is, give it to me. And put some bacon on the side.




    Brunch on!

Fall Beer

If there was one fall thing I hardcore felt I missed out on prior to turning 21, it has to be pumpkin beer. The insanely delicious taste of pumpkin mixed with perfect blends of spices after a long day of class or work is divine.
People are surprised to learn that I basically didn't drink any beer until I moved to North Carolina last year. I'd tried some kinds, but nothing had really grown on me before and the best I could stomach was a Blue Moon. Then a roommate last year introduced me to the what-seems-like-bazillions of local breweries and all their fall beers (pumpkin, harvest spice, maple, etc.) and I hate to phrase it that I was hooked, but I was hooked. What are your favorite beers?

Recipe: Spinach Puff Pastries

When I was in South Africa, the lady who owned the guesthouse I stayed at made these really delicious spinach puff pastries. When I tried to get the exact recipe, she was a little vague (perhaps it was a family secret or something), but I tried my hardest to recreate them a week ago. I gotta say, hers were better, but mine turned out good enough that my roommates liked them, so....I'll take that.
Ingredients:
Sundried tomatoes
Spinach
Mozzarella cheese (diced)
Salt/Pepper/Spices you enjoy
Pastry sheets
Butter/Butter spray

Completely thaw pastry sheet roll. Cook spinach lightly with salt to remove excess water. Mix mozzarella, spinach, sundried tomatoes and salt/pepper/spices to taste in a bowl.

Spray a cupcake pan with non-stick spray. Take two pastry sheets and fold in half. Fit carefully to the cupcake mold and add filling generously.

Tuck edges of pastry sheet over the top (like box flaps). Spray or spread butter over the tops of sheets to seal and add shine. Stick in the oven on 350 degrees until brown and crispy (mine took 15-20 min).
Apologies for not taking more pictures, but my hands ended up all pastry dough-y and then handling my camera seemed less appealing. Feel free to ask  if you have any questions!

Fourth Feast

When you're not in America on July 4th, as has often been the case for me, the thing you really miss is food. Though I can't bring myself to tout the "home of the free and the brave" horn today with all the 4th Amendment and rights violations so nonchalantly being passed in our country (most recently, see education bill in PA and sneaky reproductive rights clause in an unrelated bill in NC), my stomach is happy to commend the American diet. Excuse me while I make this post about unhealthy food I miss.





Happy Fourth of July! Feast on!

Thug Kitchen

You need to visit this website:
THUG KITCHEN
Warning: NSFW for Language

I will definitely be getting some of these fruits and vegetables on my grocery trip today. I just couldn't stop reading for like 5 pages. Discovering this made my day, and I hope it makes yours! Happy Friday!

Mardi Gras!

This past weekend, I got to unwind a little from the stressful couple weeks I've been having. One of my friends here is a native Louisianan, so we had a little Mardi Gras party on Saturday!

I did my nails accordingly, of course. We made gumbo, which turned out pretty good! Sadly, I have no pictures of it, but that's okay because we thought it would be fine to use jambalaya mix instead of gumbo mix...so unfortunately the rice expanded a ton (but don't you steal the name gumbalaya, because we're patenting).
I was introduced to the tradition of King Cake. It's more or less like a giant glazed cinnamon roll. There's a little figurine of a baby hidden inside it and apparently, the tradition is that whoever gets the baby in their piece buys the next King Cake. The baby in ours was definitely male and more than a little creepy, but the cake was delicious.  We also had some delicious biscuits and beer and cheese grits, so really, what more could a girl ask for, right? Turned out to be a really fun, relaxing night! But now...back to the grind.

Recipe: Bhindi Subji

I don't really enjoy calling things New Years resolutions...because let's face it, the term highlights my failures more often than successes (and like, we're just totally not into labels, man...you know?), but I would like to cook more this year. Especially, Indian food. One of my all-time favorite dishes is stir-fried okra, or bhindi subji, but I like it exactly a certain way. Thus, I modified a recipe I found a little so it'd be exactly to my taste, and whaddya know? It turned out great (which is rare for my cooking experiments)! Nothin' like a little positive reinforcement!

2 cups okra, diced

1 tbsp oil

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp turmeric powder

2 small green chiles, diced (or w/e your spicy preference)

1 tbsp lemon juice

salt to taste 

In a pan, heat the mustard seeds and oil on medium until the seeds begin to crackle. Add okra and fry for about 10 min, stirring regularly. The okra should turn a dark-ish green and get less sticky. Add coriander powder, turmeric powder, salt and chiles and cook for another 3-4 min. Add lemon juice and cook for another 1-2 min, still stirring regularly and you're donezo! Eat with a tortilla (or roti/naan)! Pro-tip: Might want to turn your vent on. Let me know if you try it!

Tell The World

I'm coming home today!
Well, I get home Tuesday night, but I'm leaving Pune in a few hours for the airport. And let's be honest, I cannot wait to be back in America. I've got a whole list of things I'm going to eat and do when I get back (but mostly things I'm going to eat) while I maybe-pack for North Carolina in two days. Clearly, my priorities are in order. But when the prospects look like this:





Who could blame me?

Recipe: Egg in Avocado

In life, there are few breakfast dishes you can never ever go wrong with. One is milk and cereal (cereal and milk!), and another is this dish, which I've only recently discovered. It's easy-peasy to make and it tastes AMAZING. How could it not, though?

What You'll Need:    Eggs, Avocado, Salt/Pepper/Hot Sauce/etc, Green Onion   Preheat oven to 350˚F.    Cut the avocado in half, pit. Fill with egg as per preference.   Pro-tip: Carve out the avocado a bit more. One whole egg won't fit in one avocado, so beating the egg before filling helps. One egg is good for 3-4 avocado halves.

  Bake till egg is cooked to however runny (or not) you like.     Garnish with green onions, salt/pepper/hot sauce.  ENJOY!

Recipe: Easy Stuffed Bell Pepper

I will admit that I am a huge fan of pretty much anything stuffed. A while ago, I made stuffed bell pepper, that was, let me tell you, awesome.

Ingredients:
Bell peppers - tops cut off, gutted, boiled
Minced mushrooms and spinach to your liking
Lemon juice, salt & pepper
Grilled chicken in small pieces
Cooked Brown rice
Mozzarella cheese
A slice of Cheddar cheese

Recipe:
1. Mince everything, grill chicken, prepare.
2. Mix the minced vegetables and mozzarella and lemon juice, salt and pepper in a bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds till cheese melts a little.

3. Mix in cooked brown rice and grilled chicken and fill pepper.

4. Place cheddar slice on top. Bake for 30 minutes at 350˚F.

And voila!
The best thing you will ever eat on so little preparation, guaranteed. Let me know if you try it!

Recipe: Stuffed Mushrooms

I'm back in San Diego again (because, get this, classes started today. Yup, January 3rd, and I'm learning Mammalian Physiology and Biomedical Ethics. Yay! Anyway, what's important here is that this means no more mommy-missed-me-and-wants-to-spoil-me-with-delicious-food dinners. I have to cook for myself again. I use the term 'cook' somewhat loosely because my culinary skills leave a lot to be desired, but one of my favorite and easiest recipes are stuffed mushrooms. They're super easy, and if you make a lot of them, they'll make a perfect meal-for-one.

Ingredients: Mushrooms, 1/4 cup finely chopped Spinach, Salt, Lemon juice, Herbs (of your choice), Chili Powder, 1/4 cup finely chopped Green Onions, 2-3 slices shredded Wheat Bread, Shredded mozzarella cheese

Wash mushrooms (thoroughly; remember, they're fungi) and remove stems.

Mix the shredded bread, chopped spinach and green onions, a little bit of cheese, and add lemon juice and salt to taste. Microwave for 1:00 till cheese melts a little.

Stuff the mushrooms.

Add a little more cheese on top! Bake for 10-15 min. at 350˚F

And eat away!
They were delicious, if I do say so myself. And, for the record, my roommates thought so as well. Here's to hoping I will be cooking more often this year!

***

A Tip or Two

This week, as many of you know, I have an insane number of finals. For those of you who don't recall right way, finals week has its own lifestyle. Tensions get high, people are stressed, coffee and junk food become staple dietary necessities, dishes pile up, clothes get left around, and somehow, the number of non-academic-but-totally-awesome things you can do on the internet suddenly triples. Seriously, people should study the finals week habits of college students, because I'm pretty sure we change species for a bit there.
Anyway, this finals week has made me realize things in the form of (possibly obvious) advice that I'd like to share with you all:

Dita Von Teese is probably the only woman to ever grocery shop in 6-inch heels.1. Do not buy groceries on an empty stomach. Even if you're a compulsive list-maker like I am, chances are, if you're hungry (and stressed), you will purchase those brownies and rationalize your way to some chocolate syrup and ice cream to go on top. This is especially bad during finals (and pregnancy, I guess), when things that you'd otherwise never eat (read: peanut butter covered turkey franks) suddenly sound delicious.
2. Put on some chapstick for those matte red lips. I find that the incidence of hoodies and sweatpants goes way up around finals, and I don't like it. It's true that you really don't want to try and take your 3-hour final with your hottest jeans digging into your stomach (full of peanut butter turkey franks) the whole time, but the Mean Girl in me thinks sweatpants all week are a little much. And, you know, the look-good-feel-good confidence helps, I think. I find that a quick way to liven up my casual, comfortable, t-shirt and jeans days is to put on red lipstick. Usually, I like glossy red lips, but frankly, too much gloss ends up looking hooker-y on me. Thus, in order to reduce the fading and drying, I've taken to applying some of my favorite Dr. Pepper chapstick to the top. It works, I swear.

I hope everyone had wonderful weekends!
***

TurTurKeyKey

Happy Thanksgiving!









{images via weheartit}

I just got home and I'm so thankful to get to spend my Thanksgiving with my family. Hope everybody is planning on eating a lot, bonding with family and friends, and then waking up early to go Black Friday shopping! Have a wonderful weekend!

***

Recipe: Pumpkin-licious.

It's the end of October, and Halloween is almost here, but really, this means one thing to me: Pumpkin Pie Season is upon us!! It's been a tradition in my family for years to make pumpkin pie around this season. The "season" starts a little before Halloween and goes till roughly after Thanksgiving. I loved it because we never really celebrated Thanksgiving (in the huge, all the family comes over, five hundred things to eat that took all day to make sense) at my house. So, a lot of my friends got to have a huge Thanksgiving dinner, but guess what? I got to have pumpkin pie every day for a month! Ha!


The recipe's fairly easy, since my mom wanted my brother and me to be able to help out as much as possible, and she was literally making them twice a week for a month. Also, I was never a fan of store bought pumpkin pie because it's just way too sweet for my taste, so these were perfect.

Ingredients:
1 graham cracker crust in a 9x9 pie tin (I always just buy mine.)
24 oz pureed pumpkin (Mom pureed them, I buy it in cans)
14 fl. oz. sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
4-5 tbsp pumpkin spice (ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, etc.)

Recipe:
1. Preheat oven to 425˚F and allow crusts to bake a little. During preheating generally seems to be the perfect amount of time.
2. Mix pumpkin, eggs, and milk together in a large bowl.
3. Add spices to mix (you can always add more or less to taste).
4. Take out crusts, pour in batter, and bake at 350˚F for 30-40 minutes or till baked as per the knife test.
5. Let cool. Top with copious amounts of whip cream and devour!

Also, thanks for all the feedback on the outfit post! I'm not thinking that will be a regular feature, since my "outfits" generally consist of some combo of jeans, a t-shirt, and a cardigan, but I might occasionally try to dress up now and do them, since I think posting them makes me accountable for what I wear, haha.

***

Fun in the Sun

One: Jello Melons!

I just made two watermelon halves of this wonderfully refreshing treat! I'm excited for them to solidify! And they were quick and easy which is good for sad, un-culinarily-inclined me. However, I do make up words like a pro.

Two: Check out Stephen Torrence. He does these amazing and amusing ASL renditions of popular songs. The adorable smile doesn't hurt either.

And though I dislike the song generally, his rendition of Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus is one of my favorites.