Strawberry!

I had a bunch of strawberries that I needed to use up so I experimented with a couple things.  First, I made a dough, basically butter, flour, a little sugar.  I wish I remembered the proportions because this dough actually turned out well!  But I don't.  D'oh!

Ok got the dough, now what?  I made this "rustic" pie.  Yum! Basically sliced strawberries and a little sugar.  That's powdered sugar on top.  This was actually pretty tasty!  I ate it for dinner. Ruchir got mad.  Ha!

And then I made these, little turnovers!  The color looks weird in this picture (all these pics on this blog are from my phone because I'm too lazy to actually upload pictures from my camera) but they were really good!  Just a dollop of homemade strawberry jam in the center.  They made a really good grab and go breakfast.  

Healthy Omelet

Ok so the problem with creme brulee is that is needs a bunch of egg yolks.  So what to do with all the egg whites?  Well two options really, the dessert route (meringues etc), or the healthy route.  And surprise! This time I went the healthy route!  Egg white omelet for two, coming up! 

I cleaned out the fridge and dumped it all in there.  Mostly green peppers, onions, mushrooms but a few other random things as well.  Sauté everything first in a little butter first.  Then add the egg whites, do the usual omelet swirl, poorly attempt to flip and spill a large chunk on the ground.  And then, voila!

Looks better when it's sliced doesn't it?  Actually for a healthy breakfast, this was pretty good. I'd make it again, if only so that I'd have leftover egg yolks to make creme brulee again!

Creme brûlée

I whipped these up for a dinner party that we were going to.  The recipe was pretty easy, 1 pint of cream, 4 egg yolks, 4 tbs sugar (I used two white and two brown), and 1 tsp of vanilla.  I scalded the cream with the sugar, then slowly tempered it with the egg yolks and then the vanilla at the end.  Bake in a water bath for about 40 minutes.  

This is a a version that I made for me and Ruchir using the leftover mix.  I added a bunch of mango puree to it, hence the orange-y color.  Unfortunately these did not turn out as good as the ones above because the puree made everything too liquidy and they never really set up.  Plus the crunchy top didn't really turn out on these - not sure why on that one.

But no worries, the ones that I took to the party set up great and turned out wonderfully!  The crunchy top was so good and topped with strawberries they looked very impressive! (Didn't hurt that they tasted great too!)

Friday Shrimp

The title of this shows you how long I've had this post in the queue waiting to be posted - it's back from Lent! Anyway, this was more or less Mom's food, with one addition by me.

Addition 1: Plenty of onions!

Add everything else.....

Top with yogurt and enjoy!

Mexican Lasagna

Ok this one is kind of a bad picture but a great meal! Ruchir was off barbecuing a squirrel (I wish I was joking) so I made this Mexican lasagna out of things I had on hand to feed me and a couple friends. I didn't follow a recipe but just threw in things that seemed like they would fit with the mexican theme.  This was awhile ago so I can't remember everything but the basics were ground beef, tomatoes, green chilis, and tortillas in alternating layers with plenty of colby jack shredded cheese.  Again, not the best picture, but it sure was tasty!

Ruchir's Brunch

Ok once again, I slipped quite a bit with the postings. But don't worry, I've been taking pictures! ANd now I have a delightful backlog of wonderful dishes to post. Here's a quick picture of a delicious brunch that Ruchir made awhile back. Gotta love avocados!

Google Food

I got the pleasure of visiting my dear sis at Google a little while back.  Not only is all the food free, but it's all delicious too!  Here's a weird watermelon honey drink that I had.

And oysters, I mean seriously??  I had to get them just because, free oysters right??

Oh yeah, I mean just look at that beautiful spread!! This is my plate after the first fill up. That fruit was scrumptious, the oysters yum, at the bottom right is some red thai chicken curry...man it was all just too good!  But it's all reasonably healthy too so huzzah, Pri can gorge without concern.  Thanks for the trip!

Chicken Curry made by myself!

My trip to Indiana this weekend also made me want to again try to re-create Mom's awesome chicken curry. This is an attempt I made a few months ago. Tasted good, but still not great. I think I need to tweak the ginger, garlic, green chili, onion ratio maybe? I had Mom tell me her process one more time, so I will attempt again soon and post back.

Hot Diggity Dog!

Well I just came back from an AMAZING weekend in Indiana where Mom made soo much good food that it makes my head spin. Seriously, I dream about that butter chicken! I didn't take any pictures of her food, but the tastiness of it all reminded me that I need to update this more often. Here are two different hotdogs they seemed to scream "America" so I felt like it was appropriate for a post July 4th weekend.

And some warmed up brownies and ice cream seems pretty American to me too!

Spinach Strawberry Mozzarella Salad

A delightful summer time salad (and I generally don't like salad unless I can somehow make it unhealthy). Fresh strawberries from the farmer's market, baby spinach, and cute tasty little mozzarella balls.

Anjali Day

I'm not really going to go back in order of all the postings that I've been stock piling, but this is one of the earlier ones that I haven't posted yet. This is the meal I had in honor of my graduation. All delicious! Again, I think I'll start keeping the words to a minimum and just let the pictures do the talking. Ruchir made most of this meal but I made the grilled asparagus, yum!

Super Dessert

Ok, it sure has been awhile since I last posted.  I knew I would start fading on the posting, I am actually surprised I made it 6 months.  But I have been cooking and taking pictures still, there is a big back log that I am planning to upload.  Especially since the month of June contained some delicious food adventures including a trip to Google and out 1st Anniversary Cook Off (which I won, of course:).  So more to come, but for now I will leave you with this.  Words are not necessary.

Puris and Potatoes

This was actually from way back near Easter but I never got around to posting it. I was reminded of it because I had been talking to Mom about getting her to bring me more of these when she visits STL. I basically did no cooking here, Mom gave me the puris in little dough balls to be fried and also gave me the potato masala. But the frying is kind of cool - so here are pictures!

First I had to roll them out and of course my awesome little Indian rolling pin is missing in action. Solution - use a water glass! It worked pretty excellently!

And here they are all fried up, yums!

The last step, as always, is to dig in!

Mexican Pizza

One of my favorite fast food snacks is a Mexican Pizza from Taco Bell. Sure it's super unhealthy I'm sure, but it's probably better than my other fav fast food meal - roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and a buttery biscuit from Church's or Lee's Chicken. Anyway, back to the Mexican pizza. I wanted to recreate it (Ruchir's mom does an excellent version) so here goes!

First the filling. For this I used a can of black beans and a can of tomatoes with green chilis. Ideally I would have used fresh tomatoes but we had just run out of the supply that we got from the farmer's market so canned it had to be. I just mixed them together (drained the beans first) and let them cook until it wasn't liquid-y anymore. Then I dumped a handful of cheese of top and mixed that in so it was a paste type thing.

Looks like chili but it's not!

The actual "pizza" part is two deep fried tortillas. I should have deep fried them but I didn't want to use a bunch of oil so I just toasted them with a little oil in a skillet. Because they weren't deep fried, they weren't totally crispy, but still good enough.

The bean and tomato mixture is spread between the tortillas and topped with a bunch of shredded cheese and then put under a broiler for a bit to melt. I topped it with a dollop of homemade guacamole (remember the 25 cent avocados I got? yum!). Some sour cream would have been nice too but I didn't have any.

And here's a shot of the middle so that the inside filling can be seen. It was tasty but the tortilla could have been crispier. Still good enough for me to devour!

For Mom - French Toast Sandwich

Happy Mother's Day!

In the spirit of Mom's wonderful cooking, I decided to make french toast. This was always my favorite growing up and I used to actually look forward to big tests days like the SAT etc because wonderful Mom would always make us a big breakfast. I've covered French toast before but it's worth repeating. It's ridiculously easy, 1 cup of milk, 1 egg, a couple spoons of sugar plus a bit of vanilla if you want. Whisk it all up with a fork, dip both sides of a slice of bread, and then throw onto a skillet that has had a quick swipe of a stick of butter. One flip and that's it - delicious! But Mom has some other tricks up her sleeve! In particular, some cream cheese between the slices after they are cooked makes things so much better! I added a little nutella in there too! And finally top with strawberries and powdered sugar (I had strawberries between the layers as well) and then you get this masterpiece! Thanks Mom for all that you do!