Now that the cookbook is fully underway (and halfway written, thank you very much), I will be running some recipes by you, alright? Alright!

You can test them if they sound good. and please, if anything doesn’t work for you (or is just so delicious you have to shout about it) e-mail me or leave notes in comments. Oh, yes. I did delete a bunch of my notes today, by accident. That wasn’t so good. I am genius at outsmarting myself when I have more than three files up at the same time. Ouchie. But my ma can bail me out, I think. (It was photo captions. Shoot.)

* This is my sister’s recipe. I ran it a long time ago, but I did a little switch-up on it. It is quite good her way, or mine:

Curried Chickpeas and Kale

2 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
4 cloves garlic (minced)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
3 cups chopped kale or 1 package frozen chopped spinach
1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
3 cups cooked chickpeas
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon salt or to taste

Combine all ingredients in your crockpot and let it cook on low 7 to 8 hours, or on high for 4 hours.

I had to fix it in a soup pot, because I have no idea where the crockpot is. I made up my own curry mix with the mortar and pestle: garam masala, turmeric, cumin, cardamom, ginger, sugar, coriander and… I think that’s it. Oh yeah. I actually found curry powder in the cupboard and threw that in, too. I thought I used twice as much in the spice mix as I should have, but it turned out to be fairly mild and the perfect amount. Curry is good that way. (Per Nan’s instructions: Mix spices into a paste with a little water; sprinkle over onions while they saute and stir like mad so they don’t burn. Mmm…)

We served it over brown rice, and I added fresh mozzarella to mine, which almost (almost) tasted like paneer. Mmmmmmmm… paneer… My sister knows how to make it from scratch — I’ll have to get her over her to show me how.

What else? I used a package of frozen spinach since we didn’t have kale. And since Steve for no good reason (or bad reason) doesn’t like kale. This saddens me, because I love kale and could eat it every day. Especially Kale Chips, oh yum.

* Next? I realized that my poor, deprived Wacky Girl has been without homemade bread for days now. So I made the one from the breadmaker recipe book and it will be ready at approximately 10 o’clock tonight. My girl likes homemade bread.

That makes me happy. (PS there is a good bread recipe on that link, if you are interested.)

If you are in need of more breadmaker recipes, there are about 8,000 online, fyi. (Here is the homemade pizza dough recipe my extended family is nuts about. Excellent good.)

* I still have not mastered my Dear Late Granny’s Pie Crust recipe, so I used this one, instead:

SUPER-EASY PIE CRUST, WITHOUT LARD

3 cups flour
1 cup veggie oil
1/2 cup orange juice

Stir together with fork.
Separate into two equally sized balls of dough.
Roll each ball of dough out between two pieces of wax paper.

The woman who shared it with me wrote “Easy, easy, yummy, yummy” at the end of the recipe, and she was right! I didn’t have any orange juice, so I used water. (You wouldn’t want the citrus if you were using this crust for a savory pie, either.)

I stirred together a can of cherries with some sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and cornstarch. It wasn’t enough filling, but I’ll double it next time. Also, I prefer metal cake/pie pans to glass, why didn’t I use one?

Trick from Granny: Sprinkle sugar on the top crust and it will make it crunchy-brown-sugary on top.

* I wanted to do a Caprese Salad (fresh Roma tomatoes, mozzarella and basil leaves), a la the Pioneer Woman, so I thought I’d try my hand at doing a Balsamic Reduction. Well, it started to boil too much, and then when I turned it down it wasn’t boiling enough, so… it didn’t reduce as much as I would have liked. But still, it reduced by about 2/3 so good enough. Also, I realized that Caprese Salad in no way complemented Chana Sag, brown rice or the macaroni and cheese out of a box that the kids were eating.

I just wanted a Caprese Salad.

So I’ll have one tomorrow night — since the reduction is in a jar in the fridge and ready to go.

Bon appetit!

WM