Chicken and Veggies in an Indian Sauce

The situation:  Need to use up organic chicken in fridge before the weekend.

The solution:  I'll find a new recipe!  No, I'll make something up.  No, I'll find a recipe.  Ugh.

What went down:  I put half a chopped onion in a pan and threw some oil in.  When I don't know what else to do, I throw an onion in a pan and wait for inspiration.  So then I put in a hearty squeeze of ginger paste (have you discovered this stuff in the produce aisle?  it's great).  I added a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil to the mix.  I chopped 2 celery stalks finely and added them.  It started to smell lovely.  I decided to boil chicken in another pot.

After the onions were translucent, I added about two teaspoons of flour, stirred, and let it cook a little.  Then I deglazed the pan with some chicken broth (about 1 cup- add more if you need it saucier).  I remembered I had half a can of chopped tomatoes in the fridge.  I tossed them in.  Then I added the last half of a red pepper chopped coarsely.  By now, it was a good looking thing.

Spices.  Hmmm.  I was thinking the whole time about a sauce I made in February when I attempted malai koftas (Indian veggie meat balls with a yummy sauce) so I sort of went in that direction.  I added 2 teaspoons coriander, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 2 teaspoons turmeric, 1 teaspoon cumin.

Oh.  You might be assuming I measured this stuff for real.  Nope.  I don't measure for stuff like this.  But I was thinking of you the whole time so I looked at about how much I was adding.

Salt to taste.  Hey, wait.  I have cilantro!  So I coarsely chopped what I had and tossed it in.  Side note: Cilantro seems so yummy, tangy and mild to me yet people completely HATE it.  Why is cilantro so polarizing?

Then I tasted it.  Yum.  I added some lemon zest.  I shredded the chicken breast that had been boiled and let the whole thing cook together on very low heat.

You could serve this over rice and it would be lovely.  I can't really digest rice right now so I had it straight up in a bowl with organic crescent rolls on the side.  (Whatevs, don't judge.  LOL).  I squeezed a lemon wedge on top.  Oh my.  So delicious.  

Here's the recipe in a list like normal people would do:

2 chicken breast, boiled, shredded

8 oz canned chopped tomatoes

1/2 large yellow onion

2 stalks celery

1/2 red pepper

1 T ginger paste

2t flour

1 C chicken broth

olive oil and toasted sesame oil

2 t coriander

1 t cinnamon

2 t turmeric

1 t cumin

 chopped fresh cilantro

salt

This makes enough for two hearty servings.  I made my lunch for tomorrow (bottom picture - sorry it's weird and upside down).

Healing 

I had an awesome session with my counselor yesterday and she said this great thing.  I can't paraphrase it right - Lighthouses can go out in the sea looking for ships to save; they stay on the shore shining their light to guide.  For me, this is about holding boundaries, not giving my power away, being the light that I am.  

She also said this cool thing:  

Time for a mental garage sale:  time to let go of a belief that is not supportive of the life I want to be living and replace it with one that is.

Also - biggie for me - I really am working on receiving.  Receiving love and care from others.  Receiving gifts from the universe.  Letting it happen.  Less controlling.  Yeah.  Hell yeah.  

Cute Little Chicken Pot Pies

This is me in my fantastic cooking chair.  Nate calls it the captain's chair.  You see how tiny my lil kitchen is and how I can basically push myself all over.  The chair cost about $150 and it's from Staples - it was their last one so you'd have to order it online.  The gate is to keep Misty the Cat from being under the wheels.  When I cook, Misty thinks it is all for her and will hang out under me.  I think she may have possibly noticed how much stuff falls to the floor when I am at the helm.

Over my February break, I made these chicken pot pies for the first time with my friend Cindy.  We knew we would want lots of them so we made tons extra and froze them.  Since then, I have made them twice more - making tons extra for freezing.  Freeze them before baking.

Today I came home feeling a way-too-swift return of my leg pain post-epidural.  No doubt made worse by the fact that I never got to really sit down today.  I didn't really get great sleep last night so the combination of low sleep and a stressful day may have increased my inflammation overall.  While I'm at the complaining part of this post, I will say that my esophagus was in full spasm several times today too.  I don't have great management of the esophagus right now.  The medications for the esophagus are all heart medicines that relax cardiac muscle.  They also relax the smooth muscles of the esophagus.  I was on one that worked amazingly well until it led to EXTREME ankle swelling (sorry for yelling it).  The next one I tried didn't work at all.  Now I have a new one to try but apparently it gives everyone terrible headaches (the dr said that's how you know it's working - wtf?).  So I'm sort of holding off on that.  I've been getting by using the medicine I have for acute esophageal spasm.  Eating and drinking remain a challenge.

I used to have salad type things every day for lunch at school.  Now, I usually have a yogurt and some fruit.  Yogurt is so easy to digest and swallow.  I have eaten more yogurt in the past 2 months than ever before in my life.  I'm totally hooked on chobani.  Right now, I'm all about strawberry.

So I had big plans of making a new recipe for dinner so that I would have something to share here.  I guess that will have to wait.  I was so grateful that I had these little chicken pot pies left in the freezer from a few weeks ago.  I based them on this recipe from the Food Network by Melissa d'Arabian.  I never have followed the amounts - I just make large amounts of the chicken mixture and 2 packages of puff pastry.  Here are the amounts approximately that I have used:

1 large onion chopped
1 bunch celery chopped
4-6 carrots chopped
5 cloves of garlic
3T flour
1 C white wine
2 C chicken stock
2-3 T dijon mustard
1 C peas
2 packages of chicken breast, cooked and chopped small (I boiled the chicken)

Follow her recipe for cooking, deglazing the pan, etc.  You end up with a beautiful gravy surrounding chicken and veggies.  Roll out the puff pastry.  I made each turnover a rectangle about 4X6 inches then fold it over and seal the edges.  Freeze them like this, then you can just pop them out onto parchment paper and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.  If you cook right away, you end up with a better puff pastry.  This is sort of a labor intensive meal because you have to boil and cook all that chicken, and then stuff the pastries.  It's worth doing on a weekend when you have time and making tons of it.  Trust me, you'll be glad to have these little babies in your freezer.