Pocketful of Memory Cards

When I arrived home from grocery shopping on Tuesday I discovered my husband had already purchased a four litre jug of milk to replace the empty one I had spied on the counter that morning.  I bought one too.  We don't use a lot of cow's milk and a four litre jug will usually last us two weeks.  It's not that we don't like it, we just believe that milk is for baby cows, not people and use almond or soy milk (though someone  prefers cow milk in their cereal).  I've been on a kick to use up the extra milk for the past two days and tonight we are going to consume it in a flavourful curried cauliflower soup.   I used this recipe more or less.  The cauliflower was huge so I added a little more curry, used chicken flavoured vegetable broth and replaced the half & half with a cup of skim milk.  I also left some small chunks of cauliflower in the mix because I like a little texture in my creamed soups.  I also added a couple of hu...

I LOVE Indian food!  Tonight's dinner is aloo gobi, curried chicken, dahl, store bought naan bread and couscous.  I know couscous isn't Indian but I forgot to start the basmati rice first, and it takes too long to cook.  Indian Fusion it is.  The aloo gobi is from a an excellent cookbook my sister gave me, called Simply Indian, though there are a lot of good recipes on line you can use.  It's basically tomatoes, onions, lemon juice, potatoes and cauliflower with Indian spices.  My dahl recipe is based on one from a dear friend from Mauritius who's lived in Kelowna longer than I have (and I must admit I haven't seen her in ages!).  I don't usually measure anything and over the years I've added a few extra spices.  I start by melting some butter in the bottom of a small pot and adding about 1/2 tsp each of  cumin seed and corriander seed.    Once the coriander starts to pop I add the chopped stems off a bunch of fresh ci...

While I've been beavering away on my novel I decided to free up some time and use my crock-pot a little more often.  There's lots of slow cooker recipe books out there, probably more than necessary, and some recipes I've made - particularly two that I made last week make me wonder "What's the point?"   Last Tuesday I made ratatouille that I must say was delicious, but it took more than two hours of prep and clean-up, dirtying almost every pot in the place before I deposited the ingredients in the crock-pot to basically re-heat all day. It would have been easier to just throw it in a pan at the end,  stick it in the fridge until 5:00, then cook it for half an hour. This morning I selected a recipe from  Canada's Best Slow Cooker Recipes, by Donna-Marie Pye.   This is the best kind of slow cooker recipe.  Chop everything up, throw into the pot with some stock and spices, turn it on low and fuhgedaboudit.  Donna's Spicy Vegetable...