Cooking!

I decided to make a few things in the last few days.

First up, Butter Chicken with Balsmati rice.

What you will need:


Cut up chicken into smaller peices. Satay in 1-2 tbsp of cooking oil


Cook rice as directed


Add Butter Chicken Sauce to chicken. I prefer the PC brand Butter Chicken but VH was on sale. Simmer for about 5 minutes on low.


Cooking rice usually takes about 20 minutes. Boo.


Pour chicken and sauce over rice. Yum!


Banana Bread! I'll post the recipe later. The secret to moist banana bread is sour cream!

What you will need:

Look how moist it is!



Pitas!

I love pitas, and making them is so easy.

What you will need:

If you're a carnivore like me, you'll want meat on your pita. I prefer to use pork soulvaki. Cook'em on the grill, or in the oven with the broiler setting if you suck at grilling like me, according to the package.

If your grocery store has them, buy a pre-made greek salad. This will save you money since feta cheese is pretty expensive. I put a little bit of it in a bowl, as I like to add Kraft's Greek Feta and Oregano salad dressing. If you pour the dressing all over the whole salad and don't use it all, it's digustingly soggy and limp.



Pour some dressing ontop of the salad. I use this, but you might want to use regular greek dressing. Put a top over the bowl or plastic wrap and shake it up.

The trick to making your pitas fold over without cracking/splitting is to bake them. Lightly brush on some cooking oil on both sides and put them in the oven for about 3 minutes on 350 F. Watch them, or they'll go black like my first attempt did (I put the oven on a timer for 5 minutes, which apparently was waaaaaay too long).


After your meat is cooked and your pita bread is baked, spread on some tzatziki sauce. Mmmm.
Add your fillings!

Fold over and enjoy!

Another Post About Food

I'm taking care of all the animals and the house as my mom and step dad go on vacation for a couple of days which means I can make whatever I want for dinner.

Sadly, when I moved back home, I share dinner with my parents, mostly my step dad because my mom works shifts in a town three hours away. He has criticized me for only liking 'pasta' and kraft dinner even though I have a larger palate than that. His comments are hilarious considering his idea of dinner is the following: Meat, potatoes, a peice of bread and beans. Sometimes he'll have a side of corn, or green beans, or potato salad, or coleslaw but that's pretty much what it is. If he makes spaghetti, he makes it as a side.

Whenever I offer to make dinner, the only thing I can make for him is Sheppard's Pie since he won't eat my Penne dish, quiches or anything other than his dinner layout.

As soon as they left I zipped off to the grocery store and spent 70 bucks to make food for the next four days (and probably will last over awhile anyways). Tonight I am going to make Butter Chicken with Balsmati rice and naan bread. Tomorrow for lunch I'll make pitas. I also have some left over bananas so I'll be making banana bread.

I wanted to share two of my favourite recipes that I've made that I really enjoy, so this seems just as good as time as ever.

Three Cheese Chicken Penne
This recipe came from Kraft's What's Cooking Magazine that comes out four times a year. This one is a baked penne that tastes just like something you'd order at a restaurant.

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups multigrain penne pasta, uncooked
1 pkg. (283 g) fresh baby spinach leaves
1 lb. (450 g) boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 tsp. Dried basil leaves
1-1/2 cups (1/2 of 700-mL jar) pasta sauce
1-2/3 cups (1/2 of 796-mL can) diced tomatoes, drained
1/4 cup Philadelphia Light Cream Cheese Spread
1 cup Mozzarella Shredded Cheese, divided
2 Tbsp. Parmesan Light Grated Cheese

Heat the oven to 375 F. Cook the pasta as you normally would. When the pasta is cooked, add the spinach into the water and boil it for a minute. Drain and set aside.

Cut up the chicken into one inch pieces. Heat up a skillet and add the chicken and basil leaves, cooking them for about three minutes until the chicken is completly cooked. Set aside.

In a sauce pan, add the jar of sauce and the cream cheese. Heat up the sauce until the cream cheese melts. Add the diced tomatoes and 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese.

In a 8 inch square baking dish, pour in the pasta and spinach. Add the chicken into the sauce and pour over the pasta. Bake for 20 minutes. Top with mozzarella and parmesan and bake for 3 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Peanut Butter Toberlone Cheese Cake
I love this cheesecake because it's so easy and a no-bake.

Ingredients

1-1/4 cups Oreo Baking Crumbs
1/4 cup Butter, melted
2 pkg. (250 g each) Cream Cheese, softened
1 cup Smooth Peanut Butter
1 cup Sugar
2 bars (100 g each) Toblerone Swiss Milk Chocolate, chopped, divided
1-1/2 cups thawed Cool Whip Whipped Topping, divided (or any whipped dessert topping)

Mix the crumbs and 1/4th of the butter together and press into a spring form pan. Refigerate for 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese, sugar, and peanut butter with a mixer (or by hand if you hate mixers like I do) until well blended. Add half of the chopped chocolate and 1 cup of the whipped dessert topping. Mix well. Pour into the pan on top of the Oreo crumbs. Refigerate for a minimum of three hours.

Microwav 1/2 cup of the whipped dessert topping and the remaining chocolate for about a minute on high. Stir until well blended. Pour ontop of the cheesecake. Remove the rim from the pan.

Food

Food is such an important thing for us, both biologically and culturally. If it's one thing we can all agree on, it's that we like food and we have to eat. Culturally, food stands for many things and is often the reason for or part of the ritual of gathering. From Thanksgiving dinner, to going out for coffee, food plays an important part in our social lives. Growing, processing, and serving food also plays a huge part in our economy. Food can express many emotions - we cook or bake special meals for the ones we love, we often picture 'romantic dinners' in special occassions like anniversaries, and we turn to 'comfort foods' when we are upset. The type of food you choose to eat reflects one's wealth and status.

We can all agree, that we love food.

I was once a very picky Western child. My parents would often lament that there were people starving around the world who would kill for the food I refused to eat. I realize that the whole notion of being picky is a Western concept, as it is a luxury for us to be able to refuse food. We also live in such a cultural mix that we are able to sample different types of food any time we want.

As I grew older, I became more accepting of the foods I didn't want to eat. As a child, mushrooms and raw tomatoes turned me off. It took me a long time to enjoy these foods. I just recently started liking tomatoes. I also have had the opportunity to expand my palate, dining on sushi and thai food.

I once worked as a waitress at a chinese restaurant, and I would be appalled by some of the things I heard while taking orders. I had a family call and tell me that there couldn't be any sauces on the food, and absolutely no vegetables as their kids would not eat them. Being a past picky child myself, I do realize that some food can be unappealing. But my parents always made sure I would eat vegetables, and there were all vegetables that I did like like carrots, peas, broccoli, cauliflower corn, potatoes, lettuce, beans, cabbage and squash which I thought justified that I would not eat onions, radishes, raw tomatoes and spicy vegetables. I would get ragged on all the time for not eating onions. I just didn't like them. I didn't like their texture, whether they were raw or fried. I didn't like their taste. I just didn't like them. Why couldn't they accept it? I wasn't turning my nose up on vegetables - I loved most vegetables. I just didn't want onions. But for parents to allow theit children to eat anything but vegetables? No wonder our health is the way it is.

To this day, my elderly neighbor criticizes my parents for not making me eat onions. She said they should have forced me to stay at the table until I had eaten them. If that was the case, we would have been there all night. My mom tried to sneak onions into my meals but I always found them, and picked them out. If I ate dinner elsewhere, I would do the same. She once tried to tell me that boiled onions were cabbages and I refused to believe her.

I fully believe that picky children shouldn't be allowed to eat hot dogs and pizza for the rest of their lives, but I do think that everybody should be allowed a few leeway foods that they just don't like. If you avoid going to a majority of restaurants because you won't eat any of the food there, you are way too picky. If you just have an avoidable vegetable, I think that's fair. I think most people have at least one food they don't like. For me it's onions. It used to be more, but I've eaten a lot of foods I once didn't like and love them now... but I still can't eat onions.