French Toast With Ground Cloves

I made french toast. I put scrambled egg sprinkles, cinnamon, and syrup on top. The look was almost like whipped cream. Upon trying my food, my french toast tasted too eggy to my liking. I added more syrup to help the flavor some, but to no avail. It still seemed like something was lacking. I went to one of my spice cupboards. "Hmm," I thought. I put some ground cloves on top of my remaining french toast slice, and sampled a bite. I thought it tasted perfect. A few bites later though, the cloves began to wear on me. My french toast began to taste too sweet, almost like candy, like red hots. I don't think I will try cloves on my french toast any time in the near future.

garlic knots

I made some knots for a family gathering. I let baby Shastya feel the dough. You can see her hand print in some of the pictures.  

 

Indian Cooking Class

I went to an Indian Cooking For Beginners class on a Saturday afternoon. The class was three hours. I had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. "Take aways" included: note to self, "I need to get a rice cooker and a wok," as well as "I should try cauliflower curry at home, and Indian chai tea." I loved the Indian Chai tea that our teacher Rachel Singapogu made. The liquid was half water and half milk. Some of the spices in the tea included: black pepper, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. I also want to try adding cilantro to my raita like Rachel did at the class. Rachel said she's thinking about doing an intermediate level Indian Cooking class. I'm thinking I need to get to that . . .

You can find the recipes for the items in the pics at Rachel's blog My Indian Recipes. The dishes Rachel taught at the class were: Special Rice, Masala Red Lentils, Cauliflower Curry, Chicken Curry, Raita, and Chai.

Triple Leftovers

Yeah, uh huh. Who blogs about leftovers? I do. My lunch today is the combination of leftovers from three different dishes: red lentils, green lentils, and rice. I heated them all up together in the microwave for a delicious lunch.

Growing up, my family "ate out" a lot so we brought home a lot of leftovers. Restaurant portions are ginormous and nobody should eat them in one sitting! I got lots of practice through the years cleaning out the fridge, and salvaging leftovers from it. I even got excited about leftovers. I looked at them as stepped up, processed, or ready-to-use ingredients.

Sometimes I see competing chefs on Chopped snub there noses at leftovers or random processed ingredients. I just smirk watching those chefs! I don't like to see leftovers trashed.

Unusual To Our Household

When I purchased a collection of aloe, rutabaga, dates, qumquats, and bosc pears, I had never cooked with them before. I purchased the produce assortment for nutrition and experimentation. Another interesting item shown in the pictures is a crown of figs. I bought a crown of figs for the first time on a previous trip to the store. We enjoyed dried figs so much that I bought a second crown of figs this trip to the grocery store. We, especially Anthony, like to just snack on the figs. You will also see a large purple eggplant in the picture. I have cooked with eggplant before, but not recently.

Aloe

Rutabaga

Eggplant

Bosc Pears

Kalamata Crown Figs

Pitted Dates