Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Shari's Indian-Inspired Butternut Squash Curry


So my pastor's wife randomly awesomely gave me a butternut squash the other day. This evening I decided to use it for supper. My husband kindly chopped it up for me. I made a curry for it from Indian ingredients. I then compared my results to some similar recipes online: Butternut Squash & Coconut CurrySambhar, and Indian Summer Stew: Butternut Squash, Coconut, and Lentil Stew. Not bad! Our supper was perfect! Not too much or too little spicy. The dish tasted buttery. I would make it again.

Shari's Indian-Inspired Butternut Squash Curry:

1 TB Ghee
2 Dashes Hing
2 Tsp Tumeric
2 Tsp Minced Garlic
2 Tsp Ginger Paste

1/2 Ginormous Onion
1 TB Chobani Yogurt
2 Cups Water

1. Saute ghee and spices.
2. Add onion. Stir.
3. Add yogurt. Stir.
4. Add water. Stir.
5. Add butternut squash. Stir. Cover. Cook until soft. Mash with fork.
6. Simmer. Serve.
















Chai Tea


I finally pulled out the tea set from China that we were given as a going away gift when we left China. I washed out the teapot and a couple teacups, and we used them. I made Indian Chai Tea. It was delicious. We loved drinking the tea from the fancy teacups.




















deep dish pizza


It's spring break for my husband. Tonight I wanted to do something other than rice for something different to kind of have fun. I decided on pizza. Then I thought I'd make my pizza deep dish since I have never done that before, and I have been wanting to. I made my own crust recipe and sauce recipe. Then I googled "chicago style pizza recipe" to check on layering my "Chicago-style" pizza correctly. The first and only recipe I looked at was Food Network's Chicago Style Pizza. Sure enough, it was as I thought, the cheese goes directly on top of the dough. The sauce goes on top of the cheese. The toppings go on top of the sauce.

Anthony and I had some pretty interesting dinner conversation. We both agreed that perhaps an Indian chicken curry pizza would be good sometime, or a cauliflower curry pizza. I was going on about what I should name my deep dish pizza, and something about it being pizza with an identity crisis. It was almost too thick to be a Chicago-style crust, and the pizza had Philly cheese-steak toppings. Then I extrapolated about inventing a new pizza genre, the Clemson-style pizza. It would have to be new and different. Maybe instead of the NY-style (crust, sauce, cheese, toppings) or the Chicago-style (deep dish crust, cheese, sauce, toppings) my future Clemson design could be crust, toppings, sauce, cheese.

Full of ideas, I asked Anthony for our next trip if we could go to Mars. We went to China last year. I've been to Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and Canada. I said maybe we could go for research or something. I was pretty much joking of course. He said that there is a company that is actually working on sending some people to Mars to settle there. Anthony said that it takes 2 1/2 years to fly/shuttle there. He said it would be quicker to go to the moon. It only takes 3-4 days to get there. I said maybe he could do some 3D printing research up on there. I could run a Clemson-style pizza shop on the moon, and everyone would love it because it would be the only pizza shop up there.