Hurry Curry's Words of Wisdom

"If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?"

I'm sorry, did I title this post with "Hurry Curry" instead of Harry Caray? Please pardon me; I must have been thinking of my glorious dinner.

Hurry Curry Cauliflower Stew!

I used this recipe with just a few slight tweaks.

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp EVOO
• 1 cup grated carrots
• 100g chopped onion
• 1 tbsp jarred ginger (not pickled), minced
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2.5 cups low-sodium organic chicken broth
• 2 10-oz boxes frozen cauliflower florets
• 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup lentils
• 1/4 cup nonfat plain yogurt

Hurry up:

1. In a soup pot, heat the oil to medium and add carrots and onion. Cook until tender, maybe 10 minutes.
2. Stir in ginger, curry and salt, cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
3. Add broth, cover and heat to boiling.
4. Stir in cauliflower and chickpeas.
5. Cover and cook on medium 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until cauliflower and lentils are tender.
6. Stir in yogurt and serve (over rice, according to the recipe). I sprinkled on some dried cilantro.

This recipe yielded what I would call 4 generous servings as a main dish. If you wanted it to be just a veggie side to a protein or something, you could stretch it to maybe 6 1-cup servings. This was my main, though, so I had about 2 cups along with half of a TJ's whole wheat naan topped with 1 tbsp Sabra Classic Hummus and paprika.

It doesn't happen often, but I have to give this recipe my highest home cookin' rating of awesome! (The rest of the rating scale is as follows, descending from awesome: excellent, very good, good, OK, barf.)

For me, awesome recipes are usually those that contain ingredients I have on hand anyway, are quick and low maintenance but yield a high taste reward for minimal effort. Score one for the cauliflower curry! It does take a good half hour, start to finish, but I would still call it "hurry curry" because there's barely any prep and the cooking process is pretty hands-off.

I bet it's even better leftover! LOVE IT when that happens.

I figured I'd roll with the Indian theme for dessert and stepped outside the chocolate box with half of a mango and a tbsp of almond butter, along with some decaf chai, of course. Namaste!

This dessert ruled, not only because it was a great flavor combo, but because it was what I really wanted. I have a raging sweet tooth and can't imagine dinner without dessert, but I'm working on it being less automatic and listening to what my body really wants at this time of day, having already eaten a bunch of (hopefully) healthy meals and snacks. There was a time in my life when I would have looked you in the eye and asserted that fruit is not dessert, but clearly I've turned a new leaf if mango was what I really wanted, even with all the Newman's cookies, etc. in the house. Plus the good fat in the almond butter has kept me feeling satisfied without any feeling of a food baby in my belly. Score one for fat!

Now, I have never bought a fresh mango before, and while I am proud that I picked a ripe and tasty one, I failed at slicing it and nearly managed to juice the whole thing in the process of getting it into the ramekin. Tips for a new mango-user?

Backtracking a bit, I wanted to revisit my comment in yesterday's post that the Awesome Almonds have a way of permeating their delicious flavor throughout whatever they are stirred into (oatmeal, in yesterday's case). Today, I brought a 1/2 cup of cottage cheese to work for an afternoon snack, which I topped the night before with cinnamon and 8 of the Cocoa Java flavored almonds. Sure enough, when I stirred it all up this afternoon, the coating dissolved into the cottage cheese and I had a sweet cinnamoney-coffee-cocoa snack! Awesome Almonds are officially the world's best mix-in right now.

Sorry for the wonky pictures from work, but I have to be stealth and use my phone whenever I want to take a photo of food.

In other news, Becca of Bites of the Day totally made my day not bite by giving me a blog award!

Thank you, Becca! I had the pleasure of meeting this lovely lady at the blogger dinner in NYC a couple weeks ago, and I love reading about her new adventures in the Culinary Institute of America.

I'm gonna keep it goin' by passing it on to another couple of fine ladies.

1. Mizfit - she needs no introduction, and she probably has like a zillion awards because anyone can see she's got a great thing going, but she gets my wheels a'turnin' sometimes and basically makes me want to be a better blogger, among other things.
2. Healthy Ashley - she recently resigned from her cushy job in favor of pursuing an as-yet-undetermined career because she knew it was the right thing for her to do, right now. She has some serious cojones and I have to admire her courage.

Other blog business:

For any New Yorkers out there, I'm thinking of going to the Hungry Girl book signing on April 14th. Would anyone be interested in joining me? Not sure I'm committed to buying the book, but I hear there will be Popchips... For any non-New Yorkers, the rest of the national tour dates are in that link too, FYI.

Also, Carrots 'n' Cake is holding a Pure Bar giveaway! SCORE. (I hope.)

Tina of aforementioned Carrots 'n' Cake fame also shared a link to this article about foodies on Twitter. Very interesting! Twitter is obviously a huge phenomenom (typo, but I'm keeping it), especially for bloggers, but this concept of the "gastronomic glitterati" having a huge community through Twitter caught my attention. I've poo-pooed the idea of joining Twitter until now, but the idea of a whole recipe in 140 characters or less is seriously intriguing.

What do you think of Twitter? Do you "tweet"? (Or "twat", as Stephen Colbert said on the Today Show a few days ago...!) Please do share, as I am uber-conflicted on this one (not that I don't have better things to think about...).

Alright, time for Thursday to become Friday. Let's do this thing. I want me some weekend.