Happy Mother’s Day!

Oh my, has it really been more than two months since I posted on this blog? Yikes, I believe it has! Bad Nimmie. 

I have tried some new recipes in the past couple months, but have been too distracted by other things to write about it.

Anyway, this photo above is the breakfast I made for my mom this morning. She has to work today. She’s a pharmacist at a hospital, and people need their meds on Mother’s Day too! I got up at 7:30am so I could make fresh waffles from scratch. Here is a previous blog post with the recipe. They were delicious! I had one and a half and so did my mom.  

My little brother Avi made her a lovely card and framed drawing (below), which was wrapped beautifully by his teachers at school.

 

I wish my gift had been as thoughtful, but alas it was a gift card to Ann Taylor. That is her favorite store though. I did better last year, I found this really awesome dress from French Connection that was on sale at Macy’s. Oh well, now I better get something really good for her birthday this August!

Since it’s Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share a few things I love about my mom…

1. She makes everything more fun.

2. She cooks amazing, delicious, healthy food.

3. She is ambitious and never gives up. She went to pharmacy school when I was in high school, and now she loves her career!

4. She always gives me and my brother Avi good advice. (We try to listen to it AND follow it. )

5. She motivates me to be the best me that I possibly can!

 

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

 

 

Quick Asian-style shrimp salad

Disclaimer: Forgot to take a photo, so closest resembling photo above pulled from: http://iamahoneybee.com/2012/01/24/spinach-salad-with-shrimp-avocado-and-grapefruit-with-citrus-vinaigrette/

This is a really great salad that my mom has been making recently. It’s very quick to put together, sounds fancy, and tastes delicious- just how I like my recipes to be!  And of course, it’s very healthy and satisfying.

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Quick Asian-style shrimp salad

• 1 cup cooked shrimp
• 3 cups chopped lettuce
• 1/2 avocado, cut into bite-size cubes
• 2 medium oranges, cut into bite-size cubes
• Dressing: 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon olive oil, drizzle of sesame oil, drizzle of hot chili oil, drizzle of agave nectar, 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, splash of vinegar, 1/2 lemon juice

We buy a large bag of cooked frozen shrimp from Costco and thaw the shrimp in warm water for about 5 minutes. The rest is just chopping up the veggies, adding shrimp, and tossing it all with the dressing. And that’s it, you have a quick meal!  You can modify the dressing as you like, adding a little more of a certain oil or a little less of another. I find that you can have a really flavorful salad even with a drizzle of a couple of different oils! I like to make olive oil the star of the show since it’s good for you.  The agave nectar balances the salty taste. 

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I try to eat healthy most of the time and save my indulgences for rich, home-cooked meals like thai curry and creamy pasta. Since a good chunk of my days is spent at work, I make sure to bring food from home and keep my cube/staff fridge stocked with healthy snacks. Recent snack has been flaxseed crackers from Trader Joe’s, peanut butter, and raisins.  This keeps me away from the vending machine. It’s important to keep your body nourished!

Anyway, good night and hope you had a lovely Easter!

Recipes, cookbooks, and future directions

Above is a tray of Cold Asian Noodle Salad that I made for the cookbook release/tasting party at my mom’s hospital. In addition to this one, I also had recipes for Chicken Enchiladas and Chickpea and Potato Curry printed in this employee cookbook. All the recipes are signed off with my name and “Daughter of Navneet, Pharmacy”. My mom chuckled at that, but she deserves credit too! Also, I’m not an employee of their hospital so some explanation of my presence in the cookbook is required. They are selling copies of this to raise money for the March of Dimes foundation (this explains the baby on the cover). I am pretty excited that I officially am a published author! Haha…baby steps. Get it, baby steps?? Baby on cover? You get it.

I’m looking forward to trying out some of these recipes, particularly the “Eggs Mimosa,” which I tasted at the party and thought was delicious! Seeing all these recipes made me think about how food plays such a large role in our lives. It’s in the form of traditions passed down from family members, memories that make us smile, and personal creations that we are proud of. Essentially, food is love! 

I haven’t posted any recipes in a while, I admit. I have been cooking and baking, but it’s all things I’ve blogged about before. My “staple” items like banana bread, muffins, and stir fry. Also stuff like tuna sandwiches, egg burritos, and quesadillas- these are pretty simple to make, so much so that I wonder if it’s even worth writing about. Maybe I could do a “Healthy meals/snacks in a hurry” post about these simple, quick to prepare items. I am sure I will be needing some reference for these when I start school in August.

This brings me to my last note about future directions of this blog. I want to keep it as a place for my recipes and cooking experiences, but I also want to start talking about my experiences at school and all the new things I’ll be learning. I might just have to create a separate blog for that. I don’t think I can group all this information under “Living for the next meal”. It’s hard to maintain one blog, let alone two, so I’m wondering if the creation of a new blog will mean the neglect of the other. Anyway, we shall see what happens.

Caesar Salad (Well, sort of…)

This is not Caesar salad per se, but the closest that I get to it at home. I don’t have time to deal with eggs, garlic, and anchovies, I save that for the restaurants! You might think it’s not worth dedicating an entire post to lettuce, but something wonderful happens when you chop it up and toss it with ranch dressing, freshly shredded parmesan, and a pinch of salt and pepper. That’s the magic I’m talking about here! 

I’m often amazed by how easy it is to do certain things (like make a salad) and yet I don’t do those things on a frequent basis, even if I know how good it would be for me. Another example is doing a quick 5 minutes scalp massage with almond oil. You think, damn, I have so many other things to do, last thing I want to do right now is worry about my hair. But then you turn 40 and your hair is less than stellar because you never gave it any attention. Same thing goes for your body, when it comes to salads. A little goes a long way. (Sorry to everyone out there who is 40, when I start getting closer to that age, I will shift my statements to “when you turn 60″)

We’ll end on a note of animal humor…

Dinner for 12 strangers

I went to a UCLA alumni event last night called Dinner for 12 strangers. (I’m the third person from the right.) I finally did it, woo hoo! I have been wanting to go to one of these dinners since I was an undergraduate student. But, I didn’t have a car at the time and it was hard to figure out how to get to someone’s house clear on the other side of Los Angeles. Okay, maybe the larger reason was that large social gatherings with complete strangers are not on my list of favorite things in life. At this dinner, though, I happened to know the host and I brought a friend along with me. I think the experience would have been just as enjoyable either way, but it’s hard to take that first step and try something new on your own. Lesson learned here is that sometimes you just have to get out there and who knows, you could have a great time when you least expect it! 

We ate lots of good food, prepared by Peggy and her sister Patty, chatted and conversed about anything and everything, and played two rounds of Mafia before having to call it a night because us busy Bay Area Bruins had to get to work/class in the morning. I found that just about every other person in the room was either an engineer or in the tech field. We also had two aspiring teachers, one massage therapist/legal trainee, a Netflix employee, a certified public accountant, an aspiring lawyer, and I don’t remember what else! Oh right, and there was also an aspiring doctor because guess what…..

I’M GOING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!!!  The school is right here in the Northern California, an added bonus, and the program is excellent. In four years, I will become a physician! More on that later, but just had to tell you guys the great news!

Cornbread

Awesome cucumber thingies

A fun display of sweets

More interesting goodies

Hot chocolate cupcakes, my favorite treat of the night!

Just realized that I forgot to take any actual dinner photos, these were just the appetizers and dessert. (I guess I was too busy eating the dinner…) Man, did those two ladies do a great job at throwing an excellent party! I’ll be taking some pointers for my next dinner party, including the lovely little cursive signs that explain what the food item in question is. A nice little touch!

Chickpea and Potato Curry

Dear WordPress friends, it’s been too long! I’m here today to share a recipe for an Indian vegetarian dish that I made this past Wednesday. My mom wrote the recipe and wanted me to test it out to make sure it could be followed by a cook who is new to Indian cooking (i.e. me). As it turns out, my mom forwarded my blog information to a woman at her hospital who is putting together a cookbook with recipes from employees and their family. An “Employee Recipe Book” essentially, to raise money for the March of Dimes foundation. (Just as background, my mom is a pharmacist.) I’m excited to  have my recipes be part of a cookbook! They requested an Indian recipe from us as well, and so that’s why my mom wrote this recipe and had me test it out. I was happy to have another push to learn to make some yummy Indian food.

This Chickpea and Potato Curry is vegetarian and very, very healthy. It is packed with protein and full of flavorful spices, including a nice addition of ginger and garlic. (You could always make a ginger-garlic paste to use in recipes like this. I used one that my dad had made earlier in the month.) Fat content is very minimal. This dish can be enjoyed on its own with a side of plain yogurt, over a bed of rice, or with roti. I’ve been trying to cut carbs from my diet lately, so I just had it on its own with the yogurt. It’s very tasty! Sometimes if I have mini pita pockets in the fridge, I also pack one with my lunch so I can dip it into the curry. This is a nice option if you don’t want to make roti. 

Chickpea & Potato Curry

2 medium boiled & peeled potatoes (cut into bite-sized pieces)

2 (14oz) canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained

4 cups water (add more water if thinner curry is desired)

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 tbsp tomato paste

2 tsp crushed ginger

2 tsp crushed garlic

1/2 tsp red chili powder (1 tsp for spicy)

1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp coriander-cumin powder

2 tsp garam masala

2 tsp toasted cumin seeds, powdered (optional)

2 tsp salt

½ cup chopped cilantro

1. In a medium pot, heat oil over high heat. Add chopped onions, lower heat to medium, and sauté until golden brown.
2. Add tomato paste, ginger, garlic and stir it into the browned onions. Next add chili powder, ground turmeric, coriander-cumin powder, garam masala and toasted, ground cumin seeds (optional). Mix vigorously until well-combined and cook for a couple of minutes. Do not let mixture stick to bottom of pot.
3. Add both cans of rinsed and drained chickpeas and the bite-sized potatoes to the above mixture in the pot.
4. Stir until everything is mixed well together.
5. Add salt and four cups of water and bring to boil. Once it starts boiling, lower heat, cover (not completely, leave small space for steam to escape), and let simmer for an additional 10 minutes.
6. Garnish with chopped cilantro and remove from heat.

*You can dry toast the cumin seeds in a skillet and then powder in a mortar and pestle, or in a grinder. This is an optional ingredient.

*Deep is a good brand for coriander-cumin powder and garam masala (available from any Indian grocery store).

Double-Chocolate Cupcakes

Rows of chocolate- just what I love!

These are soooo awesome! They are moist, fluffy, and light at the same time- quite amazing. And very easy to make. I watched the movie No Reservations in the background (really fun movie complete with an awesome Italian soundtrack that’s perfect for when you’re in the kitchen) and whipped these up in a snap.

Thank you Kim for the recipe! You now have two pingbacks from me. I will no longer have to resort to boxed baking mixes when I am craving a good ol’ chocolate cupcake.

So, my friends, give these LOW FAT cupcakes a shot- you will not regret it!