slow-cooker salsa chicken meal

I don't know where I found this tip, but a great way to keep herbs fresh is to put them in a glass jar of water and cover with a plastic bag in the fridge. Works great! This jar-full happens to be cilantro (coriander), which I love on curries or Mexican food.

A meal we've come to love recently is cobbled together from various recipes. I serve the salsa chicken over rice.

 You'll need:

• boneless chicken thighs, skin removed
• salsa, medium heat
• one onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped or minced
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• salt and pepper
• a splash of Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder

Do this:

Add all of the above ingredients to a slow cooker, and set to cook on low heat for about 8 hours. When it's done, shred with two forks.

Here are the side dishes I serve with it: lettuce, cilantro leaves, black olives, corn chips, sliced green onions, lettuce, avocado, tomatoes or more salsa, and sauteed garlicky corn (saute chopped purple onion in a frying pan in a neutral-flavored oil, then add thawed corn and minced garlic, and finally add some salt and pepper).

curried salmon croquettes

Curried salmon croquettes ready to fry up when we get home from calligraphy class. Ingredients: canned salmon, beaten eggs, sifted coconut flour, onion, garlic, parsley, turmeric, curry powder, salt and pepper, mayo, mustard, and rolled in golden flaxseed meal. Yummy served with lemon wedges, and for a side dish we have rice cooked in the rice cooker with chopped sweet potatoes. Lovely with coleslaw as well.

All done:

persian eggplant and tomato beef dish (gheimeh baademjaan)

Well, this was just absolutely delicious.

I had eggplants in the house that needed to be used up, so I just searched for a Middle Eastern dish with eggplant and ground beef. Voila!

Here's the recipe I used, and instead of searing the eggplant and doing all the fiddly bits, I just did it all in one pan in one go. It worked, and everybody raved about it. (I served it over quinoa, which I make in the rice cooker. So easy: you just double the amount of water, so if you're making two cups of quinoa, add four cups of water.)

You'll need:

• 1 large eggplant (or a number of the small Japanese variety), chopped
• 2 large tomatoes, cut into wedges
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 chopped onion
• lots of minced garlic
• olive oil
• 2 teaspoons sea salt 
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2/3 cup tomato paste (I used less than this)

Do this:

Saute everything except the tomatoes, then add them in, stir till they are soft, and serve over quinoa.

Muy muy delicioso! I'm going to be making this every couple weeks for sure.