Chicken Stir Fry And Leftover Mac And Cheese

Since we no longer RV or travel very much otherwise, I’ve given up gardening and don’t cook much while on a diet, and we only eat out occasionally, I don’t have a whole lot to post about these days but I'll keep plugging along.

Chicken and Pineapple Kebabs

We had some pineapple spears in the fridge along with some chicken breasts and bell pepper and Bev suggested kebabs for supper which sounded great to me.  I went on line in search of a recipe and settled on the recipe for Chicken and Pineapple Kabobs from “The Whole Cook” blog.  I chose it because of the short list of ingredients, all of which I had on hand.  I followed the recipe but added the extra step of reducing the leftover marinade in a pan and spooning it over the plated kebabs.

Ropa Vieja (aka Cuban Style Shredded Beef) & Cuban Black Beans

When I saw Kevin’s recipe for Ropa Vieja on his Closet Cooking blog, I knew I wanted to try just for a different version of shredded beef.  I amended the recipe for the additional beef that I had and I made it the day before to give the flavors more time to marry.  I also changed the directions to reflect use of my slow cooker.  You can get the original recipe by clicking on the above link. 

Greek Night At Almost Heaven South - Around The World Meal

The inspiration for a meal can be pretty well out there sometimes as evidenced by this one.  Bev had a cucumber that she had grown and wanted to use and decided she’d like to make it into Tzatziki sauce.  But what are you going to do with it was the next question to which she came up with a souvlaki recipe from Food & Wine.  Then I suggested that we just use this meal as our regular Thursday night offering for our friends and we make Greek potatoes as a side.  So this whole meal began with one over sized home-grown cucumber.

Chicken Stir Fry For Around The World

We had not had stir-fry in a long time and with broccoli needing to be cooked, chicken in the freezer and another around-the-world dish opportunity, I went in search of a recipe.  I found Trish’s EasyChicken Stir Fry recipe at her Mom on Timeout site.  I adapted it a little for the ingredients we had on hand but you can click on the link for the original and more pics like this one.

South Africa Potijekos

With my hip surgery and now Covid-19, my around the world meals have been way on the back burner but I finally had all of the ingredients to make one from Africa.  So far, I’ve done PaprikásCsirke - Chicken Paprikash – Paprika Chicken from Europe, Ceviche Peruano from South America, GreekLentil Soup (Fakes Soupa) from Europe, and Murgh Makhana - Butter Chicken from Asia.

This South African meal is called Chicken Potijekos, where potijekos means small pot food and it is generally prepared outdoors in a pot of the same name over an open fire or coals as below but I just cooked mine in a large cast iron Dutch oven on the stove.  

After deciding on this dish, I went on line in search of a recipe and liked the one from Yuppie Chef and I adapted a little in the directions.  Please click on the link to visit their site for more photos.

Murgh Makhana - Butter Chicken

Now that I have a new hip and even though still using a walker, I had to get out of my chair and do something plus I was ready to get back to my around-the-world meals - none since before Christmas and the pre-surgery crash diet started.  For this next one,  I selected India and it seems there are many traditional Indian dishes so I picked Butter Chicken using the recipe from Café Delights and after ordering what is likely a lifetime supply of Garam Masala and dried fenugreek leaves from Amazon over a month ago, I was pretty well set to go.  

Please check out Karina’s blog for some good pics of her process and her dish like this one.

Greek Lentil Soup (Fakes Soupa)

Continuing with my weight-loss, low-carb, Blue Zone, and around-the-world meals, I made up a pot of Greek Lentil Soup using the recipe from Sarah and Tim on their Curious Cuisiniere blog as it seemed to have the right stuff in it.  Since I had 2 cups of lentils, I adjusted their recipe to get the one below with a couple of other revisions.  Check out their blog for the original recipe and more shots like this.

Around The World To Peru

Christmas week dishes and the need to lose an additional 10 lbs before my hip replacement, following my doctor visit, resulted in my missing the week for my planned around-the world meal.  After looking harder at my list, I decided to go to Peru where ceviche (low-cal and protein rich) is one of the traditional dishes.

Paprikás Csirke - Chicken Paprikash – Paprika Chicken

While my girls were in Florida, I got to thinking about the meals we eat and realized we stay pretty close to home and I thought we should branch out.  So I divided the world into five areas (excluding North America), picked five 5-7 countries from each and found a signature dish from each country – the areas are Africa, Asian mainland, Europe, South/Central America, Pacific Islands.

My goal is to cook a dish from a different country each week and I picked Europe – Hungary – Chicken Paprikish with Nokedi (dumplings) for the first one.  I read many recipes for the chicken and finally settled on one from the Daring Gourmet for the chicken and a recipe from Food.com forthe dumplings.  Here is a shot of the chicken from the Daring Gourmet website which has many how-to pics and a shot from the web for the dumplings.