Sandwich Fillings

For our office Halloween potluck, I decided to prepare a couple of sandwich fillings - spicy mustard egg salad and cranberry pecan chicken salad. The egg salad recipe is an old standby that I've had in my recipe stash since my 'can't cook but need to eat something decent' days. Over the years, I have tried many versions of chicken salad and they have been mediocre at best. Hence, my mission was to get my grubby fingers on the best chicken salad recipe ever! CC came to my rescue! She raved about her perfect chicken salad recipe...and she's right. It is perfect!!!

Sweet Italian Sausage Vegetable Soup

For some reason or other, when Autumn comes around, I'm in the mood to prepare big vats of soup! After a quick survey of the contents of my fridge and my pantry, I decided to make a batch of hearty veggie soup with crumbled sweet Italian sausage.

Honey Lemon Chicken

The chicken breast pieces were marinated for 24 hours in a tangy honey, lemon, and tomato sauce before being grilled on George.

Keema Mattar

A Northern Indian and Pakistani dish featuring minced meat (in this case, beef was used instead of lamb) and peas!

Tea Shortbread

Well, it's not tea AND shortbread. It's tea flavoured shortbread! Brilliant, no? I baked half batches, using three types of tea: Double Bergamot Earl Grey, Jasmine Green Tea and Masala Chai. As I was preparing the cookie dough, I couldn't resist sampling the goods. They were very good. The finished baked versions are just as awesome!! Each cookie is buttery, fragrant, and crisp. I can't wait to experiment with other varieties of tea. Perhaps I should also consider replacing the tea leaves with flowers (rose, lavender, linden)!

Murgh Makhani with Garlic Naan

I 'accidentally' upped the cayenne content for the murgh makhani (butter chicken) and it's really, really, spicy!!! When I'm not feeling lazy, I usually cook a pot of basmati rice. This evening, I decided on garlic naan instead. It was a good dinner!

Quick Foo Yung Hai

If you order Egg Foo Yung in an American Chinese restaurant, you usually get a deep-fried egg patty filled with vegetables and meat or seafood, with a side of gravy. What's up with the gravy?!? That's not what I grew up on! My mama's version is sort of a scrambled omelette dish with crab meat, veggies and roast pork...and definitely no gravy on the side! This evening, I made a simplified version with shredded carrots, eggs and imitation crab meat. Not as good as mama's, but still edible!

Baby Carrot Slaw!!!

As I was shredding baby carrots for an omelette (more on said omelette in a bit!), I suddenly developed a craving for coleslaw! Since I didn't have any cabbage on hand, I decided to mix the shredded carrots with some shredded Granny Smith apples. As an afterthought, I added some raisins for good measure! Everything was tossed in a homemade (translation: didn't have any coleslaw dressing in the fridge) dressing of mayo, sour cream and sugar. It was good.

Chocolate Fix

When it comes to chocolates, I like the best. Yes, I'm a candy snob. While visiting my friends this weekend, they insisted that I visit The Schakolad Chocolate Factory. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of their truffles! My favourites were the Champagne Ganache and the Hazelnut Praline truffles.

Adding fruits to my daily diet...

In the form of candy!!! The kiwi gummy candies had bits of black seeds in them. I couldn't really taste the kiwi flavour, but it was still good. The lychee hard candy was very aromatic while the pineapple hard candy resembled the pineapple rings you would find in a can.

Tranquility

I chanced upon this tiny box of chocolates at a kiosk in the Reagan National Airport. After a frazzled week of travelling, I was in desperate need of some TLC! Belgian milk chocolate, infused with lavender sounded heavenly to me! This chocolate purportedly has the ability to soothe and induce inner calm. A marketing ploy, I reckon. Nevertheless, I happily parted with $4 for 0.95 oz of the chocolate. The lavender was a tad too subtle, and I wouldn't mind it at all if Newtree* decided to modify their recipe and make the lavender flavour more pronounced!



*Newtree also has the following flavours in their stable of goodies:

Pleasure (Indulgence) - Dark Chocolate
Vigor (Energizing) - Dark Chocolate with Coffee
Renew (Rejuvenating) - Dark Chocolate with Blackcurrant
Forgiveness (Harmonizing) - Dark Chocolate iwth Lemon
Sexy (Energizing) - Dark Chocolate with Ginger
Blush (Rejuvenating) - Dark Chocolate with Cherry
Tranquility (Soothing) - Milk Chocolate with Lavender
Rejoice (Soothing) - Milk Chocolate with Bitter Orange/Crisped Rice
Cocoon (Comforting) - Milk Chocolate with Cinnamon

Cheese Omelette!

When I'm too tired to open a box of Tuna Helper, a fluffy and cheesy omelette suits me just fine!

Papdi Gathiya

A delish chickpea flour based snack that my mama can't seem to get enough of!