Trader Joe's Indian

Happy Birthday VeggieGirl, the blogworld would not be the same without you!!

A friend gave me a jar of Trader Joe's Indian Curry Sauce that she said we had to try. Somehow, I missed this great product on Trader Joe's shelves. I didn't think to take a photo until I emptied the jar.

I included chick peas (which I made from dried beans), kale and cauliflower. I steamed the cauliflower and kale for a few minutes, then drained out the excess water. I then prepared the curry sauce as directed by pouring the sauce and about half a jar of water into the pan. I added the steamed kale and cauliflower and about a cup of chick peas. I simmered all the ingredients for about 20 minutes.

With the curry I heated up a piece of frozen Trader Joe's Naan.

I also had some brown rice under my curry. This was one amazing meal!

If you love Indian food, I highly recommend these products.

A weekend of trying new recipes

Before I get into some of the fantastic meals I ate this weekend, I am going to tell you about the exercise video I just tried: Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones. I bought this DVD and Jillian's Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism DVD from Sam's Club about a month ago. Reading about Caitlin's journey with Jillian's 30 day shread, inspired me to finally unwrap this DVD. WOW, was this rough for me. Maybe it is because I haven't lifted weights in a couple weeks, but I was using 5 pound weights and for a few exercises I had to drop my weights and just do the exercises without them.

Jillian is very amazing, so if you haven't tried one of her DVDs yet, you should. Now on to some eats.

Before I get to the new recipes I tried, I wanted to thank my husband for making pancakes. He is the pancake maker in our house, and today he really decorated them nice with all my favorites. There is some fat free cool whip on there, I haven't bought it for months, because it is full of crappy ingredients, but I really love it, so I picked some up this weekend.

I have wanted to try a Mushroom Stroganoff recipe for a long time and finally tried one. I found one online for Tofu Stroganoff. I followed the basic recipe, but instead of tofu I used more mushrooms and some morningstar crumbles. Also instead of sour cream, I used Fage. We had it over some fresh whole wheat pasta we bought at an Italian market.

Also this weekend, we tried, for the first time, to make Indian food. First, I knew that the recipe called for chick peas, and being previously inspired by Heather making beans from dried beans, I made the chick peas instead of using them from a can. I soaked the chick peas overnight, and then just cooked them in boiling water for 20 minutes when I needed them. This was so easy, I can't believe I was buying canned chick peas for this long and never tried this.

Here is a picture of my chick peas:

I used some of the chick peas in a Indian dish I found for Indian spiced kale and chick peas. I really liked how this one turned out. With that, we finally made Happy Herbivore's Red Lentil Dal, which I have seen on so many of my favorite blogs. I think we made this too spicy for me. My husband liked it a lot, but my mouth was burning. Steve had leftovers of the Red Lentil Dal for lunch and still loved it. So I'm sure we will make both recipes again.

Finally with our Indian, we attempted to make our own whole wheat Naan bread, but it didn't work out for us. Steve still loved this bread, but it didn't turn out to be or taste anything like Naan. I attempted this recipe for the naan bread. Has anyone else tried to make Naan? I even went to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy a baking stone to bake it on!

Time to get ready for bed. I'm so sad the weekend is over!

Where did the weekend go?

I'm feeling a lot better and feel refresh after a 5 mile walk with Steve and Sophie (Sophie didn't really do much walking, she pretty much slept in my arms). So here is Sunday and Monday.

Sunday

We have so much fruit, so for breakfast I had a fruit salad and two of the Blueberry-Oat Bars I made last week.

For lunch I had some leftovers from Sunday's party. Some of the roasted red pepper hummus I made, some guacamole, a tomato, some baked tostitos, and pretzel crisps.

I started feeling stick, with a huge migraine a little after lunch and the day went down hill from there. I was supposed to go on a long bike ride with Steve but I felt so exhausted that I needed to lay down. I told him I would go after a small nap. Well I ended up sleeping from 2-4 before Steve came to check on me. When he woke me up, I had a full blown migraine and told him to go without me. I tried to have a snack of 1 cup of cereal and 1 cup of skim milk.

I then fell back asleep from 4-6:15pm. We had made plans to have dinner at another couple's house who live down the road. We told them we would be there at 6:30, so even though I had a migraine we figured we couldn't cancel. They were making homemade Belgium Waffles with a mix from Williams Sonoma (Sorry no picture). They had the most heavy duty waffle maker I have ever seen. It made two Belgium waffles at one time. I had mine with a little maple syrup and a side of cantaloupe. We stayed there talking until 9:30 when my headache had come back strong.

Monday

Unfortunately a night of sleep didn't rid me of my migraine and I felt horrible this morning. Because I felt like crap last night, my husband was great and packed my Monday meals. He made this beautiful fruit salad for breakfast. I didn't eat breakfast until close to 9am, and even then I thought I was too sick to eat.

I had packed my gym bag to take a lunch time spin class, but my migraine was still around and I felt too weak. Even at lunch I didn't feel very hungry. I really didn't feel in the mood for the wonderful taco salad my husband made, but I convinced myself to try to eat it. I'm glad I did because it really did taste wonderful. In one container I take a chopped romaine salad and then in another I have one serving of Baked Tostitos, 1/3 cup Morningstar crumbles, salsa, and 1 slice of soy cheese. I microwave the taco mixture at work and then put it on top of the salad.

At 4pm I decided to eat the Fiber One Bar that was a sample in our Sunday newspaper, that my husband packed in my lunch. It was a little too sweet for me today, but other times I've had these I liked them (although I do not like the list of ingredients). I have never bought a box of these, but I have purchased them in an emergency from a gas station or from a vending machine.

I got home around 6:30pm and decided to try some frozen Indian food that Steve and I bought at Whole Foods last week.

Here is my Ethnic Gourmet dinner out of the box with the Naan Bread. The Ethnic Gourmet meal tasted pretty good, although I don't think that it was quite as good as the Amy's Frozen Indian Meals. The Korma had 300 calories and one piece of the bread had 182 calories. The Naan bread was actually really good and I'm sure we will buy it again.

I split the third piece of Naan bread with Steve.

The walk made me a little hungry so I had a handful of Trader Joe's mini meringue.

I am super tired and am hoping that my headache doesn't come back, so I better get to bed.