Day 118

Lemme just talk to you guys about the EPIC dinner I made tonight. Seriously, my back is aching from standing up for so long in the kitchen. I started this meal exactly at 5:00 this evening and didn't sit down to eat until 7:45! And I was working almost the entire time. It was a rather labor-intensive meal, which I didn't really anticipate.

I had to make mashed potatoes and dough for the roti, then chop up chicken, onions, garlic, peppers, green beans, you name it. And of course, as with anytime I elect to make a challenging meal, I had to endure several giant fails along the way.

First I decided to make the mashed potatoes with my hand blender, which quickly and efficiently rendered them into glue. GLUE, I tell you. No matter how much I banged the spoon on the bowl, the potatoes would NOT come off. It took me several minutes to clean all the potato off the hand blender. Two words on that one: never again! When in doubt, use the food processor!

So then, even though I thought I had followed the the roti dough recipe perfectly, it was really dry and crumbly and I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong, so I kept adding water and oil until it came together. I just rechecked the recipe now to find out I only added 2 tbsp of water to begin with, entirely missing the part where it said one 1/2 cup PLUS 2 tbsp. Sigh. Now I see the problem. Luckily, the roti turned out okay, but it was a little thick. Kind of like biscuits. I'll have to try again another time.

Happily, the chicken turned out perfectly...tender and flavorful and all that jazz. There were supposed to be potatoes in the chicken/green bean blend as well, but I chose to leave them out since I used mashed potatoes in the bread. Didn't want to overpotato!

Sadly, by the time I actually sat down to eat it, I was so exhausted I couldn't really appreciate it very much. It was a good meal, but not worth all that trouble! I do want to try making more Indian food soon though...I absolutely love all those awesome spices and flavors. But this was definitely not a weeknight meal. Thankfully I did all my homework before I started. There's no way I would have been happy about sitting down to do it now!

Phew. So anyways, here is what I made: Roti Chicken from Kayotic Kitchen

Doesn't really look like much, does it? Not enough to merit almost 3 hours of prep and cooking! Sigh. I've got to work on my speed.

But I did get my walk in today and got through Day #3 of no soda! It hasn't been bad so far. I actually like the sparkling water. I think I'm going to try to make some iced tea one of these days too.

All right. I'm pooped. Good night all! Peace and blessins!