Making Glasses

Recently I have acquired a Kinkajou bottle cutter. It's a nifty little device (you can see it in the picture below sitting on the chair) that scores a bottle evenly all the way around, making it easy to cut. I finally got around to cutting a bunch of bottles a few weekends ago (Lilly was getting sick of the growing collection of empties I was saving for this purpose on top of our fridge) and now have a bunch of glasses!

 You can see in the photo above the score line around the bottles. To actually cut them, you just run them under alternating cold and hot water until they pop apart, usually with success, but as you can see below occasionally it doesn't work out so well, there was one that I cut that was beyond saving unfortunately. 

 A little sanding to smooth out the edges, and voila! Old beer bottle becomes new drinking glass. Now Lilly and I don't need all these glasses for drinking so in the coming weeks, you might see a post or two about other uses for these, and I might throw a few up on my Etsy shop eventually. See you next Tuesday everyone!

Chickpea and Potato Curry

Sometimes I think the theme of this blog may really be cheap eats. Or perhaps more accurately, I want to eat something and we haven't made time to go to a grocery store in over a week what can I make with the things we do (and usually always) have around? This is clearly one of those times. I went to make dinner and said to myself, hmm, well lets look for chickpea recipes (dear god I love the internet). I found this recipe and thought to myself, 'the curry part sounds good, and we have a bunch of naan in the freezer, so yeah, deal' (my thoughts are prolific, I know). A few notes to less obvious changes I 'made': I did not use tomatoes or spinach, we didn't have any in the house and Lilly doesn't really like tomatoes or cooked spinach anyways. I don't even know what garam masala is, so instead of 2 teaspoons of that I used a teaspoon of curry powder and a teaspoon of masala tea powder, cause that makes sense, right? I definitely had more than a teaspoon of grated ginger, I cut off a little chunk to grate that turned out to be bigger than I bargained for, I would estimate it was a least a tablespoon, maybe a smidgin more. I added coconut milk. 

I mostly just followed the recipe....and forgot to take many pictures along the way, so here's a picture of most of the ingredients on my counter. 

One day I'll learn how to make naan, from what I understand it's not that difficult to make. But for now warming up some pre-made naan in the toaster oven is more than sufficient. 

All in all, I'd make this again. Even Lilly seemed to like it as much as me! In the future however I would not use as much, if any added salt, it came out overly salty, which was fine while eating it with the naan, but still. I have a couple theories as to why that is: while I did rinse the chickpeas, they probably were still hella salty on their own, also since I didn't use tomatoes and spinach it maybe threw off how salty everything turned out. Also I did use the optional cayenne pepper, not an entire 1/4 of a teaspoon, but almost that much, and it was at the perfect level of spiciness for me, and barely noticeable spiciness for Lilly.  Next week I'll try and post something non-food related, no promises though! See you next Tuesday!

Potato Bowls

The other night I made Lilly and I a real healthy dinner (note sarcasm). It was a product of not knowing what I wanted that we had in the apartment to make for dinner. So I started with some potatoes cooked up home fry style. I used a little less oil than I normally do when making home fries, because I knew I wouldn't be taking them out of the pan or draining the oil in the cooking process. 

Once the potatoes were nearing being done, I threw in two cloves of garlic that I had minced and some chopped onion. 

 While the onions and garlic were cooking I looked in the fridge. We had an open can of black beans and an open can of kidney beans in the fridge, so in went some of each of those.

Then some salsa.

Once this had all simmered together to my likings I took it out of the pan and split it into two bowls. Topped each with shredded cheese and threw them in the microwave for long enough to melt the cheese. The I topped them off with a dollop of sour cream and sliced up an avocado. Then I dug in. Yum. See you next Tuesday kids!

Popcorn

Let's talk about popcorn. And not those microwave bags either, it seems many of us have forgotten that the prepackaged bags with who knows what in them were not always the way we got popcorn at home. Popcorn is an easy, delicious, not to mention high in fiber treat, that doesn't have to have all those added who knows what in it. I can remember as a kid we used to use an air popper and pop a large batch of popcorn into a paper shopping bag to then douse in melted butter in salt. YUM. However Lilly and I do not have (nor particularly have the room in our cabinets for) an air popper. Luckily though Lilly grew up using neither an air popper nor microwave popcorn. She makes it old school. Like on the stove. Which I thought was tricky, but turns out, it's pretty easy, though it is a bit more hands on. First we drizzle a little oil to coat the bottom of a pot (we use olive oil).

Then we pour enough kernels in to just about cover the bottom of the pan in a single layer. The lid goes on the pot, we turn on the heat and wait (you may not be able to see it in the picture below, but the stove is on). Every 30 seconds or so I swish the pot around so that the kernels move and don't just sit still in one place. Once I hear the first few pops (which does take a few minutes) I try and keep the pot in constant motion with a little shaking, so that the popped kernels don't get burned from sitting on the bottom of the pan.

Eventually the popping slows and then all but stops, much like making it in the microwave, and it's time to turn off the heat and remove the lid. Viola! Popcorn!

   

I don't care what anyone says, popcorn and melted butter were made for each other. So melt some butter. Then drizzle it on. My preferred seasoning on popcorn these days is this little concoction I have in a baby food jar in our cupboard. Good news, it tastes amazing. Bad news I'm not entirely sure what I put in it. It definitely has sea salt, parmesan cheese and curry powder. It might have season salt, cayenne pepper and/or garlic powder? To be honest though, all of those things in the right proportions would taste great on popcorn. I will warn you though that when dealing with seasonings beyond the salt and cheese, less tends to be more, the first time I seasoned my popcorn with this I used more than I needed and I regretted it. Sprinkle a little on, stir it up, and taste it. You can always add more, but it's harder to take it back. 

So put on a movie, make some popcorn and enjoy! See you next Tuesday kids!