curry

Curry Lentil Soup with Butternut Squash and Greens

Simple vegetarian soups are easy to come by, but this healthy curried lentil soup recipe serves a purpose, too.

This recipe is brought to you by Kroger

My best friend is one of the most enthusiastic people I know. She is a PhD. She is a dreamer. She is a CEO. She is an avid, and I mean AVID animal rescuer. She travels, she mentors, she’s curious, she’s beautiful, she loves mimosas, and in business and in life, she is the ultimate planner.

And my best friend has Stage 4 Metastatic HER2 Positive Breast Cancer.

Wait. Hold up. This is not part of Kim’s plan.

Stage 4. Cancer. Those words…they’re so scary to hear. I have no idea what it’s like to live with them banging about in your brain, rattling your heart, day in and day out.

Ironically, I received her call about the cancer diagnosis on a Saturday morning while at a Kroger retreat in Detroit. She had been to the doctor the day before. She told me the cancer was back. She told me she wished that five years ago her insurance would have allowed her to have the double mastectomy she wanted, instead of just the one she did have. I’ll never forget that phone call as I paced the floor, talking to Kim, my head spinning out and my heart breaking for my friend.

And now, here I am, sharing our story and a very special recipe in a post sponsored by Kroger’s Sharing Courage breast cancer awareness program for women, their families, and their support systems. And each and every one of them are very important stories to tell.continue to the recipe… about Curry Lentil Soup with Butternut Squash and Greens

Curried Egg Salad Sandwich Recipe

Curry and onion powder add an exotic heat to the traditional egg salad sandwich, making it fit for an every day breakfast, lunch or elegant brunch.

This post is the first in my year-long partnership with McCormick, because I’m a firm believer that we can all use a little spice in our lives.

Back in the day I could peel an egg like no other.

As a kid, I vividly remember my Uncle Tom showing me a magic trick. “Hey, Heidi, do you want to see something special?” Well, of course I did! I was 10 years old! How could I not?

Uncle T knew how to make a presentation out of just about anything so when he showed me how he could peel an entire shell from a hard boiled egg in one movement, I was transfixed! The shell easily fell from the white orb in his large hand in one complete, in-tact ribbon.

It became my mission to master the peeling of an egg just like Uncle Tom did. And I did! For years.

And then my success came to a screeching halt.

I don’t know what my deal is, but for the life of me I can no longer peel an egg without it ending up as a shaggy semblance of what I see others pulling off all of the time.

That’s why today’s recipe is an egg salad sandwich instead of deviled eggs. Because who wants to see a deviled egg that looks like it’s been hacked with a jig saw when you can be making this delicious curry-spiked egg salad sandwich instead?

continue to the recipe… about Curried Egg Salad Sandwich Recipe

Vietnamese Curry Chicken and Rice Noodle Salad Bowl

Curried chicken and rice noodles dressed with a lime and rice vinegar dressing, loads of fresh veggies and leafy green herbs make create a clean and healthy salad perfect for lunch or dinner.

At our house, our food cravings tend to lean in the regions of ethnic. Don’t get me wrong, we love a classic American Sunday dinner of pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, but when it comes to those dishes that make our mouth water with just a whisper of a mention, you’ll more often find us in other hemispheres of eating.

This Vietnamese noodle salad is one of those recipes that has been hanging around as a favorite staple in our kitchen for years. Literally years. I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve made it. Correction: How many times my husband has made it.

That’s probably why it took me 4 trips (FOUR TRIPS!) to the store in one afternoon — and back, and back, and back — to get just the right noodles.

My man. He’s particular about his noodles. And his curry chicken. Yet one more reason of the many that make me love him.

continue to the recipe… about Vietnamese Curry Chicken and Rice Noodle Salad Bowl

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

Here’s the thing about cooking with slow cookers. It’s convenient. But only if you’re creating a recipe where you don’t have to dirty more than the slow cooker. Like this Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup.

I’m all about time management. I eat breakfast while I do the dishes, I brush my teeth while I tie on my running shoes. In other words, I’m a multi-tasker who isn’t terribly efficient at getting much of any of my laundry list of daily to-dos completed because my mind thinks I have to do more than six things at at time. Why? Oh why?

So these days, unless its a lazy day weekend, my to do list doesn’t always necessitate spending an hour and a half making dinner. I don’t mean letting it cook, I mean MAKING dinner.

Enter the genius invention that has been on every wedding registry since 1973. The slow cooker. And this Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup. continue to the recipe… about Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

Craving > 5 Twists on Comforting Chicken Stew

Goodbye grill. Oh well helllllooolo braise.

It’s the first day of fall and we’re all about comforting, stew-ey goodness and going back to the basics with chicken, carrots and mushrooms. Over rice? No way. Noodles. That’s right, egg noodles, just like mom used to make, slithering in butter with a touch of salt and pepper.

photo > foodiecrush

Whoa, but wait! What’s that pungent smell perfuming the entire house with an almost wrinkle-your-nose-I’ve-been-cleaning-the-house-from-top-to-bottom smell?

Vinegar. Cider vinegar. It reminds me of most Saturday mornings when mom would clean the wood floors with her secret combination of “just a tablespoon or so to a gallon of water” that made the whole house smell clean and fresh.

Except tonight its for dinner. And it tastes nothing like wood floors.

photo > foodiecrush

Get the recipe from one of my favorite food mags, and you SERIOUSLY have to try it. It’s a keeper. One for the archives, to hand down from generation to generation. You’ll thank us later. And your house will smell clean and fresh, whether it is or not.

Do you have a favorite home cooked meal that reminds you of mom’s cookin’ (not neccesarily her cleaning like this post). Join a bunch of us foodie bloggers on Wednesday, October 5, when we’ll each be posting our own Family Food Flashback recipes. Join us with your story, your recipe and your memories.

Send me a link to your recipe by Monday, October 3 and we’ll add your link to our list of recipes for post on Wednesday, October 5 and we’ll share memories of dinner time before Ipods and microwaves. Well, some of us will anyway.

And of course, here are some hold-the-phone, home-cookin’ chicken recipes to add to your “Welcome Fall” repertoire.

photo > Mirch Masala

One thing that brings me to my cooking knees is the combo of chicken and coconut milk. Manju creates a coco stew-ey goodness with Mirch Masala’s Kerala Chicken Stew with potatoes, ginger and garlic deliciousness. And a beauty shot bonus too.

photo > La Fuji Mama

Quote from Rachael: her Chicken Gohan Stew is “ It’s what might happen if chicken noodle soup took a little trip to Japan and had a layover in Mexico on the way home.” La Fuji Mama also suggests using a shorter grain rice for max chew after thickening the comforting tang of the ginger-flavored, slow-cooker stew.

photo > Bev Cooks

Putting on her craz-ee hat and asking the rest of us to join her, Bev of Bev Cooks pulls together swiss chard, potatoes and chicken chunks in her Crazy Chicken with Skillet Potatoes and Swiss Chard. Choose your amount of your fav spice blend and cook at your own risk.

photo > My Cooking Hut

Two little love birds sittin’ in a tree, c-h-i-c-k-e-n k-o-r-m-a I love thee. Curry, coriander and creamy yogurt lovingly envelop tender chicken nuggets in My Cooking Hut’s Chicken Korma where Leemei serves this stew-ey comfort dish with a hint of spice from green chiles, cumin and chili powder.

photo > Food and the Fabulous

A pestle and peppercorns walk into a bar and…oh wait, wrong blog. There’s no punchline because this recipe isn’t funny, it’s lux. Isahy takes the de riguer simple ingredients of carrots, chicken and stock to create Food and the Fabulous’s Pink Pepper Chicken Stew, to create a spicy and bold one pot meal.

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Craving > 5 Updated Chicken Salad Recipes

Chicken Salad. It can so easily go so wrong and seem trite, the catch-all recipe for the catered office lunch or duty-calls bridal shower. But by adding an unexpected and flavorful ingredient, chicken salad can be oh-so-divine.

photo > foodiecrush

Here’s my take on Chicken Salad, crunchy with celery and toasted almonds then sweetened up with sliced grapes and earthed up with curry and tarragon. Served on big old slices of hearty wheat bread, this is one version that has full-fledged-flavored. I add a lot more celery to this recipe than listed below because I like the crunch, so follow the recipe as is or adapt to your own cravings.

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Curried Chicken Salad with Toasted Almonds and Grapes

Ingredients

4 bone-in chicken breasts with skin
1/3 cup diced red onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 cup red seedless grapes halved
1/3 cup almond slivers toasted
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 T orange juice
1 1/2 T curry powder
1 1/2 T fresh tarragon chopped
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Rub chicken with olive oil and generous amounts of salt and pepper. Cook for 30-40 minutes or until juice of chicken runs clear. When chicken has cooled, remove skin from breasts and shred chicken meat, discarding bones and skin. Mix in large bowl with onion, celery, grapes and almond slivers and set aside.
In a medium size bowl, combine mayonnaise, yogurt, orange juice, curry power, salt and pepper.
Add mayonnaise mixture to chicken mixture and gently combine. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
Serve on a bed of spring or butter lettuce or hearty wheat bread with lettuce.

Nutrition Facts

Curried Chicken Salad with Toasted Almonds and Grapes

Amount Per Serving (6 g)

Calories 0

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

photo > Plum Pie

Plum Pie’s crunchy –thanks to the pecans and apple– and sweetly tart –thanks to the cranberries and tangy Greek yogurt— Cranberry Pecan Chicken Salad is light and even healthy, and is a hit with the savory twist thanks to Brooke’s addition of rosemary.

photo > Skinny Gourmet

Studded with some of cooking’s most under-used herbs of caraway (one of my favorites when sauteed with cabbage) and anise seeds and a touch of cumin, Skinny Gourmet‘s Irish Chicken Salad Sandwich on Soda Bread is deliciously sandwiched between slices of her husband’s family recipe for Irish Soda Bread. Looks like she now has another family recipe to hand down.

photo > Heat Oven to 350

Adapted from a Southern recipe for pimento cheese sandwiches, Nicole geniusly added shredded chicken to create a cheesey-chicken-wonderland-on-toast with Heaven to 350 ‘s recipe for Pimento Cheese Chicken Salad Sandwiches.

photo > Closet Cooking

You knew we had to highlight at least one recipe that has some serious spice and is far and above the expected chicken salad. Meet Kevin’s Kimchi Chicken Salad Sandwich. Kimchi sauteed in bacon grease? Woo-hoo, a new favorite is born in the kitchen of Closet Cooking.

Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, please subscribe to foodiecrush and follow me on twitter.

Thai Curried Salmon

photo > foodiecrush

Salmon season is upon us and I…am…ready…

Considered a top Superfood and packed with Omega 3’s (yes, that one-liner is a hangover from my days working for a natural health magazine) one of my favorite recipes for preparing salmon is simple: a fresh filet of firm, rich Copper River salmon, seasoned with a large grind of fresh peppercorns, a generous sprinkling of kosher salt that’s seared on a hot grill then topped with a yogurt-cucumber-dill sauce.

My husband is pretty much the king of grilling salmon, so when he declared he wanted to try a different recipe, something with a little more flavor-flav, I was curious to see what he’d come up with. And the search was for curry recipes was on.

photo > What Did You Eat?

While I usually search the internet via tried and true foodie search resources, my husband Jeff casts a wider net with the ever-expanding-so-keep-on-digging-googlemachine. The result is blog finds that are off the beaten path. So when he found the recipe that inspired this post from What Did You Eat? for Kona Kampachi With Thai Red Curry Sauce, Cabbage Salad and Jasmine Rice. We figured it would adapt just fine to salmon thanks to the fish’s sturdiness and the sauce’s perfect combo of curry, coconut milk and the royal topper of a fresh cabbage and cucumber salad. Oh my, delicious!

And then we read the blog’s final entry made just a few short months after Sherry posted this recipe. It was a not so gentle, but lovely reminder of how quickly things can change.

Thank you and cheers to Sherry for continuing to share her legacy of recipes, photography and stories with those of us searching for the deliciousness in life.

photo > The Perfect Pantry

A spicy asian fish “stew” made with red curry paste, lovely fresh veggies and a sweetness thanks to coconut cream and pineapple chunks, Lydia’s Salmon Choo Chee is a quick and easy one pan—or wok—salmon dish. The Perfect Pantry is a mini-wikipedia of foodie ingredients and her list of additional recipes at the end of each post gives the reader more tasty options from fellow foodie bloggers. Now that’s foodie love!

photo > Bonbini

Prepared as a composed appetizer or small plate, blogger and Thai pastry chef Thip’s adaptation of her childhood Fish Curry from Bonbini is a pretty sample of red curry, fresh kaffir lime and the essential flavor of Thai fish sauce. If you can’t find kaffir lime leaves, substitute with finely grated lime zest for that fresh citrus flavor.

photo > The Weather in Cascadia

A seasoned traveler and Thai curry lover, Christine of the blog The Weather in Cascadia adds shitake mushrooms and swiss chard to her take on Red Curry Salmon and Rice Noodles. Although she doesn’t note which noodles to use, I’d recommend rice noodles cooked for just a minute or two in the sauce to soak up some of the coconuty-goodness.

Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, please subscribe to foodiecrush and follow me on twitter.

curry

Curry Lentil Soup with Butternut Squash and Greens

Curried Egg Salad Sandwich Recipe

Vietnamese Curry Chicken and Rice Noodle Salad Bowl

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

Craving > 5 Twists on Comforting Chicken Stew

Craving > 5 Updated Chicken Salad Recipes

Curried Chicken Salad with Toasted Almonds and Grapes

Ingredients

Instructions

Thai Curried Salmon

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