Sweet Chili Sauce

I recently made Coconut Curry Polenta which was pleasing, but missing something: the sweet chili sauce. I even mentioned it in the blogpost, but it didn't occur to me to make my own until the next day.

Here's how simple it was:
Rice Vinegar
Water
Tamari Soy sauce
Chili flakes
Garlic
Sugar

After finding a recipe online, I put all the ingredients together in a small saucepan and let it reduce by half. I had my sugar jar on hand so that I could add more if needed. This is a perfect compliment to my polenta and I am excited to use it for salad rolls, stir fries and whatever else I can imagine. Below, I put it on the last of the polenta with some freshly roasted peppers and onion:

So easy, I can't believe I've never made it before!

Coconut Curry Polenta and Chop Salad

A couple of days ago I had an amazing meal at a bar during happy hour. My mind was blown when I ate the coconut curry polenta with sesame sauteed veggies and sweet chili sauce. I've never had a more tasty polenta!

As I tend to do, I then tried to make my own version of this dish. Since I didn't have a recipe for the curried polenta I made one up, substituting half the cooking water with coconut milk and various other spices (Thai hot sauce, tamari soy sauce, curry powder, grated ginger).

I cooked the polenta until it was a thick and hard to stir, then spread it in a pyrex dish to cool. As it cools, the polenta hardens and can be handled easily and prepared for any recipe. However, this batch is probably limited by its dominant curry flavor.

Cheating with Soup

Making handmade and homemade meals is one of my favorite things to do. But I'm not always in the mood for a long cooking session (especially with my new jobs all starting soon!) or don't have lots of stuff to work with. Pre-made soups are perfect because they allow me to have the majority of the cooking already done, and I can just add some stuff to it and and feel like a champion chef. And I like that!

Things I do with canned/boxed soups:
-Add a can of beans. Probably something that I think goes with the soup.
-Add a grain. Some of my favorites are brown rice, barley, and buckwheat.
-Garnish the heck out of them. Bread, cilantro, spices!
-Pour a soup over some cooked pasta; I like thicker and more creamy soups for this, but I am sure it can work for whatever
-Cook my own veggies and add them

Breakfast Disaster

Oh dear...

That lid just flew right off of the large (too large!) salt container. (Edit: The salt washed away in a colander and it was all okay after my initial freak out.)

It started with beets...

This was a wonderful meal that just kind of happened as I walked through the grocery store. Well, really, Bree and I had this great adventure involving a warm drink (Toddy!) in a thermos at some bluffs overlooking the river at sunset. It was nice but then it was cold and we were hungry and had beets on our minds.

It's hard for me to describe the meal because there ended up being many parts instead of one bowl of every ingredient, like a stir-fry. I suppose that's what lists are for:
-Beet and a pear mixed green salad with White Wine Vinaigrette
-Smoked Apple Sage sausage
-Sauteed beet greens and fried Polenta rounds

Beets are wonderful and sweet and their leaves are actually very nutritious and largely overlooked in the leafy-greens department. I lightly sauteed the leaves in a little Earth Balance until they wilted and served them with the polenta and sausage. The polenta was fried in a combination of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and course salt and pepper until the surface was crispy and golden.

The sausage is made by a company called Field Roast from Seattle, WA. This is the most delicious veggie sausage I have ever had in my life! They are pricey at around $6.99 for four links, but they are very much worth the splurge (especially when on sale for $4.99). I lightly browned the sausage in a pan after slicing it into little rounds.

As for the salad, I boiled the beets and cut them into small cubes and added them the the thinly cut pear and onion. Usually I don't boil veggies because all the good stuff boils out into the water but I've saved the beet water and look forward to reusing it today. It would be nice to use the beet water in a fresh juice of some sort but I don't have that technology so I might use it to make a pink pasta salad of some sort. A quick internet search yields many interesting results for beet water usage, though.