Indian Food and Ends and Beginnings

I am happy to announce a first guest post! My sister Sarah is an amazing chef and caterer and is entering a new chapter in her life-one with a new baby.

40 weeks and 6 days.

The last month at home, not working.

This is certainly the hardest part of pregnancy (I can say that now of course as I haven’t been through the labor part yet.)

For reasons unbeknownst to me or anyone else, the baby has yet to engage in my pelvis and for a first time mom this is not exactly news you want to hear at the doctor’s office. Of course she can drop down at any time, it just means my chances of going into labor naturally are less, so we scheduled a just-in-case induction date for a week from now which will be 2 weeks past my due date. The waiting game is brutal, made more so by the news that it may not happen naturally for me. 1st time childbirth, so many unknowns. But any way that it happens, we know that in at most a week we will have a baby girl with us, forever. It’s hard not to tear up just writing or thinking that. It is just so...HUGE! I used to be obsessed with the old TLC show A Baby Story when I was younger. I would cry at literally every single episode when the baby was born and the parents were just so happy. Now it’s going to be me. I just can’t believe it. Anyway, eye on the prize, that’s what I have to keep telling myself. No matter what MY baby story winds up being, Mike and I are enormously blessed to be happy and in love and creating this new life together.

As for now, I am doing my best to not just sit at home anxiously waiting and am in the mean-time doing all that I can to be good to myself and to help encourage the baby to move downward. I got a massage yesterday and learned some acupressure points, I’m drinking red raspberry leaf tea, bouncing on my birthing ball, getting a little “romantic” with the hubby and fulfilling my love of spicy food. Of course I’m not expecting a miracle based on any of these things, but hey you gotta try!

But about that spicy food…

Last night I made an Indian chicken and spinach dish that I absolutely loved so I thought I would share it. I like to cook Indian food, but a lot of times although it comes out good, it falls just a little short for me. This dish though, it tasted reminiscent of a restaurant dish and that I’d say is a good sign! It’s based off of a Julie Sahny recipe for beef with spinach. The only caveat is that you do need quite a bit of spices in your pantry to make this.

Here it goes:

Ingredients:

1-2 T vegetable oil

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2” pieces

1 lg onion, chopped

1 T garlic

1 T ginger - made into a paste with garlic

1 t cumin, ground

2 t coriander, ground

½ t tumeric, ground

3/4 t cardamon, ground

1 green chili, minced

1 small-medium tomato, diced

½ cinnamon stick

3 cloves

1 bay leaf

1 C chicken broth

1 bunch of spinach, chopped

2 t garam masala

3 T greek yogurt

salt to taste

Directions:

-Season chicken with salt and pepper and brown in a heavy pan in oil over med-high heat. Remove to a plate.

-Add onions to pan and saute over med-high until nicely browned. Add garlic-ginger paste to pan and saute another two minutes till fragrant. Add dry spices and toast for another minute(reducing heat if necessary to prevent burning the spices) and then add tomatoes and chili pepper to pan. Deglaze bottom of pan with the juice from the tomatoes and cook until tomatoes break down a bit and mixture becomes more of a paste; this should take a few minutes.

-Turn off heat and add yogurt pan. Using an immersion blender, puree mixture (no need to be a perfectionist about this, I left mine a little bit chunky)

-Add chicken back to pan, along with 1 C of chicken broth and bring to a boil.

-Cover pot and reduce to a simmer and cook 15 minutes.

-Add chopped spinach to pot with another dose of salt and garam masala and stir until spinach is wilted. Cover and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.

-Taste for salt or more yogurt if you like, and voila!

-Serve with basmati rice

****note from Randie-if you are following the 21 day Fix, this serves 4 and each serving is one red, one tsp and 1/2 green

xx, Randie