Easy Chicken Curry

We are always trying to eat better. That means more meals at home. This recipe was a hit.

1 rotisserie chicken -  I like rotisserie chicken because someone else cooked it. Just shred it.
2 T butter
4 green onions, chopped
3 T curry powder - Sounds like a lot, but yes you do need 3 T.
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup chicken stock
1 can of pineapple tidbits, plus the juice
3 T crystallized ginger - I chopped it in my new NINGA food processor that I love. (No one paid me to say that.)
Ground red pepper, to taste
4 T raisins
1/4 cup lime juice
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Trader Joe's brown rice. I get the box with 3 packs of rice in it. It is in the freezer section. Just microwave for 3 minutes.

Shred chicken, set aside.

Heat butter in sauce pan. Add onions and saute 2-3 minutes. Stir in curry powder. Gradually add the coconut milk, chicken stock and juice from the pineapple.

Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add the ginger and red pepper. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add chicken, simmer for 15 minutes.

Add raisins, pineapple, lime juice and cream. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve over rice. Enjoy.

Why I consider this easy is the substitution of rotisserie chicken vs. poaching chicken. Plus the tasty, easy microwavable rice.

Just want to share these fun Jack + Ella Paper recipe cards. 20 pack, 4 designs, double sided. Jack + Ella's design, my lettering and illustrations. http://www.jackandellapaper.com/misc-paper-goods

Watermelon = Summertime

Everyone loves watermelon. But often it is messy, especially at an outdoor party. Here is your solution.

We've taken this to two parties and it gets eaten down to almost the last watermelon slice. It is perfect outdoor finger food.

You need... one watermelon, one low bowl. (I use a pasta bowl) and one cereal bowl.

Turn your cereal bowl upside down in the middle of the pasta bowl. Cut the end of the watermelon off. Use that to cover up the bowl.

Cut the watermelon into watermelon slices as shown and arrange them in rows around the small bowl. Easy peasy. We all know it is all about presentation.

Alaska Adventure, Day 2

Day 2 starts like every other day with a hearty breakfast. It often includes Reindeer Sausage. I need a good breakfast because we are off to take an Air Taxi to Denali.

No matter how amazing I thought this would be it truly exceeded all expectations. I really do not have words to describe this experience. There is something about these vistas, all that wide open space. So moving to experience this. I did not know that the mountain is only out 1 in 3 days. So for us to get 3 days of cloudless blue sky is very special.

I got to be part of this very special group of friends, having this very special experience. L. to R. John, Erica, Mike, Rae & Ralph. (Thank you Mike!)

All videos shot by John Ganahl.

Blue Glacier Pools

Really interesting to see these blue glacier ice pools. We were no where near these and this was shot from the plane. You can read more about them here.

This spectacular day ended with my favorite meal of the trip. Maple Glazed Salmon with Scallop Stuffed Shrimp.

Complete happiness overload.

Alaska Adventure, Day 1

View coming into Anchorage.

Just got back from our best vacation ever. This was in great part to our kind host, who lives there, and who organized everything. And I mean everything. He met our every need before we even knew we had them. (And no, I am not sharing him with you. So don't ask.)

Day 1 starts with John and I and our good friends and neighbors heading out at 4:40AM for an early flight out of Madison which continued on to Minneapolis and landed in Anchorage.

It is nearly impossible to take a bad photo. Pretty much point and shoot.

Seafood Salad

We were met by Mike who whisked us off to lunch near the airport at The Flying Machine. I had a very nice seafood salad. And then back in the car and on to Talkeetna, AK.

If you want to take photos of your food, and who doesn't, use this app InstaFoodPro. You get it through iTunes. The app recognizes where you are and adds the copy. You get to choose the layout. Sometimes it does have a problem with location and I have no idea why. For the most part it works well.

Talkeetna Lodge

Our long day ended at the very nice Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge. Behind this fireplace is a row of rocking chairs where you can take in the view inside or outside on the deck.

Denali

Early to bed. Right now it does not get dark there. I could not wait to experience this. At 1:30AM I woke up and decided to wander around to see what it looked like. And this is what Denali looked like. I was almost completely alone in that silence soaking in that vista.

Tomorrow... landing on Denali...

Ice Cream = Summertime!

Homemade ice cream that is. I have a Donvier ice cream maker that I may have bought in the 90s. Sooooo easy, you freeze the cylinder. Mix up the ice cream, pour it into the cylinder and crank the handle every so often. Makes about a quart.

I recently bought one on Amazon.

Favorite Vanilla Ice Cream

1   14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix ingredients together well. Put in ice cream maker and crank! Summer at its best.

Can't wait to have these little guys help make ice cream!

Rhubarb Pie = Summertime!

This is sort of a re post.

I made 2 rhubarb cherry pies this weekend. If that isn't the start to Summer I don't know what is. Just want to share the recipe again because it is rhubarb time. I try to buy what is fresh at the farmer's market and use what is in season. Two pies take 6c of rhubarb. I substituted 2c of cherries because I had them. I like to make two pies because it is no more work to make two than one. And that means I can send pie home with guests.

For the recipe go to this older post and enjoy.

gardening, reading and baking...

More great guests this weekend. Terry and Barry were here. It was the 4th Annual Golfapalooza. The men golf as much as possible and on breaks they watch golf. The women garden and shop. Saturday found us at the Farmer's Market. And from the shoes I wore it looked like I got dressed in the dark. Too bad that wasn't true.

I planted some pots of flowers...

while Terry weeded, transplanted, and planted some lupine and foxglove. She has been working on this bed for 3 visits and it is looking good this year. All these great plants for only $40 at the market. Score.

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This book has been on my reading list for several years. I am finding it interesting.

Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the opulence of the 19th century's Gilded Age with a 21st century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is heiress Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, when she died at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen for decades. Her father, W.A. Clark, was born in a log cabin, discovered incredible riches in copper in Montana territory after the Civil War, was thought to be as rich as Rockefeller, founded Las Vegas and was pushed out of the U.S. Senate for bribery.

Huguette held a ticket on the Titanic and was still alive in New York City long after 9/11. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a Stradivarius violin, and a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she lived out her last 20 years in a simple hospital room, devoting her wealth to her art and buying gifts for friends and strangers.

Pulitzer Prize-winner and NBC News investigative reporter Bill Dedman stumbled onto the story of eccentricity and inherited wealth in 2010, discovering that Huguette’s fantastic homes in Santa Barbara, Connecticut and New York City were unoccupied but still maintained by servants. Dedman co-wrote the book with Huguette’s cousin Paul Clark Newell Jr., one of the few relatives to have conversations with her.

The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic.

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I enjoy Maddie Allen's blog Muffins & Mixtapes. The No-Bake Mini Cheesecakes were a hit this week. Check her blog out, I like both the food and the music.