What you're having for dinner tonight. You're welcome.

Monday night I was in Meal Time Crisis.

You know that magic hour before dinner is supposed to be ON the TABLE when you - the one responsible for creating said dinner - still has no idea under heaven what to make?

Oh, and you're pregnant, and it's been too long since your last morsel, and so everything sounds disgusting and you feel sick and the idea of cooking is threatening to throw you over the edge?

"I give up." I said and flopped over on the couch, burying my face in the pillow.

"You give up?" William asked from his computer.

"On dinner."

"Oh no! Don't give up!" He whirled his (fancy new) chair around. "We could do...tuna?"

I groaned the deep-souled lament of one who cannot hear suggestions like TUNA FISH for dinner without the possibility of throwing up, punching her husband, or both.

"I want Bombay House," I announced. In no uncertain terms.

"I know," William said sympathetically. Then with a preemptive cringe, "But..."

I stared at him, daring him to defy the craving of a woman who was pregnant (which was HIS fault in this moment), sick, exhausted and soul-weary. "I want Bombay House," I said again - defeated. He was right. Whatever he was about to say, he was right and the tiny shred of my rational mind I was able to hang on to knew it.

"But...we just can't do that, babe."

I groaned again, face-pillowed again - despaired - and then rallied.

I stood up with undiluted fury on my face, and marched to the stairs. "I'M MAKING DINNER!" I announced to the cosmos. I would not be defeated by a bad mood!

But it was William who timidly answered, "...great!"

I marched to the kitchen and began pulling things from the cupboard.

The result was a delicious chicken and chickpea curry that took NO time at all to make, and left us all full, satisfied, and feeling proud of ourselves for our self control.

It was so good, in fact, and so easy, in fact fact, that I am going to give you this recipe so that the next time (tonight?) you enter Meal Time Crisis, you're covered.

Here's what you're making:

Here's what you need:
  • Chicken Breast (we used one and it was plenty), cubed.
  • 1/4 c. (or less) onion
  • 1 T. Olive Oil
  • 2 tsp. Curry Powder and Cumin
  • 1 can chickpeas, drained
  • 1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
  • diced potato - we used 2 small red potatoes, but any kind will be delish!
  • greek yogurt (or not!)
Here's what you do:
  1. Throw some olive oil (about a tablespoon) and onions in your frying pan to saute and soften. I didn't have an onion so I used dehydrated onions. Peasy.
  2. Add your chicken cubes to cook. 
  3. When the chicken is almost cooked through, add your Curry and Cumin (I know Cumin is included in a curry powder, but I loves it - so I ended up doing 2 tsp. cumin and 1 tsp. curry). Stir all around so the chicken is coated. Smell that? Oh, yeah!
  4. Add potatoes (diced small) and stir to coat.
  5. When the potatoes begin to soften (which took way less time than I anticipated), add your chickpeas and your tomatoes. It comes out looking like this:

Do you happen to have some greek yogurt on hand? If you do - you are awesome. If you don't, you can skip this step or add plain yogurt or sour cream or something. Be daring! This whole thing is just made up anyway! I happened to have one of these on hand:


I do not mind admitting, I am totally obsessed. If you have never tried Chobani, repent! I and my taste buds adore them. I just added the yogurt part and ate the fruit-at-the-bottom myself. This step is to thicken things up so it's more like a curry you'd have over rice than a curry-flavored stir-fry - but either way, it's still good.

Guess what? That's it! Once it's all hot, you're done, and you can bask in the awesomeness that is you; for you have SAVED DINNER!

Mom snitching a bite before heading out to dinner with Dad and Ali.
We had ours with orange rice and home-cooked tortillas (acting as naan).



And, since I was celebrating not-giving-up (remember my 2011 theme?) on dinner, we broke out the izzies.

Enjoy! We sure did.

6 comments:

sharon. said...

I miss Bombay House sooooo much!! I gave Kory this recipe, he is always trying to make good Indian food. We have failed it a few times. Thanks for sharing!

Lara said...

Sounds delicious! How do you make your tortillas? We tried home-made tortillas once and they weren't very good. I'm sure they are super easy, but I guess we just had a bad recipe. Way to rise triumphant over the great dinner dilemma!

Ro Ro Riot said...

Seeing that dining room brings back good memories.

That Girl said...

Um, wow. I'm writing this one down. And buying Greek yogurt.

Briana said...

I'm writing you to let you know, I'm stealing your work (and your recipe too, it looks delicious!). My English Professor wants us to share an example of writing we think is "good and great and fantastic and all that" and I instantly thought of you and your way of putting words together that is brilliant. SO, I'm stealing an excerpt from this post, because I love it so, but I promise to give you credit. I really didn't think you'd mind, BUT if you'd rather I didn't next time, please tell me, because If the opportunity arises, I might try to show you off again. Thanks!

Windy Dawn said...

Um, this looks delicious!! I just ate breakfast, but now I'm craving dinner... Thanks for sharing the recipe.