Fresh Tomato Salad

This is a very easy and yummy salad.

Tomatoes
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Salt and Pepper
Feta Cheese
Fresh Parsley
Kalamata or Black Olives (chopped or sliced)

Slice tomatoes in thick slices and arrange on a plate. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar over them. Salt and pepper to taste. Allow to sit on counter top at least 1 hour for flavors to mingle. Add feta cheese, chopped olives and minced parsley. Serve. (If you don't have an hour for the salad to sit, just prepare everything and serve.)

Saag Recipe

Saag Recipe

This is a wonderful Indian dish that can be made with chicken or paneer cheese.

1 block paneer (cubed) or 3 lbs boneless chicken (skinned, cubed)
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 large onions, minced
1 can crushed tomatoes or 3 fresh tomatoes (skinned and cubed)
1 inch ginger (peeled, minced)
4 TBS milk, yogurt, sour cream or heavy cream
3-4 bunches fresh spinach or swiss chard
2 TBS butter or ghee
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp tumeric powder
2 big cardamom pods
2 whole cloves
oil for frying
1 tsp garam masala
salt to taste

Fry chicken in oil for 3-4 minutes and set aside. If using paneer, brown in oil and set aside. Boil spinach until soft, drain and set aside. Brown garlic, onions and ginger in oil. Add tomatoes, salt, cayenne, coriander, tumeric, cloves and cardamom pods. Cook for 10 min. on low. Add chicken or cheese and sour cream and cook for 10 min. Add spinach garam masala and cook for 15 min. Add butter and serve with rice or quinoa.

A variation is to add the spinach before the chicken or paneer to the other ingredients and then blend them into a thick sauce. Then add chicken or paneer and sour cream.

Merry Christmas, I love you

Gabriel loves the Diego videos, so I got him the 'Diego Saves Christmas' video yesterday. Somewhere during the video the characters say "Merry Christmas, I love you." Gabriel has heard me say "I love you," but he has never said it back until yesterday. Now he goes around telling everyone "Merry Christmas, I love you." It is pretty cute.

Papa's Pizza

I cut Todd's hair a few days ago and since the clipper set was out, I asked him to help me cut Gabriel's hair too. He truly hates having it cut. Usually, one person has to hold him down while the other person trims it. Todd didn't want to use the clippers, so he tried to trim the hair above Gabriel's ears with scissors. Bad idea. Gabriel was holding still and it was going really well, until Todd cut his ear. I'm sure you saw that coming. Anyway, it wasn't bad, but it bled a lot. So he still needs a hair cut and will probably really put up a fight the next time we try. Poor kid. To make amends, we took the kids to Papa's Pizza for lunch and to play. Well, Gabriel had a HUGE blowout. I had to strip off all of his clothes. There was poop everywhere. I didn't want him going outside in only a diaper because of the cold, so I took my sweater off and put it on him. Luckily I had my coat. So I walked out in only a bra and a zipped up coat and he had my sweater on. What a day!