All the Little Things that Make You Smile and Glow

Tonight I raced home with a big appetite but no time to dick around with anything time consuming.  I task myself with figuring a meal on my bike ride home.  All I knew for sure was that I had ground turkey and some left over kale. I remembered way back when I used to buy these taco meat seasoning packets and you would add water and it would make like a little gravy in the bottom of the pan.  I basically did the same but just added my own spices, onions, garlic, lots of cumin and chili, browned the ground meat and added a can of pinto beans.  I added about a 1/4 cup of water and even without fat, it made a nice little tasty sauce.

I just wilted the kale down into the mix in the last few minutes of cooking and served it with my Salvadorian cabbage slaw.

I notice pinto beans really help the almost fatless turkey meat taste richer and fuller. Plus it picks up the sauce.  I have also made my own chili powders lately and the taste difference even in a simple dish like this is pretty noticeable.  Simple but right. Simple pleasures are the best.

We're All Alright! We're All Alright!

When we used to have weekends off together and could ride out to Red Hook to watch the soccer games (sigh) on Saturdays, we loved to eat from the food carts.  We'd normally get a huarache, which are those giant oblong taco/burrito mutant dreams from Mexico. They are a meal in themselves but sometimes, we'd have room for Salvadorian pupusas as well.  They always served them with that amazing pickled cabbage, that I now see is called curtido.

Well today I just had to have that cabbage slaw or I'd just die.  And actually, I needed to top it with this particular red tomato sauce that they traditionally top the pupusas with. So I desperately searched the web for a recipe and made my own version to serve with my stewed chicken breast.

 I made the slaw first with thin sliced green cabbage, onions, jalapeno and carrots mixed with vinegar, s&p, Mexican oregano and a squeeze of lemon since limes are so darn expensive right now.

 The sauce did double duty.  I did a fresh raw sauce with canned tomatoes, real tomato, onion, peno, cilantro, garlic and cold water and salt.

 Blended that and served it over the sauerkraut and then cooked it for the chicken sauce.

I'm going on record to say no matter how much flavor I add to chicken breast meat, I never like it stewed because basically it doesn't absorb any flavors.  Real cooks probably know this but it has been a very slow learning curve with me.  I mean, you can usually marinate it and that works, but stewing...no.  This same sauce cooked with chicken legs and thighs would have been dreamy even skinless.

I would grade this effort a C+.  The Salvadorian Sauerkraut was refreshing and crunchy and the sauce was almost there.  The chicken was a perfectly fine partner.  The plus is for giving a shit enough to try something new during the week.  All homemade food unless it sucks or spoiled is good.