Chickpea & Tofu Curry with Quinoa

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I usually follow recipes for most of my cooking, but came up with this one on my own. According to Zach, it's one of the best dishes I've made without a recipe...I'll take that as a compliment. This dish is quick and easy to prepare, and uses basic staples such as canned tomatoes and chickpeas. It's also vegetarian, gluten free, and high in protein.

Ingredients
Sesame oil
1 can (15 oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 pkg (16 oz) tofu, cubed
Tikka masala paste
Salt, pepper, and curry, to taste
1 cup quinoa, rinsed

Bring two cups lightly salted water to a boil. Add the quinoa. Reduce heat and cook covered for 20 minutes.
In a medium pot, heat a small amount of sesame oil over medium heat. Add the tofu and 2 spoonfuls of tikka masala paste and cook for a few minutes. Add the chickpeas and diced tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper, and curry. Cook until heated through.

Serve the curry mixture on top of the quinoa.

Serves 4.

About the Ingredients

Quinoa is a grain-like crop, closely related to species such as beets and spinach. Quinoa has high protein content and contains a balanced set of essential amino acids. It's a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and easy to digest.

Tofu is a very good source of protein, specifically soy protein. It's also high in iron, while low in calories, sodium and fat.
  
Chickpeas are a good source of  folate and protein and are high in dietary fiber. Chickpeas are low in fat and high in minerals such as phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc.

I've also shared this recipe on Allrecipes.com.

Beverage Tags

Etsy has a wonderful feature called Alchemy. Buyers can post requests for custom handmade items, and then sellers bid on the opportunity to make the item. As much as I'd like to branch out into every corner of the craft world, I just don't have the money or the space for all the tools and supplies I'd need. So when I wanted to create ceramic beverage tags, I turned to Etsy Alchemy. It's like having your own personal genie. I dream up an item, make a wish on Alchemy, and within hours there's a whole slew of sellers ready to do my bidding with bids.

I wanted labeled tags to go along with my beverage servers, that way guests would know what they were drinking. Of course they could try the age old method of actually tasting the drink, or I could inform them of their options. But tags are prettier...and I love labeling things.

Along with a detailed description, I included this illustration with my Alchemy request:

I chose to work with Wise Impressions, who offered a very fair price. Here's the end result:

Beverage Servers

Punch bowl vs. beverage server?
I'm definitely on the beverage server side of this debate.

Argument # 1: You can put beverages other than punch in a server. Sure a punch bowl can hold any liquid, but do you really want to be that hostess who filled her punch bowl with water? A server filled with water, on the other hand, looks classy.

Argument #2: Servers have spigots. We've all been there; the clumsy guest who spilled punch all over the tablecloth while trying to use that enormous ladle to pour a drink into their tiny plastic cup.

Argument #3: Servers have lids. Very useful for keeping out things like sneezes and whatever else might make its way into your punch bowl.

These, among other reasons, are why I set out to find a set of beverage servers. I knew I wanted something with a stand or pedestal, but the majority of these were pretty expensive. Then I had an idea:

I have to give credit to my four sources of inspiration: Pottery Barn, Young House Love for their pet feeding station idea, Target, and Zach, who always ensures the structural integrity of my ideas.

I purchased two inexpensive servers at Target and Zach helped me build stands for them. We used crown molding blocks for the legs and assembled the rest from scrap wood we had on hand. Zach used a router to give the top a nice edge, and then I gave both stands a couple coats of white semi-gloss paint.

I found the little white dishes at Goodwill, and they help to catch any drips.

Did you spy the beverage tags in the picture above? More on those tomorrow...

New Year Bunting

Last night I made a quick and easy bunting for our New Year's party on Friday. I didn't have a lot of time to spend on this project, so I opted for fabric glue and pinking shears, rather than using a sewing machine. I made a very basic pattern for the triangles and numbers, which you can download here.

Materials
fabric scraps
pinking shears
fabric glue
paint
glitter (optional)
ribbon

Trace four triangles onto your choice of fabric, then cut out with pinking shears. (I used scraps of burlap, muslin, and silk.) Then, trace the numbers onto the fabric and fill in with paint. I used acrylic paint then sprinkled it with a little glitter glamour dust before it dried.

Next, attach each triangle to the back of a ribbon using fabric glue. Let dry for about 30 minutes and it's ready to hang!

Happy New Year!

Go Fish

This year for Christmas I made my nieces a fishing game. I got the idea, as well as the patterns for the fish and worms, here.

I started with a large piece of green felt for the base, then cut out a pond from blue felt and sewed it onto the green felt. I then sewed three concentric shapes on the inside, following the shape of the pond, and added a lily pad. The brown tackle box in the corner holds the fish when not in use and is held shut by velcro.

To make each fish, I doubled a piece of felt, traced my fish pattern onto it, then sewed along the outline. I filled the middle of each fish with polyester stuffing to give it some volume, and used the alphabet setting on my sewing machine to embroider a letter "O" for the eyes. There are magnets in the head of each fish so that the fish can be "caught".
Keep in mind when sewing you fish that you will need to leave openings to insert the magnet and stuffing. Here's the method that worked best for me:

(Note: These pictures were taken after cutting out the fish; however I did all the sewing first, as shown here)



Start at the top of the tail fin and curve back around, leaving a small opening

Insert the magnet into the head



Sew the head closed and continue around the bottom fin



Add stuffing

Sew around the top and tail fins, closing the body of the fish

Add eye, mouth, and details to tail fin

The last step is to cut around the outline of the fish, removing the excess felt. You can follow similar steps to make the worms. I also added eyelets to the end of each worm using my crop-a-dile and attached string using small lanyard hooks.

I used dowel rods for the fishing poles and painted them to coordinate with the colors of the fish (purple, magenta, and goldenrod). Instead of using screw eyes, I just drilled holes through the dowel rods and tied the string through the hole.

Go fish!

Christmas Projects

I made more Christmas postcards this year. (See last year's design here.) I chose Luke 19:38 for this year's verse and embossed the front with a "peace" stamp.

Many of the people on our Christmas list got jars of homemade jalapeno jelly and spiced apple jam. (Both recipes are inside the Ball Liquid Pectin box, with more recipes available here.) The label template is courtesy of Merriment Design.

The spiced apple jam is great on just about everything, especially waffles, and I enjoy the jalapeno jelly on a slice of french bread with a little goat cheese.

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!

Before & After

I thought I'd share some before and after shots of two quick and easy projects. These candle sconces belonged to my grandmother. Here they are before:

 After a few coats of white paint...

This old picture frame is from Zach's mom (Thanks Renee!) and I decided it would be a good size for a chalkboard.

I already had an 11 x 14 piece of masonite, which was just the right size for the frame. All I had to purchase was a small tub of chalkboard paint. They have this stuff in just about every color now; I chose to go with the traditional black. I gave the masonite three coats of paint and 24 hours later it was ready to write on.

After