A New Found Appreciation for Food

It's a rainy Saturday morning and I have nothing to do...nowhere to be! It's heavenly!

I'm sipping on my morning ginger tea - my life force! I can't function fully without my morning tea.

The weather is awesome and I really want to write, but I don't have anything particular to write about. So, I'll write about the evil influence that The Knife has had on me.

I consider it an "evil" influence because I was never one for cooking. Until I started reading his blog.

I used to detest cooking...considered it "burning of one's time" in the literal sense of the word. I never understood how people could think of painfully chopping vegetables and standing in front of the gas range for hours as means of de-stressing!

However, ever since I started reading The Knife's blog, I have started experimenting with cooking. Not the dal-chawal type of everyday cooking but more exotic weekend cooking - Italian, Spanish, French, Thai, Mediterranean cooking.

Almost every weekend I’m cooking something and inflicting it upon A & my sister. And if their feedback is to be believed, I’m pretty decent at it :)

I hunt online for recipes during the week so I can make something new over the weekend. Sometimes I pick recipes from The Knife’s blog because they are practical and easy to follow.

Ever since I’ve gone on the GM Diet, all I can think about is food! I dream of food. Yesterday was the ‘chicken & tomatoes’ day. I was way bored to eat boiled chicken & raw sliced tomatoes all day, so I got a little experimental with Italian herbs and came up with this delicious chicken preparation that had all of 1 tsp of olive oil in it! So here’s what you’ve got to do :

Take skinned boneless chicken breast (or leg pieces if you find chicken breast too chewy). Grate tomatoes and marinate the chicken in the pulp for half an hour. Add salt, pepper, chopped fresh basil & parsley, dried oregano (though keep oregano to a minimum because it can overpower the taste of all other herbs) & red chilly flakes.

Heat 1 tsp of olive oil in a pressure cooker and sautee crushed garlic in it. Once the garlic turns brown, add the chicken along with the marinade, shut the lid on the pressure cooker and let it cook for 3-4 whistles or until the chicken is fully cooked. You wouldn’t need to add water as the tomato pulp is enough. You can then remove the lid from the cooker and let the gravy dry up a bit. This can be served with garlic bread.

This chicken dish is easy to prepare and tastes good even though it isn't loaded on calories.

In a way, this weekend is going to be really sad. I associate weekends with good food and eating out, but my diet doesn't allow me to. I have 2 more days left to go and can already see my plate of spaghetti carbonara screaming out to me! Get that plate of ham & bacon with spaghetti in a cheese sauce ready, babe :)