Still Cookin'

Amiya's culinary adventures continue unabated. She won't let me have any peace if she doesn't get to make something every day. Fine, fine. But my chicky needs to stick around a bit longer to help with the clean up!

Yesterday she had a friend over and they made homemade fettuccine for us - the noodles were good, but very chewy. We all agree that next time we need to move the pasta machine to an even finer setting before cutting into noodles.

Here you can see the two little sous chefs - the health inspector would rail about the lack of hairnets in our kitchen, but I think they're pretty cute.

And the final product - this was an entirely homemade meal (except the cheese). The tomato sauce was from tomatoes that we picked and froze a few weeks ago. We're still getting used to fresh tomato spaghetti sauce - it's much thinner than jarred sauce but it tastes so much fresher. The kids would say the best part was getting to grate their own cheese on their plates. It's the little things, right?

These two also made the best homemade brownies ever. They had that shiny, crispy box-mix brownie top crust going on, but a much deeper flavor than brownies from a box. Nice job girls!

And today, Amiya was begging to get back in the kitchen before I could have my morning coffee. Dinner plans were simple: Indian basics to use up random things in our house.

So, Amiya helped prepare our rajmah (kidney beans) and chapati. She grated the ginger, fried the spices, stirred the tomatoes, rinsed the beans, etc. I added on a cabbage and cauliflower dish to appease the gobi-monster that is Kev and we tried changing things up with a (new to us) carrot dish.

How did she do? Check it out:

How many kids do you know who take thirds of cauliflower? Cabbage? Kidney beans?

How to get Kev to stop spewing moopsetherium species? Give him carrots! Chapati! Gobi! As long as it's cooked with a bit of garam masala and served with a healthy serving of yogurt, Kev will eat it and give the rest of us a moment's calm.