What's for dinner? Chicken Kabobs!

Last night, we made chicken kabobs for dinner. Delicious, easy, and summer-y!

Usually, chicken kabobs in this house entail mushrooms, zucchini and green peppers, plus the chicken.

I start out by cutting the chicken into chunks (about 1-1.5 inches), and then marinading them for at least an hour in the fridge before tossing them on the grill.

Last night's marinade included Wildtree's Hickory Smoked Grapeseed Oil, which adds a delicious smoky flavor, Southwestern Seasoning (from Pampered Chef!), cayenne pepper and a spicy garlic from Dean Jacobs. What we actually did was add the spices first and tried to coat the meat as thoroughly as possible, and then added in the grapeseed oil, then added some more spices and mixed it again.

Tossed in the fridge for an hour to let the flavors marinade together.

On Monday, I went out to run some errands and happened across a produce stand on my way home. Since I actually had cash on hand, I made sure to stop. I picked up a dozen ears of corn ($6), two large zucchini ($1.50/lb), two ginormous green peppers ($o.75/lb), some green beans (~$1.50/lb), a pint of blueberries ($2.50) and two cucumbers ($0.75 each). My total came to just over $14 which is WAY better than I'd have been able to do at the grocery store. Plus, it was fresh and local!! Bonus!

For the kabobs, I had bought two green peppers and two zucchini, since that's what we'd used for our last round of kabobs. Since the peppers and zucchini were much larger than the ones we get at the grocery store, we only had to use 1 of each. We sliced the zucchini and peppers, and started threading the kabobs. We have a nice set of wood handled kabobs that we use, but please keep in mind that if you are using wood kabobs, don't forget to soak them in cold water for about 20 minutes (minimum) before adding the meat and veggies so they don't go up in flames when you put them on the grill!

Toss the kabobs on the grill, making sure to check on them and rotate them regularly. It took about 15 minutes for the kabobs to cook thoroughly on medium high heat.

Kabobs are delicious and a fun way to eat chicken and veggies. The prep time is not that long, I'd say about 20 minutes total and that includes cutting up the chicken and making the marinade, and then to cut up the veggies and thread the kabobs (but allow about 1 hour to marinade).

And it's only chicken and veggies, so it's not bad for you at all. There are marinades available at the grocery store, but if you have oil/grapeseed oil on hand, I encourage you to make it yourself! We have also used sesame seed oil for a marinade with success.

Happy grilling!

Mmm...Indian Food...

So, once upon a time I blogged about how much I adore Indian food. Because I do adore Indian food. I love Indian food so much that I hope when I die, heaven is actually just an Indian buffet that is all-you-can-eat and you never get full.

That being said, however, I've really been wanting to make Indian food in the meantime (before my all you can eat Indian buffet heaven plans). :) While I have always been a huge fan of Indian food, the budget is a bit tighter now and a typical Indian restaurant trip usually runs us in the $40 range once you figure in all the delicious appetizers!

So when I came across this recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala (aka my favorite Indian dish!) on AllRecipes, I knew I HAD to try it.

It sat in my recipe box for a while (btw, I'm going to take a quick minute to plug AllRecipes. It's awesome. And the recipes are endless. And most of the ones I've made have been delicious! So I suggest that you finish reading this blog and head over to AllRecipes to log in and create your own account!), but I finally decided I really needed to eat Indian food since I don't think I've had anything save my Trader Joe's frozen meals since New Year's Eve. Or maybe February. But that is too long ago.

The one thing I noticed (which surprised me a bit) was that I pretty much had all of the ingredients already: chicken, plain yogurt, lemon juice, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper (okay, well, had to borrow this from the neighbor since ours ran out a few months ago and forgot to replace it, but now it's been replaced!), black pepper, ginger (recipes calls for fresh, I used powdered), salt, butter, garlic (minced), paprika, tomato sauce, jalapeno pepper, heavy cream & cilantro. Aside from the heavy cream & yogurt, most of the ingredients were here or already on our regular grocery list.

The recipe was clear and easy to follow. Aside from using powdered ginger instead of fresh ginger, I didn't really make any modifications. Chicken marinaded in the fridge for about an hour while we ran some errands (including to get some cilantro, since the stuff we'd bought about a week earlier was already gross). Trader Joe's has frozen naan, both plain and garlic, but I decided not to get any this time.

After marinading and soaking the wooden skewers in cold water for about 1/2 hour, we threaded the chicken onto skewers and tossed them on the grill.

While the chicken was on the grill, we started on the cream/tomato sauce. The recipes calls for melted butter and then jalapenos and a whole bunch of spices to be sauteed prior to the cream & tomato sauce being added. Almost burned the butter! but was able to keep it from burning by hurrying up the spices and tossing in the cream. Phew. Crisis averted. The jalapenos and spices combined with the cream & tomato sauces turned into the lovely orange chicken tikka masala sauce that I know and LOVE! :)

I also had a bag of basmati rice so I made sure to cook that up to go along with the meal, especially given that I had passed on the naan.

After the chicken was grilled and the sauce was ready, we added chicken to the sauce & let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

THIS. WAS. AMAZING.

Holy crap and holy crap again. I honestly think this is one of the best dinners we've EVER made and that's saying something as it includes the Sprecher beer cheese soup, the Pioneer Woman mac & cheese, the chicken tortilla soup, the Jamaican jerk chicken and any of Andy's awesome chili. So yeah, I highly recommend this. A lot. And did I mention you should possibly go out and make this tomorrow?

So given that a chicken tikka masala dish at a good Indian restaurant will usually run about $10 (on the low end), and I don't really think this is "healthy" (though it yields 4 servings at 404 calories a pop, so really not as bad as I thought it would be), but I think it fits the "frugal" aspect.

Chicken: 3lbs @1.99/lb = $6

Heavy Cream: 8oz @0.89 = $0.89

Yogurt: large carton = $2.25

Tomato Sauce: 8oz @ ~$1

Cilantro: ~$1

Jalapeno Pepper: ~$0.50

Cumin, Cinnamon, Lemon Juice, Cayenne Pepper, Black Pepper, Salt, Ginger, Butter, Garlic & Paprika, Basmati Rice: Already found in the house. :)

So for the whole dish, it was roughly $11.65. For 4 servings. No tip necessary! :)

Next time, however, I am going to try a few different things to try and make it a bit healthier. The entire recipe as written calls for 7 teaspoons of salt. Uhh...sodium much? A few of the reviews on allrecipes said the salt didn't matter. So I think I'll just do a bit of trial and error with that. The recipe also calls for a tablespoon of butter, but it really was just to saute the jalapeno and spices. I am going to try substituting grapeseed oil for that next time. No risk of me burning then either....

Overall I give the recipe an A+. It tasted pretty similar to my favorite Indian restaurant's chicken tikka masala (though I'm not going to stop frequenting my favorite Indian restaurants because of it). I was really surprised at how relatively easy it was to make, and I was very impressed.