Mmm, slow cooker. Mmm, Indian food

Life got in the way of blogging these past couple of weeks. Apologies! 

February is Cheap Eats month at Stuff My Kids Will Eat, but clearly even if I’d been keeping up, a 28-day month is not enough time to do justice to Cheap Eats, and boy, do I have lots of “stuff” to share. So, let's call it Cheap Eats Late-Winter. We’ll do what our agrarian ancestors did and keep up the cheap eating until it’s time to, I don’t know, slaughter the Easter ham and/or tofu block. 

One goal I have (and have been avoiding mightily) is to figure out how to budget and plan for a whole week of dinner menus. It sounds frighteningly planful. More on that soon.

In the midst of all the blizzarding and budgeting, an amazing new cookbook came into my life and became an obsession, thanks to friend Molly, who mentioned the Indian Slow Cooker Spice Tour on facebook (To which I said, Indian? Slow Cooker? Devon Avenue? YES!) 

Anupy Singla is the local author of The Indian Slow Cooker. We joined her for a fun and informative shopping spree followed by a yummy, inexpensive lunch at  Annapurna. Then I came home with all of my lentils, spices, seeds, and yes, curry leaves – at last! – and cooked until my kids started to wonder what was going on (“mom, I like Indian food, but are you ever going to cook any other kind again?”)

Spiced [meatless] Crumbles with Peas (p.116)

The book is gorgeously photographed and includes useful information on the basic spices used in Indian cooking. It’s great for anyone starting out with this cuisine, and for anyone looking for new uses for the slow cooker.  Anupy includes a lot of vegetarian recipes in here, which is great for me because finding vegetarian slow cooker recipes of any kind is pretty difficult. One note of warning – as Anupy told me, the “heat” in these recipes is the authentic style. If cooking for kids, you may want to be cautious with the chili powder and fresh chiles. 

You can buy paneer on Devon Ave. Also, this whole wheat roti.
p. 96, Anupy's Curried Spinach with Homemade cheese.
The dish at left top is a Sambhar vegetable and lentil curry (not slow-cooked)

If you’re in Chicagoland, check out Anupy’s website for cooking classes and spice tour dates – she does the spice tour every month. Did I mention that’s she’s super fun and friendly, too?

Our group

I learn about lentils