Monthly Archives: November 2009

menu plan Monday, National Blog Posting Month

I don’t dig on lamb

NaBloPoMo!Amy and I are both trying to eat healthier these days, so we’ve both joined Weight Watchers. So our Recipe Roulette picks should be a little better for us from here on out!

Our dish for this week was based on a lamb kheema from Gina’s WW Recipes. I didn’t really want to use lamb, though, so I used ground turkey instead. I also didn’t have any cumin, so I left that out. I used lettuce leaves to make little kheema lettuce wraps.

I was a bit leery of this one at first. One of the things I don’t love about ground turkey is its color, but the spices in the kheema made the meat a rich, dark brown. The dish had a really lovely, deep and spicy flavor. I liked this so much, in fact, that we’re going to have it again this week!

Menu Plan Monday
Monday: Spaghetti
Tuesday: Quesadillas
Wednesday: Crabby Patties
Thursday: Turkey kheema
Friday: Pizza

Lamb Kheema with Peas
from Gina’s Weight Watcher Recipes
1 large onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ginger, chopped (Note: I just realized I forgot to add this!)
1 tablespoon butter or ghee
1 pound lean ground lamb shoulder (Note: I used ground turkey)
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup frozen peas
1 chili pepper, minced (or more to taste) (I omitted this altogether, because I was being lazy)
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 bay leaf
salt and fresh pepper

In a large saute pan, heat ghee or butter and onions on medium heat. Cook about 8 minutes. Add garlic and cook another 2 minutes.

Add ground meat to pan and brown. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, cayenne, chili powder, turmeric, garam masala and cinnamon. Stir well. Add chopped chili pepper, cilantro, bay leaf, tomato sauce and 1/2 cup of water. Reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer about 15 minutes. Add frozen peas and simmer covered another 5-10 minutes.

National Blog Posting Month, Reading

Return of the Poetry Foundation

NaBloPoMo!I used to post the American Life in Poetry poems all the time, and then I didn’t. Today, though, having nothing in particular to say for this post, it seems like a nice day to share a poem.

How Wonderful
by Irving Feldman

How wonderful to be understood,
to just sit here while some kind person
relieves you of the awful burden
of having to explain yourself, of having
to find other words to say what you meant,
or what you think you thought you meant,
and of the worse burden of finding no words,
of being struck dumb . . . because some bright person
has found just the right words for you—and you
have only to sit here and be grateful
for words so quiet so discerning they seem
not words but literate light, in which
your merely lucid blossomiong grows lustrous.
How wonderful that is!

And how altogether wonderful it is
not to be understood, not at all, to, well,
just sit here while someone not unkindly
is saying those impossibly wrong things,
or quite possbily they’re the right things
if you are, which you’re not, that somone
—a difference, finally, so indifferent
it would be conceit not to let it pass,
unkindness, really, to spoil someone’s fun.
And so you don’t mind, you welcome the umbrage
of those high murmurings over your head,
having found, after all, you are grateful
—and you understand this, how wonderful!—
that you’ve been led to be quietly yourself,
like a root growing wise in darkness
under the light litter, the falling words.
Irving Feldman, “How Wonderful” from Collected Poems: 1954-2004, published by Schocken Books. Copyright © 2004 by Irving Feldman. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Source: Collected Poems: 1954-2004 (2004)