I Made Up a Recipe!

If you knew me, you'd know that I enjoy cooking and baking immensely, but I ALWAYS have to follow a recipe. In fact, I obsessively check the recipe every other step in the recipe to make sure I'm doing everything okay. Since I've been reading food blogs, I've noticed that people seem to make up recipes with abandon, tossing all sorts of ingredients together and ending up with delicious sounding concoctions. I have little scribbled notes everywhere with things like mashed garbanzo bean sandwiches and almond dip directions on them. When I got ready for lunch last Friday, nothing really appealed to me, but I spotted some Kashi whole grain pilaf that I needed to use up, and started thinking about how good it would taste with some beans and sauteed veggies. So I totally made something up and it was delicious!

I sauteed some minced garlic, an onion, a green pepper, mushrooms, and some celery with a spritz of olive oil cooking spray while I cooked one package from the box of pilaf (I think it originally came with 3 or 4 little packets). To the veggies, I added a can of kidney beans that I'd drained and rinsed, as well as a jar of locally made salsa. I thought about making it a Mexican tasting dish with chili pepper and cumin, but saw a bottle of garam masala in the spice cupboard, and tossed some of that in instead, along with some turmeric, a bit of curry and black pepper. I stirred in the pilaf and YUM! It turned out to be quite delish. For some reason, I didn't take a picture of the finished product, but it looked tasty too. I ended up with about five servings that were quite filling.