Dinner with Kenlie!

You’d think two blogs in one day would be enough (one featured my weigh-in results; the other had a photo of me with antlers), but here I am, composing my third blog in less than 24 hours, and it’s a good one!

I’ll start with a picture of who I spent my evening with.  Maybe you already know her, as she’s a very popular weight-loss blogger.  Yep, it’s Kenlie, from All The Weigh!

Kenlie moved to Los Angeles a few days ago, and I think she’ll be a lovely addition to this city.  She’s been talking about moving to LA for months now, pretty much since she visited in May, and I’m glad it’s finally happened!  I invited Kenlie and her two aunts, who helped bring Kenlie’s stuff cross-country, over for dinner.  Her aunts are lovely women, and it was great to meet them and shoot the shit with Kenlie in person, as opposed to over Twitter, Facebook, or our blogs.

For dinner, I pulled out my most trusted kitchen appliance: my Crockpot.  I’ve had my Crockpot for 8 years or so, and it’s never let me down.  My Crockpot and me have shared many adventures together.  We participated in a weekly CrockPotLuck every Friday a year.  We won Runner-up in a chili contest.  Since I started this blog, my Crockpot has starred in 4 posts:

• Squash and Sweet Potato Soup
• Seitan and Vegetable Stew
• Balsamic Chicken with Pears
• Chicken Cordon Bleu Dip: A Cautionary Tale

And now it’s time for another.  I made up the following recipe, and it all started with a jar:

I picked up this jar of Spinach Curry Simmer Sauce a few months ago at Whole Foods and have been staring at it in my cupboard since then.  Finally, I have a great reason to crack it open!  (FYI: the jar has 6 servings, and each one has 25 calories and 1 gram of fat.)

I thought the sauce would be a good base for a stew.  And, as anyone who’s ever cooked with a Crockpot knows, everything in a Crockpot ends up becoming a stew whether you want it to or not, so that really couldn’t have worked out any better!

My favorite stews are loaded with vegetables, so I sharpened my knife and started chopping:

From left to right, we have 2 big turnips, 1 red onion, 3 parsnips, and 3 Italian eggplants.  I also added 3 minced cloves of garlic.  I got a few comments the other day when I mentioned buying a purple bell pepper, and I know Kenlie is a huge fan of my posts about oddly-colored vegetables, so I chopped up the purple bell pepper, too.  Here it is whole:

And here it is in the Crockpot with the other vegetables:

Oh, and by the way, I grossly overestimated how many veggies I’d need.  I could only squeeze in about 2/3 of the veggies before the Crockpot was full; the other 1/3 are sitting in my fridge, awaiting their destiny.  I may roast them off tomorrow; I’m not sure yet.

For protein, I added 6 chicken thighs.  I had to remove the skin and trim some fat from them, which is a total pain in the butt, but they looked pretty afterwards:

The thighs still had their bones inside them, but I’ve Crocked chicken thighs before, and they get so tender that the meat literally falls off the bones, making them easy to remove when you’re serving.

Finally, the jar of sauce got poured over everything:

The lid went on, and the Crockpot got plugged in and set to Low.  I started the cooking process at noon, and at 8pm, when it was time to eat, this is what it looked like:

I made some couscous to serve it over, following the directions on the box, except that I used some chicken stock instead of water.  And here’s the finished plate!

The chicken was tender, and the sauce was fantastic.  I love curry, and I’ll be buying that sauce again!

I’ll end this post with one more photo of Kenlie and me.  If you haven’t checked out her blog, do yourself a favor and click here.  She’s lost well over 100 pounds, and is wonderfully honest, open, and inspiring.  Keep it up, Kenlie…

…and Keep it up, David!

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