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On Independence Day, I served a very nontraditional dinner. But, hey, it's a free country; I can do what I want! I made one of my favorite Indian dishes for the first time ... chicken tikka masala with cucumber-mint raita and naan. It was delicious and my family loved it! Even the 8-year-old ate it without complaining. Though I shouldn't have been surprised because we have fed her a wide variety of foods her entire life so she is growing quite a sophisticated little palate. In kindergarten she drew a picture of kale. I am always interested in becoming a more sophisticated cook by learning to cook new things. Food from other cultures always makes me nervous. I don't like to eat my mistakes, and sometimes exotic ingredients are too expensive to risk messing up the dish. For chicken tikka masala, I had training wheels. I spied a package of McCormick Recipe Inspirations for Chicken Tikka Masala at my local Wal-mart and I snapped it up. It cost $1. The packet has pr...

I might be using my bread machine a lot more. The August/September issue of Country Woman magazine has a feature on bread machine recipes. I pulled out my Magic Chef, dusted it off and tried two recipes so far. Here is one, by request of my Tweep Meghan: Cherry-Pecan Cocoa Bread. Yes, I made it on a day that had a heat advisory, but a bread machine doesn't create as much heat as the oven. And I did it in early morning. The flavor is really good. My only gripe about Cherry-Pecan Cocoa Bread is that when I added the cherries and nuts before the final kneading, the dough ball was so solid that it just sorta chased them around the pan (I watched) and never incorporated them evenly throughout the dough. So the baked loaf has cherries and pecans around the bottom and sides and not in the middle or near the top. Next time, I will add them earlier ... if not at the beginning, then after the ingredients are moistened and starting to come together. CHERRY-PECAN COCOA BREAD  2/3 c...