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I enjoy Indian food when I get to the nearest city that has an Indian restaurant, Morgantown, WV, and Mother India. Because I can't afford to eat out or drive much, I am always looking for ways to make what I crave at home. I found a passable way to make one of my two favorite Indian dishes, Chicken Tikka Masala . And I blogged about it last summer so click the link in the last sentence to find the recipe. About the same time I was intrigued by this recipe for "Bread Machine Naan." Now, my understanding of naan is a chewy flat bread that's stretched thin and baked in a Tandoor clay oven. This recipe is so delicious I don't care what it calls itself! My family loves it any time we get a craving for fried dough ... you know, like vendors serve at carnivals. Sometimes it's called Elephant Ears. Or Johnny Cakes. Or fry bread. Eat these plain or with butter and powdered sugar, or cinnamon sugar, or spread with your favorite jam. I recently enjoyed them d...

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...

Saturday night I was cleaning -- wild times, I know! -- and I felt snacky. I decided to make my favorite version of Chex Mix, which some people think of as a Christmastime treat. I eat it year-round. Especially since I found many variations on the original recipe. When I was a kid in the 80s, there was the original recipe of Worcestershire sauce, seasoning salt, garlic powder, onion powder and butter mixed and poured over Chex cereal, pretzels, peanuts and sometimes crackers or bagel chips. There was also a sweet version called puppy chow (maybe because Ralston Purina, which invented Chex and then sold all its brands to General Mills), which Chex also called Muddy Buddies. It was made with peanut butter and chocolate and powdered sugar. Besides that the only innovations I saw were GM packaging the cereal with a seasoning packet at the holidays and marketing bags of ready-made Chex Mix, which tastes nothing like homemade. Until I was an adult. In the late 90s/early 2000 when giving home...

I live 30 miles from good Indian food. (OK, I live 30 miles from ANY Indian food.) So I am excited to see Amy's frozen meals for sale at the Walmart in Oakland, Md. I picked the Palak Paneer with a side of Rajmah dal for $3.77. I ate the kidney beans in ginger-garlic sauce first so I could savor my favorite part: the creamed spinach with cheese (the paneer) and basmati rice uninterrupted. Was it as good as Ram's at Mother India in Morgantown, WV? No. But it was a reasonably priced and accessible substitute.