Thai Red Curry With Chicken

My favorite piece of exercise equipment is my Elliptical. It’s a NordicTrack space saver model that I picked up from Sears a few years ago. Hubs (who was my fiancé at the time) and I had just moved to a new area together, and away from our old gym. We looked in to a few local gyms, but we didn’t want to spend much and we didn’t have a lot of free time.

As it was, we had pretty long commutes to work and since I had just graduated from college, I had a weird work schedule. For over a year I kept my college job as an Assistant Manager at a well known coffee/donut shop while I started working in my current career part-time. It was a hectic time in my life. I had to work 6 or 7 days to fit it all in and I was going back and forth between a desk job and one that required me to be on my feet all day, but it was a good transition for me. I don’t have any regrets 🙂

Anyway…Since my main form of exercise at the gym was the Elliptical, it seemed like a good investment. And, after making that investment, I was sure to use it 4-6 nights a week – which I did while watching TV and chatting with hubs. It took me about 2 years of regular use to start getting tired of it, which is when I decided to try running! I’ve been doing both ever since, but the elliptical definitely puts less impact on your joints. As someone who experiences intermittent joint pain, sometimes no matter how badly I want to run – I just can’t. It’s nice to have an alternative.

 

Tuesday morning started out with one of the 30 minute pre-programmed interval workouts. I put it on level 5 (out of 12) and worked up a pretty good sweat while watching Roseanne.

We weren’t allowed to watch Roseanne when we were kids, but I think the shows we have on TV now are much worse than that. Sometimes I’m shocked by the things they say on TV! I’m always turning to hubs and asking when it became ok to say that on prime time. I should probably mention that I’m not perfect either, when I get mad sometimes I get loud and swear, but I’m not saying on TV or in front of anyone inappropriate – so, I think there’s a difference.

Then, I did a mini strength training session

• 15 pushups x 3 sets
• 15 situps x 3 sets

I figure something is better than nothing 🙂 The pushups were hard today, my shoulders have been sore since Monday. I think I tense up and hold them awkwardly when I run? I know I swing my arms too much sometimes.

Breakfast

I found a way to enjoy pumpkin in my smoothie!

Since I’m a crazy person, I decided to roast butternut squash and squash seeds while getting ready for work. I used this recipe for the squash and just put the seeds on a foil lined baking sheet sprayed with canola oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. The squash seeds were done in about 20 minutes. I put both to good use when I packed my lunch.

Lunch

I’ve been really hungry this week, so I also had a Clif Mojo Mountain Mix bar with lunch. I picked up a box of these at Target with a coupon, back when they were having their back to school sales. They are my favorite, but I’m pretty sure I could recreate them, they actually taste a bit like these, which I’ve made before and loved!

Dinner

Sometimes, I feel like I get in a dinner rut and we keep having the same things over and over. That gets boring quickly! So, the other day, when I saw a curry recipe that Ashley posted, I made a mental note to make curry for dinner one night this week. I’ve made it a few times before and since I only had red curry and a ton of veggies to use up, I decided to just wing it. Luckily, it came out great.

 

This dish is a great way to mix up your usual dinner rotation. You can use whatever veggies you have on hand, even frozen, which would further speed up the prep time. This recipe took me ten minutes to prep and about 20 minutes to cook, how’s that for a 30 minute meal?

Ingredients

• 2 carrots
• 1/2 an onion
• 1 small green pepper
• 3 mushrooms
• ~1/2 lb chicken
• 1 can of light coconut milk
• .5T fish sauce
• 2.5T of Red Curry Paste (note, red curry can be spicy, but I found that mine wasn’t very spicy at all)
• 1 teaspoon canola oil
• Salt & Pepper
• Lime wedges & peanuts for garnish (optional)

Method

• Chop all of the veggies into pieces that are the same size so they’ll cook evenly and put aside
• Dice the chicken into small pieces and sprinkle with salt and pepper
• In a small bowl, combine the coconut milk, fish sauce, and red curry paste. Stir until well mixed, then put aside
• Heat 1 teaspoon of canola in large skillet until hot
• Add chicken and sauté on medium until it has a bit of color, but isn’t cooked through
• Add the veggies to the same pan and allow them to cook for 2-3 minutes
• Add the sauce to the pan, stir everything together, and bring it to a boil
• Turn heat down to low and allow curry to simmer for 15 minutes
• Serve over rice and garnish with wedges of lime and peanuts

I served this with a combo of brown rice and jasmine rice. We also sprinkled some crushed red pepper on top for additional heat.

This was a nice change from our typical stir fry. One of these days, I’ll have to try “real” Thai food and see how it compares.

I spent the rest of my evening catching up on some blog stuff and watching House. There may have also been a bit of Cherry Chocolate Chip ice cream involved 🙂

Something to talk about…

• Have you ever had “real” Thai food? What’s your favorite dish?