Daily Eats: The West Indies

Jamaican Curry Chicken Stew with Mango Rice

The necessary ingredient needed in making any Caribbean dish is allspice. Allspice is similar to cinnamon and nutmeg. When accompanied with brown sugar, garlic, and chili peppers, you can make anything thing taste like Jamaica. For this dish, I had really no inspiration besides the fact that I had an overripe mango and tomatoes that needed to be eaten.

For the stew, I used chicken, garlic, allspice, curry powder, brown sugar, chili peppers, salt, onions, tomatoes, and green bell peppers. I incorporated the mango into the rice by simply cooking the rice in a pot and adding in the mango, which I cubed. To add more flavor into the rice, I added some curry powder, along with some salt and sugar to play with the sweetness of the mango. I generally don't like spending more than 30 minutes making a meal and this meal took about twenty minutes to make!

Daily Eats: Pita Pizza

Pita pizzas are fast, fun, and easy to make. And in my opinion, it's the only thing that one can make, if the world suffered from a hummus shortage. Like any other pizza, pita pizzas can be made with any and with as many toppings that can be delicately placed on a miniature pizza-like surface. This pita pizza was basically made, like most of my other meals, out of desperation (because I was hungry and wanted something fast) and availability (what is left in the fridge).

Here was my approach to a quick pita pizza:
Note: please excuse the informal layout of the ingredients. But, it's necessary to show what it was exactly that I had to work with

• "a sliver of "cheddar cheese
• "half-eaten" sausage
• "what was left of" an onion
• green bell peppers
• canned diced tomatoes
• salt
• pepper
• garlic powder
• basil flakes
• day-old whole-wheat pita bread

In order to make the sauce for the pita pizza, I heated the diced tomatoes in a saucepan and added the salt, pepper, garlic powder, and basil. I allowed the sauce to cook for five minutes under a low flame. When the sauce was ready, I spread it evenly on the pita bread. And for the more elaborate pizza making process, I shredded cheddar cheese on top and threw on the finely diced vegetables and sausage. I placed the pita pizza in the 350 degree oven for five minutes, or until the cheese melted. In the end, the pizza was amazing. The pita bread was bordering the state of becoming a chip, which made the pizza really thin and crunchy.

Daily Eats: Broccoli and Mushroom Penne

Broccoli and Mushroom Penne with a Creamy Garlic Sauce and Meatballs

Pasta is probably one of the most easiest and quickest thing to make. This meal was made mostly out of desperation because everything that I had in the refrigerator were moments away from going bad. But, it was amazing and a meal that could be easily modified to consist of whatever vegetables happen to be around.