Armchair vacation

As Kimberly prepares to return home after her two weeks of farm-sitting, we are cramming in some last projects. We had discovered we both love Indian cuisine, so our last cooking project was a celebration of one of the world's most incredible spice blends: Garam Masala.

Chicken Tikka Masala goes together quickly with some prep and coordination. We decided to try a new recipe, recruiting Kim's laptop as a third kitchen helper. http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/06/chicken-tikka-masala-by-pastor-ryan/ allows you to follow along with great step-by-step photos, give it a try!

Of course Naan, the ubiquitous bread of Indian, is a must. The naan recipe we used is one of Kim's mom's treasures, amazingly fast and so full of flavor from the cumin and scallions.

Naan bakes in a mere 5 minutes or so, on a hot inverted baking sheet or stone. The dimpled flat bread is a delectable combination of crisp and chewy with a golden bottom and lightly browned edges.

Served with glowing golden turmeric rice, the Chicken Tikka Masala can be spiced up with extra cayenne, or mildly warm with just a few chops of jalapeno. Warm fragrant naan is used to wipe every last drop of the masala sauce off the plate -

Staying with our India theme, Kim happily shared her creative artistic talent by doing a henna pattern for me. She also did one for Jolene when we went over to milk, a thank-you for teaching Kim how to milk goats (which she does very well - and is now wondering what she is going to do with this new-found talent!). Henna patterns can be done anywhere on the body, the hands and feet being most common. The thick ink is green when applied, dries almost black, which is then removed to reveal the rust-colored design.

Don't freak-out, Mom...it fades completely in two to three weeks.

Then we can do a DIFFERENT pattern!

We were going to finish the evening with a "Bali-wood" movie, featuring Kim's favorite actor. But we decided 9:30 pm was a little late for two farm girls to be starting a long movie. We'll save it for another feast day.