Great ideas, bad ideas, Indian food.

Great ideas:

•  Walking to Wawa Wednesday evening and buying Snickers ice cream bars and eating them on the walk home in the 85*, post-sunset, weather.
• Going to hot yoga instead of watching another three episodes of Scrubs, season three, Thursday night
• Late afternoon swimming after a long day at work yesterday
• Jumping on the pizza train yesterday at work instead of eating my kale-centric leftovers for lunch
• An impromptu hot date for some Indian food with my husband and his stepmom (who had never eaten Indian food!) - kebabs, garlic naan, samosas, chicken tikka masala, something with lamb (ew)
• Falling asleep at 9:30 last night
• Buying tickets to see Ben Folds Five and Guster tonight
• Planning to tailgate in our Honda Fit (YEAH HATCHBACK) with Wawa subs and Cheetos
• Barre in an hour (I hope this still feels like a good idea in an hour and a half)

Bad ideas:

• There have actually not really been any bad ideas in the near past, except for possibly...
• ... the Whole30, in its glorious 4.5-day entirety, last week (that's a story for another day, or possibly never)

Indian food:

• I'm not going to tell you how to make chicken tikka masala (can be done, but I haven't thoroughly investigated the matter yet) or how to make naan (cannot be done well at home, and believe me when I say I have thoroughly investigated the matter.) But I have a really great recipe for chana masala, cobbled together between these two recipes: Smitten Kitchen's version, and the Wednesday Chef's version, except sort of lazier than both of those. I like it because it's vegan, and makes you feel all healthy and virtuous, even though it's just a great big old dose of starchy carbs,

Ingredients:

• 2 can chickpeas, rinsed (if you're fancier than me)
• 1 big can of pureed tomatoes
• A few garlic cloves (the more the better, in my personal opinion), minced
• About 1 teaspoon of fresh ginger, minced
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 thai pepper (or jalepeno), finely chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon coriander
• 1 teaspoon garam masala (easily found in the spice aisle, usually in the fancy McCormick rack)
• 1/4 teaspoon tumeric
• 1/4 lemon, cut for squeezing juice
• Rice, if you feel like it

1. Saute garlic, ginger, onion and pepper in a little olive oil until translucent
2. Throw in dry spices and toast in oil (this makes a weird-looking and -smelling slurry in the pan, don't worry about it.)
3. Throw in tomatoes, mix it all up, let it simmer / blurb for about five minutes.
4. Add chickpeas, cook on low for an hour.
5. Dish up over rice (or not), squeeze a little lemon juice on top.