A Tikka Surprise: Feeding Myself After a Night at Fats

So if you've been reading along, you know I'm currently exploring what Single Girl Cooking is and what that means for me.

This week, it's meant eating a lot of sandwiches for dinner, which isn't terrible. I'm not just sitting around eating turkey sandwiches every day. I've kept it interesting by trying different combinations of food I currently have.

For example, one night I made a cheeseburger with a kimchi mayo (so good). If you're not familiar with kimchi, I wrote a post about making it last year. This is that same kimchi.

So none of that was really anything new.

This weekend, a group of friends went out to celebrate one of my girlfriends' birthdays. Dinner first. Thai food. Then bar. Single girls need to get out, get a beer, jump in a DJ booth, and do some dancing.

So this morning I wake up hungry - as you do after spending the evening drinking lager. Ignored my hunger and opted to go for a run first. By the time I got home, I was seriously hungry. But what to make?

My first impulse was to settle my tomato craving with spaghetti sauce and gnocchi. Eh. Not a great combo really. Looking in my pantry, I spied a jar of tikka sauce I bought at the PA Gourmet Show. Aha! Now that sounded really good.

So boiled up some gnocchi and cooked up some chicken. I threw them in a pan with the tikka sauce (sadly no vegetables were available) and prayed for the best. From the smell, I knew it really wouldn't be bad. I was right. Tikka heaven.

I made the whole jar, so I will have leftovers for lunch this week. This Single Girl Cooking wasn't about paring down a recipe for one. It was about feeding yourself after a night out with the girls. Next time, add vegetables.

And now I'm off to decide Star Trek movie or Game of Thrones...hey I like Chris Pine, ok?

Sauce Saving Tip

Here's a quick tip for saving sauces that I usually find comes in handy when I'm making pizza. Pizza sauce comes in a 14 oz. jar or can, but I rarely use the entire jar making a pizza, especially if it's a personal sized pizza. Sometimes I like to buy the 2 packs of Boboli pizza crusts for a quick dinner where my boyfriend and I can personalize our pizzas (he likes pepperoni and bacon and I like vegetables). But back to the sauce. If you have leftover sauce from making pizza, chances are you won't use the rest in the same week. Sure it refrigerates for a few days, but freezing is best for longevity. The only problem is that saving the sauce in a ziplock can force you to use all your leftover sauce at once AND it takes quite a while to defrost.

I freeze my sauce in ice cube trays. Then once frozen, I pop each cube out and store them in a ziplock freezer bag until next time. That way, I can thaw out only as many cubes of sauce as I will need. They don't take long to thaw, and you get to choose how much sauce you have to use. So maybe one night I decide I want some sauce to dip a side in, or another night I want to make a pizza. I just pull out as many cubes as I think I'll need! Nothing goes to waste!

P.S. This is also a great way for someone cooking for one to preserve spaghetti sauce. You can always boil up some fresh pasta and defrost a few cubes of sauce for a quick dinner. I especially like this idea because I hate spaghetti leftovers.