Curry Soup, Oreos, and Custard

I cooked up a storm on Monday night. I tried three new recipes, and they all turned out great. It was a miracle, and something that doesn't happen often. It seems that the more I cook the more disasters I have. Lentil Sloppy Joes, Vegan Lemon Poppy Seed Bread, Black Bean Brownies to name a few. Yet, each one teaches me something new that I didn't know before. I can't complain about the failures, because they are my teacher. But when I am successful I am not ashamed to celebrate my victory :)! 

For dinner I made a Thai Red Curry Pumpkin Soup that I found over at The Whole Kitchen blog. I found her blog recently, and I adopted her this month for Adopt A Gluten Free Blogger. I couldn't find just one recipe, because they all looked so delicious. So you will be seeing more recipes from her blog that I will be trying in the next week. I was definitely impressed with this soup. I followed it exactly except I didn't have a bell pepper, I used chicken instead of turkey, and I added some collard greens. Gotta use 'em up!

It had complex flavor, with a nice blend of bright, spicy, earthy, and tangy. It had lots of fresh veggies, coconut milk, pumpkin, lime juice, fish sauce, curry paste, cilantro, and ginger marinated chicken. The pumpkin gave it a great mouth feel without tasting like pumpkin, and the little bit of coconut milk added a wonderful creaminess.

 Chris had wild rice with his soup that I had cooked separately, and I ate mine without the rice. It works out nicely for us because my favorite part of the soup is the broth, and for Chris he likes his more like stew. I got lots of yummy broth, and his bowl was piled high with meat, vegetables, and rice. Also, one of my favorite touches was the cilantro on top. It added such a great flavor to the soup that I would go so far as to say it wouldn't be as good without it. I will definitely be making this again and again.

Then for dessert I made Chris Homemade Oreos with  Peanut Butter Filling. This is not healthy in any way. But, since I have been making Chris eat so much weird stuff lately, I thought I would be nice and make him a dessert with lots of butter and sugar :). I didn't try them, but he said they were good, and since he ate 4 or 5 of them I guess it is a good indicator that he liked them.

I am not going to lie. I am really proud if this picture. :)

I wanted dessert too, something not filled with sugar and butter, and since the kitchen was a mess already I decided to make myself a pumpkin custard. For how few ingredients there are, this tastes really good. However, I want to make it one more time before I post the recipe. My pumpkin puree that I used was really watery and it kept the custard from setting up as well as I wanted it to. I will try to cook some of the water out before I mix it in the other ingredients. When I make it again I will post the recipe.

I am off to make cookies for a Christmas Party Cookie Exchange I am attending tonight. I have lots of pumpkin to use up, so I will be making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Hopefully, my cooking success will follow me through today.