Cinnamon and Clove Day

Today I may or may not have taken the day off from work... we were out late last night at the concert, and so I planned on having a relaxing mental health day.  It ended up being a good thing that I stayed home; I had to help get Dad up, and then Mark came over and we grocery shopped, and made lunch, dinner, and dessert together!  It was relaxing in that I was not at work, but still quite busy - and I must not be cut out for mental health days, because I spent much of the day feeling guilty.

Marky was in charge of lunch; he made grilled chicken sandwiches with bleu cheese, onions and peppers.  This is his specialty and they were great.  While he worked, I set up the slow cooker for dinner.  I made cinnamon chicken.  It does sound weird, I know, but I like weird food.  The recipe calls for boneless skinless chicken breast, sliced carrots, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coconut milk, and tomato sauce.  Quite the strange mix.  I couldn't find coconut milk, so I Googled it and mixed cream of coconut with hot water.  Then I let it set for 6 hours. 

Mmm... potatoes!

I also made my personal favorite, mashed potatoes. to go with the chicken.  I added goat cheese, butter and milk.... extremely healthy.  But the chicken wasn't bad, so I figured it would even out.  They were by far the best part of the meal, but I am a mashed potato kind of girl.  And add goat cheese to anything, and I will be happy.  So this was perfect.

As for the chicken?  Well, I don't like meat, so as I always say, I am not the person to ask. I thought the texture of the chicken was a little too stringy, but the flavor was very good.  I liked the carrots.  Kenzie,  Nick and Mark were the only ones home.  Mark and Kenzie both ate a lot and said they liked it.  Nick did his bizarre "I-may-usually-eat-like-an-elephant-but-happen-to-be-full-tonight" thing and gave 75% of his serving to the dogs.  Apparently he "doesn't like cloves."  Kenz and I are fairly certain that he would not have even known there were ground cloves in it except for the fact that I was telling her the ingredients.  I'm getting very used to Nick whining about my meals, though, so this time I chose not to be upset and just be entertained by his story that he wasn't hungry since he ate a hamburger 7 hours earlier.

Frosting with a weird tip?

While Kenzie was at class tonight, I worked on a surprise dessert for her.  She is having a crappy day, and I know that she loves chai tea, so when I saw a recipe for chai cupcakes, I knew I had to try it. You have the option to make chocolate or vanilla chai cupcakes (or both!) with either Swiss meringue honey buttercream or whipped chocolate cinnamon ganache for frosting.  I decided to make the vanilla cupcakes with the chocolate frosting.  In a funny coincidence, both my dinner and my dessert have cinnamon and cloves in them (so ha, Nick)!  The cupcakes came out delicious: spiced and soft and great.  Then the frosting might be my best yet.  It only called for semisweet chocolate, heavy cream, and cinnamon, which I was intrigued by because of so few ingredients.  I had to simmer the cream and cinnamon, then pour it over the chocolate, mix it up, chill it for an hour, and then whip it.  Then of course I ruin everything when I try to frost the cupcakes and they end up looking ridiculous, but it tastes amazing.  As someone who is not big on sweets, I will probably bring one to work tomorrow for lunch :)  And hopefully they did their job and made Kenzie's crappy day a little bit better.

Recipes:
slow cooker cinnamon chicken
chai cupcakes

This is where I gave up and just smeared the frosting on...