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Cooking experiments on my business trip!

I m realizing the fact that food blogging cannot be a side business at all. This space was deserted for past 3 months, I being held up with multiple things at work and home. But my passion always drags me back here and I was so much missing this space. Being long time away from this place had made me lazy too, but today I thought to break from my hibernation and put up something here. I am just checking how many recipes are in pipeline to finish. Yeah there are a lot. But here I am starting with my business trip time cooking experience.
My small kitchen and the minimal ingredients

Dinner is ready
Happy Chef :)
Different from my last trip, this time I got my company of food lovers and that added up on my decision to cook myself. And of course the groceries in US always entice me. I can hold on my dress or shoes shopping there, but when I m in grocery section, ohhh I cannot explain how excited and I will get carried away in the role of a chef. I still remember my friends dragging me out of the grocery zone of Walmart, Walmart was the cheapest and widest assortment grocery nearby, and it's a huge store. I feel these vegetables and fruits are talking to me smiling at me, asking me to take them. Aww that fresh they are; the cutie Avocados, the naughty tomatoes. Being only in India for all these while other than the short trips to US, these things are like a surprise to me, like a kid taken to Disney world.
 
Ok , so now lot of explanations and you can see how much I was carried away. So the greatest challenge as a cook in a short trip is that we cannot stock all spices and powders. The challenge is to cook varieties using the minimal stuffs and hence the shopping should be that intelligent. I think my love towards food has helped me to do a good job, because my foodie friends were so much happy and they where looking forward for the dinner time everyday. And along with that, if anything is made with love and care,that cannot go waste.
Turkey Fajita. Yes its my choice :P
This post I am using as how logically we can do a grocery shopping with less items when you are in a short trip or situations where you are moving from one place to another. The base ingredients I had was salt, pepper, turmeric (which I carried from India for my turmeric milk at night), paprika powder, lemon, curd, cinnamon powder and honey, again carried from India for my morning cinnamon tea, sour cream, peanut butter. As you can see not at all a planned list of ingredients; but the beauty of cooking is that. How to try out flavors with very random things we come across.
  
Each day the dinner was full course which starts with a salad, dressing is self made and changes everyday. A main meal which would be steaks, Spanish omelettes, roasted prawns, a gravy of course mushrooms, egg plants and zucchini; oh man they are just awesome and some toasted veggies including sweet potatoes, soups or baked beans. The group was not that keen to desserts including me, of course thinking about the extra calories I may put :P
  
But red wine to end with. Another favorite thing of the group was my guacamole. The credit goes to the yummy buttery avocados of course and what else when I have so fresh lemon, cilantro and tomatoes to mix it up. We were even planning to carry some avocados to India ...Lol.

  
It was 21 days I spent there this time and apart from 5 days or so it was completely self made dinner days. And yea an average of 3 dishes per day counts up to 45 varieties I tried with the same ingredients mixing and matching here and there. This trip was truly a very much satisfied one of the culinary fantasies for sure.
Zucchini Soup, Yumm!!
I couldn't get much of the pictures of my dishes as I was busy cooking and I don't remember what went in all these 45 dishes. I would be putting some of the recipes though.
So here it is my ice breaking post after a long time :) 
For the shimp lover among the gang!

And finally proud chef posing for the photo with her creations :P

PS: You can find me in gym clothes; Yes, coz everyday the cooking session was done running back from gym :D
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Location: Mooresville, NC, USA

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