Healthy (metal) Living Recipe: Easy Chicken Tikka Masala

A few weeks ago I found a cooking sauce at the grocery store for Tikka Masala. I tried Chicken Tikka Masala for the first time at an Indian restaurant in Vacaville, CA. when I was pregnant with Hayden. It was great, a little spicy for me but a new taste I had never experienced before.

On sale for $2.50 I figured I would try my hand at it. The first run was good but a little bland, so I found an easy way to spice it up and wanted to share this awesome little gem of a recipe.

Easy Chicken Tikka Masala for 2 
(Chicken can be substituted for veggies or tofu for vegetarians)
Brown or White Rice prepared.
I use the boil in the bag rice so it cooks while I'm making the rest. 
2 Chicken Breasts cubed
1 Crookneck yellow squash sliced thin and small
1 green bell pepper sliced thin and small
1 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Red Curry
1 pkg of Tasty Bite Tikka Masala cooking sauce

In a splash of Olive Oil cook the chicken about 3 minutes.
Add sauce
Sprinkle in cumin
Add green pepper
Sprinkle in red curry

Saute for 10 minutes.

Serve over brown or white rice. 

Girls Night

Friday night I invited a bunch of my girlfriends out to have a good time. There was six of us. Laughter, drinking, dancing, hugging, wonderful "I love you's!" and bonding. Three of us were mothers, four of us were married, all of us strong beautiful women in our 30's. 

Working Mom and Working Dad

I read an article on a blog that was a response to this letter. In the response the writer blamed America for not providing paid maternity leave (which we do have, sure it would be great if it paid more) and affordable daycare options.
As a working mother I understand the difficulty and guilt women face in the workplace especially when your child isn't school age yet. But I disagreed with the direction of the response. I wouldn't have thrown blame as if this woman wasn't given any other options because of a sexist America. She seems to have been juggling a Big Law job and family for years. Kudos to her for working her way to that position in the first place. And more so Kudos to her for being able to walk away and have another option for financially supporting her family.
I am not in that position and I don't know many women who would work so hard to accomplish such a career and be able to walk away without going broke.

One topic I don't see addressed enough is the difficulty Dads face as well.
With my husband being the amazing partner he is, he too faces issues with working and balancing fatherhood. I don't know how many times he has left work to care for Hayden in one way or another. I also don't know how many times he's had a co-worker ask him "Well can't your wife do that?"
Well, I can, and I do and thanks for being a Douche. Not that either one of us need to explain it to anyone but WE TAKE TURNS and balance it out the best we can to ensure that we both don't neglect our jobs enough to lose them.

A higher up executive we know just found out his long-time girlfriend is expecting their first child. The gossip-mill at the workplace exploded and with it came some erroneous comments about how the poor guy probably freaked out, didn't want a baby, and hated brats. When really he is super-stoked and described finding out as "I WAS JUMPING UP AND DOWN!"  It's just sad that people passed judgement and spread lies instead of being happy for them especially when both of them have really demanding careers.

We made it through baby-dom, toddler-dom, and daycare-dom pretty well together. Now we're in the 1st grade-dom where we rock, paper, scissors for who has to tackle the War and Piece amount of homework this kid has and then spend a good thirty minutes humming and hahing over what we want for dinner every night after work. Our kid came out pretty amazing and I wish more Moms had partnerships like ours.

 I know first-hand that sexism in the workplace sucks. I also know that it goes both ways.
Lisa Belkin from Huffington Post said it best: "There is no workplace reform that will ease every conflict or erase the reality that work is often time-consuming and hard. But there are changes of attitude and policy that can mitigate many of the strains that have become accepted as the norm."

Boring, Eight Teeth, and Valentines

The last couple weeks have been super busy for me with work and stuff.  I participated in an Advertising and Marketing expo last week working late every day and taking care of house work, homework, errands, and then played a show on Friday.
I also took on more accounts which have required much more of my time.
I have been truly balancing work, mommyhood, and the band full time. Which I know is boring but I have to throw in my damn tag line every now and then.

But this evening I am alone watching Project Runway and catching up on my blogging.

Brian had eight, that's right EIGHT teeth removed yesterday that's right on VALENTINES DAY.
He had originally only scheduled to have six, but after consultation with the oral surgeon it became eight. You would think the man never brushed his teeth, but the oral surgeon told him to blame his parents. That guy gets a Christmas card.

We actually got to celebrate our Valentines early. Brian bought me beautiful roses (that we actually picked out together) and we made each other an amazing dinner of New York steak, mashed potatoes and peanut butter ice cream for desert. 

Hayden had a pretty great Valentines as well. He scored a whole bag of candy and cards, but the best prize of all was a cute little hug he got from the little girl he's been friends with since last year. He had forgotten to give her the card he wrote for her the night before. When I picked him up and they were playing in he after school program I asked him if she liked the card. His eyes got big "I FORGOT!" He ran over gave her the card and stood back with a half-worried look waiting to see how she would respond. She smiled big and gave him a hug. He hugged her back, his whole face lit up and then skipped out the door with me to the car.

I get busy balancing all of these things that make up my tagline and the routine sometimes makes my life seem dull. Then magical moments like this happen when I get to witness my son's heart get all warm and fuzzy.

Weekend Redux : Namm 2013 (last weekend)

We had a long weekend(last weekend)in Anaheim visiting NAMM.  It was a whirlwind of friends, lots of cool music gear, running into unexpected people, and driving all over Orange county in my "pimp ass whip" as our friend Steve said.
We got to hang out with our best friends Steve and Heather and we got to attend one of the coolest yearly events for musicians.

One of the best things about Brian is that he is so excited about everything. When he's around musicians he admires, he can't contain that excitement.  So NAMM is like Brian's Disneyland and I love all the pretty shiny music gear.

 This was a dope Batman comic book drum set from Rockett drums. 

This was a giant Sabian tower that shot out smoke. It was awesome. 

This was a beautiful green drum set I stumbled upon (literally I tripped on it). I wish I had nail polish this color. 

This company made amazing works of art with guitars. Unfortunately I don't think you can play them afterwards.

  

This is Brian with Fieldy of Korn.

We took a short break from the chaos to get a pic of ourselves. We were running on a few hours of sleep, after a four hour drive and four hours of walking around, we didn't look too bad. 

 This right here is an allstar group. That's Mike Inez of Alice In Chains, Rex Brown of Pantera, Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains and Charlie Benante of Anthrax.

Hayden Amps makes a cute little combo amp that would be perfect for my cute little Hayden.

We ran into Art Alexakis of Everclear a few times during the first day. 

I got up the nerve to ask him for a pic. 

 My camera started to act funny, so this pic is a little blurry. This is our friend Christian and his new Spector bass that was much more beautiful than my camera captured.

We also ran into our photographer friend Fred who snapped this shot with us and his pal Tyler.

We headed home on Sunday. I bought this top specifically for this trip, although it only saw the inside of my car.

Hayden was a perfect travel buddy as usual. He loved the first road trip in my new car.

We drove right into a storm but when we got back home in Vegas it was sunny.

This was our third NAMM trip and the best yet. We have many more pictures I didn't include, and had some awesome experiences I didn't get to capture. 

We had a great time and can't wait to do it again.