Chicken Peanut Stew

Happy National Peanut Butter Day! (Yesterday)

Out of nothing but pure coincidence, I made a stew using peanut butter last night because I got an awesome cookbook for Christmas (thanks Kaitlin!) and vowed to not buy any more groceries until I start my detox week. 

I busted out my new Food Truck Cookbook and found what looked like a pretty awesome recipe from Buraka, a food truck from Madison, WI! 

Seeing as how I couldn't buy groceries, I had to make some substitutions and used what I had on hand - here's what I came up with:

2 Tbsp Olive Oil

1 onion, diced

1 medium red potato, diced

1 yellow bell pepper, diced

1 carrot, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

2 cups cooked and diced chicken breast

1/2 cup red lentils

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon coriander powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon red chili flakes

3/4 cup peanut butter

In whatever it is you usually use to make soups/stews (I busted out the Le Creuset for this job), add olive oil and sweat onions, potato, bell peppers, carrot, and celery over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes until vegetables are tender (potatoes may not be, but no worries, this is going to cook for a while longer).

Add chicken, lentils, and spices along with 2 cups of water and bring to boil. Add peanut butter and mix well to incorporate it, simmer for another 15-20 minutes, or until potatoes are fork-tender.

Yum. So hearty and delicious - I mean, who doesn't love peanut butter!?

This is definitely one of those recipes that you can use to get rid of some of that leftover rotisserie chicken you've got on hand and whatever it is you've got in that vegetable crisper of yours. The original recipe calls for more potatoes and chickpeas and none of that carrot, onion, bell pepper, or lentil business, but I do what I want.

Now about that week-long detox…

I purchased Lady Gwyneth's It's All Good a while back, and decided that post-New-York-Trip-of-extreme-dessert-appreciation-time that it was time for a good ol' fashioned detox. She's got a week-long detox plan using her recipes from the book (which is amazing - if you don't own it already, you should) and I figure if anyone knows how to detox, it's Gwyneth. And it's not one of those crazy drink-lemon-juice-for-30-days type situations. There's real food!

But we'll see how it goes. I read up on a review and I'm expecting similar results - oodles of eye-rolling being a significant part of the detox in the beginning, then emerging like a radiant, Gwyneth-preaching, way-better-than-you butterfly by the end of this "journey." (We'll call it a "journey" because that's what I feel like Gwyneth would call it. It's already begun.)