Filled Cylinders for Dinner

For some crazy reason "filled cylinders" as a theme came to mind when I decided to cook something yummy and not-quite-normal for dinner. It turned out to be an extremely awesome combination of flavors, and actually pretty healthy. It consisted of:
A red pepper section (fresh raw) deseeded/devained & filled with spanish rice (box -- I made this after a full day of work & taking Hunter to TKD... no time for scratch). Garnished with thin slices of Cougar Smoky Cheddar.
A roma tomato half (fresh raw) scooped & filled with cottage cheese & a garnish of romaine.
Three carrot sections (fresh raw), cored and filled with a puree of the leftover carrot, neufchâtel cheese, 1 Tbs soy sauce, 1 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp chili powder.
Garnished with (fresh raw) avocado slices and more carrot puree.
A person *could* cook/bake the tomato, pepper, and carrots... but they'd just not taste the same.
Dessert is another filled cylinder - strawberry shortcake with whip cream!

Lamb Curry

I made some phenomenally tasty lamb curry last night, followed by some yummy dessert. My house smelled like an Indian restaurant -- the only thing missing was some naan bread.
Lamb Curry
1 sweet potato, peeled & cubed
1/2 carrot, cubed
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 jalapeño or other pepper, diced
1 stick of celery, diced
1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 Tbsp garlic, diced
3 medium tomatoes, cubed
1 lb. lamb steak, cut into 3/4 inch cubes
1 tsp black pepper, ground
1 cup red wine
1 package of S&B - Golden Curry Sauce Mix, chopped up well
1 1/2 Tbsp Mae Ploy Yellow Curry paste
1 Tbsp Mae Ploy Red Curry paste

Cut & add the ingredients in the order listed to a slow-cooker and mix well.
I assembled everything the night before and put it into the refridgerator overnight. The next day I had Carmen take it out & plug it in on low when she got up -- so it was going pretty much all day.

When I got home, I made up some saffron rice:

Saffron Rice
2 cups water
1 1/4 cups jasmine rice
1 tsp salt
1 pinch of saffron

Mix & bring to a boil, put on simmer and let cook for 20 minutes. Fluff.

That was dinner... and it was really, really good. I would have felt a bit better had I actually made the curry myself -- I have everything I need (including the fermented shrimp paste -- don't ask). But the night I assembled everything I was also making our our regular dinner for that evening (Eggplant Parmesean) as well as cooking up some organic carrot puree for Hunter... so I don't feel *too* bad about using store-bought curries. It ended up tasting very close to a Massamam style curry. Mmmm.

For dessert, I made Indian Spiced Rice Pudding -- a recipe I saw yesterday on one of the cooking blogs I follow, http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/

I only ended up making a small modification -- I didn't feel like going spice-cabinet-spelunking to look for my nutmeg pods and then getting the mace from them (too much work). So instead of mace I ended up using a scant 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg & 1/4 tsp of allspice. And fresh ground cardamom.

[edited to fix tags]