Last week I did something super cool; any food blogger’s dream really – I attended a real professional food photo shoot!! You guys know I’ve been volunteering with Cooking Matters for a little while now (just finished another 6-week class as chef instructor and getting ready for another, woop woop!). In the February newsletter I noticed a call out to volunteers to assist in a photo shoot of all of their recipes. You know I got on that right away! The position was actually to do the cooking of the recipes. It was going to be an aggressive schedule so I quickly realized I would be stuck in a kitchen without a real insight into how the magic happens. So I asked to do a half day of cooking and a half day of assisting the food photographer and stylist. This was met with some hesitance at first but then I got a call back from photographer Ellen Callaway (check out that link, she’s super talented!) who said she got a little more flexibility and I was welcome to come down for a few hours. Done and done! [Moral of the story – ask for what you want or you will likely be disappointed.]

When I got to Ellen’s house (where the photo shoot was taking place), I saw that the cooking was very much under way and that I was basically invited to observe. The atmosphere was super casual. Catrine Kelty did the food styling, her daughter did the cooking, and Ellen took the photos. They worked really well together and made the whole thing look effortless (we all know it’s not!)

I was surprised to see that Ellen works with almost 100% artificial lighting. Those giant black “curtains” purposely blocked any natural light coming in. And the set-up was relatively minimal – some crates, a table top, and then… thousands of dollars worth of lights, cameras, stands and a strobe that automatically sets off the lights when the flash goes off (fancy stuff!).

Of course equipment is not everything – you need to know what you’re doing! Ellen has been doing food photography since 1997 and Cartine has been styling for over 15 years. They were pros for sure.

Little pieces of white paper bouncing light in just the right spot:

Ellen first took several hand held shots until the right angle and general styling was agreed on. This “draft” was emailed to the client (he couldn’t be there). He then let us know if he wanted any changes (different spoon, plate, more visible veggies, etc.). In the meantime Catrine also perfected the dish – like a surgeon. She had these giant tweezers and tiny spatulas, placing bits of veggies, herbs and chicken in just the right spots; fluffing up layers of lasagna; adding chickpea chunks to hummus. I’m usually hungry when I take my food photos so it was interesting to see how much care goes into each shot when it’s done on a professional level (and there is no husband standing over your head asking if dinner is ready to eat yet ).

Once the general shot is approved, Ellen takes the final pictures with a tripod and makes sure that all the shadows are in the right places and the lighting is well balanced. The final shot gets sent to someone else to post-process.

Just a few super quick snap shots with my point and shoot… I didn’t want to be in the way. Sometimes the food looked better in pictures than in real life – impressive! [It was all delicious though, we ate it for lunch.]

Obviously I don’t have money or space for crazy equipment but this did teach me to at least try to take more time to get the right shot (especially with things that don’t have to be eaten immediately… like muffins and cookies). And I like the idea of practicing the layout with a hand held camera and then busting out the tripod. It’s still one of my 30 by 30 goals to master that beast (which has been collecting dust). One of these days for sure…

So yeah, that was awesome. Thank you Ellen and Catrine for letting me be a part of it!

I thought this would also be the right post to share with you my little DIY project from a while back – portable table tops for photo backgrounds. You may remember that I set up a little photo studio in my bedroom – this was my next project to tackle.

There seem to be a lot of wooden table tops made of planks, but when I went to Lowe’s to get the supplies, the guy at the store convinced me to try this easier route, reminding me that most tables are made of solid wood. So true!

I just bought some 2’x2’ wooden boards (1/2” thick) and stained them. All you need a stain of your choice (I picked out “walnut” stain), an old t-shirt and space, preferably outdoors (the stuff is stinky). And then you just rub a thin layer of the stain over the wood. It was surprisingly runny. I was afraid it would be thick and hard to apply but nope, it took seriously less than a minute.

Easy peasy!

It gets tiny bit darker after drying. This is when you can apply another coat if you want. I got lazy and did just 1 coat. It’s been working just fine.

Some photos on the new “table”

[The colors look different due to exposure in the photos – it’s the same board]

I don’t really miss those planks!

Next up, I wanted to do the distressed look and once again decided to go for a shortcut…

Crackle paint! Btw, this is just the other side of the stained top above. You get 2 table tops in 1!

So the idea is that you paint your surface like you would with any other regular paint, and when it dries out the paint starts to crackle. The reality of it? No cracks in sight!

I was cheap and forwent the primer but reading reviews online, it seems like many people found that it didn’t really crack even with the primer… so I guess I’m glad I saved myself an extra $7.

The board looks almost plain white in the photos. It kind of worked in this little photo shoot so I’ll leave it to it.

Have you ever been to a professional food photo shoot? What would you ask the stylist or photographer? I asked Catrine for styling tips and she referred me to Food Styling by Dolores Custer and Food Fanatics.

Wasabi is newish kaiten dining sushi restaurant located inside the Natick mall. There is a conveyor belt that runs through the entire space with plates of sushi (and other Japanese dishes) on it. You watch them pass by and grab what you like. At the end of the meal, the waitress adds up your bill based on the empty plates. Fun and fast!

Oh and the plates are color-coded, with each color representing a price category. The most expensive plate as you see below is $5, so you really can try a whole bunch of dishes. Love it!

[There are a few other dishes you can order straight off the menu, including soups, salads and some hot appetizers.]

I’ve seen this conveyor belt concept in airports in London. I’m glad they finally brought it to the U.S. (or should I say… Boston area since Wasabi appears to be a chain).

Which one is it gonnna be?

Adam and I tried a few plates as a light lunch. This guy was my favorite:

Tyson’s Roll

It was sort of like a deconstructed California roll (with the crab on the outside) topped with seaweed salad and wasabi cream. It tasted super fresh and delicious.

The seared salmon with red pepper coulis was pretty boring.

Adam got the crunchy salmon. It was pretty fun dipping the maki in the panko mixture for some extra crunch

These two rolls were sort of forgettable. Solid but nothing special.

Eel cucumber maki

Lucky roll – mango, salmon, green and red tobiko (and wasabi cream)

Our bill was about $20 for all of this. Definitely the perfect spot to refuel at during your next shopping spree in the Natick mall.

Have you ever been to a kaitan sushi place?

Want an example? Let’s do something easy, like working out (I have a feeling a lot of you could relate!). I plan on working out daily (actually 6 times a week) but sometimes I don’t feel like doing it at the convenient time… or I start getting nervous about all those pull-ups P90X loves so much, so I tell myself I’m hungry and should eat first. Of course that follows my the need to digest before I can get to it. I tell myself I have the whole day to do it. And then 6/7/8pm rolls around and I’m too tired to work out. Too much wiggle room and a whole lot of nothing gets accomplished!

So I realized on Monday that I need to whip my ass into shape and get organized! Because besides all the things my business requires, I have a personal life too… with responsibilities and a social life, all of which require some juggling. On the personal front, my 30th birthday is coming up and that means it was time to revisit my 30 by 30 list. On this lovely list, I saw the goal of making and blogging about 25 new Russian recipes. And since I’m still 15 recipes short (with the last Russian recipe posted over 2 months ago!), I’ve got some serious catching up to do!! On the calendar a new weekly Russian recipe went immediately. It’s now an appointment I must keep.

There was no way around it. I had to whip something delicious (and Russian) right away – a treat I used to enjoy as a kid – shokoladnaya karthoshka (translation: chocolate potato… yeah). I’ve written about this before but Russian have this weird obsession with trying to shape foods into strange things (examples include chocolate sausage, black poodle cake, little hill cake… and now potatoes!). I suppose out of those examples, potatoes seem almost normal. But have no fear, they always taste amazing.

These babies are made of milk, sugar, butter, cacao and crushed cookies and walnuts, creating fudgy little balls of goodness…which you can choose to shape into mini potatoes, or not. I actually kind of got into it and thought it was fun to make little potato sprouts out of pine nuts.

Make the batter, refrigerate overnight, then shape into potatoes (or just balls) and toss in cacao/sugar mixture.

I Russian treats!

See the resemblance?

How about NOW?

Oh yeah.

Or you can just go the plain non-potatoey route.

Soft fudgy goodness

ARRR (<—sound of me biting into one! )

Printable recipe here

How do you organize yourself? Have you ever shaped foods into something non-traditional? Would you like to try one of these potato truffles? Yes, I’m full of questions today and I want answers!

P.S. The Dahlicious lassi giveaway winner is Lily. Congrats!! Please email me your address to elina@healthyandsane.com

Between Boston and New York, New York was decisively the cooler of the two, and I made sure to show Adam the best the city had to offer. We spent our days eating and drinking all over New York, enjoying perfectly pressed sandwiches oozing with goat cheese and plump tomatoes; feasting on ice cream, cookies and pastries while exploring new neighborhoods (ok the pastries part was all me ); and finishing our nights with indulgent dinners and cocktails at fancy restaurants. It is then that dining out became the core of our relationship. Good food really does bring people together (oh yeah, and love).

Eventually I developed an interest in cooking, but our love for eating out never died – it remains to be our favorite past time. Unfortunately due to my lack of income at the moment, our eating out budget has been cut significantly (it has been the hardest part of our transition). To “ease the pain,” I’ve been trying to recreate memorable meals out at home.

This dish of fideos with ham, shrimp and clams (recipe here; I halved it and it still made about 8 servings!) was inspired by a dish I had in a (surprise, surprise!) New York restaurant, Casa Mono (<—Mario Batali’s Spanish tapas restaurant in Union Square). It was my first time trying fideos which are thin noodles, replacing rice in this paella-like dish (yes, I know paella actually refers to the pan – not the dish – but in my mind rice, seafood and meats all cooked together with safron and Spanish spices = paella, regardless of the vessel they are cooked in). We were so blown away by Casa Mono’s fideos with chorizo and clams – we ordered round 2!

When Kerstin, Shannon and I decided to make a Spanish inspired feast, instead of going out to eat, I was eager to try my hands at a fideos dish myself… and I have to say it came out absolutely perfect – as good, if not better, than the fideos dish at Casa Mono!! Side note: Kerstin made manchego stuffed meatballs and fantastic potatoes and Shannon made some crazy brown rice milk cupcakes with almond cream cheese frosting, and her boyfriends supplied some home brewed beer and hard cider – oh yeah, we ate well that night!).

This dish is a little time consuming but it’s mostly inactive time. You can also make the ham hock broth ahead of time, and then the whole thing will come together leisurely in about 45 minutes. Easy peasy. It was my first time cooking with ham shanks/hocks (I found them in the frozen section at Whole Foods) – they lend an incredible smokiness to the whole dish since the noodles and seafood are cooked in the broth they produce. Oh and I also couldn’t find “fideos” so I bought angel hair pasta and broke it up into smaller pieces – it worked like a charm! This dish was hearty, smoky, briny (from the olives and clams) and buttery (from the shrimp) – I thought it was an incredibly impressive dish that is just perfect for company. Pair it with a simple salad or make a few other tapas, and your guests will be happy. I promise

Have you ever had fideos? Do you like recreating meals out at home?

PS – If you haven’t yet, don’t forget to enter my giveaway!

When I meet new people and they learn about my blog (or at least my love for cooking), the first question is always “What’s your favorite thing to cook?” The answer is – I like cooking everything! Of course the focus is mostly on healthy meals, but I don’t limit myself to any particular ethnic angle. I feel like if I did that, I’d be missing out on so much deliciousness that’s out there. Variety is the spice of life, as they say!

So the second question is 9/10 is this (seriously, almost every time!): “Do you know how to cook Indian food?” And this is where I must confess my limitations. I love love love Indian food, especially the non-traditional dishes the likes of chicken tikka masala (I’m sorry, I know people in India don’t eat it but it still tastes like Indian food to me and that creamy/nutty tomato sauce it comes with just can’t be beat. It’s the best!!). But I haven’t been able to replicate the stuff to save my life. I follow recipes, often highly rated recipes claiming to have restaurant-quality taste, and they still fall flat every.single.time.

The other day, I was browsing through my blog archives and found this old post on pork vindaloo that got rave reviews from me and Adam. I thought, hey – maybe I can cook Indian food after all! This also happened to be a super quick dish so I was excited to give it a go again and hopefully also make it a little more appetizing to look at. The end result was this:

1. It was very easy to make.

2. This dish is hard to photograph but the pictures are definitely an improvement over my previous set.

3. It tasted just ok. I guess my standards have gotten higher. I will not be making this dish again. The search for a great Indian recipe continues!!

The bright spot of dinner were these DAHlicious Lassis sent to me by the company for review. Just in case you are unfamiliar with lassis – they are Indian yogurt based drinks. They are creamy and sweet – sort of like smoothies you enjoy with your dinner. Since a lot of Indian food is quite spicy, they add a nice cooling effect too. I enjoy them on occasion when out (although to be honest, they are typically quite indulgent and sweet and I usually don’t like to drink my calories).

DAHlicious Lassis are made with low fat Indian yogurt, made with milk from grass-fed cows (LOVE), are 100% natural and only lightly sweetened. When reading the labels, I also noticed that the banana flavor doesn’t even have any added sugar. Way to take advantage of banana’s natural sweetness. Very cool!

Here is what these pretties look like in a glass:

Again, love the color! The flavors offered are mango, vanilla, blueberry, strawberry and banana. Adam and I had a little taste test with dinner and honestly enjoyed every one. The creamy, slightly tangy taste of yogurt really comes through in every flavor. My favorites were vanilla (most yogurt-centric in flavor), banana – which had the perfect balance of yogurt and banana flavor (my favorite of the bunch, I think!! Also, this one gets bonus points for not having any added sugar), and blueberry – which has a much more berry forward flavor (most smoothie-like and Adam’s favorite too). The strawberry seemed to be just too mild at first but upon a second taste (since it was one of Adam’s favorites), I sort of enjoyed its subtlety. The mango seemed to the exact opposite – completely overpowering, ranking the least favorite of all.

So there you have it! I think these babies would make for a great on-the-go “snack” too, and they sure are tasty.

Would you like a chance to win some? One lucky Healthy and Sane reader will win 5 coupons for free DAHlicious lassis – so you can taste each flavor too and pick your own favorite (they are sold at Whole Foods and various independent retailers across the country)!

Here are the rules: there are plenty of ways to enter.

1) Leave a comment on this post – Tell me anything Indian related. And I will love you forever if you direct me to a great Indian recipe!

2) Follow me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway (a link to this post must be included to qualify)

3) Pin this post on Pinterest

4) Subscribe to Healthy and Sane by email

5) Like Healthy and Sane on Facebook.

6) Link to this post on your Facebook page.

7) Add Healthy and Sane to your blogroll.

8 ) Link to this post on your blog, if you have one. If you don’t, let someone else know about this giveaway and tell me so in the comments section after they’ve entered the giveaway.

Please leave a separate comment on this post for each qualifying entry. This giveaway is open to US residents only (sorry!) and ends at midnight on Wed, February 8. I will randomly choose 1 winner using random.org and announce him/her the following day. Good luck!

No? Ok, then you should definitely make them. These babies were incredible!!

What, you’re still trying to keep cookies out of your house as part of your New Years resolution to lose a few pounds? I have 2 things to say about that.

1. Are there really people out there that still remember their New Year’s resolutions on January 30? I’m serious. Are there? I can’t seem to remember mine. Sad truth.

2. If you make these cookies, you can taste 1 or 2… and then gift them. Trust me – the recipient will very happy. Very very happy. And making your friends even better friends this year is a really good thing to add to your resolutions.

See? Win-win

A few weeks ago it was my friend Katy’s birthday and I was trying to figure out the perfect gift for her. She’s a doctor so the girl is pretty much living in the hospital. I wanted to give her something that would relax her on some especially exhausting day. Since my mind always goes to food, I thought that maybe baking cookies would be a nice activity for such a day (truth be told, on days like that I prefer to mindlessly shove cookies into my mouth until I pass out. Slowing down and actually baking some is a way better approach. I think Katy agreed!). Katy rarely has time to go grocery shopping so I thought a cookie mix would be a good compromise – homemade cookies, homemade taste – a lot less measuring and planning necessary. Again, win-win.

So I researched and researched. And I found this guide to oatmeal peanut butter jar cookies. They looked perfect!

Of course I wanted to bake a test batch and also to give some to Katy together with the mix so she wouldn’t need to work for her cookies right away.

[Side note: I tried baking them on an ungreased cookie sheet and on a silpat. The results were identical!]

They came out even better than expected!! They were soft and a little gooey on the inside, yet hearty with the addition of oat). And of course the mini peanut butter cups (from Trade Joe’s) made these guys extra special. Everything is better with chocolate!

I made another batch of the mix for Katy…

… and completed the gift with a peanut butter jar (since you have to add pb to the mix), a cookie scoop, and some pretty tags. Honestly, I couldn’t be more proud of myself. The gift turned out SO CUTE!!

Don’t wait for the holidays to shower your friends with homemade gifts. Or to eat cookies.

Are you into DIY gifts? I’d love to hear some new ideas… I’m really digging them these days

Have you heard of miracle berries before? Wikipedia tells me it’s also called synsepalum dulcificum (way harder to pronounce!) which is a plant with a berry that makes sour things taste sweet. The tablets are basically ground up miracle berries – all natural

Last night we had our friends Jim and Liz over for dinner to experiment with this “mysterious fruit tab.” We started the dinner by dissolving a tablet on our tongues and then dove into lemons, limes and grapefruit. Not gonna lie, it was a little scary to take the first bite! Would it really work?

Action shots!

Wow, guys. This was crazy. Seriously insane. Everything was SO SWEET – I honestly had no idea how sweet they’d be (and started getting a little nervous that our whole dinner will taste like pure sugar). Biting into a lime and being overwhelmed by its sweetness was surreal (the limes were the sweetest – almost inedible at first because of how sweet they were).

We calmed our palettes for a minute with these clover rolls, which had nothing to do with our experiment but delicious nonetheless. Definitely a must-make again recipe!

Aside from the rolls which were a last minute decision (a brilliant last minute decision!), the rest of the dinner all centered around citrus. I looked for recipes that utilized oranges (already sweet) but used lemons and grapefruit instead, knowing they would be made sweeter because of the tablets.

Grapefruit and avocado salad with a citrus dressing (here is the base recipes, I subbed grapefruit for oranges in everything)

Jalapeno citrus salmon (based on this recipe, I used half grapefruit, half lemon juice for the glaze)

My plate:

My beverage of choice for the night – it had citrus notes which turned sweet. The beer tasted kind of like a beer cocktail as a result. I liked it

The effect lasts between 30 minutes and 2 hours and over the course of dinner we definitely felt it fade. The citrus still tasted very sweet but we could start slowly also tasting mild sour notes. Luckily non-citrusy components made the meal a real dinner – salmon, avocado, jalapenos all stayed true to themselves

Of course we had to finish the meal with some lemon sherbet. This particular brand was super creamy – the perfect ending to a sweet citrus meal!

This was super fun!! Apparently hot sauce and radishes should have been part of our experiment too. I may just have to keep playing around with this stuff. It’s sort of trippy in a good way

Would you want to try this stuff? What would you make? I may use these for nights when my sweet tooth won’t stop nagging. A wedge of lemon would totally do the trick!

Now before you remind me about my goals of losing a few pounds this year, let me assure you – I’m well aware of this goal. And in case I somehow forgot, my jeans very clearly (although passive aggressively) set the record straight by bursting at the seems. No, I’m not using this expression metaphorically. Literally, I looked down at my jeans yesterday while my sister was in a dressing room trying on wedding dress #3785643, and along both sides of the pant legs, I saw seems. Holding on for their dear life. No bueno.

Needless to say I went with a lighter recipe for brunch (from Cook’s Illustrated The Best Light Recipecookbook). These guys normally know their stuff. They test dozens for recipes before publishing their own. They tell you what went wrong and what went right. I trust them.

Yet somehow this recipe was a fail.

The dough was crazy sticky (I added a lot of flour in an attempt to remedy that); the technique of patting it down (instead of rolling it out) into a rectangle was quite strange (they said it’d be easier but nope, quite awkward in fact) and then finally when I started forming the cinnamon roll, the dough started ripping in so many places – spewing out cinnamon sugar like crazy (you may notice patches in the below picture).

I was not a happy camper. Not at all. But at the end, decided to just plop a bunch of dough and cinnamon sugar blobs into the pan and see what happens.

Cinnamon bun dough blobs

This is what happened ~25 minutes later. Hey, not bad!

Getting these babies out of the pan was no easy task (since I basically poured sugar over the dough, it stuck to the bottom of the pan once melted)… but I persevered.

These were “quick” cinnamon buns, meaning the dough was not yeasted. Instead they were biscuit-like buns with a sweet cinnamon filling and a cream cheese/buttermilk glaze. I won’t be making this recipe again but they were quite tasty at the end.

Have you ever made cinnamon buns (or rolls)? Do you have a favorite lighter recipe? And just for fun… what’s your favorite brunch food? Mine is French toast and this crème brulee baked French toast (which incidentally I made last time I was staying at my sister’s in NY) is my favorite recipe of all times!

enjoyed in the past – but with better pictures

“Old” tomato goat cheese strata (yikes!). Visually improved tomato goat cheese strata:

Same delicious recipe from Cooking Light. Now hopefully you’d actually want to make it

How is your week going so far?? Mine is flying by and I’m not too happy about it. I have things to accomplish!! Although now that I think about it, this weekend I’m going to NY to go wedding dress shopping with my sister (and hopefully celebrating my best friend’s 30th birthday… if I can get a hold of her!) so it’s going to be a good one. So I guess it’s ok that it’s coming so soon.

As I mentioned in the my previous post, my sister’s wedding is definitely motivating me to get a little more serious about healthy eating. I’m not going on any crazy diets but I am being a little more mindful about what I’m eating. I put up a big calendar on the fridge reminding me of the “big day” (sort of funny saying that since it’s not my wedding) and a few pictures of myself at a lower weight for motivation. It’s only been 1 day, but I feel like I’m approaching this in the right way and feel good about weight loss results that are sure to follow!

The best part? I have a few old favorites to ensure I’m eating satisfying healthy meals. Like this strata. It comes together quite quickly, uses ingredients I always have on hand (well, I happened to have fresh sage on hand this time, but I’d just use dried if I didn’t) and it’s so warm and comforting. It has (whole wheat) sourdough bread and goat cheese. You can eat it for breakfast or dinner. And one quarter of the pan is a serving. Really, what’s not to love?!

Diets, shmiets. I’ll stick to this!

What are your favorite healthy and satisfying recipes? Please share with me in the comments!

What are your truths today?