Mo's Kitchen

Crunchy Chia-Coconut Chocolates (And 2 conditional benefit giveaways)

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:30:00 +0000

For an important giveaway, see the bottom of this post and forgo all this chocolate business. Or maybe just come back to it later, because you probably like chocolate.

When I was little, the absolute best part of Christmas and Valentine's Day was chocolate. (Okay, not the absolute best for Christmas, but still up there. I like chocolate; can you tell?)
Even better than just plain ol' chocolate were the chocolate samplers.
The problem with these samplers, though, was that every once in a while I'd bite into one that was very do not want (will anyone even get that reference?) for me. There'd be the sickly-sweet cherry chocolates, the weird raspberry-flavored ones, the caramels (I know, I know, caramel is awesome or whatever is supposedly so great about it) and of course the dreaded coconut.
I never really had a problem with the flavor of coconut. It was just that the texture was so strange and there was a bit too much coconut flavor in such a small bite. Eventually I decided I hated it and just kind of... swore off coconut. Told people I was allergic to it and all that. What, you don't do that?

But then, of course, nowadays I read food blogs - especially blogs geared towards healthy living - and coconut is everywhere. It is pretty hard to escape. I was hearing a lot about coconut butter and coconut oil, so finally I caved and bought some coconut flakes and a jar of oil at Whole Foods.
I blended up the coconut until it was butter, and went from there. And what do you know: it turns out I'm kind of in love with coconut. Which makes it a bit annoying, I would guess, for my coconut-hating family, since I'm now addicted to adding it to everything and am constantly dreaming up ways to use it.

But hey - more fish for Kunta.

Crunchy Chia-Coconut Chocolates

(Recipe kind of by Mo but mostly inspired by and adapted from the amazing Meghan Telpner)

Makes 9 chocolates.

26 g (1/3 cup) good-quality cocoa powder

7 g (1/2 tbsp) virgin coconut oil

3.5 tbsp coconut butter (I use homemade, which works great, but I'm betting store-bought would be even better)

63 g (3 tbsp) raw agave or liquid sweetener of choice, such as honey, maple syrup, date syrup or brown rice syrup

2 pinches sea salt

1 tsp stevia powder (optional, as it's actually not very necessary and make note that this is not pure extract - 1 tsp of pure extract will probably make this taste horrible)

1 tbsp chia seeds (You could also use poppy seeds for the same texture, but it will be less nutritious! Another option would be unsweetened coconut flakes for a more coconutty flavor. Or, really, anything you want.)

Prepare a sheet of wax or parchment paper, a mini-muffin tin or a candy mold.

In a double-boiler, melt together everything but the seeds, stirring with a spatula until it's a smooth liquid. Stir in the chia seeds, and then scoop by the tablespoon onto your wax/parchment paper or candy mold. If on paper, slide onto a plate or cookie sheet and place in either the fridge or the freezer (depending on how long you want to wait to have one ;) ) until hard. Keep in a sealed container in the fridge or freezer. They actually probably could sit at room-temperature (that is, if it's still cool in your area) but I prefer cold chocolate, anyway!

They look like weird cookies, but they're not. They would probably look less weird in molds. But hey, I was free-stylin' it.

The verdict:

While you'd never confuse them with a good hunk of Scharffen Berger or whatever it is you kids eat these days, these are very good, very rich, very filling and do actually taste like chocolates. They actually kind of remind me of Nestle Crunch Bars! They're not intensely coconutty, but you do get a whiff of it and it's lovely (if you like coconut, that is... otherwise these might not be the best idea for you). As I mentioned before, I used homemade coconut butter, which is super easy to make: just blend coconut flakes (preferably unsweetened and unsulphured) in a food processor or high-powered blender until smooth, creamy, and liquid. Easy, cheap, delicious, and it has so many applications!

Also, you can have it be more like Meghan's recipe and use only coconut oil, but a) I didn't want these to be terribly high in fat or have a greasy mouthfeel, b) coconut oil is much more expensive and I use it wisely and c) I just really, really like coconut butter and it behaves pretty much the same way coconut oil does in recipes like these. :)

On a very important note, my friend Monet, whom you may know and love just like I do, has had a tragedy befall her and her family. She has set up a fund on her website and it would be fantastic if you guys could help her out a bit by contributing to it. Any additional money will go to charity in her nephew's name. Thank you!

Please read carefully!

If you donate $8 or more, forward the confirmation email to me at moskitchen(at)yahoo.com and I will enter you in a giveaway, which will have two winners. Each winner will receive:
- 1 $5 Amazon gift certificate
- 1 jar of date syrup (or something similar - we can work it out later!)
- 3 Bourbon-Madagascar vanilla beans

You will get additional entries if, in addition to donating $8+, you leave a comment on this post with a link to your webpage in which you are spreading the word about this "conditional giveaway", linking to both Monet's webpage and this post. You can enter this way *an unlimited number of times*, by posting about this in as many posts as you want (for example, you post about/link to it today, and then maybe you post again on Thursday and you post/link again, et cetera), linking to each post in a comment). If you do this, make sure I know that you are the same person that sent me the confirmation email. Otherwise you'll be entered into the giveaway below.

Note: if there is sensitive information in the confirmation email which you do not wish to share with me, you are free to delete it (such as a credit card number). However, I do not think that there will be, and I will only accept forwarded confirmation emails that are intact with the correct information.

**A separate giveaway only for those unable to donate less than $8 for whatever reason** -- one winner will receive:
- 1 lb of unblanched almond flour

To enter in this separate giveaway, you must leave a comment on this post with a link to your webpage in which you are spreading the word about this "conditional giveaway", linking to both Monet's webpage and this post. You can enter this way *5* times, by posting about this in as many posts as 5 posts (for example, you post about/link to it today, and then maybe you post again on Thursday and you post/link again, et cetera), linking to each post in a comment.
EDIT: I do believe I forgot to mention that if you donate less than $8, to forward the confirmation to me to be entered in this. Sorry!

Both giveaways will end in two weeks (on April 5th at 11:59 PM EST).

Thank you for reading and participating. Every little bit will help!

I know a whole bunch of you would donate anyway out of the goodness of your hearts, but a little incentive never hurt anyone. :)

Oof (An Apology, An Excuse, and A Plan)

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Whoa.

Yeah, I know.

Whoaaaa.

I know!

I've been rather, erm, absent lately, as you may have noticed (if anyone still even pays attention to this :S). I'm very sorry, and I do feel pretty bad about it because I gave not much warning or update. Instead, I kind of just disappeared. =\

This is a result of a combination of things:

1) Technological troubles.

2) A rather large decline in my health

3) General lack of creativity.

4) The need to focus on school.

5) The stress that blogging had been putting on me for a good deal of the time I was doing it.

I've thought long and hard about this, and I thought about how stressed this here blog was making me before I kind of abandoned it and the blogosphere in general. I considered closing up shop, but I do love this place, the people I've met through writing about food and - this is the biggie, here - I love sharing recipes and ideas. It's also a good way for me to work on my writing.

So here's my plan:

1) Move to a different hosting site. I'm sorry, Blogger. You've been great, and all, but actually that's just me being nice 'cause you've kind of sucked. Hard. I actually do enjoy the format you're laid out in, but you constantly eat comments, lose my posts, screw up the HTML and just suck in general. So, I am working on making a new blog on a different site. It's actually up already, as I had to make it as soon as I thought of the name I wanted for it (Oh, yeah, I'm getting a new name, too. I actually put thought into this one. :P) It may take a while to debut, though, because I want to pretty it up before I tell you all where to go. ;)

2) Have a posting schedule: once a week, on Tuesdays (subject to change, of course). I think a big part of my problem with blogging was that when I was beginning, I thought I should have a format like so many food bloggers that I'd followed and been inspired by. So I started posting every day, and that quickly tired me out. The truth is, I'm someone who cooks and bakes a lot at once so that I don't have to do it every day, (and 'cause I frigging love leftovers). And after I stopped posting every day, I would still get anxious about the fact that I hadn't posted in two days. I never had a rigid schedule to keep to, and that's been sucking. Maybe for a normal person this wouldn't be such an issue but it's something I really need in order to function properly. :P So yes, every Tuesday morning. Tuesdays are actually my busiest day, but if I can work all week on a post non-hurriedly and then schedule it to be posted on Tuesdays, then I don't have to worry about it. But since there's so much time between posts, this will lead to what comes next...

3) Stop talking so much about myself and focus on the food. Basically, in the past I've been worried about keeping you guys in the loop with everything that goes on in my life, especially when I miss so much time between posts, and I don't really feel it's necessary or conducive to making this an interesting blog. Sure, I'll throw in an anecdote here and there, but I think cutting down on the "me" part of it will help the logorrhea that is evident in my posts sometimes. There will still be classic Mo-isms, of course, because I can't really help those brain farts of mine, but I'd love to focus more on the food than myself. Some bloggers can pull off focusing on both themselves and the food (after all, half the time they're talking about themselves and talking about their days, it's about food anyway!), but I don't think I can. I'd like to just focus on one post a week, and have it be about the food.

4) Be more involved in the community. The blogging community, that is. I don't want to spend all day on the computer reading blogs and posting comments, but I do want to do more of that than I have been! Part of disappearing from the blogosphere has been disappearing from your guys' blogs, too. While this past week I have been trying to catch up on my favorite food blogs (abstaining from commenting because I thought it might be weird, because I'm a bit stupid), for the past few months I was kind of out of touch with the blogging world (There are so many great recipes I missed!). I'd like to post once a week, and then the rest of the week spend time reading and commenting. I feel like this is a more efficient way to connect, read and learn. Again, maybe for a normal person this schedule isn't needed but it turns out schedules make for a happier, less-stressed Mo.

My overall goal for this is for it to be fun again and not seem like an obligation, a homework assignment or a project that I'll fail at if I don't get it done in time. Blogging should be fun, not stressful and I somehow lost sight of that. I felt an obligation and, while that's fine to have if there are no negative side effects, the stress of this imaginary obligation made me somewhat relieved that I had an excuse for not posting (broken computer) and with each added excuse it made me shrink further and further away from this community, from this blog, and, ultimately, from my feeling of obligation. I regret having left this place so silent for so long, but I have a good feeling that it will have been for the better. I'd like to start over, turn over a new leaf or what have you. My main focus will be to provide you with great, wholesome food. I won't post every recipe I ever make anymore, and just weed it out to include just the good stuff. My hope is that the result will make up for my abandonment. ;)

Now, a couple mentions that I owe that are painfully overdue:

1) Marina of Cook At Home nominated me quite some time ago as one of the best blogs of 2010. At the time my computer troubles made it near impossible to give her the gratitude I felt, so here it is. Thank you so much, Marina. It's wonderful to know that my efforts, however well they turned out, are appreciated and although I sure do feel undeserving of it now, it's incentive to be the best I can at what I'm doing. :) And please do check out her website, it's very resourceful and informative!

2) Months and months and months ago, Ryan from POM Wonderful sent me a big box of their 100% pomegranate juice. My sister, of course, being the juice-loving crazy that she is, drank most of it before I yelled at her because I wanted to make something special with it. She then whined and whined about how long I was taking to make something with it, but the thing is - I was having so much trouble figuring something out! See, I've seen so many recipes calling for pomegranate juice and I really wanted to do something different and unique. I only just figured out what I want to do with it, and I plan on doing that soon. So a huge thank you to Ryan and POM Wonderful for the gift and the patience! I know it's not like I'm contractually obligated to post about it, but it's common courtesy, I feel, and one that, while definitely not overlooked, was a bit neglected.

So yeah, that's about it. I hope everyone has been well and I look forward to getting back in the blogging habit. I've missed you guys, and I'll resume regular posting in a week!

A couple shots from upcoming posts ('cause I'm a tease):

Technical Difficulties

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:32:00 +0000

Hey, all. Sorry for my absence but my computer has crapped out. I'll be back as soon as possible.

Hope you all are well and I hope that those who celebrated have had a lovely Thanksgiving. :)

Chorizo-Kale-Barley Sauté with Cannellini Beans

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 23:45:00 +0000

(Also called, I Can't Name a Dish For My Life.)

First off: I'd like to thank everyone for their lovely birthday wishes. :)

Second: for those commenting that my cake looked silver - I promise, it was just the pretty lighting. ;)

Third: look, I made dinner!

The idea of this dish is that you throw some fresh chorizo in a screaming-hot pan, and render the fatty goodness, then throw in some sun-dried tomatoes and let them reconstitute in the fat, and then cook everything else in it too.

This might not be an epically healthful meal, but damn it if it isn't amazing. And there's so much kale!

I had some free-range buffalo chorizo from the farmer's market in the freezer, but feel free to use whatever kind of spicy sausage you like. Even Italian would be wonderful. :)

Chorizo-Kale-Barley Sauté with Cannellini Beans

(Recipe by Mo)

~ 3/4 lb chorizo or Andouille sausage (I had 10 oz, which was 3 sausages)

8 sun-dried tomato halves (preserved with salt), soaked in some warm water if they're a little tough and chopped roughly

~5 good-sized cloves garlic, minced or pressed

Pinch asafoetida (optional)

About 5-6 "stalks" worth of kale, thinly sliced

1/2 cup whole barley, cooked in lightly salted water

1 (15 oz) can cannellini beans, drained

Heat a large pan (I used nonstick so it had to be on low and heated for a long time; with stainless steel I'd heat it on medium).

Dice the sausage (or take them out of their casings and crumble).

When the pan is very, very hot, toss the sausage in and cook. If the pan is hot enough, the sausage should immediately begin releasing its fat. Add the tomatoes and let them absorb some of the fat. Then add the garlic and asafoetida, sauté a bit, and add the kale, barley and cannellini beans. Let it all cook together, absorbing the flavors of the chorizo. If you'd like it to be more spicy, season with some crushed red pepper.

The verdict: I knew I was a genius, but...

Nah, I kid, but this is fantastic. It's so warm, spicy and hearty, and just pure deliciousness. I have nothing more to say, honestly, except that this is a perfect chilly-weather dish. Oh, and chorizo-infused sun-dried tomatoes are the bomb-diggity.

Oh, and for those of you who don't eat meat - I'm sure that this would work well with vegetarian/vegan sausages, but you'd need to add oil to pan because there's no way any of the fat in the "sausages" would seep out to let you sauté in it, and you'd need to adjust for the seasonings (paprika, red pepper flakes, pepper, salt; stuff like that). It'd be less simple, but I'm sure you could figure something out. :)

Almond Refrigerator Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:49:00 +0000

Oh hi. How have you been? Good!

Me? I've been fairly non-existent.

I've actually just been busy and having a hell of a time understanding high school chemistry. S P D F levels, something about electron orbital shapes, and a bunch of phooey such as this. I'm more of a biology (specifically evolution and DNA) kind of a gal, sorry.
And I was sick last week! My sister was kind enough to infect me with her germs, but I was smart enough to treat myself well enough that I didn't get as bad as she did. Take that, illness!

I actually have quite a few posts lined up, because I have been baking. I've just been sucking at blogging, and reading blogs, because as has been pointed out before: eating requires cooking, and (food) blogging requires cooking, but eating is more important than blogging. I took pictures and saved the recipes, though. I have found/somewhat-created the (healthy) banana bread recipe. THE. It is perfect in every way. <3

But all of this is not important right now. What is important is the fact that I am not 16 anymore as of this morning. I'm 17. Which somehow seems so much older than 16 is, despite the fact that I don't feel any different. And you know what? If I'd been born in 1992 instead of '93, I could totally vote in the midterm elections today! But nooooooooo, my parents were too busy with my sister in '92 to care about timing this perfectly. When I have kids I'm totally going to be more considerate of them.

But anyway, in case you didn't get the whole "I'm 17" thing, it's my birthday today. To celebrate, I made a cake. After two years of trying to make my birthday cake, I finally did it.

In 2008, I was just getting into the whole being-obsessed-with-food thing. I wasn't quite into the health zone that I am now, but I was getting there. I was determined to make this cake for my birthday. I was sooo excited. Before I'd made cupcakes and stuff, but never a cake! But, my parents decided I'd spend my birthday with my grandparents, so I couldn't make a cake. "Okay," I decided, "I'm definitely making one next year, though!"

And then "swine flu" came along. Despite having gotten our flu shots, my sister still caught the H1N1 virus on Halloween, which I'd spent at a friend's house. The next day, I was picked up from my friend's house and told to pack up and leave the house so I wouldn't get infected. I spent November 1st driving to my grandparents' house and staying in their guest rooms, away from them in case I was already infected (and I was because, as sisters are so often kind-enough to do, my sister had once again shared her germs with me). I woke up on my birthday feeling quite ill, and spent my 16th birthday in a car driving home with the swine flu, all the while thinking, "owwwwww" and, of course, "I am most-definitely-without-a-single-doubt making a cake next year. GOD WILLS IT!"

So, today's my birthday, and I don't have to be at anyone's house, and I was already sick last week so that's out of the way. So guess what? I made a cake. Boo-ya.

I had this bad boy saved in my recipe files since Spring 2009 when I first saw it on Tastespotting. I bought the ingredients for it last year but of course that didn't work out. ;) So I did it this year, and it turned out fabulously!

I ended up doubling the recipe, not on purpose but because I measured out 1 cup of yogurt instead of 1/2 cup, and realized this mistake after I added the sweetener. Whoops.
But it turned out quite well; I just had a thicker cake. :D I also didn't bother cutting the cake in half, because I am A) lazy and B) lacking a big-enough and good-enough knife and C) afraid of messing things such as birthday cakes up. It's good anyway, so you'll just have to trust me.

Almond Refrigerator Cake
(Recipe very, very slightly adapted from Comfy Belly)

168 g (1/2 cup) honey
168 g (1/2 cup) light agave nectar
225 g (1 cup) plain organic nonfat yogurt
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
4 large organic eggs
6 tbsp organic butter, melted
2 pinches salt
2 tsp baking soda
4 cups almond flour (For a prettier cake, use blanched almond flour; I for one am not concerned by such things and besides, unblanched is more nutritious!)

Preheat oven to 310 degrees F.

Combine honey, agave, yogurt, vanilla, eggs and butter in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine the salt, baking soda and almond flour, then add to the wet ingredients.
Lube up a cake pan (I used a springform cake pan, which made my life incredibly easier - for the record I believe it's a 10" pan) and add the batter. Bake for 35-50 minutes (mine took 50, but I had to refrigerate mine for a few hours to go to school so I think it took longer to bake because of that). If it starts looking dark, cover with a piece of aluminum foil. Just keep an eye on it and it'll be fine!
Remove from the oven and take out of the pan (this is where springform works marvelously <3). Let cool as you make the ganache:

1.5 cups all-natural chocolate chips
1-2 (I actually used about 2.5) tsp nonfat plain yogurt
~2.5 tbsp butter

In a double-boiler, combine all of the ingredients and stir occasionally until it has all melted and is a chocolate liquid. I am actually quite impatient and ended up giving up on the bain-marie idea and doing it in the microwave, stirring every 20 seconds. ;) If it's too thick, add more butter or yogurt. Point is, once it's a chocolate liquid, pour on top of the cake and smooth it out, letting it drip over the sides. If it's depressed in the middle like it is mine (it probably won't be if you bake it immediately if you don't suck at estimating how much time it's going to take you to make stuff before you have to go to school [I'm pretty sure most of you don't even go to school anymore so, you know, you see my point]) then you get to have a filler for that to pretend that it's actually an even top. Yahoo!

Hopefully you can smooth it over the edge better than I can if you care about looks and silly things like that. ;)

Once the ganache is good and ready, refrigerate the cake until everything is cooled. Meanwhile, lick the ganache bowl. Man, that stuff is good!
Once cooled, enjoy the heck out of it. :)

The verdict: This stuff is crack. Seriously. CRACK. Fairly nutritious crack, too. Score.
The cake is somewhat grainy, but not at all in a bad way, and it has such a lovely vanilla-almond flavor. The ganache is... amazing beyond belief, and combined with the cake it is... crack. And the best part is, you don't even get a sugar rush or anything unless you just eat all of the ganache. ;)

I hope you all have been swell! I'm off to buy sneakers, and then do a bunch of much-needed blog reading. :D

Roasted Banana Pasta with Peanut-Cinnamon Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:36:00 +0000

That's right. I went there.

I made banana pasta.

Now, this recipe definitely needs some tinkering, because it's not perfect. But for a first try at something I don't think has been done before... not bad; not bad at all.

This was also my first time making pasta. I did it by hand. Not as labor-intensive as people like to make you think; it's just hard to get even pieces.

I grossly underestimated how many bananas would make 1 cup of banana purée, so I had to supplement about 3/4 cup of banana purée with some organic plain nonfat yogurt. This probably affected the flavor a lot, so the only change I'm making in the recipe from what I actually did is to up the amount of bananas.

Roasted Banana Pasta
(Recipe by Mo)

4-6 very ripe bananas, depending on size
1 tbsp dark brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Chop the bananas in roughly 1/2"-thick slice, combine in a bowl with the brown sugar (be gentle!), and spread on a pan in an even layer. Roast for about 20ish minutes, more or less. Be sure to keep an eye on them, because the sugar likes to burn. ;)

Allow the bananas to cool, then purée them and any syrup in the pan. Measure out a cup of the puree and add to a bowl with...

1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Then in a larger bowl, combine:

240 g (2 cups) white whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp fine sea salt (I think it could use more)

Use your fist to make a little ditch in the flour mixture, then pour in the banana-sugar mixture. With a spatula (the mixing kind, not the flipping kind), bring the two together until a dough is beginning to form. It will seem like there's too much flour, but trust me, there's enough. When it's getting too difficult to combine in the bowl, dump the dough onto a clean floured surface and bring it together with your hands in a mount. Really, just smoosh it all together until it's not a crumbly pile of... crumbs. (I suppose I should point out that you could also just combine this all in your food processor, because that would be a lot easier. But my food processor is tiny and it wouldn't have worked out.)
Knead as much as you can, adding flour as needed (flour both your board and your hands very well - because of the sugar content, it gets very sticky!). When it gets hard to knead, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

Split the dough in 6 pieces, and keeping the other pieces wrapped while you work on each piece, roll it out as uniformly thin as you would like. You could also use a pasta machine, and this would go so much easier. However, I'm without one so...
You want to roll the dough out into a rectangle. It helps to roll the dough out in as much of a rectangle as you can, then fold it in thirds and roll it out that way. Anyway, roll it out into the best rectangle you can, as thin or as thick as you want (just try to make sure that all 6 pieces of dough get rolled and cut to be the same size and thickness), using a lot of flour to make sure the dough doesn't stick to the board. I've heard of using powdered sugar instead of flour so it doesn't add more flour to the actual dough, and you're welcome to try that as well.
Cut the dough in equal pieces and place on a lightly floured board/pan.

It's kind of interesting to me that the pieces actually look kind of equal here. They totally weren't. At all.

Now, prepare the sauce!

Peanut-Cinnamon Sauce
(Recipe by Mo)

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp smooth, all-natural, salted peanut butter (I used Trader Joe's brand, which just has roasted peanuts and salt)
1/2 cup 1% milk or neutral-flavored nondairy milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tbsp agave nectar (I used raw; I think the flavor worked better here)

Measure the peanut butter and milk into a microwave-safe container (I just used a pyrex measuring cup) and microwave for about 90 seconds. With a fork, whisk together the peanut butter and milk until it's a smooth, homogenous mixture. Stir in the cinnamon and then microwave at 30 second intervals, whisking in between, until the sauce is the texture you desire. Add the agave and serve.

Once the sauce is finished, prepare a pot of water and set it to boil. Once boiling, drop in all of the pasta at once and boil for no more than 1 minute. Drain quickly, rinse with cold water, and serve with the sauce.

The verdict: I like it, I really do, but there are definitely some things I'd like to change about the pasta recipe. First, I'd like to try it with raw bananas and white sugar. The roasted banana-brown sugar flavor was delicious, don't get me wrong, but as you can see above, the color is kind of... gross. I'd also work on getting the noodles to be more uniform, because I ended up overcooking some of the pasta because they were thinner/smaller. And, like I mentioned, I'd add a bit more salt to bring the flavor out. But overall, it was a success! My dad liked the flavor; he just didn't like the texture because it was overcooked. I can look past such things. :P
The sauce, though... man, that stuff's good. Seriously. Super-easy and sooo delicious. You should make it. Now.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you've enjoyed my foray into the world of sweet pastas! I'm off to go catch up on all of your blogs. ;)

Oh, and you may or may not have noticed that I've stopped moderating comments. Blogger seems to be funky and I've noticed that a lot of people get their comments eaten by Blogger, or they at least think that they are. So, I've decided to let it just publish. I can't really remember why I wanted to moderate comments in the first place. :P So go forth and comment! Only if you want to, though.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto/Sauce (And a Sun-Dried Tomato Veggie Pasta Salad)

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:15:00 +0000

When I was in 2nd grade, I was a little obsessed with pesto.

See, my mom first introduced it to me by way of simply dumping a container of store-bought pesto onto a box's worth of cooked pasta. That right there was heaven. I had no idea what exactly pesto was except some delicious green stuff Mom put on pasta, but I knew I loved it. I remember the first time I actually saw the container, and I asked my mom if I could have a spoonful. Naturally she said no, but I found other ways to get my pesto fix.

Namely, in a delicious creation by yours truly. See, you take store-bought potato bread, slather both sides with pesto, layer a couple slices of bologna between them and chow down. If I could find organic bologna and a good potato-bread recipe, I'd totally make this again. It's that good.

Nowadays we drive to see my grandparents in Maine during the summer, because it's cheaper than flying (even with the gas prices, apparently). But we used to fly to an airport in New Hampshire, and then my gramps would pick us up and drive us the rest of the way. Flying would be an all-day affair - we'd get to the airport super-early, check in all our stuff, and hang around for a while at the airport. By the time we'd get to the airport in NH, it'd be dinnertime, so my gramps would pack sandwiches for us to eat on the drive. He'd call my mom up about a week before to see what he should make. The summer of the year I discovered my special sandwich, I requested a "bologna with pesto on potato bread" sandwich.

When it came time to eat this sandwich, however, I opened the little sandwich baggie and noticed something red. Red did not belong on my sandwich, and it freaked me out. I slowly peeled the top slice of bread away from the rest of the sandwich and was horrified to find some red goop all over the bread and bologna instead of my lovely green goop. Disgusted, I put it back in the sandwich bag and refused to eat it. Oh, and I threw a big fit about it, too, because I was hungry. I asked my gramps what the red stuff was and he said, "pesto". I knew he was crazy to think this, because pesto was green. Then it was somehow determined that my pesto was made out of some kind of tomato. Ewww, right?

I probably would have liked the sandwich if I'd bothered to try it, but I was one stubborn kid. I sat with my arms crossed, staring at the baggie slowly finding its way under the seat in front of me, thinking about how unfair life was and how gross this so-called "sun-dried tomato pesto" was.

This event was so traumatic that I never had a sun-dried tomato until 2009. Yeah, I know.

And I'm here today to tell you this - sun-dried tomatoes aren't that bad. In fact, they're a little delicious.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
(Recipe by Mo, with inspiration from Eating Well)

12 (dry) sun-dried tomato halves (I use Whole Foods' brand of sun-dried tomatoes, which are preserved with salt instead of artificial preservatives.)
1/4 cup pepitas
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves
1 garlic clove
1/2 cup frozen peas, cooked (measured while frozen)
1/4 tsp Aleppo pepper (or standard crushed red pepper)
2 tbsp EVOO
1 tbsp lemon juice
Soaking liquid
Salt, if needed (mine didn't but if you're using tomatoes without salt then add about 1/4 tsp)

Place the tomatoes in a small bowl and cover with boiling/hot water. I used water reserved from a pot of pasta I boiled for the veggie salad. Let sit while you prepare all of the other ingredients.

Pan-toast the pepitas over medium-high, shaking the pan constantly. They're done when golden-brown and popping. Does anyone else think that they start smelling like Italian sausage at this point?

When the tomatoes are soft, remove them with a slotted spoon and add to the bowl of your food processor along with all of the ingredients except the EVOO, lemon juice and soaking liquid.
Blend the ingredients as much as you can, scraping down the sides. Finally, with the machine running, pour in the oil and lemon juice. By the tablespoon, pour in the soaking liquid from your tomatoes (I used about 5) until the pesto has reached your desired consistency. Taste, season with salt as necessary, and serve.

I used all of the pesto as the dressing for a pasta salad:

1 (13.5 oz) box whole-grain rotini pasta
1 English (seedless) cucumber
1 US dry pint of grape or cherry tomatoes
9 average-sized scallions (1 bunch)
Fresh baby spinach, chopped and lightly cooked
Any veggies you'd like (I'dve liked to have added broccoli for example but the store's selection was sub-par)
One batch of the above sun-dried tomato pesto

Cook the pasta in salted water, drain and rinse with water to remove the starch.
Chop all of the veggies however you'd like and combine in a large bowl with the pasta and the pesto. Enjoy!

You can't see the tomatoes, but I promise they're there. See the spot of red under the piece of pasta near the bean patty? That's a tomato, I swear.

The verdict: the pesto is amazing. I was actually kind of surprised by how good this stuff tastes, but it's delicious. This was my first time using sun-dried tomatoes in a pesto that didn't also incorporate basil and spinach, so I was a little nervous that the flavor would be too overwhelming. It wasn't at all! The flavor is actually very mellow and complemented by the tartness of the lemon. And of course it went fantastically with the veggie pasta salad. :)

I'm sorry for my absence around here lately, but I have a couple of good posts in store. Including one in which I share how to make something quite unique. ;)

Pumpkin Bagels

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:05:00 +0000

Dear bagel-makers,

Never again will I doubt your prowess in the field of baking. For too long I have thought, "So? They're just bagels."

I admit, bagel-makers, that ever since I learned how to work with yeast and make bread, I've been a little cocky. I figured if I could make loaves of bread from scratch without even using a recipe, surely I could make little round loaves with holes in the middle. Easy, right?

Alas, I was wrong. So wrong. I mean, I made bagels, and they were good. But... dang, I was impressed by how un-easy it was.

I'm sure with some practice it'll get easier, but there are some things that I just don't get. Like, I let my bagels rest a little, and then when I tried to boil them the act of picking them up both deflated them and stretched them. I'd like to pretend that that was on purpose and I was going for the "deflated, stretched-out" look, but I'm not going to. Also, they're wrinkly. I wasn't going for the "geezer" look, either. Did I just make a wrinkly flagel?

It's a smidge blurry, but it was the only one I took that truly conveyed the flatness and ugly. The picture below is of the thickest, most uniform one I made. I could have pretended that they were all pretty, but where would that have gotten me?

And dudes - it is so sticky! I had to spray oil on my hands every time I formed a new bagel. Otherwise I just ended up with very sticky, gummy, spiced fingers.

I know that I didn't use a very traditional bagel recipe (in any sense). But still - Pam's bagels look awesome. Why don't mine?

So I appeal to you, bagel-makers - professional and amateur. Show me how to make a perfect bagel and tell me what I did wrong. In return, I will love you long time.

Sincerely,

Pumpkin Spiced Bagels

(Recipe adapted by Mo from A Taste of Home Healthy Cooking)

180 g (1.5 cups) white whole wheat flour

180 g (1.5 cups) unbleached bread flour

3/4 tsp ground nutmeg, freshly grated

1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp fine sea salt

2 tsp instant yeast

2/3 cup warm water

122 g (1/2 cup) canned pumpkin purée

1/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

15 g (1 tbsp) oil of choice

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine the wet ingredients - including sugar - in a smaller bowl. Pour the wet into the dry and combine until a dough is formed. Dust a clean work surface with flour, dump the dough onto the surface, and knead, flouring the board and your hands as needed to keep the dough from sticking, for about 10-12 minutes, until a smooth and supple dough is formed. Oil a bowl, place the dough in the bowl, toss to coat, cover and rise in a warm place for 90 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Once risen, deflate and separate into 9 balls (it helps to weigh this to ensure accuracy, if you're anal-retentive like I am). Using your thumb (grease your hands for ease if you'd like), poke a 1" hole in each ball. Stretch and and shape dough to form an even ring. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.

Fill a large pot 2/3 with water, cover (just so it boils faster; it's not necessary) and bring to a boil. Once at a boil and the bagels have been resting for 10 minutes, drop two in at a time and cook for 45 seconds on each side (1.5 minutes total); drain on paper towels. Grease a baking sheet and dust with cornmeal. Prepare the glaze (I actually skipped this and brushed melted butter on them instead. I hear milk also works if, like me, you're out of eggs):

1 egg white

1/4 cup water

Whisk together the egg white and water; brush the boiled bagels with the glaze and place them on the baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

The verdict: they taste like bagels, so this is technically a success. Score! I have to say, I can't really taste the pumpkin and I think I would have said "cinnamon" or something similar if asked to name the flavor in a blind test. But hey, when life and Jess give you pumpkin, you gotta use it in everything. Also, I'dve added a bit more salt but salt is kind of my lover so I don't know if that's just me being picky. ;)

Oh, and a special thanks to Debbi from Debbi Does Dinner for featuring From Apples To Zucchini on her site, which is the whole reason I found this recipe. :P

Dearest "Blog Buddies" re: Banana Pasta

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:07:00 +0000

So, I was talking to my father about vanilla, which somehow turned into a discussion about ice cream, which somehow turned into a discussion about how Cavendish bananas are inferior to the rest of the world's bananas according to banana researchers.

Are you following me?

So anyway, suddenly an idea sprang to my head.

"I just got a really weird idea."

"What?"

"Banana pasta!"

"Oh, god, that's even worse."

"Why, what were you thinking of?"

"Banana ice cream."

"Oh, that's already been done."

At first my dad, unbeknown to me, thought I meant bananas on pasta. Noooooooooo, I meant making pasta out of bananas!

"Oh GodJesusLordAllahChrist *beep*"

Clearly, he's not excited about the idea.

Then he started challenging me.

"That's like... would you eat meatball ice cream?"

"Probably! Just to know what it was like."

"*facepalm*"

After a bit more arguing, he said, "I bet your blog buddies wouldn't eat your banana pasta either."

I of course told him that you all are far more adventurous regarding food, so you probably would.

"Oh yeah? Go ask them. Take a poll."

"Okay!"

"And ask them if they'd eat meatball ice cream, too!"

Which brings me to this:

Would you eat pasta made out of bananas? As a dessert, of course.

Would you ever eat meatball ice cream, at least one bite to see what it was like?

I shall be back with food! Possibly banana pasta...

PS - please don't think my dad is mean. He's actually quite nice and supportive. Just unaware of how much unconventional food is out there, and likes to stay ignorant regarding the deliciousness of such things. ;)

Pumpkin Granola

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:14:00 +0000

My friends, I have hit the pumpkin jackpot.

I don't just have a couple of cans lying around, no.

You want to know how much pumpkin I have?

12.0625 pounds.

And that's not even counting the huge open can I have in the fridge, which is only about halfway empty.

Are you jealous yet?

I think good ol' Libby's has hit shelves around the country now, so if you were feeling pumpkin-deprived, go on and get some.

So, with all of this pumpkin lying around, I felt it was necessary to make something with pumpkin. It's almost stressful, thinking about all of the things I could and should make with the stuff. Bread, muffins, quick bread, sauces, pastas, bars... I decided to sit back, take a deep breath and decide what I was in the mood for. That turned out to be granola.

Pumpkin Granola
(Recipe adapted by Mo from Mahalo.com)

Part one:
320 g (4 cups) rolled oats
32 g (2 cups) puffed wheat or other puffed cereal
1/4 cup finely chopped almonds or pecans
1/2 cup pepitas

Part two:
240 g (1 cup) canned pumpkin purée
84 g (1/4 cup) honey (maple syrup would also be lovely here, but I don't have much left)
20 g (1 tbsp + 1 tsp) unsulphured molasses
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp dark brown sugar
30 g (2 tbsp) oil of choice
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp fine sea salt
2.5 - 3 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1.5 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1/2 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, combine all of part one. Set aside
In a smaller bowl, whisk together all of part two.
Add part two to part one and combine well.
In a large pan or rimmed baking sheet, spread out the granola mixture evenly. Bake for 30-40 minutes (my batch took about 35 minutes) until granola is dry, crispy and a slightly darker shade than it was when you put it in the oven (it's hard to tell you to take it out when it's "golden", because it's already kind of golden when you put it in). Be sure to give it a stir every 10-15 minutes.
Add the raisins to the granola, let cool and enjoy!

The verdict: This is so delicious. It's like candy, only... not? It's not super pumpkin-y, but it's pumpkin-y enough for me and that's what matters. I also adore the slight caramel flavor that the mixture of honey, molasses and brown sugar gives it. Especially the brown sugar. Brown sugar and I have a special relationship.

I hope everyone has a fantastic day. :)

PS - Nicole, one of my favorite bloggers, is giving away two mandolines! Are you excited? I am.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 00:31:00 +0000

I know, I know, I know.

"Well, hey, stranger. Where ya been?"

What? I've been around.

"Your last post was 13 days ago."

Shhhhhhhhhhh. Shhh. Shush. I have a good excuse. I swear.

Well, it's not exactly a concrete excuse. But hear me out.

I've been cooking. Reeni's Farinata Genovese, with thinly sliced garlic fried until brown in the oil instead of onion - amazing. I've made it twice already. Plus, it's ridiculously healthy. So go make it. One thing though - I don't want to depress you or anything, but you know that prison scene in Goodfellas where Paul Cicero slices garlic paper-thin and Henry Hill talks about how, by slicing the garlic so thin, it'd liquefy in just a little oil? You remember drooling over the thought of that? Well prepare to be disappointed - it's all lies! LIES, I tell you! The slices just end up as deep-fried garlic slices. :( (Delicious garlic slices, mind you.)
I've been baking. Whole Wheat Oaty Pumpkin Carrot Tops work wonderfully with brown rice flour instead of oat flour, fyi. Oh, and Nicole's Carrot Raisin Bran Muffins are delicious. I'd eat two at a time if one wasn't so filling.
I've just been making good eats. Jess's Carrot-Fig 'Nola Bars are fantastic, even if you only have dates for the dried fruit and get the dry-to-wet ratio wrong by using the wrong type of puffed grain. Try 'em. :)

The problem is, I've been uninspired to make much of anything. And when I have, I haven't bothered to take pictures or notes on what I did differently. Also, my dad is evil keeps buying Cumin & Chili Chickpeas from Trader Joe's. This is a problem because then when I'm hungry, I just microwave some frozen organic chopped spinach, add some of the chickpeas and some lemon juice and munch away. It's fast, it's simple, it's delicious and it's healthy. And it's been making me too lazy to actually cook dinner. As my dad said as I was explaining why it was good that he forgot to get the chickpeas after his last venture to Trader Joe's, "It's too convenient." Along with that, we've also been eating out of the freezer a lot. (Remember that hurricane I was talking about? Yeah, we didn't even get rain from that bad boy. But we don't have a lot of freezer space in the first place so I figured it might be a good idea to keep on eating out of the freezer.) We're currently working on a container of chili that was put in the freezer in April. Yeah, that's right, I made chili in April. Whatchya gonna do about it?

Also, I've been a little busy, and and I had strept a little while ago too. And then I got a cold. I've still got the cough part of that. And I thought a lot about taking the time to let you all know, because I was getting a little stressed that time was slipping away. But I realized that if something I'm meant to do for fun is stressing me out because I feel obligated to do it... something's wrong there, yes? :)

But I felt a little ridiculous going 2 weeks without a peep. So I'm not. ;) All I can say is... I'm so glad I started making vanilla extract so long ago and forgot to post about it.

Making vanilla extract is suuuper simple. Seriously. Like, you will kick yourself over how simple it is.

Here be the necessary materials:

Vanilla beans. Good-quality, please. It really counts here. But good-quality doesn't mean super expensive. I had Penzeys vanilla beans (you know, just... laying around, because I'm cool like that) but if you're looking for a good deal on vanilla beans look here. The price is so cheap you'll feel like you might now owe someone a kidney for getting so many for so little, and everyone loooves them.

Vodka. This is a funny story, actually. I kept bothering my dad to get me some vodka* from the liquor store, and finally I got him to take me to the ABC store on the way home from the gym. I needed it for two things: Mango-Lime Sorbet and to make more vanilla extract. We were driving in our really old, crappy Ford van for some reason, and we pulled up. Stupidly, I got out and followed my dad into the store. More stupidly so, my dad didn't stop me. So we find the shelf of Absolut, which is my brand of choice both because it's my mom's brand of choice and because I kind of have a thing for Sweden. I pick up two 200ml bottles of Absolut, one in each hand (one for possible culinary needs besides extract, and one for extract) and walk over with a big, friendly smile on my face to the lone cashier. She's a young woman, probably 10 years older than me, and she looks quite bored. She starts to do the transaction and then she realizes that I have a baby face and she goes bug-eyed. "How old are you? o.o" Because I'm a truthful person, I answered honestly. "16. I'm making vanilla extract. :D" And she says, "I can't sell this to you. o.o" And my dad says, "You're selling it to ME!" And she looks really freaked out and won't sell it. She's clutching one bottle in each hand to her chest, kind of how you see little kids clutch their toys to their chest when someone wants them to share. So we leave, with me grumbling about how I don't even like alcohol. Then in the car I realized why exactly we probably freaked her out, besides the fact that she just almost sold booze to a teenager. Picture this: a teenage girl holding two tiny bottles of vodka, being accompanied by an old fart (sorry, daddy) who drives a creepy van. Yeah, that doesn't scream inappropriate or anything. The moral of this story is, mommies buy booze better.

Now, here's what you do:

Ratio:
At least 3 vanilla beans for every 200ml (approx. 1 cup) of vodka or other strong liquor

Place thy beans on a plate or a cutting board.

With a very sharp knife, cut the beans in half.

Split the bean halves down the middle and open them up a little.

Excuse my disgusting fingernails. You probably didn't know they looked gross until I pointed it out but that's okay. Also, yes, the sharpest knife I own is currently a knife that came with a vegetable carving set.

Place the beans in your vodka. I used the bottle it came with because it was the perfect size, but if you want to use just a cup from a rather large bottle, it's okay to recycle a glass bottle or even a jar. Anything works, I promise! One thing, though - you might want to pour out a little of the vodka from the jar if you're using a 200ml jar as-is. I forgot that that's what I did last time I made it. When I made it this time, I kind of forgot about that important thing Archimedes was so into back in the day. He flashed Syracuse over it, and then there was I, I forgetting all about it whilst making vanilla extract. So ashamed.

Err, anyway.

The next part is really simple. Just... give it a shake, put it in the cabinet and forget about it. Whenever you feel like doing so, shake the bottle around to help with the extracting process. But really, the most difficult thing about making your own extract is waiting. But it's also super pretty the first time, because you can see the vanilla staining the vodka from the bottom up.

This was taken about a week and a half after the beans were placed in the vodka.

You will almost not want to shake it up, but then you'll remember that you want vanilla extract more than you want a pretty bottle of vodka in your cabinet.

Let your vodka sit for at least 8-9 weeks. The longer you let it sit (with intermittent shaking), the more potent and lovely the flavor shall be. My vodka actually isn't quite done yet, so I can't show you what mine looks like when done, but it should be very dark and look like the final product of this vanilla extract experiment.

Bonus: if you start now, these bottles would make amaaazing Christmas gifts for a special someone. :) Actually, the link above kind of explains that already. But still.
And if you don't want to give away your precious extract, consider this:
Your hands will smell delicious. For quite a while. Refrain from eating your fingers.

It broke my heart to wash the little seeds off!

So there you have it. A post. :) Now I just have to catch up on all the blogs I've missed...

*Just a disclaimer, here: I don't and don't intend to drink. Alcohol has always been disgusting to me. It's not some kind of self-righteous thing where I look down on everyone who drinks alcohol, as though I think they're immoral. There's no religious conviction that prevents me of drinking (I'm not religious, so it'd be kind of weird if that was the case, huh?). I just simply haaate the taste. Hate it. The smell's no great thing either. So rest assured, folks, that I do not use and abuse. Culinary purposes only! Also, I'm 16 and I have no idea how to even purchase alcohol besides asking a parent to get some. I'm dependent like that.

Pasta alla Formiana

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:24:00 +0000

There are some dishes, where you just know.

You know when you see the recipe.

You know as you gather the ingredients.

You know as you tamper with the recipe to suit your needs; your resources; your tastes.

You know as you put it together, your hands smelling of oregano and your counters red with tomato. (Well... if you're really messy, your counters will be red.)

You know when you put it in the oven.

You know when you pass by the oven and sniff in the scent wafting out as though it's cocaine and you're Paris Hilton (it's not my oven, Officer... I swear).

You know when you take it out of the oven and obligingly let it rest for 5 minutes.

You just know. You know it's good. And of course, you're not at all mistaken.

I knew when I saw Reeni's post featuring Pasta alla Formiana, a Giada recipe. Just... look at it. How can you not want to make that? (Shut up, tomato-haters - I'm talking to you, Dakota Fanning*)

This was my first experience with a Giada de Laurentiis recipe. I have to admit, I'm kind of prejudiced against her. Sure, she's beautiful, and she seems like a lovely person. But every 5 frigging minutes, you know what comes out of her mouth? "Look at how pretty that is! I just love it!" I can only take so much of that, Giada. Only. So. Much. I guess as a subconscious revolt, I haven't been tempted to try any of her recipes. Yes, I don't try Giada's recipes because she annoys me - immature, I know. I haven't tried any of Emeril's or the Neelys' recipes, either; wanna guess why?

But it's also technically a Reeni recipe, which makes it okay, since Reeni isn't annoying. :D

I knew I wanted to make the recipe as soon as I saw it, but I wasn't sure when that'd happen because it'd been a while since we'd been able to get to our favorite place to buy tomatoes. Then fate intervened and my dad's friend sent him home with a billion tomatoes ("assorted slicers, roma, Juliet [mini-Roma grapes] , Sun Gold")...

Sun gold (tiny little orange cherry tomatoes) not pictured, as I gave them to Mom, who's kind of obsessed with them.

three different types of basil - large leaf Italian, Marseiles, and Thai...

Italian at the bottom, Marseilles at the left, Thai at the right. I probably could have spaced them farther apart so you can actually tell the difference. Oh well.

and some assorted hot peppers, (the latter of which I have nooo idea what to do with =S), all from her garden!

Anyhow, it was all in good timing, because when I finally got my tomatoes I also realized what to do with some of the Smart Ground in the freezer. Add some to the recipe, duhhh. This time I used the only package of "sausage" Smart Ground that we had, since I figured it would be best applied in an Italian dish. And adding the basil was only natural, right?

Pasta alla Formiana
(Recipe adapted by Mo from Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice, who in turn adapted it from Giada de Laurentiis)

Part one:
1 28-oz can of tomatoes (crushed would be best, but I used diced -- it's going in a food processor anyway, so...)
As much garlic as you want (I used about 4 cloves)
8 oz small, whole-grain pasta (I used rotini)
1 6-oz can tomato paste (only ingredient should be tomato paste)
1/2 cup water
30 g (2 tbsp) EVOO
2 tbsp butter, melted (Don't question it. Just do it. Have faith, padawan.)
2 tbsp dried oregano, rubbed between your hands to become powdery (To my disappointment, we're out of Turkish oregano, so I used Mexican. My life is so hard, I know.)
1.5 tsp kosher or coarse sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1.5 tsp sugar
1/2 cup loosely packed basil leaves, coarsely shredded after measuring

Add tomatoes and garlic to a food processor and process until smooth (some chunks of garlic are okay). Add to a bowl and combine with the rest of part one. Proceed to part two.

Part two:
1 14-oz package of Smart Ground, sausage-style or 1 lb of tofu, drained well and crumbled or 1 lb of Italian sausage, meat taken out of casings
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1/4 cup water
1/4 - 1/2 tsp ground fennel (depends on your tastes and whether or not you're using Smart Ground, something similar or tofu)

Heat a skillet. Add a teensy bit of oil (if using Smart Ground or tofu; it's doubtful that the sausage will need it), and add the protein. Let it brown. Meanwhile, combine the tomato paste, water, and fennel (again, I don't think this is necessary with the real meat, so after browning, just skip the tomato paste part). When it's good and browned, add the tomato paste mixture, combine well. Turn the heat down a smidgeon and let the water cook out. When done, add to part one.

Part three:
Butter
Tomatoes
Nutritional yeast or parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Butter a 9x13" baking dish.

Slice tomatoes into 1/2" thick slices. I don't know how much you'll need, since I had a bunch of different types (therefore sizes) of tomatoes. Line the bottom of the pan with the tomatoes, then line the sides. Pour part one into the dish, smooth down. Either top the dish with more sliced tomatoes (drizzled with some EVOO) or deseed and chop up the couple of tiny little Romas you've got and sprinkle them on top. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the pasta is cooked.
Remove from the oven, sprinkle with nutritional yeast or cheese and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. 5 looong minutes.

Look at how pretty that is! I just love it!

The verdict: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL. I mean, uh, it's pretty good. Everyone approves. It's about as good as you'd expect a dish which comprises of pasta being cooked by way of being infused with intense tomato flavor to be. Which, assuming you to be a lover of tomatoes, is extremely good. The "sausage" kind of disintegrates here, which I actually appreciate because, as I've mentioned before, it does not taste that great. I'm not sure if the tomato paste that coated the "sausage" was really necessary but hey - why not, huh? Yeah. That's what I thought.

* I don't know why I know that Dakota Fanning is afraid of tomatoes. But I do. I have to live with this fact every day of my life, and now so do you. You're welcome. Fun fact, though - I won a piece of candy or something lame like that for a poem that I wrote in creative writing class from the POV of a tomato. I mentioned that Dakota Fanning was scared of "me". It was a crappy poem, but I'm pretty sure I got the prize because I mentioned something so incredibly random. My teacher probably thought I really did my research.

Mexican Stromboli (a Get Rid of It dish)

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:11:00 +0000

Please note that I don't speak Italian and I have never heard the plural of "stromboli" before. I feel like stromboli should be plural, but I can't find the singluar form of it. I also don't want to be pretentious and act like I know all about the Italian language when the breadth of my knowledge of said language is really just me saying things like, "Mozzarella!" in an overly-enthusiastic Italian accent. I also enjoy Roberto Benigni films but I rarely take anything away from those, linguistically. For a while I could remember what "Holy smokes!" was in Italian but I forget it now. So, in this post I will say "stromboli" to be singular and "strombolis" to be plural. I just wish so very much that you won't cringe if that is painfully incorrect. I think the stromboli is an American creation, anyway. Thank you. :D

So, if you haven't heard the news, Hurricane Earl will be skirting the East Coast soon. As a precaution, this means eating everything in the fridge and freezer so it doesn't go bad in case the power goes out (we most likely won't be hit by the hurricane itself, but rather by all that wind and rain good ol' Earl will be throwing at us. While digging through the freezer to find something to make use of I found not one, not two, not five, but seven packages of frozen Smart Ground. Yeah. I'm not exactly a fan of the stuff. Meat that's not meat in general kind of freaks me out. If you look at the ingredient list, it's really not that scary. But it's still weird to me. Plus, I don't think it tastes that great. My vegetarian sister doesn't like it either, and I'm 90% sure that she was the reason so much was bought.

My only solution for this is to heavily spice it, infuse it with flavors other than the gross one it came with and hope for the best. And the best is what happened.

The lovely Madhuram from Eggless Cooking sent me a cookbook called Vegan Planet. Many of you know that I'm not a vegan, but I often eat vegan either because I do so without meaning to or because good-quality, organic animal products are pretty expensive. So, this book was a welcome gift. I already have so many recipes I want to try!

The first one I went with actually isn't the recipe, but the basic ideas behind the recipe and some of the methods. There's a great recipe for a cheese-less tofu stromboli, with classic Italian flavors. I at first was going to just substitute a package of the Smart Ground for tofu and follow the recipe otherwise, but I realized that not enough flavor would be there to mask the Smart Ground. So, I flashed back to when I made a tamale pie with the stuff and I didn't notice the weird taste, and decided that I'd make a Mexican stromboli. By the way, the reason why I didn't just make the tamale pie was because it was a Hungry Girl recipe. Yeah, that's how long ago I made it.

Now, before I go any further, I'd love to point out that Mexican stromboli is actually not that creative, apparently. In my head I was going, "Yeah! Unique!" And then I googled it and it's all over the interwebz. But that's not important. What's important is that Mexican stromboli is goood.

Also, we also had a lot of this Southwestern vegetable mix because my mom likes to throw it into chili (because we do kitchen-sink chili, where everything goes). Thing is, she never makes chili anymore and it was getting freezer burnt, so I threw a bunch of it in to get rid of it once and for all. The stuff actually is pretty handy; I just don't like using frozen veggie mixes for some reason. o.O

On a last note about what I just had to get rid of, I used pretty much the same dough that I used for my Indian-Style Pizza. You of course could use any recipe that yields enough dough for 2 pizzas, but as my last few posts have been saying, I need to get rid of the pumpkin I have. Don't you love how I'm using three things that I need to be gone in one dish? Resourceful, I am.

Mexican Stromboli
(Recipe by Mo, but inspired by Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson)

(Yields two large strombolis. Serves many.)

Stromboli Dough
(Recipe adapted by Mo from the (never home) maker)

Part one:
180 g (1.5 cups) high-gluten flour*
240 g (2 cups) white whole wheat flour
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
1.5 tsp coarse sea or kosher salt
2.25 tsp instant yeast
A few dashes black pepper

Part two:
1 cup warm water
122 g (1/2 cup) pumpkin purée
35 g (5 tsp) agave nectar
30 g (2 tbsp) oil of choice

* High-gluten flour is a type of flour that has an even higher protein percentage than bread flour. I've never actually bought this flour, we just have a lot laying around because my mom used to use it a lot, and I thought I might as well help to get rid of it since that was the whole point of this entire project - getting rid of stuff. If you're interested in high-gluten flour, you can purchase some at KingArthurFlour.com, and I'm sure other sources carry it. If you just want to use bread flour, that's fine too, but might I suggest using 2 tbsp of vital wheat gluten to replace 2 tbsp of the whole wheat flour. :)

Mix together part one in a large bowl. Mix together part two in a small bowl. Add part two to part one, mix well until scraggly.
On a well-floured surface, dump the mess and clump together with floured hands. Knead, adding flour as needed (I used whole wheat) until it is a smooth and supple ball of dough that isn't too sticky. Place in an oiled bowl, toss it to coat in the oil, cover and leave in a warm space to rise for 2 hours.

Meanwhile...

Stromboli Filling
(Recipe by Mo but inspired by and slightly adapted from Vegan Planet)

1.5 tbsp oil of choice
1/2 tsp asafoetida (optional, but helps the stomach where beans hurt it)
1.75 cups Southwestern veggie mix (black beans, corn, pablano peppers, onion and red bell peppers - measured after defrosting and draining)
2-3 garlic cloves, minced/pressed
1 12-oz package of Smart Ground veggie protein crumbles (I used Mexican style, because we had it) OR 1 16-oz package of firm tofu, drained well and crumbled

1 6-oz can of tomato paste (only ingredient should be tomatoes), mixed with the following:
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp sea salt (use 1 tsp if using tofu)
1 tsp black pepper
1.5 tsp dark brown sugar

1 14.5-oz can pinto beans (I used a no-salt-added kind)
1.5 tsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp onion salt (or 3/4 tsp salt - use less salt if using already-salted beans)
Cheese, if you want (I didn't bother)

Heat the oil in a large skillet. When hot, add the asafoetida, let fry for a bit, then add the veggies, garlic and protein crumbles or tofu. Add the tomato-spice mixture and cook until the mixture is dry. Take off of heat and let cool.

Drain the can of pinto beans, add to a small bowl, and mash with a fork very well. Add in the nutritional yeast, cumin and onion salt, continuing to mash until it is smooth. You can also just purée this mixture, but I didn't feel like dirtying up my food processor bowl for such a menial task.

When the dough is ready, punch it down, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F with a baking/pizza stone or two baking sheets stacked on top of each other.
Divide the dough in half (it helps to weigh!). Knead each portion of the dough well, then let rest for 15 minutes to relax the gluten. Then, roll out a portion as thin as you can into what can possibly be conceived as a rectangle (I'm bad at this part :P). It helps to pick up the dough and use the back of your knuckles to gently stretch it out. Then, take the pinto bean mix and spread half of it on the rolled-out dough to 1 inch from the edge (add cheese now if you're going to). Then spread half of the veggie protein crumble mix on top of the pinto bean mash, again keeping to 1 inch from the edge. Roll it up length-wise, pinch the seams and place seam-side-down onto a piece of parchment paper which is on a pizza peel or the back of a baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the dough, pinto beans and veggie crumbles, so that you have 2 strombolis sitting on the same piece of parchment.

Brush the strombolis with the oil of your choice. I sprinkled them here with smoked paprika but I feel like that was pointless so you can forgo that. ;)

Slide the strombolis onto the baking stone/baking sheets and immediately turn the temperature down to 375 degrees F. Bake for 40 minutes, remove from the oven, and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice and serve. It's good with salsa. And organic ketchup for breakfast. o.O

My sister was holding it up outside, which is why you can see my street in the background. It's also why it looks like the stromboli is about to fall off the plate. Sister's hands aren't as stable as tables. The last part rhymed.

The verdict: This stuff is good! My dad and I summed it up quite well: You can't taste the fakeness! It's very well-spiced, and not in a way that all you can taste is chili powder. Dad is actually impressed with the spiciness, which never happens. :P And, he said that if he didn't know any better he'd assume it was real meat. Score! My sister thinks it needs (soy) cheese, but I disagree. I mean, cheese is awesome; I love it, but this just doesn't need it to be delectable. :)

Now, I'm off to figure out how to get rid of the rest of this Smart Ground stuff without making stromboli 6 more times...

Whole Wheat Oaty Pumpkin-Carrot Muffin Tops

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:44:00 +0000

That's a mouthful, isn't it?

As I explained in my pumpkin bulgur post, I have a big ol' can of pumpkin that Jess kindly sent to me. I only used about half of the can, which led to me thinking and thinking about what else I wanted to make with pumpkin.

I'm not sure why, but I just wasn't feelin' the whole quick bread thing (even though I kind of made that anyway). So I decided to make something I'd never had - pumpkin cookies.

As I usually do when I'm looking for a recipe to either follow or adapt, I went to Tastespotting and typed in "pumpkin cookies". I found Joy the Baker's recipe, which was really easy to adapt into something nutritious and deliiiicious. :)

I'm calling these muffin tops because while, yes, pumpkin cookies are rather soft little buggers in general, these were just too soft to call cookies, and they taste like quick bread/muffins.

I'm including the carrot as optional (and in its place you can totally add something like chopped nuts, chocolate chips or dried fruit) because I just have a lot of carrot to get rid of. That's what happens when you see organic carrots for really cheap, so you buy 5 pounds of them. Just fyi.

Oh yeah, these are vegan. You're welcome.

Whole Wheat Oaty Pumpkin-Carrot Muffin Tops

(Recipe adapted by Mo from JoytheBaker.com)

Part one:

1/2 cup oat flour (you could definitely use another type of flour; I just wanted to add some oats to this)

180 g (1.5 cups) whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1.75 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Part two:

100 g (1/2 cup) flax egg (or 2 tbsp finely ground flaxseed mixed well with 6 tbsp of water and given a chance to sit and thicken)

2/3 cup + 1 tbsp dark brown sugar, slightly packed

60 g (1/4 cup) oil of choice

1 cup + 2 tbsp pumpkin purée

2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp pure vanilla extract (I actually didn't measure this but I assume it was around 1 tsp :P)

1 cup grated carrot (not packed, and optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Whisk together part one in a large bowl.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together part two.

Add part two to part one, mix to combine until it is almost homogenous.

Fold in the carrot and continue mixing until you can't see any more flour. (As a food blogger, it is my duty to tell you not to overmix. As a rational person, it suits my fancy to tell you that with the flours the recipe calls for, you're allowed to do a couple more strokes than necessary. I don't recommend it, but don't stress out. Some people get really on your case about over-mixing. It's a batch of cookies, not your wedding cake. Jeez.)

On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat (or greased, I guess), spoon out 2 slightly-rounded tablespoons per cookie (you can make them smaller or larger, of course), making sure to space them apart a couple of inches. Dip a spoon into a small bowl of water, then use the back spoon to flatten the cookies down as thick as you'd like (I did about 1/2 inch). Bake for about 15 minutes, then cool on a rack. Enjoy!

The verdict: As I said, these are soft and kind of muffin-like, so don't expect them to be like cookies. Just expect flavor, moistness and a gentle hit of spice. Also, these are sweeter than I expected they would be, so if you want to use even less sugar, go for it! As a bonus, these bad boys are really filling. I kid you not. I had one a couple of hours ago after having not eaten in about 3 hours, and I'm still not hungry. If you knew how often I get hungry*, you would find this amazing. These will most likely be on the Thanksgiving menu in a few months! :)

* When I went to Maine with my friend Marwa last month, about every 2 hours I would go, "I'm hungry..." And Marwa would go, "Oh my GOD! You JUST ATE." In my defense, I'm not one to eat really big meals so I think I earned the right to say I'm hungry every two hours... annoying as it may be. My family just needs to be happy that I know how to feed myself.

Giveaway Winner!

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:28:00 +0000

Well, today's the day. The one we've all been waiting for.

The day Paris Hilton stops trying to convince everyone that she can sing.

Just kidding, I'm only announcing the giveaway winner.

Since it's all the rage, and I'd have much trouble picking a winner otherwise, I went to random.org to find out the winner.

My 27th comment was from Faith of An Edible Mosaic! Congratulations, Faith, expect an email soon from CSN! :)

Thanks to everyone who participated - I enjoyed reading the poems. ;)

In other news... (to give you something to talk about other than the giveaway, of course)

Is it just me, or does waste annoy you too?

It sure annoys me. Point in case: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Spain-Tomatina-Festival/ss/events/lf/082510tomatina/im:/100825/481/urn_publicid_ap_org_c3609d59f5574a58ba04f0966ac4d77a/

I mean, I'm sure it's fun and all that, but 100 tons of tomatoes just got wasted. Does that depress anyone else? =\

Have a nice day, everyone!

Spiced Pumpkin Bulgur

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:36:00 +0000

This here is a heinously belated post. It is also a wee bit early for fall, but shh!

I first made this aaaaaaages ago, probably even over a year ago. To put it simply, it's darn delicious so when Jess was hosting the Blogger Secret Ingredient contest and she chose bulgur, I knew just what to submit!

Now, I was really intent on having my submission be a blog post, so I could explain it nicely, give pictures, et cetera. But I had forgotten all about that wee little pumpkin shortage we had last year. See, as though I was psychic or something, I had stocked up on pumpkin big time. Big time. (That's right. I contributed to the pumpkin shortage. Sorry.) So whilst everyone was going, "Where's the pumpkin? :O" I was going, "What's the big deal?" Well, my friends, I understand now what the big deal was.

Because sure enough, way back in June when I wanted to make the recipe in order to post about it in order to submit it to the contest all pretty and wrapped in a bow, I couldn't find pumpkin anywhere. A-n-y-w-h-e-r-e. I looked at regular grocery stores, specialty grocery stores, pharmacies, Wal-Mart (okay, my mom looked, but same thing)... I looked everywhere, and I finally gave up and decided to just email her the recipe, explaining why it wasn't in a post. Boring, I know.

But this recipe, the one I'm about to share with you, won the contest! And better yet, because Jess is amazing and shares things, she sent me a big can of pumpkin she had laying around as my prize (along with some excellent maple syrup). :D

1 lb 13 oz of pure pumpkin. You're jealous, aren't you?

I had intended on making this dish much sooner than I did, but things got busy and yeah. But today was the perfect day to make it, and so I did. :D

Spiced Pumpkin Bulgur
(Recipe by Mo)

1-2 tsp (I eyeball it, really) oil of choice
1 good-sized onion (I prefer a sweet one like vidalia but go with what you've got!)
1 1/3 cup canned pumpkin purée
2 (2.5") cinnamon sticks
1.5 - 2 tsp (I used two) curry powder (I use sweet curry powder here because it goes really well with the pumpkin, but you can absolutely your favorite kind of curry powder - you just might want to use 1.5 to avoid an overly spicy dish)
2-3 bay leaves, depending on size
1 cup uncooked bulgur
2 cups chicken* or vegetable broth
1/4 tsp sea salt, plus more to taste
1/4 tsp ground white pepper, plus more to taste

*preferably organic

Heat the oil in a medium-sized pot over medium-low heat. Add the onion, give a stir, and add the pumpkin and cinnamon, curry powder and bay leaves. Cook for a few minutes until the onions soften, then add the bulgur. Combine well with the pumpkin-onion mixture and let cook for a few minutes. Add the broth, salt and pepper, and stir well. Bring to a boil (if it is too thick to boil and instead does that thing where it heaves and burps instead of boils, add a bit of water until it's thin enough), then lower the heat to simmer, cover and cook for about 15 minutes. Check every 5 minutes to stir so that the bulgur doesn't stick to the pot, and when all of the liquid is absorbed and the bulgur is cooked through, fluff with a fork, season with salt and pepper to taste, and eat away! (Do remove the bay leaves, please. The cinnamon sticks can stay, since they'll continue to emit flavor. Just eat around them. ;) )

The verdict: What's there to say, really? It's good. It's healthy. It's ever-so-slightly spicy. It's flavorful. It's filling. It's, ahem, award-winning. ;)
I will say, though, that if you're not into funky flavors, this might not be for you. Also, call it something other than "pumpkin bulgur" when talking to picky people. My sister refuses to try it because of the name alone. Like my dad said, calling parboiled cracked wheat "bulgur" was a baaad PR move.

Also, I haven't tried this, but I'm throwing this idea out there because I'm betting it's delicious. For a breakfast pumpkin bulgur:

1 tsp neutral oil
1/3-1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1 1/3 cup canned pumpkin purée
2 (2.5") cinnamon sticks
1.5 - 2 tsp cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, baking spice, etc.
1 cup uncooked bulgur
2 cups milk (any kind; nonfat, whole, cow, soy, rice, almond, coconut...)
1/4 tsp salt
Maple syrup, molasses, brown sugar, agave, brown rice syrup...

Heat oil in a medium pot over low. Add the nuts and toast. Add the pumpkin and spices, combine, cook for about a minute, add the bulgur, cook another minute, then add the milk and salt. Bring to a boil (if it is too thick to boil and instead does that thing where it heaves and burps instead of boils, add a bit of water/milk until it's thin enough), then lower the heat to simmer, cover and cook for about 15 minutes. Check every 5 minutes to stir so that the bulgur doesn't stick to the pot, and when all of the liquid is absorbed and the bulgur is cooked through, fluff with a fork and serve. Sweeten to taste with sweetener of choice.

That's all for now; hope everyone's just peachy. :D

Oh, and don't forget to enter my CSN giveaway! You've got six ways to enter, and therefore 6 chances to win. Aren't I nice?

Stay awesome. <3

A giveaway, because I love you.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:15:00 +0000

Hey, kiddos! (Yes, you're all older than me.) I was recently contacted by CSN Stores and asked if I wanted to host a giveaway. It was a really tough decision, because I thought, "Hmm... deprive my readers, or give one of them $40?" After much deliberation and listening to the Jeopardy! theme song on repeat, I decided I might as well be nice to you all.

Now, if you're not familiar with CSN, you're kind of missing out. Just sayin'. They've got pretty much everything you could ever want to stock your home with, whether you're going for the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom or, my favorite part, the kitchen. (I actually rarely venture into their other sections, since I get lost dreaming in the kitchen section every time. It's like IKEA, only if you need to get out you just click a button instead of walking 2 miles to the exit.) From the kitchen section you can get anything from a high-quality blender to a Dutch Oven to forks and knives. Oooh, they also have a great selection of pans. I should know, I have two from their site. :D

Now, the whole deal with this is, basically, I get to dangle a $40 gift certificate in front of you, you tell me you want it, and a winner will be chosen.

But I'd like to make it a bit more fun.
Here are ways you can enter (please leave one comment for each entry to make my life a lot easier) :

You can simply enter once by telling me in a comment what you'd buy from CSN stores with the gift certificate.
You can get another entry by inventing a recipe that you would use whatever you got from the store to make (assuming it's from the kitchen section, which, let's face it, it probably will be) and sharing it with me in a comment. I'm always looking for new recipes! (And, if I get any, I'll probably post them to share with everyone, giving you credit of course.)
You can get another entry by writing me a (5-line-minimum) poem about the giveaway in a comment. Oooh, the exception to the 5-line-minimum rule is if it's a haiku. I lurve me a haiku. So long as, you know, it all makes sense. :P It can also be free verse, so long as it's not something like this:

Mo is hosting a giveaway

I would really like to win

Because I like free stuff

Like nice pots and pans

Giraffe tongues are sticky

You can get another entry by subscribing to me in some way and then leaving me a comment telling me you've done so. This option is kind of the least fun, because I want my subscribers to want to subscribe for reasons other than the fact that they want a $40 gift certificate, you know? (Oh, I should have mentioned earlier, that if you already follow me, just tell me you do and that counts!)
You can get another entry by linking to this giveaway on your own blog, and then leaving me a comment telling me you've done so.
EDIT: As you will see in the comments section, a reader named Katrina suggested that it might be a chokecherry tree. After further examining the "berries", I discovered that they have pits in them as cherries do. I will get this confirmed on Saturday, but for now if anyone disagrees with Katrina you can still suggest things for another entry. A final entry can be gained by telling me what the heck kind of a tree this is, and what the berries growing on it are (please, research your guesses before telling me, because if I get told one more time that "maybe they're elderberries," I will shoot something), because it has been bugging me for a couple weeks now:

They're green when they're unripe, they're reddish as they're ripening and they turn black when ripe and squishy.

It only has branches that face the sun.

Additional information:

This giveaway is open to US and Canada residents only (sorry, everyone else!).
Anyone in those two countries can enter (even if you don't have a blog), just so long as you make sure I have your email address. If I don't have your email, it'll be really hard for you to actually win anything.
If you live in Canada, there might be some international shipping charges.
Giveaway ends on Thursday, the 26th of August, at 9:30 AM EDT. Yes, this does mean that if you enter at exactly 9:30 in the morning EDT on Thursday, I will still count you. Because I love you. :) But at 9:31... you snooze, you lose.
No, Dad, you can't enter. It'd just look bad if you won. Sorry, I know you really wanted a new pie pan.*

Have fun!

*You would find this funny if you knew how little he's interested in baking. The first time my mom and I made up our own bread recipe from scratch, using only yeast from the air, he said something along the lines of, "So? It's just bread."

Mango-Lime Sorbet

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:23:00 +0000

The first time I ever had mango was when I was, god, maybe 7-8 years old? I had been in a Trader Joe's with my mom and my grandmother. My grandmother said to me, "Marielle, would you like to try mango?" I actually had no idea what she said or what she was talking about because I wasn't listening; I just replied, "Yeah," because I thought it might settle the situation. So she bought a bag of Trader Joe's frozen mango.

At home, she let it sit out a bit before pouring some pieces in a bowl. I don't remember actually eating it or having some euphoric reaction to it - all I know is, from then on mango was my favorite fruit.

It was a while, though, before I discovered the strange organism known as a whole mango. For maybe 2 years mango had been my favorite fruit, and I had no idea what it actually looked like when it didn't come in frozen chunks at TJ's. Now that I think about it, though, my grandmother was probably the one who introduced me to the scary-looking thing. I was told how to cut it around the pit, then make a grid with the meat and invert the peel so that you can spoon the flesh into a bowl. I took this into consideration, then ignored it. I like the more uncivilized way of eating a mango - peeling it, then eating each slice as you go. And thus I discovered how amazing fresh mango is.

Then came mango sorbet.

I've mentioned before that my sister is allergic to dairy and eggs, and because they thought I might be as well we both grew up on things like fortified orange juice instead of milk (OJ + Cheerios = ahhhh), take-out pizzas without cheese ( :( ), and best of all, sorbet. I think that to this day I still probably prefer sorbet to ice cream. It's just... better. FACT.

I was used to the strawberry and lemon and raspberry sorbets, because that's what Krista liked (Krista, Krista, Krista! *pouts*) but one day one of my parents came home with Häagen-Dazs mango sorbet, and I was hooked. I used to, I kid you not, eat a whole pint in a sitting. Definitely not something I'm proud of. ;)

And then there was a time when I thought it was a travesty that there was not one single brand of sorbet that made a mango-lime swirl. I was thinking of those Edy's Lime Fruit Bars, mixed with Häagen-Dazs much like those jars of peanut butter and jelly all swirled together, only not as gross. I never came forth with my idea so I can't sue if someone ever comes out with it, but sometimes I still dream about such a product.

And from those dreams, combined with overripe mangoes and limes purchased for 10 cents each, this sorbet was born. It's not too unique (mango and lime has definitely been done before, I know) but what it is is simple, not too bad for you and pretty damn delicious.

The mango I used has been in the freezer for a few weeks. I got them super-cheap at Costco before leaving for Maine (9 for $6.35! Come on!) but didn't quite think through the fact that, oh yeah, we were leaving for Maine the next day. So I had to bring them with me, and only ate a couple during the vacation. So, I chopped them up (which is why I can't tell you how many mangoes' worth of flesh you need, or how much the mangoes with the skin and pit would weigh) at a point where they were losing half their juice just by my cutting into them and froze them to bring home. They've remained in the freezer until I became inspired by the super-cheap limes I found. The rest is history.

Mango-Lime Sorbet

(Recipe by Mo)

906 g (~ 2 lbs) very ripe mango flesh (if you haven't a scale, I suggest buying a couple of 1-lb bags of frozen mango and letting it thaw before proceeding, although you may need more agave depending on the ripeness of the fruit you purchased; or use about 3 cups of mango purée)

Juice and zest of 1-2 limes (I used 1 for just a subtle lime flavor)

1 tbsp light agave nectar

1 tbsp vodka, rum or tequila

Purée the mango until smooth. Add in the lime, agave and alcohol and mix together well. Sample, and add more lime and agave to taste. Refrigerate this mixture for at least 2 hours, then freeze in ice cream-maker as per machine instructions (mine took about a half-hour). Keep in the freezer until serving, at which time you might want to leave it out for a few minutes to soften. Enjoy!

The verdict: it's not as sweet as Häagen-Dazs, but that's actually a good thing. It's very naturally sweetened, with a bit of a tang from the lime but not so much that you feel as though you may as well have just sucked on a lime. Long story short - this one's a keeper.

Guest Post over at Lazaro Cooks!

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:29:00 +0000

I told you food would be coming... just not here. ;) Check out my guest post on Lazaro's blog and I'll love you forever. Promise.

:D?

Asian-marinated salmon, mysterious puffs of deliciousness, and a bunch of vegetables

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:13:00 +0000

So, long story short, my sister's boyfriend is living with us for the month because he needs a place to stay before he moves in with a friend. This makes for occasional slight awkwardness, since we don't really know him that well despite the fact that my sister has known him since she was 14 (she's 19 as of July 20th - one of these days I'm making a cake ;) ). My dad and I were discussing this last week and decided that it was rather lame that we didn't know him, and we should all have dinner together as a family.

Sit-down dinners are really unusual for my family, because everyone's always got something going on and we're eating at different times, blah blah blah. So it was quite the special occasion!

For the main dish, I prepared a marinade for some salmon steaks that my dad grilled.

Asian-style Marinade for Salmon
(Recipe adapted by Mo from The Cookingfishmonger)

~ 4 lbs salmon steaks
1/2 cup pure, unrefined peanut oil (Pssst... I collect the oil from the top of my natural peanut butter - because if I stir it in it's unpleasantly oily - and funnel it into an old cleaned-out soy sauce bottle and keep it in the fridge. Never pay for overpriced good-quality peanut oil again! Mwahaha.)
1/4 cup organic soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup scallions, snipped fine (Okay, I am never chopping scallions ever again. Just wash a pair of scissors well and snip away. Easy-peasy.)
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 tsp sea salt

Whisk everything together and pour into a gallon-size ziploc bag. Add the salmon steaks, move everything around so that the marinade is on all of the fish, place in a container (in case of leakage) and marinate in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours, occasionally moving the bag around and flipping it so the marinade is distributed well.
Remove from the refrigerator, start your grill to about medium-high, and grill about 10 minutes total per inch of thickness (so if the steaks are an inch thick, grill for 4-5 minutes on one side and 4-5 minutes on the other).

To plate, we served the salmon on a bed of local sugar snap pea shoots*, with farmer's market grape tomatoes and sliced cucumbers. I also made some simple quinoa cooked in organic chicken broth and steamed some broccoli.

*My mother is obsessed with pea shoots. Obsessed. On Saturday we got the farmer's market kind of late so she had me run from the car with a bunch of cash while she parked the car to get to the booth before they ran out. I bought so many shoots the dude thought I worked for a restaurant.

There was also this stuff:

My dad got these at a local Asian supermarket. Some saleswoman seduced him with them and he bought a ton of them. We actually don't quite know what they are or what they're called, but they're kind of like salmon-veggie cakes but mostly made with white flour. All I know is they're slightly spicy, they're fluffy, they might be deep-fried, and she said to prepare them by stir-frying them in some grapeseed oil, garlic and scallions, then glaze with oyster sauce (not in the pan yet, in the picture; it was hard enough to get a picture of them without the gloopy stuff all over them). Oh, yeah, and they're delicious. Any ideas?

Overall, it was a pretty successful meal. It was hard to get good pictures because it was everyone was talking, plus I was feeling kind of awkward taking pictures of other people's food (it's usually only mine :P).

My mom's plate:

Mine (well, part of it):

My sister's:

Uhh, yeah. We don't have blinds or curtains on our windows and it was just before sunset. Light attack!

Overall, it was a very successful dinner! I hear the salmon was delicious, but I didn't partake in it myself because I kind of sort of really don't like salmon. ;) (I was outnumbered in the fish department, obviously.)

So yeah, just wanted to share that with you! Especially since you guys probably like salmon a lot more than I do. ;)

A recap of the busiest bunch of days I've had in a while

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:49:00 +0000

WARNING: Extremely long post. You should be thankful that only 10% of it is actual words.

Hey, world! First off, I just want to thank everyone (again) who wondered where in the world Mo was. I appreciate the concern. :)

So where was I? I was all over the Northeastern US Coast, pretty much (pssst... Northern Virgina counts as Northeastern, in my opinion :D).

As I've mentioned in the past few posts, I had a friend who currently lives in Cairo visiting. Her name is Marwa,

Isn't she so pretty?!

and I've known her since the 3rd grade. She's one of those people that you automatically feel comfortable around and are drawn to because they've got such an effervescent personality. What we think is hilarious is that I used to hate her. I was never very mean to her (save for a few instances that we laugh about now because it was lame 4th grade meanness, not high school meanness), but she was very annoying and I was one of the few people who didn't think it was necessary to pick on her, so she pretty much glued herself to me. ;)

Which of course I'm thankful for, because as we both grew up, we "grew together", as she accurately puts it. I think it started when everyone in music class in 4th grade had to team up with someone and write a song. I had no real friends in the class, and Marwa had no real friends in the school, so we teamed up (I later admitted that I also wanted to pair up with her because she's an amazing singer - has sung at Carnegie Hall - and a loud one at that so no one would be able to hear my scratchy, off-tune voice). We would call each other every night and try to write a song. We had to come up with a band name and chose "The Dream Team" only to be told by our music teacher that we couldn't call ourselves that because of the Olympic basketball team or something (like we paid attention to basketball?). I can't remember what name we chose after that because in my head we were always The Dream Team. In the end we wrote and performed a song that was almost a complete rip-off of the song Tomorrow from the musical Annie, but let's not pay attention to that. It was one of the most fun projects I've ever had to do, mostly because if you were forced to talk to one person on the phone 24/7 for a fortnight, Marwa's the person you want to call. Even when she annoyed me, she was still loads of fun to talk to. After the project, we still called each other on the phone for fun... pretty much every night.

It was a very slow, gradual friendship filled with tears, laughs, eye-rolling and giant bear hugs that could take the breath out of a 300lb man, and by 2006 I was comfortable calling her my best friend. And 2 years later, she had to move to Cairo. She's of Egyptian and Belgian descent and her parents wanted her to I guess experience the culture. She moved in the early summer of 2008 and until July 8th I hadn't seen her since (of course, we'd kept in contact but it's often difficult with the time difference). So, I hope it's understandable that I pretty much haven't been around all month!

Now, the festivities...

I mentioned that I was going to Maine with Marwa, and she was in my "custody" from the 20th to the 28th.

I picked her up, and we drove to Costco to pick up some stuff that you can't get in Cairo, at least for cheap.

She's on the left, I'm on the right. It was the best picture I could get of us while leaning over the cup holder in the back seat.

The baking soda, oats and organic sugar were for me. I ended up only getting the oats. The sugar was ripped and I didn't feel like getting another bag since we were on the other side of costco, and my mother seriously underestimates how much I use baking soda.

We made sure we had good snackage. For some reason carrots are something of a delicious inside joke with us.

We then stopped at Mad Fox Brewing Company, which I will shamelessly promote for my sister, who works there, for lunch. It's a pretty cool place, and while it definitely lives up to its name:

Caution: beer brewing

The bar.

It also serves a whole bunch of food. My sister recommended the pizza, and for good reason.

Primavera, sans mushrooms. (My first time in years tasting artichokes. They're still gross.)

Mediterranean, which I didn't partake in because of the chicken, but I heard it was good.

My mom admitted that my primavera pizza was good, but she preferred the Mediterranean. Marwa agreed that the Mediterranean was good, but sided with me in that the primavera pizza was to die for.

We also picked up a growler of Kölsch beer, which is a German beer that we knew my 100% German Gramps would appreciate.

This is really random, but I need to mention it as it is the greatest piece of technology I've come across in recent years. It's called the Dyson Airblade, (yes, the yellow-vacuum-English-dude Dyson) and it's simply amazing.

We played around with it in the bathroom of Mad Fox for far too long...

Anyway, we went home to pack, I tripped in the driveway and landed 3 kick-ass bruises on my right leg, and eventually fell asleep.

The next morning, we woke up at 5:30, which is unfortunate, since that's the time we'd intended on leaving the house. Someone, I won't say who, apparently unplugged the alarm after it went off at 4:50 AM. Whoops. We shuffled along into the car and left the house at 6 AM.

Now, I won't bore you too much with the details because we were basically just driving and driving and driving (okay, Marwa and I were sleeping for a good portion of it, but still). For a really long time. The plan was to drive the entire 13.5 hours from Northern Virginia to a town about two hours away from Bar Harbor, Maine. However, somewhere south of Yarmouth, which is near Freeport, ME, we ran into some amazingly bad and scary weather. We couldn't see the road because of the rain, and there was thunder, lightning and the works. It was around 5:30 and we were starving, so we stopped at the first restaurant we saw, which turned out to be a place that was rather fancy-ish, making Marwa and I feel out of place, given the fact that we were in our soaking-wet pajamas, hair disheveled and black circles under our eyes. I got a vegetable panini, which was more like a grilled cheese sandwich with grill marks and a few leaves of spinach in it, but it was sooo good, so I'm not even complaining. I didn't bring my camera in so no pictures, but my god it was amazing. I actually don't know if it was my hunger telling me it was amazing, but I shall look back on it with the fondest of memories, so that's that. I'd share the name of the place but honestly I could barely read the sign through the rain and forgot to check when we left, at which point it'd briefly stopped raining.

A phone call with my Gramps telling us to go find a hotel room led us to a search for a hotel/motel that didn't look like it was run by Norman Bates (side note: there is a Bait's Motel in Searsport, ME, not far from where my nana and gramps live). I pointed out the Casco Bay Inn, which ended up being advertised in the town's "What to Do In This Town" pamphlet as a bargain, which it was. Once inside, we turned on the TV to Seinfeld, which Marwa had never seen (this weighed heavy on my heart, given I was pretty much raised on the show) and almost immediately a tornado warning came on. Yeah, a tornado warning. In Maine. The next morning we found out that it somehow skipped us but it did do damage to some places we'd been half an hour before we stopped for dinner.

Speaking of morning, since I passed out about 2 hours before Marwa and my mom did, I woke up way earlier than they did.

I assembled my very lame breakfast:

Carrots, peanut butter and a peach. That's right, I pack my own peanut butter.

Took a picture of the hotel room and my sleeping roommates:

I'm not sure how, but the picture makes it seem so much more tacky than it was. It was actually a cute place. I blame the bed covers, which are admittedly rather unfortunate in my opinion.

And when my mom woke, I brewed her some Green Mountain Coffee. This wouldn't have been exciting except for the fact that I'd never seen this brand of coffee before, and would not have even known of it if not for Jess.

I don't drink coffee, so I can't speak for its amazingness, but mom approved and even bought two bags of GMC later in the trip.

We went for breakfast at a small diner (they called it a café but it's definitely a diner). I got a bowl of oatmeal and was pleased to discover that they didn't sweeten it and left that up to me by giving me a tiny cup of dark brown sugar and some raisins. I hate really sweet oatmeal, if I haven't mentioned it before. ;)

Then we went into Freeport, Marwa did some shopping for clothes she can't get in Cairo (this was a very boring affair for me because the only kind of shopping I really like is the kind with food involved), and we were on our way to our final destination: Lincolnville, ME.

Some of these shots were along the way so I don't exactly know where they were taken:

I actually didn't take many photos of Lincolnville and the drive into the town because I was too busy laughing at Marwa, who was tearing up at the beauty of the area. "It's so beeauuutiful!"

Which, I can't really argue with. Especially my grandparents' backyard, which is pretty much a pond. Pitcher Pond, to be exact.

You could say she was thrilled by this, but that would be an understatement.

After this the timeline gets a little screwy, but I believe we went to Acadia National Park the next day. We walked the length of Jordan Pond...

Then we hiked up South Bubble Mt, which was one of the mountains in the first 3 pictures above (there was also a North and I have no idea which was which). I didn't take any pictures because I was too busy climbing enormous rocks and yelling, "Marwa, wait for me!" Marwa has very strong legs, apparently.

At the top:

The Bubble Rock

I was too scared to venture further. :P

Then we drove to the top of Cadillac Mt:

Stopped by Sand Beach:

And Thunder Hole: (It didn't thunder!)

Waves crash into there in high tide and supposedly make an awesome thundering sound?

Then we went into Bar Harbor, saw where the Obamas ate dinner or lunch or whatever (it's kind of boring when they're your neighbors though), and ate at a very nice restaurant called Parkside On the Green (I got undocumented baked scallops, which were perfectly cooked; Mom and Marwa got a seafood pasta dish which they raved about). We walked around town looking at shops. We didn't buy anything, though, because it was ridiculously expensive. However, it was nice to walk around and browse. Then Mom and Marwa stopped for ice cream.

And a nap. (I promise she's resting and not crying.)

Some other highlights:

Camden, ME:

I was trying to avoid getting Marwa in the picture but oh well. :P

Belfast, ME: (It was lunchtime and I was done eating my little veggie wrap thing so I decided to photograph everything in sight to pass the time.)

Marwa devouring her lobster roll.

Her favorite color is purple, fyi.

Lincolnville Beach:

Taken from a far edge of Pitcher Pond in a kayak: (I took more pictures but they were mostly of Marwa kayaking and I'm not sure she'd be happy with me posting them. :P)

It was amazingly foggy that day. In the middle of the pond we could hardly see the banks!

My lobsters (which I took about 2 hours to finish because I insist on extracting every little bit of meat I can):

I didn't really care about getting an amazing picture. I was hungry.

We also went to Renys, which is a discount store found all over Maine. I didn't get much, except I bought a bunch of cheap Bob's Red Mill products (which will be oogled over at a later date). After that we found our way to Goodwill, which was Marwa's first experience in a thrift store. I think it's safe to say she's a convert. "I got 3 pairs of jeans for $15!"

The day before we left, I went to a co-op for the first time (I stated many times while inside the building that I would like to live there):

"What's a coop store?"

High-bush (conventional) on the left and my beloved low-bush (wild) on the right.

A small part of the greatest bulk section I've ever seen. I picked up a small thing of nutritional yeast.

Bulk everything. Oils, environmentally-safe cleaners, sweeteners, vinegars, you name it.

Bulk maple syrup, my friend.

Half of this stuff I'm pretty sure I've only heard of in the Harry Potter books.

Sadly our time in Maine only lasted a few days and we had to leave. We left early in the morning and drove to Madison, CT, which is my mom's hometown.

My mom went to high school with the Sweitzer brothers.

Then we headed back to the car and drove to New Haven. We stayed at The Study at Yale, which is probably the best hotel in New Haven, at least in our experience. It's right on the campus and it's very sleek and professional. I wished it had a refrigerator or a microwave but it was good enough. ;) And Marwa was either talking on her phone or reading, so I spent loads of time photographing everything in sight.

The bathroom was nice, okay?

I love sesame sticks. I love oat bran. I want to marry sesame sticks made with oatbran.

Highly recommend it!

These were so good. Nature's Path Mmmmaple Pecan (or some stupid name like that) was really good too, but a bit too sweet for me.

A salad I got to go from some restaurant we had lunch at. They were too cheap to give me a to-go box and I found it amusing.

Our view. (Which my dad was quick to point out didn't look like Yale did in Gilmore Girls. Because I have the kind of parent who remembers that Rory from Gilmore Girls went to Yale, despite the fact that he's never seen a single episode.)

Then we went to go have dinner with my foster aunt/cousins (my mom's foster sister's biological sister, the biological sister's daughter and the actual foster sister's daughter... confusing, right?)

This type of picture is not uncommon. People move too much.

Across the hotel.

Nice dude who was somewhat of a concierge but not quite. If he was annoyed by my taking pictures, he was nice enough to not tell me.

This was the typical view I got from the other side of the car. When she reads, she's completely unaware of anything going on around her.

We ended up in West Haven, and my aunt Kate had purchased some pizza which we ate at a park near a free concert, which had the shore to our left. I was a wee bit obsessed with it.

This pier was very dramatic. Another Egyptian girl (who didn't realize Marwa was Egyptian because her skin is much lighter) called her something very insulting in Arabic as we walked by them and Marwa was all, "Excuuuuuuuuuuuse me?" and told her in Arabic that, well, she spoke Arabic. The look on the rude girl's face was priceless.

The moon came out before we should have been able to see it, so it was practically on the horizon. I got looks of envy as people tried to get a picture on their camera phones.

The next day we did a little bit of Yale touring (Marwa's a potential student):

The dorms.

Inside the Yale Bookstore

Marwa's reading material of choice.

My reading material of choice #1

My reading material of choice #2 (I got neither =\)

A selection of stethoscopes in a bookstore. A first for me. o.O

This is one of the offices - so cute!

Marwa submitting her information to be subscribed to the Yale freshman admissions mailing list. She was nervous.

We left after that, heading on the road and chowing down on some lunch in the car.

My lunch on the way home, because I was in the mood for a dead musician. (It was a bunch of veggies/sprouts and an ungodly amount of hummus on a pita. Not that good but filling.)

I actually somehow fell asleep in the car and woke up in Manhattan in some horrible traffic with a really full bladder. We didn't leave Manhattan for about an hour and a half. I was not happy.

Somewhere in Maryland we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for dinner. I had never been to a Cracker Barrel and I don't exactly recommend it now that I have (although I will say that their "grilled" spicy catfish is not bad).

We've been home for quite a while, but I've been pretty busy nonetheless. I've also been tired so when I've not been busy I've been resting. I'm certainly getting caught up on my reading. So far this summer I've read 7 books (4 by P.G. Wodehouse, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs, and American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson [my mom bought it for herself and I read it afterwards because I was bored; it's surprisingly well-written and heartfelt]) and am now working on Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which I got for 99 cents at Goodwill. :D And then of course there was the gradual process of compiling pictures for this here post and getting it in order, which took a while.

That's pretty much it. I commend you if you actually read all of this, and don't blame anyone who just skimmed for the pictures. ;)

Hope everyone is well, and actual food stuff will be coming soon!

Hey!

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:53:00 +0000

First off, I want to thank everyone who was wondering where I was and hoping I was having friend with my friend. It means a lot. :) EDIT: fun with my friend. I'm obviously not tired...

So, I've been spending the past few days trying to compile sort of a, I dunno, brief recounting of what I've been up to (so. many. pictures) but it's really long because, well, I was gone a while. ;) So I'll be posting that later for anyone who's interested, but I know it's really long and I'm kind of afraid of it being boring. :S

And because I was gone, I don't think I've made anything more complicated than oatmeal in, well, a really long time. And as you may have been able to tell, in the month of July I posted a grand total of 4 times. I've just been really, really busy and I'm definitely not someone who can deal with being super busy and then cooking and then writing about it, unlike probably hundreds of food bloggers but whatever.
Also, as I've mentioned in one of the past few posts (one of the 4, haha), I've been feeling purdy uninspired. So there hasn't been much to talk about, lately!

Some cool things, though:

I have a mango tree growing in my backyard.

Blurry because I was getting bitten by 4 dozen mosquitoes as I was trying to take a picture.

Ya. Thanks to Stella (definitely one of my favorite people in the blogosphere, by the way), I have a compost heap in my yard. This was actually growing in the old compost pile which I've shamefully yet to move in the new location, which is further away from the house and in an area that no one really walks in (the old one was attracting too many bugs to the house, even though it wasn't that close to the house either). I have no idea how long this has been going on, since I have no idea how fast mango seeds sprout, but I discovered it just tonight and flipped out. Seriously, I've killed mint before but I can accidentally grow a mango tree? Awesome. And, my mom's letting me keep it (as though it was a puppy that followed me home. "Alright, but you have to take care of it!") but it'll have to be potted for the time being, first of all because it'll die in the winter if I don't bring it inside, and also I've read that it takes 5 years to get fruit from the tree... I don't know where I'll be in 5 years, but my family might not even be living in this house in 5 years (we rent) and I kind of want to bring it with me if I move somewhere... (It is a damn shame that I hate tropical weather but my favorite fruit is mango. :P). Chances are it'll die before it ever gives up some fruity goodness but can't a mango-lover dream? The good thing is, the summers here are pretty tropical. It's just the winters I'm worried about.

Also, a while back I won Jessica's Blogger Secret Ingredient Contest (it was bulgur). Before I left for vacation, I received her amazing prize:

Grade A dark amber Vermont maple syrup and canned pumpkin.
In case you haven't looked around lately, we're in a pumpkin shortage at the moment. Before I submitted the recipe, which calls for canned pumpkin, for her contest, I searched all over Northern friggin' Virginia for canned pumpkin so I could make it, blog about it and then submit the blog post's link. Alas, pumpkin could not be found and I informed her of this as I submitted just the recipe over email.
So you can just imagine how much this prize made my day when I opened the box. I actually didn't even realize until later that there was maple syrup in the box, too, because the first thing I saw was pumpkin and I was too busy laughing to consider that there may have been something else in the box (even though I'd read on her blog that she'd picked up something for me at the farmer's market... I kind of forgot about that part :P). The pumpkin was more than enough; the maple syrup just made it loads better!

Lastly, this is completely random and not at all food-related, but aaaaaaaaages ago I gave Lauren O'Connell of minor YouTube fame an idea for a t-shirt design (she asked for 'em) and she sent everyone who sent in suggestions a free copy of her CD, The Shakes. I received mine today, like 2 minutes before I discovered my mango sapling, and it is the bomb diggity, if you don't mind my saying so. Plus, it's signed and self-released, so it'll totally be worth a fortune when she's old and wrinkly.

She's already so famous she has an illegible signature!

Sooo yeah. I'm sorry for being so MIA lately, but I promise I'll try to be better at actually making food that's worth posting about this month. Oh, yeah, and reading/commenting on others' blogs. That's been about as neglected as my blog this month!

Love to you all, and while I need to kind of rest my tired little butt this week I hope to catch up with everyone! :)

Date Cinnamon Rolls

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:12:00 +0000

In the past week I have:

Seen my best friend for the first time in over 2 years and instead of crying like I thought I would, made note of how nice she smelled (which was very, if you're interested).
Ate at a sushi place for the first time in my life. I didn't get sushi, though. Stubborn.
Started my first job.
Learned that I am fantastic at serving iced tea to people.
Learned that I am the worst frozen yogurt machine operator in the history of frozen yogurt machines, which kind of sucks when the people who are buying the yogurt you're screwing up are watching you screw it up. :D
Been procrastinating horribly at cleaning the house.
Not made much of anything until yesterday.
Made date cinnamon rolls. Mwahaha.

Background story: because dates are usually so expensive, I jump at the chance to buy dates when I see them at a cheap price, no matter how many dates I have at home. As of a result, I have a lot of dates. Like, 5 lbs of dates. Which is interesting, since I don't really use them that much.

Then for some reason I got really in mood for cinnamon rolls but I've never actually made them before and I didn't want to deal with all that butter and sugar. I remembered seeing a date roll recipe over at Practical Nutrition and I have the bricks of pressed dates like she used (like she says, they're way cheaper than regular dried dates). So some ideas got twirling about in my head and I'm VERY happy with the results!

Date Cinnamon Rolls

(Recipe for dough adapted by Mo from Moosewood's Low Fat Favorites, filling inspired by Nour of Practical Nutrition)

1 tbsp yeast (instant or active-dry)

2 cups water*

1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder*

1/4 cup warm water

1 tbsp dark brown sugar

45 g (3 tbsp) oil of choice

240 g (2 cups) white whole wheat flour

120 g (1 cup) unbleached all purpose flour

60 g (1/2 cup) buckwheat flour

1.5 tsp baking soda (To be honest, I don't know why this is in the recipe seeing as there's already yeast in it. I guess because the original recipe called for buttermilk it was supposed to react with the acidity? Either way, it doesn't hurt to add it.)

1.5 tsp sea salt

* I was out of milk. The recipe called for 2 cups of milk, and the internet told me that 1/2 cup of dry milk powder and 2 cups of water equals 2 cups of milk. Which didn't sound right at all but I didn't contest it and ended up with about 2.25 cups of milk. You can use 2 cups of milk or nondairy milk if you'd like, since it'd just mean using slightly less of the additional flour but wouldn't actually change the recipe as it's written. :)

Combine the wet in a small bowl. Combine the dry in a larger bowl. Add wet to dry and mix very well. Add more flour until it forms a stiff dough (I used quite a bit, honestly, but I didn't keep track so I didn't try to give measurements). I used a combination of white whole wheat, unbleached AP, buckwheat and brown rice, the latter added because it was really wet and rice flour absorbs rather well. When it gets to be stiff, dump it out onto a floured surface, cover with the bowl, and let sit 15-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the filling.

13 oz brick of pitted and pressed dates (or 13 oz of softened dates, puréed)

1 tbsp cinnamon or baking spice mix

1 tbsp vanilla extract

~ 1/4 cup of water or more to thin

Combine all of the ingredients in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften, and mix together well with a spoon, adding more water to get it to a spreadable consistency.

Take the dough and knead it well for 5-10 minutes until it's smooth and not so sticky, adding flour of choice as needed. Divide the dough equally into 2 portions and roll each into a rectangle approximately 9x12" in size.

Spread enough of the filling to cover the surface well (make sure the edges of the shorter sizes are covered in the filling; the edges of the longer sides don't need to be completely covered). It doesn't need to be really thick; it should just be a thinnish layer of the filling. If you have the space to roll them both out at once, then you can split the filling up evenly. What I did was spread on the right amount to cover everything, then did the same for the next. Since you don't want the filling really thick (unless... you do?), there will be some left over.

Anyway, roll it up so you have a 12" log, and pinch the seams. Cut the logs into 12 pieces each, to get 24 rolls total.

Grease 2 9" round cake pans or 10" pie pans, and place 12 in each pan. Cover with a damp towel and place somewhere warm to rise for 45 minutes. When almost risen, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake for 15-20 minutes (15 was good for me).

Meanwhile, take that leftover filling (if you've got it) and thin it out with water and a liquid sweetener. I used date molasses (to keep with the date theme XD) but honey, agave, brown rice syrup or maple syrup would work well too. Just thin it out to the consistency you want! Tasting as you go, of course.

When the rolls are done, just spoon some of the sauce made with the filling over the roll and chow down! :)

The verdict: I personally think these taste EXACTLY like cinnamon rolls usually taste. The dough could be a little sweeter but it's not at all necessary. They're very moist and nicely sweet, even though it's sweetened purely by dates save for the 1 tbsp of brown sugar in the dough, and even sweeter with the sauce I made if you're looking for a true Cinnabon experience. ;) However, if you genuinely dislike dates these are probably not for you. I personally think dates taste pretty much like dark brown sugar, just sliiiightly different. My dad however, bit into one and made a face that I've inherited. The one that says, "Eughhhhh". You can see it on my baked beans post. I'd forgotten that he hates dates (because he hates like, everything on the planet and it's hard to keep track) and just told him they were cinnamon rolls and he thought they were weird-tasting. No biggie. :P But if you're a date-lover or just don't notice the difference between dates and sugar, you could take it a step further and replace the brown sugar in the dough with date sugar. As for me, I will definitely make these again when I'm in the mood for a cinnamon roll without the sugar high and unsatisfied feeling. :D

Does anyone else see a face that reminds you of a monkey sticking its tongue out?

Okay, now I am going to try to catch up on some blog-reading that I've been neglecting. But I'm still a busy bee all month; I'm going to Maine with ze visiting friend for 8 days in about a week! :) (This is where you picture me as excited as a 3-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber meet-and-greet.)

Obesity + Hunger = 1 Global Food Issue

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:38:00 +0000

Just wanted to see what your thoughts were on this, lovely people of the food blogosphere. :)

PS: If you're not subscribed to TED Talks in any manner... what are you waiting for? They're kind of awesome.

PPS: I'll be kind of in-and-out around here. My best friend who currently lives in Cairo is in town for a month and as much as I love blogging, people whom you haven't seen in over 2 years are kind of more important. ;) So yeah, if I don't post for a while, or I didn't comment on whatever deliciousness you made, fret not. Stay classy. <3

Seedy Crackers

noreply@blogger.com (Mo) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:01:00 +0000

I am really full. Eating a ton of crackers will do that to you, ya know.

I first saw these over at Two Spoons, and then I checked out where she got the recipe from, and kind of went from there.

I ended up using way more water than was called for, because I forgot to halve the recipe (I immediately knew it'd be too big for my puny processor), so then I tried making two half batches since I already had the amount of seeds for 1 whole batch ground up. All was going well until I realized I'd added all of the honey, salt and oil to one half-batch. And it turns out I used more pumpkin seeds than I was supposed to. Whoops. So it took a bit of dampening and lots of kneading to mix the batch, but they actually didn't turn out so bad given the amount of mistakes I made. :P

This was my first time making crackers, and also my first time concocting a recipe within the confines of my bedroom (dad was watching TV and the kitchen is far too close for a loud processor to not be highly annoying).

Don't worry, I was clean about it.

I had to change up the recipe a tad because I didn't have black sesame seeds, but that's okay.
(I apologize for the fact that this doesn't have many volumetric measurements to it; sometimes I forget that some people don't have scales so I don't bother to measure it volumetrically. If you don't have a scale, though, do yourself a favor and get one. It will be your best friend. I promise you.)

Seedy Crackers
(Recipe adapted by Mo from Swirl and Scramble, who in turn adapted it from Peter Reinhart)

75 g pepitas
5 g chia seeds
10 g golden flax seeds
70 g toasted sesame seeds
240 g (2 cups) white whole wheat flour
1 - 1.25 tsp sea salt
14 g (2 tsp) honey
35 g (~ 2.5 tbsp) oil of choice
1/2 cup water, plus more if needed

First, grind all the seeds together until you get a powder.

Then add the flour, salt, honey and oil and grind away. Drizzle in the water while the machine's running until it forms a dough.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Bunch all the dough up in a ball. If it is a little dry, dip your fingers in water and work the dry spots into the dough until it's all a uniform moistness (?). On a lightly floured surface, roll out chunk of the dough to the thickness you'd like, and cut out shapes. Place the crackers on a baking sheet lined with parchment, and bake for 12-15 minutes (less for thinner crackers, more for thicker), meanwhile preparing another sheet for more cracker cut-outs (use ALL of the scraps over by wetting your fingers with water and then gently kneading the scraps into a dough; surprisingly this didn't have much of an ill effect on the crackers, possibly because I made them quite thin). When they are baked, cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container.

The verdict: mine were less salty than I'd liked with 1 tsp of salt, but I'm sure it's due to the extra water and then extra flour that may or may not have been incorporated into my batch. Otherwise, they're quite yummy and kind of addictive. I don't have crackers very often so it's a nice little treat!
Also, I was kind of amazed at how easy these are to make. Rolling things out usually scares the bejeezus out of me, and I'd already made some mistakes along the way, but after finishing all the crackers I've concluded that it was actually a relatively simple and quick process. Cracker dough, it seems, is very forgiving.
The one thing I wonder is if I should have pricked them with a fork or something? 'Cause some of them (ahem, most of them) got puffy and bumpy. That's not a bad thing at all, but I seem to remember cracker recipes calling for poking and I'm only now realizing that might be why. :P

Have a happy 4th! Hope everyone is enjoying themselves. I'm not really doing anything for today... Fireworks and I are like water and oil. ;) (I swear, every 4th of July I think I'm going crazy 'cause I'm hearing popping sounds all over the place. A few years ago I was convinced that there was something in the wall making knocking sounds, and I think last year I was convinced gunshots were going off. Of course it's all fine when I realize what day it is but it's awfully annoying, yes?)