Gourmet Superbowl

Or: How to get me interested in football.

I can honestly say that 2010 marks the first time I’ve watched the Superbowl and enjoyed it. Of course, there are a number of factors contributing to that statement, the game itself not being foremost among them.

Ah, Superbowl XLIV, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

1. Good Company: I attended the best Superbowl party of my life last night, hosted by Nick & JP (friends of Boyf and Sister Boyf…and mine!) at their amazing home in DUMBO. It was a quality collection of football fans and otherstuff fans alike.

(Nick & Sister Boyf)

2. Good Food: Not 60 seconds after arriving, I was handed a piping hot cup of slow-simmered chili, which Nick had been working on all day. I could definitely taste the time invested! Nick had a super-tasty, super-secret Superbowl chili recipe going on here.

…and maybe now that it’s quasi-famous he’ll share the recipe with me. ;)

3. Good Toys (also file under Good Food): Legit old-school popcorn maker…

…along with legit cotton candy maker. Seriously! My eyes just about bugged out of my head when I saw this. No one will ever accuse Nick and JP of not knowing how to have a good time.

4. Good Fun: It’s better left to the imagination how aforementioned cotton candy ended up here:

As you can see, the entire party was held in rapt attention by the game right off the bat.

…But if no one’s watching the game, where are they?

Ok, so maybe a little Rock Band was needed to get us through the first half of the game.

And I don’t think anyone’s arguing if I say the band in the picture above is easier on the eyes than Pete Townshend’s windmill-exposed belly.

5. Good Food (it bears repeating): Sweet potato empanadas, you say? Why thank you, Nick, you obviously saw me coming a mile away.

My photos don’t nearly do the party justice—I’m barely scratching the surface of all the fantastic eats on display. I also owe everyone an apology for forgetting my camera, since these awkward phone pics make for a poor representation of the party!

For that reason, however, I’ll take extra props for managing to frame the boyf and myself in a self-portrait using said awkward camera-phone.

He ought to have stars in his eyes whenever I’m around, but given the circumstances, I’ll settle for the Superbowl.

Homemade Brownie Points

Now this is a bandwagon worth jumping on:

Those are indeed the world-(or at least blog-)famous Happy Herbivore Black Bean Brownies! Lindsay has outdone herself with this treat.

Lucky for you, this recipe is not top-secret like most of the upcoming cookbook recipes I’ve mentioned over the past few months. It’s a Happy Herbivore signature favorite, and it’s about time you tried it too, if you haven’t already! I am late in making them for the first time myself, and needless to say, I’m yet another new disciple of the bean brownie kingdom. Just the smell of them baking is worth it!

I almost don’t care whether or not they’re healthy, since they taste so great, but in all reality they’re pretty much guilt-free! The stats for one brownie:

Nutritional Info: 85 calories, 1g fat, 16g carbs, 4g protein (without optional sugar)

I made them with adzuki beans instead of black beans, actually, since I had some on hand. I love adzuki beans and they’re used often in Asian desserts, so I associate them with sweets. My leftover beans were just begging to be made into brownies, naturally!

Adzukis are not without their own benefits. According to this source, they are an excellent source of iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc and folate.

So don’t waste anymore time sitting in front of my blog—get thee to the kitchen and make a batch! The beauty of this recipe is that you probably have everything you need already.

What’s your favorite dessert of all time? Mine has to be a warm brownie a la mode. Looks like my next project is to make some ice cream to go with my brownies!

Groundhog Day All Over Again

Since I didn't have time for a proper post last night, I thought I'd go with the current bandwagon of reposting last year's February 2 post in honor of the Groundhog Day movie (in which Bill Murray relives February 2 over and over again, if you recall. ...And recall, and recall...)

I figured I'd be in for a shock as to how much my eating habits and/or blogging style had changed in a year, but you know what? This is still a pretty good recipe! Especially for times when you're low on groceries/high on leftovers. Enjoy! (And please excuse the hasty formatting...)

Goddess Fried Rice

Keeping with my lazy healthy theme today, I decided to whip up an original creation using only things I had in my freezer already. The result? Goddess Fried Rice. And boy howdy, it was tasty.This can be done more or less with whatever veggies you prefer, but the following is what went into the pan as seen in the picture above:

1.5 cups cooked plain Kashi Pilaf (or whatever grain you'd rather use - brown rice/quinoa/spelt...)
2 cups frozen carrot slices
3/4 cup frozen shelled edamame
1 cup frozen bell pepper slices
3 tbsp Annie's Naturals Organic Goddess dressing
4-5 slices ginger (fresh or jarred, but not pickled)
1 tbsp dried cilantro
a couple shakes of crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp low-sodium soy sauce
juice from 1/8 of a lime

Directions are simple.
Steam the carrots and edamame until cooked through.
Meanwhile, heat a large skillet or wok to medium-high with the dressing and ginger.
Add grains and peppers, stir to combine. Add cilantro and red pepper flakes.
Turn heat to high, add carrots and edamame and stir-fry until well-combined and sizzling.
Add soy sauce and squeeze lime slice into pan, then drop the slice in. Continue stirring.
Serve into bowls and top with sesame seeds (mine are green with wasabi flavor) and a few basil leaves, if desired.

The above quantities yield 3 generous servings. Whoever gets the lime slice has to do the dishes. :)

That is my usual seltzer with lime in the background, but I was feeling extra fancy so I put it in one of our underused champagne flutes with a splash of red wine. Yee haw!In my rush to get back to Gossip Girl before the commercials ended, I took a very hasty picture of dessert and didn't realize it came out all wonky until I'd already eaten it. Oops. Hard to tell, but that's a 1/2 cup cottage cheese with 1 tbsp TJ's sipping chocolate dry mix stirred in, topped with carob chips, coconut and a fluff of whipped cream.

So much for the artsy dessert photo. Any Gossip Girl fans out there? That Miss Carr is a sly fox, she is. She can go straight to Hades, if you ask me.

Radventures Revisited

Tonight I re-read my post introducing the concept of Radventures and realized it has been eight months to the day since I wrote it. I haven’t talked about this very much in the time since, so I figure I’m overdue for an update!

It was really interesting to go back and read what was going through my head when I wrote that I was essentially becoming “raw-curious;” I’d been enjoying Gena’s blog for a few months and did a bunch of reading on the subject via other sources as well. For those of you who have found me in the meantime (welcome, by the way!) and have no idea what I mean by “Radventure,” here is an excerpt from the post in question:

…I've been giving a lot of thought to different dietary lifestyles lately, raw foodism in particular. …At the same time, I couldn't fathom how to reconcile that with my current lifestyle and preferences. Above all, I hate the thought of poisoning my body with what I choose to eat, or even the skin products I use. I only get one body and I'd better treat it right so that it doesn't crap out early!

…I think it's safe to start with this notable quotable from Michael Pollan, which I'm sure you have come across before: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

That said, no one's diet is perfect, and yes, food is nutrition and fuel, but it is also a cultural source of enjoyment. Ultimately, my way of eating has to keep me both healthy and happy, so in the spirit of adventure, I've decided to embark on what I'll call Radventures. The R stands for raw, because that is the eating style that is currently most foreign to me and therefore peaking my interest, but whatever it is I try doesn't have to be raw to qualify as a Radventure. Anything I can do to clean up my eating habits, no matter how miniscule, is rad, after all. 

And clean up I did! I systematically purged my kitchen cabinets and fridge of foods and products that didn’t meet with my new (and VERY high) standards. Not wanting to waste food, I just ate away at it, replacing each lesser food with a greater one as I went. Naturally, processed foods were out, as were frozen meals (even frozen vegetables), things with added sugar or salt and even canned goods.

I shopped first and foremost at the farmer’s market, going to Whole Foods or health food stores only for things that couldn’t be bought directly from Old MacDonald himself (most of which was organic, too). Whenever I tried a new recipe, I would adapt it so that it met with my clean eating ideals: if I was cooking with high heat, I used coconut oil instead of olive (which was expensive, high quality cold-pressed and reserved for raw dishes only); if the recipe called for canned tomatoes or beans, I bought fresh tomatoes and/or boiled my own beans.

And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t summer anymore. The farmer’s market dwindled to the point where my options consisted of apples, jam and cheese. Furthermore, the colder it got, the less I wanted to be out there digging through what was available to me! Combined with testing for the Happy Herbivore cookbook (wherein I need to follow Lindsay’s still-very-healthy vegan recipes exactly, of course), I was forced to relax my over-zealous clean eating ambitions.

That said, even with my current “relaxed” approach to diet and overall health, a lot of my Radventure of a makeover has stuck.

See, even when I wrote that initial post, I knew myself well enough to realize I couldn’t make it an overnight thing, nor could I hold myself to it in an all-or-nothing way. That is where I have been most successful.

Then: On the flip side of this quasi-project, if I find that I'm using the Radventures to a control-freaky or restrictive end, a rethink is in order, because this isn't what raw eating is about. If it's going to make me depressed to think of life without pizza and ice cream, heretofore some of my favorite things, then pizza and ice cream I shall have. Ideally, the more Radventures I embark upon, the less I will want that pizza and ice cream. For now, however, it's baby steps. Toes in the water, not cannonballs… Best case scenario, I'll enjoy the changes I feel in my body so much that I want to build upon them and I will cast nary a glance backward at my old ways.

Now: I can’t say that I feel so very different now as compared to eight months ago, but I am definitely more in tune with how certain foods affect me. I’m not lactose-intolerant, but yeah, cow dairy gives me gas sometimes. Large doses of processed soy sit my stomach forever, whereas bananas are but a distant memory a mere 30 minutes after consumption.

My biggest habit change was to eat raw until lunch, a pattern I have maintained five days a week ever since. On the weekends, when I have time to get fancy, I’ll have oats or pancakes or similar, but during the work week, it’s green juice and fruit until lunch, along with a weak coffee doctored with hemp milk and stevia (as opposed to my former skim milk and Sweet ‘n’ Low coffee cocktail), just for sanity’s sake. Actually, just in the last week, I have replaced half of breakfast’s fruit with a small salad of mixed greens and dulse, plus a cup of miso broth. I’m loving the change and so is my body. I don’t tend to eat much fermented food otherwise, and I think my, ahem, system is appreciating its effects. The toilet, on the other hand, is likely getting tired of my fairly frequent visits.

Do I still enjoy the aforementioned pizza and ice cream? Yes. And regularly. Do I depend on a meal like that to make me feel like I’m having something truly fun to eat?

Not anymore.

The foods I look forward to are no longer mutually exclusive of the foods that look forward to me. It’s not a black and white situation; it’s more like a Venn diagram wherein the overlapped center consists of foods I love and are good for me.

I’m still taking those baby steps—there are still plenty of days where I’m eating from outside the diagram’s center—but man, do those baby steps add up. It’s true: if you keep putting one food foot in front of the other, it may not seem like you’re getting anywhere, but before you know it you look back and you’ve walked a mile.

Most importantly, I’ve learned what works for me (not anyone else, excellent example though s/he may be), and that’s a pretty rad venture.

If you’re still with me after all this ruminating on healthy choices, you’re a major trooper (but thank you, I appreciate it). I could go on and on, but I think I’ll put a cork in it and turn it over to you now.

How do you feel about “clean eating?” Or rather, what does it mean to you, if anything? How do you reconcile what your body needs vs. what you “want” but is “unhealthy”?

--> SUB-QUESTION FOR BLOGGERS: Has food/health blog-reading affected how you think about your own choices, for better or worse? Care to share any interesting revelations regarding your own choices/habits?

Brownie Points

Once upon a time
In fair New York City,
I came upon a shop
That looked very pretty.

I might have passed by,
But I was alone.
Not listening to music,
Nor clutching my phone.

I have to admit,
I felt in my tummy
A feeling most empty
Except for the rumbling.

So inside I went
For my hunger to break.
I’m so glad I did;
That shop was Babycakes!

Gluten-free, sugar-free,
Whole grains galore!
When I saw all these treats,
My jaw hit the floor!

Cookies and cupcakes
and coffee and tea;
I couldn’t decide!
What would it be?

Vanilla, red velvet,
Or chocolate, why not?
If you don’t want the cake,
Have a frosting shot!

Overwhelmed with the choices,
Forget the cookies.
Not even the cakes;
I wanted brownies!

Spelt flour, agave,
Rich chocolate so nifty!
But what could be better?
The price was $1.50!

With each little bite
I was so glad I’d eaten.
With good food like this,
Who cares that it’s vegan?

Double Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Vegan Ice Cream

Alternative post titles:

• The Blob
• Beware of Falling Cookie Dough
• Warning: Ugly Photos Ahead

What I’m trying to say is that this post won’t be remembered for things like “food styling” or even “good photography.”

But I do have a rockin’ vegan ice cream recipe for you. Only if you’re interested, of course. ;)

Considering this ice cream recipe involves Averie’s Chocolate Cookie Dough Ball recipe, you darn well ought to be interested. It’s all kinds of dangerously good!

Double Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream (Vegan)

Ingredients:

• 2 cans coconut milk (one regular, one lite)
• 1/2 cup agave nectar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 6 tbsp raw cacao powder (or unsweetened cocoa)
• 1/4 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 recipe Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls (not balled yet)

Directions:

1. Prepare the chocolate chip cookie dough recipe per Averie’s instructions, but do not roll into balls. Place dough in the fridge.
2. Meanwhile, combine all remaining ingredients in a blender and whiz just until well-incorporated.
3. Process ice cream batter in your ice cream maker per manufacturer’s instructions.*
4. Meanwhile, remove cookie dough from the fridge and pinch off bits according to how large you want your cookie dough bites in the ice cream.
5. Add cookie dough bits to the ice cream batter about 5 minutes before turning off the ice cream maker, or according to the machine instructions.
6. Freeze and enjoy!

*If you don’t have an ice cream maker, I recommend following steps 1 and 2, then placing the ice cream mixture in the freezer. Stir every 10-20 minutes or so until the mixture has reached soft serve texture, at which point you could stir in the cookie dough. Feel free to nosh as soon as you have achieved your desired ice cream thickness.

Clearly my first sample was too good to bother serving it neat and tidy in a pretty bowl and everything. I scooped a big blob out of the ice cream maker with my spatula and plopped it into a little Tupperware container for immediate consumption.

Actually, I’m done apologizing for the lame photos. You’re lucky I didn’t eat the whole batch straight from the ice cream maker, in which case I would have had nothing to photograph but the dark, cavernous (and empty…) depths of its frozen, rotating barrel.

Your turn: vanilla or chocolate ice cream to go with your chocolate chip cookie dough? “Other” is an acceptable answer as well. :)

A Gaggle of Guac

I recently won the Wholly Guacamole giveaway on the Foodie Blogroll. The prize was fairly modest, as you can see:

Just a t-shirt, 2 aprons, 2 chip clips, 4 kinds of guacamole, 2 kinds of salsa, 2 chip clips, 3 bags of tortilla chips, a rolling cooler with extendable handle (!) and about a half-dozen avocado squeezie toys.

I can’t imagine what I’ll do with all that, but at least the squeezie toys will keep me busy for the next decade or so. ;)

Or maybe I actually busted open the first guac box the very next day.

The first flavor I sampled was Pico de Gallo Style, which has some nice bits of tomato and cilantro in it.

I tossed a good sized blob on top of a bowl of Gena’s raw Tortilla Soup (amazing with or without guac garnish, by the way)…

…and tossed an even better sized blob on top of the accompanying salad. Who needs salad dressing when you have guacamole?!

This is pretty much the ultimate meal for any guac lover, so much so that I even threw some “guacamole-flavored” juicer pulp crackers into the mix.

“Guacamole-flavored” may be too strong a description, as the flavor of the vegetable pulp and flax tend to overpower much of the other seasonings that go into crackers like these, but the components of guac certainly inspired the following recipe.

Guackers

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup flax seeds
• 2 cups pulp from your juicer
• 1 tbsp nama shoyu/soy sauce
• 1 tsp dried cilantro
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 4 sundried tomatoes
• water, if/as needed

Directions:

1. Add flax seeds to your food processor and allow to run a little bit so that the seeds start to approach being ground up.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients, except water. Run your food processor until no large bits remain and the mixture is fine and well combined. Add water, if needed, though I don’t think I ended up adding any at all. I was using juicer pulp thawed from the freezer, so it had gotten sweaty in the process.
3. Spread very thinly on a cookie sheet and score into cracker shapes with the edge of your spatula or a knife.
4. Place in the oven, turned on to the lowest setting (“warm” on mine; something below 200 degrees).
5. Dehydrate for at least 3 hours or so, during which time you might like to check on the crackers and flip them if the tops are well dried and they need some help crisping up some more. I turned the oven off before I went to bed but left the tray in the oven overnight as well. Use your judgement, based on your own oven.

Use your guackers as an ideal vehicle for the actual guacamole…if you haven’t already plunged into your guac head-first, that is (I would totally understand).

Your turn: guacamole or salsa?