Soap & Chocolate

Death Rattle

2011-09-18T13:07:00.001-04:00

I think that when I wrote this I was merely postponing the inevitable. At the time, I really did believe I could manage one blog post per month. And had I really tried, I would have succeeded. Instead, I’ve only posted twice since then, and one of those really doesn’t count, as it simply announced the winner of a giveaway.

The facts are these: I started blogging six years ago in China as a way to share my experiences with the folks back home.

I continued blogging because I liked to write. So it was that Soap & Chocolate was born, even though I didn’t set out to write about food.

But I ended up writing about food because I discovered other people’s food blogs. Those were art to me, and my life started imitating that art. It was cool. I liked it. A lot.

Soon enough food was all I could think about, for better or for worse. Recipe creation and food shopping occupied my thoughts. It was poor man’s therapy: a creative outlet I wanted and needed, but also basic sustenance. Win-win.

But to make a long story short, a funny thing happened once I became a group fitness teacher: I never felt like blogging. I forced myself every once in a while, just to avoid completely dead air here. I felt really guilty for abandoning something that gave me a lot of satisfaction at one time.

But that time was a different time, and the reality is that it’s ok if something else is scratching that creative itch. Even as I write this, I’m impatient for it to be over. I’d rather be working on choreography for the four (!) different class modalities I teach. Add to that the occasional dance workshops I’ll soon be leading, and I’ve got my hands full.

I barely cook anymore, anyway! Lately, a plate full of crudites with hummus and pita at 10pm constitutes many a dinner. And that’s fine with me. I’m content to be a blog reader rather than writer now. Basically, I can stop making all these excuses if I remove the reason: I won’t feel guilty for not blogging if I am no longer a blogger. I won’t delete it or anything—I want the archive here for my own purposes—but I don’t plan on posting anymore.

These days, I prefer to micro-blog on my Facebook page, LafFIToff with Diana. Sometimes it’s a great song, sometimes an inspirational quote/blog post, and yes, sometimes it’s food! I still eat. A lot. The Facebook platform just fits me better than a full-on blog right now. Click “Like” on that page to follow my updates. Or not!

But that’s all I have to say about that. Thank you for reading.

e-Hug.

Giveaway Winner!

2011-07-17T17:27:00.001-04:00

Just popping in to announce that the winner(s?) of the giveaway is Pure2Raw! Lori and/or Michelle, email your address to diana at soapandchocolate dot com and I will be happy to ship your prize to you.

…well, once I’m back in the country next week, that is. Photos to come!

Da sveedaneeya…

Facebook and the Cookie (GIVEAWAY)

2011-07-10T13:16:00.002-04:00

I bet you didn’t believe me when I said I’d post here once a month or so. Well, here it is, one month later, practically to the day. I think this calls for some vigorous cabbage-patching.

I bet you also don’t believe that I teach the cabbage patch in my group exercise classes.

Actually, that’s correct.

But I’m doing a little happy dance on the inside nonetheless, as this upcoming week marks the start of my full teaching schedule for M Dance & Fitness, and I’m really excited to be teaching Hip Hop and circuit training more often, in addition to Zumba.

To commemorate the occasion, I’ve created a Facebook page for myself as an instructor/coach, which I have given the disgustingly clever moniker, “LafFIToff with Diana”. I can’t even type that with a straight face, so I guess it works. I post all kinds of fun stuff there, from the next song I’m using in class to workout tips and funny videos.

I’d also like to celebrate with a giveaway for you!

See, back in early 2010, I came up with one of my favorite cookie recipes to date: Raw Almond Cookies. After a fateful encounter with Whole Foods’ macaroons this week, however, I decided to revisit this recipe and rework it slightly to create its cooked counterpart. After an exhausting, grueling, whopping total of TWO trials [mops sweat off brow], it is done. And it is good.

(Please look past the abundance of beige and the absence of good photography.)

Almond Macaroons

Ingredients:

2 cups almond meal/flour (I like to use the leftovers from making homemade almond milk)
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
4 tsp almond extract
2 tbsp coconut oil
1/4 cup almond butter
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp maple syrup
30 drops NuNaturals liquid stevia (or more maple syrup to taste)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*
Stir together all ingredients in a mixing bowl until evenly combined.
Scoop by the tablespoonful (I use a mini ice cream scoop) onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until slightly browned on top and bottom.
Allow to cool to room temperature before storing in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Makes ~20 cookies

“Wow Diana, those sound like the best cookies in the known universe, but I don’t have any of those ingredients and actually I don’t really want to have any of those ingredients so thanks but I’m not making them.” ~ You

I hear that. So I’ll make ‘em for you! You can’t tell me you wouldn’t like to have a batch delivered to your doorstep like so:

And maybejustmaybe there will be other goodies in the package too.

To win a batch of Almond Macaroons, etc. please do one or more of the following:

Leave a comment below.
For an additional entry, “Like” LafFIToff with Diana on Facebook and leave an additional comment below to let me know you have done so (since your fb name may not match your commenting-below name).
And for a 3rd entry, leave a comment on LafFIToff with Diana’s wall to tell me your favorite way to, ahem, laugh it off. Is it a certain workout? A great TV show or movie? Whatever makes you smile and keeps you healthy. Again, comment below to let me know you did this.
Finally, you can tweet the following (and comment below yet again) for an additional entry: @soapnchocolate is giving away homemade Almond Macaroons! http://bit.ly/n5hSZu

I’ll choose a winner on July 17 and get your care package out as soon as possible! (US and Canadian residents only, please!)

I’m off to cabbage-patch into the sunset.

We need to talk...

2011-06-12T18:59:00.003-04:00

Hi.

I’m having tons of fun teaching group fitness. I’ve been at it since early February, and it couldn’t suit me better. I’ve even had the chance to create my own classes from scratch, so I now teach Hip Hop and Boot Camp in addition to Zumba.

My good friend Kara Fox is a really talented photographer and came to my last Hip Hop class to take some shots of us in action, so I thought I’d share a few here.

Needless to say, fitness has somewhat taken the place of food in terms of what occupies my mind and therefore what I have to blog about. Don’t get me wrong—I think about food a LOT and consume astounding quantities on a daily basis. However, whereas this time last year I was always thinking about creative cooking and enjoying the whole culinary process, I now simply feed myself. Cooking time is limited now that I both work full-time and teach during the remainder, so for the most part, I turn to quick, reliable dishes that come together easily and with ingredients I always have around. Translation: I eat a hell of a lot of zucchini stuff.

I have a lot of guilt where this blog is concerned. I desperately want to avoid it looking like dead air, so to speak, but my eats are not likely to inspire anyone these days, so the likelihood of this remaining a food blog is low. I wish I could go back to the days of posting 5 times a week, but the reality is that this blog was serving a different purpose for me back then, and I no longer have that need to satisfy. So it is that the blog will have to evolve along with me.

It makes me cringe, but I’m thinking a more realistic goal will be posting once a month. I don’t think I’m breaking any hearts here except my own, though, so a lower expectation on my part is best for now, as far as the blog is concerned.

Indeed, the best way for me to share what I’ve been up to is to show you! I would love to see any New Yorkers in class sometime. You can attend any of my 3 formats at M Dance & Fitness. In fact, we are running a special discount right now: 3 classes for $25! This deal is only available through June 15, so if you’d like to take advantage, click here to sign up. Plus, starting in July, I’ll be teaching 7 times a week for MDF (as opposed to the current 2; I teach Zumba elsewhere at other times).

…And that’s all I’ve got for now. Until next time!

Bloggy Style: Meetings to Remember

2011-05-28T18:19:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, I got to share a really special dinner with nine other NYC bloggers. Though I wish we weren’t gathering for this particular reason—Gena’s departure from New York (as I write this, in fact)—it was a wonderful occasion to rub shoulders with some of my favorite New Yorkers and enjoy a meal put on by Verite Catering.

Raw gazpacho in a cucumber cup with dehydrated beet chip

There were some familiar faces…

(Pictured: Melissa and Gena; Unpictured: Danielle, Katie, and Dori)

…as well as several people I was delighted to meet for the first time.

(Pictured: Sofia, Leslie and Kathleen; Unpictured: Ada)

We were treated to a gorgeous set of five courses…

Mushroom and sweet potato soup—my favorite of the five! Well, until dessert…

Green salad with spiced sunflower seeds

Half-eaten risotto tart with basil and yellow pepper sauce
(I got so excited that I committed the usual blogger faux-pas of digging in pre-picture!)

Pictured: mango sorbet and coconut mini-cupcake; Unpictured: me on the floor, swooning

I think I am the Godfather of coconut. And by that I mean I doubt I could refuse any request on a day involving coconut treats. Do with that what you will.

While I am loathe to let D.C. have Gena, I’ve no doubt that there are some pretty major things in store for her, and for that I am willing to let her go. Temporarily. During which time I may show up at her apartment unannounced.

Gena toasts Melissa, who I (we?) consider the blog fairy godmother, as she both inspired Gena to start blogging and organized the first blogger meet-up I ever attended.
I’m so glad to know these ladies.

All in all, it was such a nice time, and all credit due to Gena and Verite Catering for pulling it off seamlessly.

Dinner kept me out late enough that I’d lost my oomph for blogging last Sunday, so add that to my mile-long list of blogger-don’ts. I don’t like to skip a week unannounced because I am nothing if not consistent, but maybe just this once it’s worth it for the sake of an extra-awesome post, if only for the following photo:

It made me so hap-pea to spend some QT with Sarah after many, many moons of fandom on my part. She was in town for Book Expo America because, in case you didn’t know (as if!), her book drops July 26. (Sarah, can I refer to a book “dropping,” like a single? Whatever, I’m keeping it. Flava Flaaaaaaaaaaaaav!) My piggy bank’s a’rattlin’ with my savings for said book. I wonder if there’s enough in there to fly her out again so she can sign it…?

Our feast of choice occurred at Bonobos.

Necessary accompaniments include the legendary Coconut Chai and fresh Thai Coconut Water. I might start writing off coconut products, what with coconut water being nature’s Gatorade and all. No one wants a dehydrated Zumba teacher, right? Right. Pardon me while I add a “Coconut Chai” column to my budget spreadsheet.

Ahem.

This is how you make a salad stick to your ribs, by the way (and keep it raw, vegan and gluten-free, if those are a factors for you). A bed of greens dressed in their amazing sweet basil dressing, topped with a mixture of walnut pate, zucchini, carrots, sprouts, purple cabbage and red pepper.

This is also how you stay regular. I’m just sayin’!

Again, all in all, Sarah is a wonder to behold and I couldn’t ask for a nicer time. It doesn’t get much better than Pea and poop.

If you’ve ever attended a blogger meet-up, who did you meet and what made it memorable?

Inspired Avocado Pesto

2011-05-15T20:09:00.001-04:00

I’ve fully accepted the fact that my once-weekly blogging schedule will keep me from posting ideas as I think of them. It will also keep me from coordinating posts with time-sensitive topics (read: I’m currently sitting on a scone recipe I made for the day of the Royal Wedding…and yeah, you’re gonna wait a while longer for that one).

But a number of post ideas have been bumped this week in favor of a delicious, seasonal dinner I had this week, and it is too good not to share. I do not take credit for this being an original idea. It is, rather, a hybrid of two of my favorite bloggers’ recipes. I know and love Angela’s Creamy Avocado Pasta, and when Gena posted her raw Pistachio Pesto recipe, I got a hankering for a gigantic pile of fresh, raw food so strong that I decided to get wacky and marry the two recipe ideas.

So, you see, I call it “inspired” not so much because it was this genius idea of mine, but rather because it was inspired by these ladies’ already awesome recipes.

To be fair to me, though, I think my reaction was something to the effect of “o92nvoiufdsnbvjnw9ejfsiudhfpnvf!!!” when I tasted this variation.

Avocado Pesto (raw, vegan, gluten-free)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
~1/2 cup each basil and baby spinach (adjust proportions according to your taste, or even add more!)
1 tbsp olive oil
3/4 avocado
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp salt, plus pepper to taste

Directions:

Grind sunflower seeds in a food processor until a bit crumbly, then add basil and spinach and pulse to combine.
Add remaining ingredients and blend until well incorporated.
Taste and adjust salt and pepper accordingly. If too thick, add more oil.
Toss with noodles of choice. I spiralized 1.5 medium zucchinis and added cherry tomatoes and chopped sundried tomatoes, per Gena’s serving suggestion.

Makes 2 Diana-sized portions. Serves up to 4 normal people.

You’re not gonna go wrong, whichever version of this recipe you choose! Just worship at the altar of basil and you’ll enjoy your summer of pesto very much indeed, methinks.

Also, if I may, I’d like to think I have the perfect utensils with which to enjoy such a dish. Behold: the Forkchops.

Chopsticks with a fork and knife on the opposite end to deal with those pesky bites that let’sbehonest are not so much bite-sized. Or perhaps not pickuppable by novice chopstick-users? Not that I would know.

Basil: love it or hate it? Discuss.

Chocolate Winner!

2011-05-08T20:42:00.001-04:00

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers and people with mothers! I am unplugged for the day (er…except for right now) in favor of enjoying the time with my own mom, but true to my word I am announcing the winner of the Guylian chocolate giveaway.

And the chocolate goes to: SOPHIA! Email me your address and you shall be shipped your goodies ASAP.

Cheers!

THAMFA + Chocolate Giveaway!

2011-05-01T19:17:00.003-04:00

Greetings! Sorry for pussing out on you the last couple of weeks, but I took some much-needed time off, including a vacation to California to visit the parental units. I spent my birthday there as well and was treated to some truly legendary eats, which I will share with you next week.

In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying some warmer weather by now, wherever you are (unless you are in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case…sorry). New York City is slowly but surely pulling itself out of the pits of winter despair. We have had some truly fabulous days with blue skies, fluffy clouds and that special smell that can only mean that spring and hay fever are here to both delight and torture us.

Gazing out the window at the gloriousness one day a couple weeks ago, I wrote a clandestine email to a coworker out of frustration that I wasn’t outside frolicking, as one does. “The hills are mother-f*cking ALIVE and I can’t be outside to enjoy it!” was the general gist of the message, I believe. Said coworker was so amused by my expression that she immediately created the acronym THAMFA for it, and we have used it ever since to describe days that create such a sense of joy and wellbeing that you are compelled to go out and frolic.

The end.

I reference this story not only in hopes that you are experiencing your own feeling of THAMFA, but to share a particular treat that is THAMFA-inducing, yet not dependent on the weather at all! Guylian recently sent me a rather generous sampler…

…yeah.

And I’ve been ooh-la-la-ing ever since. Included in my samples were their classic seashell Belgian Chocolate Truffles,

No Sugar Added chocolate bars and Extra Dark truffles,

and individually wrapped pralines.

You know, for my lunch box.

Since I had one foot out the door for California at the time, I brought the two biggest assortments to share with my parents, both in classic milk/white marble and extra dark.

I think they were a hit.

(Picture taken mere seconds after my arrival.)

I also later brought a few to my chocoholic coworker-friend (of “THAMFA” fame), who had this to say:

“Um, THANK YOU they are like explosions of awesomeness in my mouth...........and they are cute.”

Direct quote.

Suffice it to say they’re good.

Now, Guylian’s goodness is nothing new to me—I’ve been enjoying these chocolates as long as I can remember—back in the days of the mermaid commercials, even (I would sing their little siren “Gheeeeeliaaaaaaaan” call for you if I could). But for those of you for whom it’s unfamiliar, a little information:

Guy Foubert was a passionate Belgian Chocolatier making handmade chocolate truffles in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. In 1958, Guy and Liliane joined their names, both in marriage and in their company name creating Chocolaterie Guylian; a small, artisanal chocolate maker. Today, Guylian crafts the finest authentic Belgian chocolate truffles, selling them to chocolate lovers in Belgium and in more than 100 countries across the world.

Guylian Artisanal Belgian Chocolates provide the ultimate experience for chocolate lovers. Each luxurious chocolate seashell is marbled with 100% pure, silky smooth milk, dark and white Belgian chocolate. Our irresistible seashell chocolates are filled with a rich, decadent, and luxuriously creamy chocolate truffle; the original handmade recipe of Guy & Liliane. Our signature truffle recipe is still made in small-batch copper kettles exclusively by Guylian's Master
Chocolatiers in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium.

I figure it’s safe to assume you might like to try some chocolate for yourself, so I’m happy to give you that opportunity. Guylian has agreed to present one winner with a prize package of both the original seashell chocolates and their Praline Original Temptations.

Simply drop a comment below to be entered! I will randomly choose a winner in next week’s post.

For an additional entry, tweet this giveaway and leave an additional comment to let me know you have done so—your entry will not be counted unless you leave the extra comment! You can use the following message: @soapnchocolate is giving away Guylian chocolate!

Good luck! Are you feeling like THAMFA yet?

Excuses, Excuses

2011-04-10T19:23:00.002-04:00

Soap & Chocolate is officially on vacation for the next two weeks for the following ~~excuses~~ reasons:

I am sick.
I am tired.
I have nothing to write about. (<— LIE; see below)
I am going out of town for a week soon.
My pizza ~~is about to arrive~~ just arrived.

Point #5 is especially important. See last post.

EDITED TO ADD: Almost forgot: I cut my hair off. That's what I have to write about.

Aaaaand I'm spent.

I’ll be back in late April with a delicious giveaway!

Cheers,

Diana

Homemade DQ Blizzard

2011-04-03T18:57:00.001-04:00

This weekend I had an encounter with the holiest of marriages in my personal food Bible: pizza and ice cream.

Such encounters are not necessarily infrequent…but they are to be celebrated nonetheless—something I do too little of on the blog.

The pizza of choice this time was a small Bel Paese on whole wheat crust from Monty Q’s. Toppings include fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, fresh plum tomato sauce and pesto.

I know, it’s like it couldn’t possibly exist outside of your wildest dreams, right? Trust me, in New York City, it can.

Sorry for the hole in the picture—a bite flew into my mouth before I could even reach for the camera. New York pizza, like New Yorkers themselves, can get a little pushy at times.

For dessert, however, I thought I’d try a semi-homemade recreation of one of my favorite ice cream treats: Dairy Queen’s Blizzard. Sadly, there appear to be no Dairy Queens in the five boroughs (or at least the two that I travel between daily…), so I decided to put some faith in my own blender and give it a whirl myself. (<— Sad pun.)

I found some new-to-me ice cream, which seemed too good to be true at 150 calories per pint (my “FRANKENFOOD!” alarm instantly went off upon spotting it), but after a scan of the ingredients,

I found nothing I didn’t recognize, so I figured why not? The flavor appealed to me very much.

And at first taste, I was quite pleasantly surprised! I mean, no, this is no substitute for real ice cream, but in a Tasti D-Lite kind of way, Arctic Zero is totally acceptable.

Still, at only 150 calories for the WHOLE PINT, I felt like it was challenging me to make it more decadent.

So I did.

Homemade Blizzard

Ingredients:

1 pint ice cream, softened at room temperature for
10-15 minutes (I used Arctic Zero Vanilla Maple)
4 oz milk (more or less, depending on how thick you like your Blizzard. I used So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk)
1/2 cup mix-ins (or more! I used TJ’s Maple Pecan granola)
Additional toppings, if desired (I added a Sutter’s Formula Soft Molasses cookie from TJ’s [unreal!])

Directions:

Combine ice cream and milk in a blender and blend smooth.
Add mix-ins and pulse once or twice to incorporate.
Serve and add any additional toppings.

Serves 1 Diana or up to 4 normal people

My Blizzard itch has most definitely been scratched. [Contented sigh]

What two foods go together like pizza and ice cream for you?

Oatmeal Breakfast Casserole (+ Stevia Winners!)

2011-03-27T18:22:00.002-04:00

First, the winners of the NuNaturals stevia giveaway:

thefirstkitchen.com
Tess
Gabriela
Katie

Congratulations! Email your shipping addresses to [diana at soapandchocolate dot com] and your prize will be on its way!

In other news:

The rather unappetizing nameless blob pictured above has been occupying my thoughts (and my belly space) every Saturday morning for about a month now. Perhaps it would be more enticing if I gave it a descriptive name, such as “Scrumptious Baked Oatmeal Casserole with Pumpkin, Oats, Banana and Spices Oh and Don’t Forget the Topping of Brown Sugar and Pecans.”

Somehow that doesn’t roll off the tongue so well.

The story behind it is this: I teach a 9am Zumba class on Saturday mornings. As explained last week, I’m not so much in the mood to munch a substantial breakfast when I’m about to jump around for an hour, so I typically down a smoothie on my way to class and leave the serious feasting for afterward.

Several weeks ago, I spied Angela’s Sweet Potato Oatmeal Breakfast Casserole and knew I wanted to try it ASAP. But when would I have the kind of time in the morning to make it? And then I realized I wasn’t using my kitchen devices to their full potential: turns out my oven has a delay timer, so I was able to assemble the casserole the night before, pop it in the oven before I left to teach, and it was cooked and ready when I got home. Cool, no? There is just everything right with having a hot, home-cooked meal ready as soon as I walk in the door. This is why I love my crockpot and rice cooker so much, in addition to the newly-discovered delay timer on my oven.

Trouble was, there was still a fair amount of time involved in prepping said casserole, what with cooking the potato AND the oatmeal mixture before it ever sees the oven. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful recipe as is, but given my particular circumstances and time management needs, it began to…morph.

Until finally, three-ish trials later, I’d arrived at a no-pre-cook, make-ahead casserole that requires less than 10 minutes to prep the night before and then bakes itself while I teach. No complaints here, yo.

Make-Ahead Oatmeal Breakfast Casserole

Ingredients:

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1 cup milk (I use unsweetened almond)
3/4 cup pumpkin
1 large banana
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp maple syrup

Topping:

2 tbsp chopped pecans
1 tbsp butter/Earth Balance
1 tbsp flour (I use whole wheat [pastry] flour)
2 tbsp brown sugar

Directions:

The night before you intend to eat this for breakfast, assemble the casserole. Mash together the banana and pumpkin in a medium-sized bowl, then whisk in the rest of the ingredients until everything is well-incorporated. Pour into a small casserole dish prepped with nonstick spray, cover and refrigerate overnight.
Separately, prepare the topping by cutting the butter into the other topping ingredients (I usually use a fork to do this, mixing until a crumble forms). Store this in its own container in the fridge overnight as well.
In the morning, about 45 minutes before you want to eat, preheat the oven to 350*, uncover the casserole, sprinkle on the topping and bake for about 40 minutes, raising the temperature to 425* for the last 10 minutes so that the topping browns. (I set the delay timer so that it begins baking while I’m away and time it so that I arrive home when there’s 10 minutes left on the cook time, at which point I crank the heat up.) It is done baking when it is bubbling at the edges and no longer runny/jiggly in the middle.
Remove from the oven and let stand 5 minutes or so to set.

Serves 1 hungry Zumba teacher who probably won’t get to eat again until 7pm because she’s teaching again after breakfast.

Or 2 normal people.

This is more spoonable than sliceable, but a glorious casserole nonetheless. And I challenge you to combine so many food groups in one dish so deliciously as with this one. With nutrition as with time, efficiency is the name of the game for those of us with crazy schedules.

What’s your favorite healthy meal to make at home when you’re short on cooking time? I need dinner ideas too!

If You Like Pina Coladas… (Giveaway Post!)

2011-03-20T17:19:00.003-04:00

…then surely you will like a green-a colada!

(I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smoothie/beverage called a green-a colada before, but I can’t be the first one to think of that name—it was begging to be used!—so advance apologies to whoever I “stole” it from!)

I now spend much of my Saturdays teaching Zumba and boot camp, and it all begins with an early (for a weekend!) wake-up call. Not only am I barely hungry at 7am, but I prefer not to teach on a full stomach. It is less than advisable to teach a vigorous workout such as Zumba running on fumes alone, though, so smoothies have become the ideal vehicle for pre-teaching energy.

I often turn to long-time favorites Choosing Raw and Oh She Glows for reliably delicious and nutrient-dense smoothie ideas, but this weekend I threw together a smoothie that tasted so nice I made it twice!

Green-a Colada

Ingredients:

3/4 cup coconut milk (such as So Delicious)
1/2 frozen banana
1/2-3/4 cup pineapple chunks
3 large romaine leaves (or a handful of spinach)
hefty spoonful coconut butter (~ 1 tbsp; shredded coconut might also work if you blend thoroughly)
7 drops NuNaturals vanilla liquid stevia (or sweetener to taste)
1 tbsp hemp protein powder, optional (or other protein powder of choice)
2-3 ice cubes

Combine all ingredients in a blender, starting with milk, and process until smooth.

I’ve always been a big fan of NuNaturals stevia and use it every day, so I’d like to give you a chance to try it yourself. FOUR (4!) lucky winners will receive a box of NuStevia packets and a bottle of Vanilla Stevia Liquid (my favorite!). Just leave a comment below to enter.

Extra entries will be awarded to those who tell me their favorite smoothie recipe/combination (bwahaha) and/or those who tweet about this giveaway. You can use the following text: @soapnchocolate is giving away NuNaturals stevia! http://bit.ly/i0G05G

Be sure to leave separate comments for each of your extra entries or they will not be counted!

I’ll choose a winner next Sunday, March 27. Good luck!

CSN Giveaway Winner! And an update…

2011-03-13T19:00:00.002-04:00

And the winner of $60 to CSN stores is MELISSA! Apparently being the first entry is NOT bad luck because random.org picked you, I sh!t you not. Gift code coming your way!

In other news, I’m creating a hip hop workout right now and I think it’s going to be ridiculously fun. Here’s a preview of a few of the tunes I’m using:

Lupe Fiasco, “Kick Push”

Pussycat Dolls, “When I Grow Up”

Far East Movement, “Like a G6”

This stuff is my jam. I’m so excited to get to create this class and share the fun with other people because not a day goes by that I don’t miss dancing with Synergy back in college. Example:

Sadly, we didn’t know what the “Youtube” was back in 2005 so the above video features a later generation, but you get the idea.

If any New Yorkers are interested in trying out my class, you can sign up for the teaser I’m teaching on April 14.

Back next week with a totally trippindicular recipe (sorry, I just watched Valley Girl)!

Giveaway: $60 to CSN Stores!

2011-03-06T14:15:00.002-05:00

Greetings! Now’s your chance to win a $60 gift code to any of CSN’s 200+ online stores! This is an epic opportunity. CSN has bestowed upon me such treasures as

a Tribest personal blender,

a Cuisinart ice cream maker,

and an Aroma rice cooker (aka love of my life). But you need not feel limited to kitchen appliances! Have a browse and allow yourself to get sucked into the shopping vortex that is CSN.

So drop a comment below and I’ll choose a winner next Sunday. For an extra entry, tweet this giveaway and leave a SEPARATE COMMENT to let me know you did so (extra entry will not be counted unless you comment separately about it). You can use the following message to paste into Twitter:

@soapnchocolate is giving away $60 to CSN stores! http://bit.ly/dEJscz

Good luck!

Love Means Chocolate and Giveaways

2011-02-26T14:17:00.001-05:00

Before your eyes glaze over at the sight of the sexy chocolate I’m about to throw down up in here, I want to alert you to the giveaway I’m hosting next week! Adjusting to my teaching schedule has taken a toll on my body, most noticeably in my lower back. It aches all day long, while I’m sitting at a desk doing my day job, so I for one am eyeballing some new office furniture, considering how much time I spend in my rolling chair. If you are similarly afflicted, you’ll be glad to learn that CSN has offered up another giveaway opportunity! Check back next weekend to enter for a chance to win a nice chunk of dinero to spend in any of their online stores.

So.

Hi. That’s chocolate. Chocolate that blows my mind. Intemperantia sent me these samples recently, and they are completely divine. Made from “fine imported Swiss chocolate specialties flown in fresh from Switzerland,” these chocolates are certified 100% organic.

And what’s more:

100% cocoa butter – no oils.
No artificial colors, preservatives or flavoring.
Only the top quality cocoa, liquors, nuts and creams are used.
Chocolate is maintained at ideal temperatures for optimum freshness.

Indeed—my chocolates arrived with a cold pack enclosed! Oh my gosh, they were so good. It was a struggle not to eat them all at once, but when you know you have such precious chocolate in your hands, you also can’t help but want to stretch it out. Oh, the humanity!

But that’s not the only treat that’s arrived lately.

I received these free samples of Pure Dark chocolate as part of Foodbuzz’s Tastemaker Program, and they were mighty delicious as well, but in a down and dirty, break ‘em apart with your hands kind of way. I loved ~~gnawing on~~ the plain 70% chocolate slab, but the bark caught my attention as something special.

Topped with cherries, roasted almonds and caramelized cacao nibs, it was seriously addictive. I’m not always one for combining fruit with my chocolate (fruit is healthy!), but I couldn’t deny the genius of this combination.

Are you drooling yet? I will leave you to Q-tipping the drool out of your keyboard and simply ask you this: What’s your favorite way to enjoy chocolate? (…or not, if you are so ~~weird~~ inclined.)

Pumpkin Apple Butter

2011-02-20T17:50:00.001-05:00

You don’t have to tell me I’m low on blogging mojo. I feel its absence acutely. It should bother me, but to be honest, the only thing bothering me right now is the overabundance of Peanut Butter Puffins in my belly. If you thought it wasn’t possible to OD on Puffins, I am here to tell you that you are WRONG.

Mostly, I’m content to ~~lurk~~ read your blog, but it does feel like it’s been a while since I made an actual food contribution to my own food blog.

As a little holiday giftie for my coworkers, I made pumpkin apple butter and gave it to them in tiny jars. Earlier this week, one of said coworkers returned her tiny jar to me, empty and clean.

Me: “Oh, you don’t have to give the jar back to me—it was a gift!”

Her: “I’m not returning it to you. I want a refill.”

I will go ahead and assume she liked it.

I will also take that as a sign that I’m about two months late in posting the recipe, but then again, some would say it’s never too early to get a jump on holiday gifts! If you are so industrious, you could probably go ahead and make this now and freeze it in its gift jars. If you do that, email me your address so that I can come high-five you.

Pumpkin Apple Butter
(adapted from Brittney’s Healthy Homemade Apple Butter)

Ingredients:

10 medium apples (such as gala), cored and chopped
2 cups apple juice (I juiced mine fresh, but store-bought is fine)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch salt
1 14.5 oz can pumpkin
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp pure maple syrup (or to taste)

Directions:

Prepare slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray and place chopped apples inside.
Add juice through salt, cover and cook 15 hours on low.
At the end of the cooking time, the mixture will have darkened and become very fragrant. Get used to this fragrance—it’ll be around a while! Turn off the crockpot and let everything cool for 30 minutes or so.
Add pumpkin and maple syrup and use an immersion blender to blend everything smooth. Alternatively, transfer to a blender or food processor to blend smooth.
Once cool, store in glass jars, size of your choice, and give it away! Or hoard it for yourself—I wouldn’t blame you.

I found tiny holiday-themed gift bags to fit the tiny apple butter jars, and that was as much gift wrapping as I did. It doesn’t get much simpler than that! I’m not big on ~~effort~~ elaborate gift wrapping, and we don’t really exchange gifts in my office, for that matter, so a small, low-cost gesture was as much as I felt the need to share ~~this~~ last year.

I’ll now walk away from this blog post with my tail between my legs for it being so un-seasonal and late. I could have shared my reviews of a couple new brands of chocolate I happened to try at Valentine’s Day, but in keeping with my general malaise where blogging is concerned, I’ll put it off for a while.

I am nothing if not consistent.

Do you like to give edible gifts? What kind of food do you think makes the best gift?

I won’t quit my day job

2011-02-13T15:59:00.001-05:00

I can take a hint.

The entirety of last week’s post consisted of the following:

I shall forego blogging this week in favor of devoting my full attention to the Black Eyed Peas concert tonight.

Superbowl, Black Eyed Peas…tomato, tomahto.

The “Black Eyed Peas concert” in question was, in fact, the Superbowl Halftime Show, in which they performed. Given my disinterest in the football game itself, the above was my attempt at a joke about what hundreds of millions were tuning in to watch that night. Apparently, said hundreds of millions do not include the readers of this blog. #FAIL

I would go back to clown college if only I weren’t having so much fun teaching group fitness! (See this post for my teaching schedule.) The job is a great fit for me PUN INTENDED and I’m so glad I picked up the phone when my calling called.

My back and muscles doth protest the increase in activity, but I’m patient, as my body and teaching skills alike are works in progress. All I can do is take care of me and enjoy the progress progressing.

And with that, I’m off to dine on dinner with family.

Cheers to you and your calling! Have you answered yet?

Playback Paused

2011-02-06T16:41:00.001-05:00

I shall forego blogging this week in favor of devoting my full attention to the Black Eyed Peas concert tonight.

Superbowl, Black Eyed Peas…tomato, tomahto.

Teaching Schedule, French Fries

2011-01-30T18:50:00.001-05:00

If this post’s title sounds odd, it’s because I feel odd. Somefluthing has hit me like a ton of bricks and I’ve been out of commission for about 3 days now. And it has not, NOT been pretty.

That said, I think I’ve got it under control (yes, I control the flu) and I do intend to start teaching this week as planned, so for any interested New York City locals, here it is:

Tuesdays:

Zumba @ 6:45pm
Cardio Sculpt @ 8:00pm

Wednesdays:

Zumba @ 6:40pm

Saturdays:

Zumba @ 3:15pm
Boot Camp @ 4:15pm

Location: Devi in Park Slope, Brooklyn (looks like the website is not yet updated with the above schedule)

Starting February 12 I will also be teaching the Saturday morning Zumba class (9:00am) for M Dance & Fitness at the Upper West Side location.

As far as food goes, I can’t say eating has been my friend this weekend. In fact, it has turned me completely inside out and ripped me apart, not to get into any gory details or anything…

Early last week I did pick up a free bag of frozen fries, courtesy of Alexia Foods and the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, so by the time I did actually get hungry last night, I was glad I had them on hand.

If you aren’t allowed to have an entire dinner of french fries and ketchup when you’re sick, I don’t know when you are. Totally hit the spot.

They weren’t as salty & peppery as their name suggested, so I had to supplement a bit myself, but otherwise tasty, non-greasy and delightfully basic. Just what the doctor ordered.

Or not. I was then up half the night in crippling pain (for the 3rd night in a row), but it’s pretty safe to say it was not the fries’ fault! Just to be safe, though, I’ve eaten strictly BRAT ever since, and it is definitely working.

What are your go-to sick day foods?

Mocha Brownie Cupcakes

2011-01-23T19:23:00.001-05:00

I know. This post’s title basically gets better with every word. That’s why I’m not going to mess around with lots of flowery lead-in today, except to say THANK YOU for your support of my “big reveal.” I start teaching next week and will post my schedule next weekend for any interested NYC locals.

And now, let’s get to the down and the dirty of these here cupcakes, because that’s the only way to treat ‘em: fast forward to the O-face.

Mocha Brownie Cupcakes (with gluten-free option)

Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Brownie Cupcakes

Ingredients:

6 tbsp butter
8 oz semisweet chocolate chips
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour (or 3/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose GF baking mix + 3/4 tsp xanthan gum)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/8 tsp baking soda
4 tsp instant coffee
nonstick cooking spray
white chocolate chips for topping, if desired

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-count muffin tin with cupcake liners, spray generously with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.
In a saucepan over low heat, melt butter and chocolate. Stir until smooth. Add instant coffee granules and stir again til smooth. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Add flour (and xanthan gum if making gluten-free), cocoa and baking soda. Stir in melted chocolate mixture until combined.
Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full with batter and top with white chocolate chips, if using. Bake until a firm crust forms on the cupcakes, 20-25 minutes (23 for me). Remove to a wire rack to cool, about 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and continue to cool on wire rack.

Makes 12 cupcakes

The inspiration for these cupcakes was an office birthday. Several of my coworkers have Celiac disease, so the treat criteria included gluten-free, chocolate, resembles birthday cake and is easily portioned into single servings. Oh and also, doesn’t require Diana to buy any new ingredients.

Ta-da.

They turned out way better than I deserved, but then again, Martha doesn’t often do us wrong, does she? They really did have the taste and texture of brownies that you’d bake in a flat pan. Thank you, Ms. Stewart, for providing me with an idea for a seriously easy birthday treat (I didn’t even have to bust out the mixer!). And I hope your face feels better.

And for you, brownie or cupcake? Or both? Neither? Hybrid?

The Big Reveal

2011-01-16T17:28:00.002-05:00

There are a few things (ok, a lot of things) I’ve kept under my hat where this blog is concerned. Nothing sketchy, I assure you, nor anything that would prove compromising to my life, or anyone else’s, for that matter. In fact, there are a great many things I’ve let fly via Twitter and Facebook that I’ve never alluded to here, so what I’m about to tell you might not even be a surprise. I guess it’s just that whatever I write on the blog tends to feel very official and recorded for all time, so I like to be good and sure about its content before I publish it.

While I’m not yet at the point where I envisioned writing a post such as this one, I think its time has come nonetheless, seeing as I was hired as a group fitness instructor this week.

I grew up a dancer. Not so much in an artistic sense as there being something that compelled me to move to music. Indeed, I wouldn’t call myself a great performer or anything. For this reason, I didn’t pursue dance beyond the point where it was easy to participate in dance-related activities, such as it was in college, where I shook pom-poms with the Dance Team at football games and shook my hiney with Synergy Hip Hop Dance Company.

I always assumed I’d have a “normal job” after graduating and that exercising on my own would be enough to fulfill my craving for dance. I did get a normal job. I still have it. The crave, however, remains unsatisfied.

Until now, that is. In the past few months I’ve been seeking to fill the void. I’m now an AFAA certified personal trainer and a Zumba instructor. Next month I will test for certification as a group exercise instructor.

I actually have no immediate plans to train private clients (unless you, er, wanna call me). I went through the personal training certification process in order to educate myself in depth on anatomy and kinesiology. It worked! But what really changed everything was Zumba.

(Me with Tanya Beardsley, Zumba guru and star of the Zumba DVDs)

To be openly cheesy about it, no other exercise format has spoken to my own musical and dansical (made up word—I’m keeping it) inclinations like Zumba. It comes naturally to me and makes me happy and I’m pretty sure I’m meant to be sharing it with other people, so perhaps it is fitting that I was hired within 48 hours of completing my certification. The universe has wasted no time in showing me the path to putting all this in action, so I’m happy to “ease on down the road!” [Insert funkadelic soundtrack.]

I’m so excited to add group fitness teaching to my life! For any interested New Yorkers, I’m happy to share my teaching schedule (which begins February 1). I’m teaching Zumba, cardio sculpt and a boot camp. I’m also happy to kick your ass. With love, of course. With love.

In the meantime, I’ve got lots of groovy tunes to choreograph into my Zumba routine, so between that and some judgmental Golden Globe-watching, I’ve got this evening’s work cut out for me.

Before I go, allow me to direct you back to my last post, in which I published a rice cooker recipe and on which every single comment (except for one! Edited to add: TWO! Excellent!) referred to the commenter’s love for slow cookers rather than rice cookers. It is entirely understandable that not everyone knows that the two are different appliances, in which case some may be in for a surprise when they try the recipe in a slow cooker, but I don’t think that was the case here. My point is that I have been cracking up all week at the consistent comment references to slow cookers, despite my frantic interjections. If you’re in the mood for a laugh, I suggest you read through the comments—don’t worry, there aren’t many.

Cheers!

Packable Stackable Rice Cooker Risotto

2011-01-09T20:08:00.002-05:00

It’s Sunday. Or rather, it’s Sunday as of the time that this blog post goes live. Anyone who shares a lifestyle of the 9-to-5 variety is likely groaning inwardly: “What in the world am I going to bring to the office for lunches this week that is relatively healthy, cheap, doesn’t make me want to die when I eat it on consecutive days and neither attracts the coworkers in an ooh-aah kind of way nor repels them with skunk-like force?”

Your thoughts exactly, right?

Well, even if not, I assume I can get an “amen” when I say that I feel like I’ve done myself a serious solid if I can manage to prepare a week’s worth of healthy lunches by Sunday night for (hopefully much) less than $5 a serving. I do not dig coming home at the end of a long day and preparing 75% of tomorrow’s eats when all I want is to fill my pie hole with today’s dinner. Or pie. Whatever.

So when I came across Angela’s Easy Creamy Tomato Barley Risotto, I thought, that sounds awesome. I also thought, I can make that meal meet all my lunch criteria. But it would be nice if it cooked itself.

Turns out dreams do come true.

Rice Cooker Tomato Risotto (Vegan, Gluten-Free)
Adapted from Oh She Glows

Ingredients:

1 cup brown rice + 1 cup quinoa (or 2 cups dry whole grain of choice)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
1 tsp crushed garlic
1 28oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups coconut milk (or other non-dairy milk)
1 cup water
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1 tbsp miso mixed with 1 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp sea salt
At least 2 cups frozen vegetables of your choice

Makes 5-6 servings

Add all ingredients to your rice cooker and switch on. When it’s done, you’re done. Divide into 5 containers to bring to work or freeze for another week.

Note: I piled my veggies of choice (mixed chopped vegetables and chopped spinach) into the rice cooker with everything else, but next time, I think I would actually stir them in after the rice cooker had finished and switched to warm. The heat from the cooking process would have thawed it all and the reheating in the office microwave would take care of any further cooking that the veggies might need.

For display purposes only, I ate my first serving atop some fresh baby spinach and dusted with parmesan (not vegan! Just saying so the police don’t slap my wrist), but the other 4 servings I have enjoyed just as they were, reheated in the ancient Corningware bowl I keep in my desk.

I don’t know if this dish would have come out much differently had I cooked it on the stove, but I thought it was pretty delicious fresh out of the rice cooker. Next time, I might add 1/4-1/2 cup tomato paste for an extra punch of tomato flavor, but then again, I might not. We’ll see!

No rice cooker? Aww. Buy one here. Or just make Angela’s recipe as originally intended!

What do you do for handy, inexpensive, healthy lunches for the average weekday? I’m always on the lookout for new ideas!

PSSST! Want some free NuNaturals stevia? Continental U.S. readers can receive FREE SAMPLES of NuStevia Packets by sending a SELF-ADDRESSED, STAMPED, # 10 envelope to the following location:

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Take full advantage of SPECIAL DISCOUNTS on all future orders only available from ordering through NuNaturals’ website: www.nunaturals.com

When you come to the website checkout page, enter this CODE: BLG228 to receive a SPECIAL DISCOUNT of -15% on your TOTAL ORDER. By ordering from the website you ALSO receive FREE SHIPPING to the Continental U.S. on all orders totaling $35.00 and over AFTER this special discount.
This offer ENDS FEBRUARY 28, 2011.

Giveaway Winner! Y una cancion

2011-01-02T18:41:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year! The winner of a $55 gift certificate to CSN is KRISTA! Congratulations! Buy something awesome.

And now for a song. The theme of this post shall be Mexican, so for the sake of authenticity, please pretend I’m wearing a sombrero and a mustache and lots of sequins.

Actually, that’s not so far from the truth.

Let’s hope my Spanish isn’t as rusty as I fear it is!

Ahem. Me me me meeeeeeee…

There once was a dinner at Maya
To tempt everyone to the playa.
You really must go
To fair Meh-hee-ko
To eat all the food you deh-sai-yah.

There’s one thing I bet you don’t know.
It has to do with Unesco.
Whenever you eat a
Mexican comida
There’s World Heritage fare in your bowl.

That got me truly excited.
With food we can all be united!
Sopa, margaritas,
Fish tacos…y pizza!
I was very glad to be invited.

Sopa y Pizza

VIEW SLIDE SHOW

DOWNLOAD ALL

I confess that my favorite bebida
Is that drink that they call margarita.
But my friends seemed to feel a
Huge shot of tequila
Would make the whole meal that much sweetah.

A scallop arrived on my plate,
Though the drinks had long sealed my fate.
I did eat it all
But prayed I’d recall
the next day what it was that I ate.

I needn’t have feared I’d be OK;
The main dish contained huitlacoche!
The crepes may seem gross,
But I ate all dos!
Cleaning my plate is my forte.

Crepas con Huitlacoche

VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I started to feel very full.
But dessert has the ultimate pull!
Helado y churros?
Not even 10 burros
Could keep me from this miracle.

Sadly, it came to an end.
But not before I made a new friend:
The muy genial
Richard Sandoval.
His food I simply must recommend.

Do you like Mexican food? Have you been to Mexico? I’ve been to Cozumel, but that hardly counts!

Merry Christmas: CSN Giveaway for YOU!

2010-12-25T00:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating! And to everyone reading this, in the spirit of giving, CSN has offered you the opportunity to win a $55 gift certificate to any of their bajillion online stores!

Just leave a comment below to be entered. For an extra entry, tweet this giveaway and be sure to include my Twitter handle (@soapnchocolate). Leave a separate comment to let me know you did so (or else the extra entry won’t be counted!). I'll announce the winner on January 2.

Good luck, and I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday season—whatever that means to you.

Lemon Sugar Cookies & Last-Minute Sweets, 2010 Edition

2010-12-18T18:01:00.003-05:00

This time last year, I was blogging five nights a week. Needless to say, I’ve had to cut back a bit and in so doing have forced myself into consolidating any holiday recipe contributions I might like to make this year.

Today I want to share a new cookie recipe, but I should also direct you back to 2009 when I posted a week’s worth of easy, last-minute dessert ideas. I’ll be referring back to it myself for sure!

In the meantime, I’ve come up with a fresh idea for a Christmas cookie to share with my family. It’s not one of our traditional Christmas treats, but I’m pretty sure they’re gonna dig it. (Earmuffs, family!)

Last week I got to meet the very cool Elina over lunch and she brought me a sampling of some of the most brilliant homemade cookies I’ve ever tasted. Homegirl has talent! One of the treats she made was a lemon sugar cookie. It was love at first bite and I decided the rest of the fandamily needed to try it too. So I did some scrounging and ended up with a hybrid of a couple cookie recipes. A bit nervous to bake a cookie that wasn’t chocolate chip, I cobbled together the following:

Lemon Sugar Cookies

(inspired by Elina's cookies and Suzan’s Favorite Butter Cookies)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1.5 cups flour
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract
1 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
zest of 1/2 a lemon
extra sugar for garnish, if desired

Directions:

Combine flour, baking soda, salt and lemon zest in a medium bowl.
Separately, in a large bowl, beat egg and sugar together until smooth and creamy, a minute or two.
Add butter and extracts to egg + sugar mixture.
Gradually add flour mixture a little at a time and mix until incorporated.
Divide dough into two parts and shape into two logs about two inches in diameter. Roll in wax paper and freeze overnight.
Slice (about 1/2 inch thick) and sprinkle with a little sugar for sparkle, if desired. Bake 10-12 minutes at 350*.

Makes 3-4 dozen

They came out so well! Far better than I deserved, I’m sure. The lemon flavor is most definitely there, but so is the butter and sugar so it’s quite the happy cookie indeed.

I understand that lemony sweets are not for everyone, though, so here again are a few other holiday-appropriate desserts (that don’t require freezing overnight, might I add!):

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the giveaway I promised either! I just decided to save it and make it my Christmas present to blog-land. And for those of you for whom Christmas is not a holiday, it shall be my December 25th present to blog-land. Look for it next weekend!

What’s your favorite holiday treat? I actually just got hit with a craving for 7-layer bars—they are the ultimate! Also a fan of the omnipresent 2-pound box of See’s nuts & chews.

Sundae, Sundae Sunday!

2010-12-12T18:06:00.002-05:00

My vacation in California was pretty uneventful. Gloriously, gloriously uneventful. It was just what I wanted: all the comforts of home without actually being (earmuffs, Mom!) responsible for its upkeep.

That’s not to say that my time there wasn’t without its highlights, most of them either in the gym (you better believe I did water aerobics) or in my belly. Assuming you’d just as soon be spared pictures of me in an ill-fitting bathing suit, I’ll stick to the food.

One thing I got a little too used to having in CA was cable. I can’t justify the expense here at home, given my current lifestyle, but I sure can justify laying on my butt during vacation. Enter the Travel Channel, sponsor of many, many hours of entertainment in the past couple weeks.

My favorite Travel Channel show is pretty much hands-down Man v. Food. Adam Richman is the host and succeeds in making me laugh out loud with every episode. And while watching him attempt challenge after challenge is enough to make your own stomach hurt in sympathy, I love learning about all the quirky watering holes he turns up in each destination.

One such destination was San Francisco, and the watering hole in question was the San Francisco Creamery. In the San Francisco episode, Sir Richman was challenged to consume The Kitchen Sink, which consists of “three sliced bananas, scoops of your choice of up to 8 flavors of ice creams, 8 servings of toppings, mounds and mounds of whipped cream, chopped toasted almonds and cherries.” People, this amounts to like, multiple gallons of ice cream! But he did it, bless his heart. Anyway, given my love for ice cream and convenient proximity to the Creamery, I had to go check it out for myself.

Proof I found the right spot:

The San Francisco Creamery is sort of half old-fashioned ice cream parlor, half diner.

At lunch time on a weekday in chilly December, my mom, sister-in-law and I had the place to ourselves. All the better for my bonding experience with the ice cream freezer…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Good girls have to eat a good lunch before they can have dessert.

A VERY good lunch.

I was so hungry when my sandwich arrived that half of it disappeared before I remembered to get a photo, but I think you can appreciate it nonetheless.

Eggplant and the promise of ice cream, all in one meal? I die. This was the grilled eggplant sandwich, which was served on focaccia with a tangy Thai sauce and a ton of other veggies. I dug it.

We were all pretty full after our lunches, but I couldn’t leave without taking on the ice cream for myself. I zeroed right in on the brownie sundae: simple, classic, and quite possibly my favorite dessert in the whole world.

Times 1,543.

Are you grasping the size of this thing? Let’s zoom out a bit.

I should have put something, like my hand or maybe an infant, in the picture as well to give it some scale. You’ll just have to trust me that this was the biggest sundae I have ever had the pleasure of attacking.

Those scoops are the size of softballs.

Believe me, I went at that thing with everything I had, and happily—ice cream is one of my top 5 favorite things, edible or otherwise.

And yet, even with two other (wimpy, dainty ladies!) helping me, this was all the damage we could manage:

That’s the better part of one softball-sized scoop remaining. I hang my head in shame. Clearly, I am not yet ready for a challenge of Man v. Food proportions.

But it was fun trying.

What’s the biggest meal you’ve ever attempted?

I’ll be back soon with a giveaway: a $55 gift certificate to CSN! Check out all their websites for great gift ideas in the meantime: kids backpacks, shoes, fun kitchen toys, you name it.

Where I’ve Been

2010-12-05T17:10:00.001-05:00

If I wasn’t so lazy, I would have scheduled a guest poster for the week I was away, but it didn’t happen. What did happen was a trip to hang out with my parents at their home in northern California. Lucky for my blog, I did little more than eat (although I went to my parents’ BAD. ASS. gym every day, which was way fun) so I’ll just share what photos I did take with some minimal commentary.

(Minimal—yeah, right!)

It all began on Thanksgiving day.

No parade-watching for me; I was on a plane out of NYC by 7am. Woof.

My nephews decorated the napkin rings and place cards.

Sorry, kids, but that looks nothing like me. Better luck next time.

I stuffed as much of my fave fare into my face as possible, which includes green beans, stuffing, mashed potatoes and a new-to-us-this-year dish, corn pudding.

Now that I’m thinking back on that day, I remember having slices of pumpkin and Dutch apple pies as well, but I guess the delirium of the 3:45am wake-up and jetlag had rendered my camera skills useless by then.

Despite the exhaustion, we made sure to acknowledge time-honored traditions…

…and pass them on to the next generation.

What, you don’t eat olives off of your fingers?

Among the delightful home cooked food (which I made sure to enjoy again…and again…), there were some notable meals out. I am quite glad to welcome Chez Panisse back to the blog!

And special snaps for its bread, which never fails to astonish and amaze. Looking back to my first post about Chez Panisse, I’m shocked that I didn’t take a picture of the bread. I’ll have to make up for that by posting two now.

Bam.

Sourdough = love of my life.

These photos are very dim because we were seated right next to the open kitchen. It was a very interesting (and busy!) vantage point, but my pictures suffered a bit as a result. Anyway, here’s what went down the hatch:

Eggplant and olive tapenades…

…with assorted crudites.

And an amazing pasta dish made of one of my favorite flavor combos: olive oil + garlic with veggies (cauliflower and peppers this time) and dried nuts + fruit (pine nuts and currants). Alice, you outdo yourself.

But wait—there’s more (as if I would go to bed without dessert).

I couldn’t resist sampling the persimmon pudding—I’ve been fascinated by persimmons ever since experimenting with them (with great results!) last year. (By the way, is that not the sexiest whipped cream blob ever?!)

But nothing could have prepared me for the chocolate ice cream.

While examining the dessert menu, I glazed over the ice cream because…well, who orders plain old ice cream when dining CHEZ PANISSE? My dad, apparently. And he’s a smart guy, so I too should have known that Alice would do up this simplest of desserts in a mind-blowing way. Sure enough, it was like eating the best chocolate bar in the world, just in ice cream form.

Looking at that sundae photo, I think I’ll share my last bit of CA eating in a separate post. You’ll understand why when you see it.

Back to the grindstone I go! Tell me about your favorite ice cream so that I may partake of it as well.

Easy Pizza Pudding

2010-11-21T18:51:00.001-05:00

I did something really, really neat this weekend!

But enough about that.

Let’s talk about bread. Nature’s Pride, to be specific.

I received these free samples via the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program and have obviously been taking my own sweet time playing with them.

Not wanting to tax my bread-utilization skills too much at the outset, I started pretty basic.

PB&J on whole wheat. Good stuff.

On the eversoslightly more interesting end of the sandwich spectrum, I graduated to tuna on oatmeal bread.

I love stirring plain yogurt and tons of mustard into tuna. Throw in some arugula and you’ve got yourself quite a zingy sammie.

(What a dumb word, sammie.)

This is where I’m going to blow your mind, though. How about we make a bread pudding…PIZZA flavored? Stay with me: we just apply bread pudding procedure to ingredients that add up to what is basically a deconstructed-reconstructed pizza. I’m not talking about cinnamon and raisins and all that schiesse up in there, too. I’m adventurous, but even that doesn’t sound like much of a party to my mouth.

It’s probably easier if I just show you the recipe.

Pizza Pudding

Ingredients:

8 slices of sandwich bread, cubed
~ 2 cups milk
2 cups chopped kale (I used frozen; could also use spinach)
2 eggs, beaten
1.5 cups marinara
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
parmesan cheese, for topping

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*. Place cubed bread in a bowl and pour milk over it, stirring to coat evenly. Let soak while the oven preheats.
Prepare an 8”x8” casserole with cooking spray and spread 1/2 cup marinara on the bottom.
Once the oven is preheated (about 10-20 minutes after turning it on, or when it lets you know), gently stir the chopped greens and beaten eggs into the soaked bread. Add other seasonings, if desired (garlic, oregano, basil, etc.)—I left them out this time for in favor of putting “easy” in the title.
Spread 1/2 of the bread mixture into the baking dish and sprinkle 1 cup of cheese over top.
Pour on 1/2 cup of marinara as evenly as possible and then spread on the rest of the bread mixture.
Pour on the remaining 1/2 cup of marinara and sprinkle with the remaining 1 cup of cheese.
Bake for about 45 minutes, or until browned and bubbly on top.
Remove from oven and allow to rest for 5 minutes or so, until it stops bubbling. Slice into 4 pieces and sprinkle with parmesan, if desired.

Serves 4

She won’t win no beauty pageant, but she’s dinner.

The marinara and cheese do most of the work in the flavor department, which makes this easy to assemble (I reckon you could even do it ahead of time in order to have dinner on the table earlier, or if you were entertaining guests). Still, I wouldn’t be above throwing in some fresh basil or other seasonings next time, just to take it up a (less lazy) notch.

Whatever you do, I recommend using a bread you really love, because that’s the meat of this dish! And yes, Nature’s Pride Oatmeal bread will do nicely.

Thank you to Foodbuzz and Nature’s Pride for pudding dinner on the table!

Did you do anything really, really neat this weekend?

Pure Food and Rhyme

2010-11-15T21:20:00.001-05:00

‘Twas a fair autumn eve when four girls chose to dine

at a glorious restaurant called Pure Food and Wine.

I’ll try to distract you with bloggers so famous

you won’t even notice my pictures are heinous.

We chose us some cocktails and “cheese” to begin.

Drinks must’ve been strong—I just typed “be gin.”

My entrée could only be the lasagna.

Food paps got excited…

(Don’t get any on ya!)

But any fan knows that dessert always wins

when enjoying a meal with the Shirts

and the Skins.

Fin.

Freestyle: Vegan MoFo Edition

2010-11-11T22:28:00.001-05:00

In case you haven’t heard, it’s Vegan MoFo! Otherwise known as the Vegan Month of Food, this is the time of year when we celebrate all things vegan, and as much as possible.

Go HERE for regularly updated roundups; otherwise I’ll throw out a few shouts of my own:

Mama Pea’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Balls. Probably illegal somewhere.
Angela’s Gingerbread Pumpkin Overnight Oat Parfait. A regular in my breakfast rotation.
Gena’s Butternut Squash Smoothie. Stupid good.
Gina’s Breakfast Cookie. Classic.
Katie’s Single Serving Cupcake. We’re all kicking ourselves for not thinking of this first.

And that’s only barely scratching the sweet surface! Obviously, I’m partial towards dessert, but there is an infinite amount of deliciousness lurking out there in the vegan blog world, and now is the time to dig in! Trust me when I say I’ve been celebrating Vegan MoFo on the daily…which is nothing out of the ordinary, but if you need some evidence, please to refer back to my previous post singing the rice cooker’s praises. It has been churning out more than curry rice in the way of vegan fare—in fact, the bibimbap pictured in that post is the only thing it has made that was NOT vegan!

What are you doing to celebrate Vegan Mofo?

New Rice Cooker, New Riceabilities

2010-11-07T18:52:00.001-05:00

CSN recently gave me the opportunity to review a rice cooker and I can honestly say that I’ve had a total blast playing with it over the past several weeks.

For those of you who might wonder why anyone would ever want a seemingly single-function (not to mention LARGE) appliance, allow me to show you exactly how exciting this thing really is.

First, let’s get one thing straight:

Almost all rice cookers also function as steamers, so there’s another use for it already. Devoted roaster that I am, I don’t do a ton of steaming, but for what it’s worth, I used my rice cooker exclusively for steaming frozen dumplings and broccoli while I was living in China. Why? I didn’t actually know it was a rice cooker at the time. Don’t laugh—if you were able to go out for amazing Chinese food for $4 or less per meal (which also kept us drunk for an entire year, might I add), you wouldn’t have spent much time in your kitchen either.

But I digress.

For my first feat of rice cooker mastery, I cooked rice.

Don’t laugh—this is a big step for someone who previously could not recognize a rice cooker in the first place.

I was delighted to find that it came out just like it does in restaurants! Perfect and chewy (this was brown rice), and without the usual soggy layer that I always got when I used to cook it stovetop.

I put some in a bowl,

covered it with some roasted stuff,

and ate it. The end. I guess that’s not a very exciting story, so for argument’s sake let’s say I also found $10.

Now that I had the hang of rice cookery, I got a little wacky and engaged my favorite rice cooker feature (which we should note is not standard): the delay timer.

It was a Thursday evening after work, and I was about to leave for a 7pm dance class. I didn’t want to have dinner right before dancing because that feels crappy, but I knew I’d be ravenous when I got home, even if I did have a snack to tide me over.

Rice cooker to the rescue! HEAB gave me this brilliant idea, to which I added a few extra ingredients. Into the rice cooker went 1 cup brown rice, 1 can light coconut milk, 1 tbsp curry powder and about 1/2 tsp salt, plus a healthy heap of frozen veggies.

I set the delay timer to have it finished when I got home from class. I arrived home to a delicious waft of curryness and hastily threw some kabocha (which I’d chopped and tossed with oil and S+P before I left) into the oven to roast. Meanwhile, I stirred 1 can of (drained and rinsed) chickpeas and a spoonful of peanut butter into the finished rice mixture and left it on the warm setting.

30 minutes later, dinner was served.

And it was pretty much the best (homemade) thing I’ve eaten in a while.

The lesson here? You can cook rice in liquids other than water! Don’t laugh—we all know someone with a talent for burning water, to whom cooking rice in something else would surely seem extremely dangerous.

Now we have established that your rice cooker can, in fact, produce an entire meal for you, involving as little or as much work as you’d like. If I hadn’t taken the time to roast that squash, I could have been eating as soon as I was able to get a bowl from the cupboard.

So let’s get fancy, shall we? Let’s test this thing’s limits!

Select a recipe. Gather some extra-special ingredients. A little local kimchi:

Some toasted nori (The TJ’s clerk told me some customers practically rioted when they ran out of this stuff):

(Don’t laugh—I know that bad things would happen if anything came between me and my favorite ice cream, so I’ll have a little sympathy for the nori ~~freaks~~ enthusiasts.)

And assemble your first homemade bibimbap! After my rice had cooked, I just threw in the rest of the ingredients, though if you read the recipe I was following you’d note that I could have even steamed the spinach and salmon in the rice cooker too—I chose to do them stovetop, in the interest of time.

Resetting the cooker back to cook mode meant that the eggs cooked right in there, after a few minutes.

Stir it all up…

And FEAST.

I plated my bibimbap over some arugula for no particular reason except it needed using (I know, I am so not Korean for doing that. News flash.) and served it with some roasted kabocha because I’m obsessed with it right now.

I used the little nori strips as grabbers for each bite, laying them over the food and pinching the ends together with my chopsticks—observe mad skills:

And it was so. good.

Maybe worth rioting.

Do you own a rice cooker? Tell me your favorite recipes!

Aloo Gobi Desert with the Righta Raita

2010-10-31T19:09:00.001-04:00

Back in August, I attended my best friend’s wedding. She and her husband are of Indian heritage, and they incorporated many Indian traditions into their wedding. They also incorporated many of their friends into Indian tradition—that is how I ended up in a sari for the event:

(I’m the Indian Care Bear on the right.)

I loved wearing it and I’m proud to own it, even if I never have another chance to wear it again (come to think of it, today is Halloween…that may have been a missed opportunity…).

That doesn’t change the fact that I am white as the day is long and have limited instincts where Indian cooking is concerned. Didn’t stop me from attempting homemade parathas, though.

I may not know much about the business of making these things from scratch, but I do know that they are not supposed to turn out with the taste and texture of a pocket pita. Parathas are stuffed flatbreads (in this case, lentil-stuffed) and mine came out…how shall I put it?…”meh.” That just about sums it up.

The recipe I (kind of…) followed was this one, and while I don’t think any of my changes should have caused them to come out wonky, I do think I lack the sweet talk and soft touch to make them cooperate with my WASPiness. So I won’t post the full recipe with step-by-step tutorial, as I imagined I would when I embarked on the project. Here are some progress shots, though:

Parathas

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This story does have a happy ending. See, the recipe for the filling made a huge quantity (like several cups), and each paratha only requires a tablespoon or two—I barely made a dent. So once I was done with my paratha experiment, I incorporated the rest of the filling into my Indian-inspired entrée, and it turned out so, so tasty. Start here:

Red Lentil Dal (vegan)

Ingredients:

1.5 cups red lentils
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne (optional, or to taste)
1/4 tsp asafoetida (optional)
1.5 tbsp oil
dash of garlic powder
salt to taste

Directions:

Simmer lentils in 2 cups of water with turmeric and salt to taste until soft and water is absorbed (maybe 10 minutes…keep an eye on it).
Heat the oil in a large pan and add cumin and asafoetida (if using). When it starts to sizzle, add lentils, ginger, sugar and cayenne. Fry until all moisture is absorbed and the mixture begins to get a little crumbly. NOTE: I was in paratha-process at this point, but for the sake of making the following aloo-gobi-like entrée, I think you could skip the frying step and just simmer the lentils with all the spices and oil and be done with the dal.
Set aside.

“Aloo Gobi” with Spinach and Dal (vegan)

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen chopped spinach
2 large potatoes
12 oz cauliflower florets
1 tbsp oil (I used olive)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup chopped onions
Red Lentil Dal (see above recipe)
1/2 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp lemon juice

Directions:

Set your spinach out to begin thawing. Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, chop potatoes and cauliflower into bite-sized pieces. Boil for 10-13 minutes, or until fork-tender, but not mushy since you will be cooking them further. Drain.

3. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high and all the onion and garlic. Sautee for a minute or two, then add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan. Bring to a simmer.

4. Add the dal and spinach, stir smooth.

5. Add the potatoes and cauliflower, plus rest of seasonings (curry, lemon juice, salt and pepper) to taste. Stir until well-incorporated and heated through.

Meanwhile, you might like to make some raita! I’m not at all sure that this is authentic—I eyeballed the ingredients in Trader Joe’s raita and then improvised my own—but if you would like a delicious, savory accompaniment to the above dish (and are not vegan) I highly recommend throwing this tasty side together.

Raita

Ingredients:

1 Persian cucumber (these are small, about the size of a kirby cuke, but skinnier—feel free to use a normal cucumber equivalent)
~1/8 c minced carrots
1/4 tsp ground ginger
pinch salt
pinch dried cilantro (perhaps coriander would be fine)
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cumin
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup nonfat yogurt

Directions:

Cut up your veggies and place in a small bowl (a cereal bowl will be fine)
Add the rest of the ingredients except yogurt and give them a stir.
Add yogurt and stir until well-incorporated. Taste and add more seasonings, if you like. It is my opinion that homemade raita should be very subjective.

Plate it all up with your paratha/breadstuffs of choice and feast!

My sub-par parathas (sub-parathas?) were somewhat rescued by a couple of yummy chutneys:

The greenish one is a mint chutney and the brown one is tamarind. Mixed together, they became sweet and spicy. LOVE me some tamarind. If you’ve ever been to an Indian restaurant and ordered samosas as an appetizer, the brown sauce they serve with it is usually tamarind—it’s sweet.

As for the raita, I don’t suppose it’s necessarily traditional to mix it up with the entrée, but I enjoyed it most when I loaded my fork up with the aloo gobi stuff and then dipped it straight into the raita.

And yes, these dishes definitely fall into the category of tastes-even-more-amazing-the-next-day! Which is a good thing because you’ll be eating leftovers for a while. No complaints here!

Now that I’ve written like, the Bhagavad Gita of all blog posts about Indian meals, I don’t suppose anyone will actually make any of this. That’s ok—this meal came about through experimentation, trial and error, and that’s what makes one a better cook. The best lessons in cooking are learned while doing.

The lesson I learned here? Go to a restaurant next time a paratha craving strikes.

Have you ever made Indian food? Any successes (or otherwise) in particular?

Freestyle: October 28

2010-10-28T22:20:00.001-04:00

Linky love, freestyle:

Pumpkin-apple spice cake with coconut-cream cheese frosting, aka Half-Birthday Cake. See previous post. It’s worth it. Not sure I can wait until October 20, 2011 to make it again.
OK Go, “White Knuckles.” A friend sent me this OK Go video the other day when I was stressed out, and it totally made me smile. Mission accomplished. Check it out, especially if you are a fur baby lover.

HEAB’s (well, CD’s) Almond Butter Chili: crockpot-approved. I had a dance class tonight so I threw all the ingredients in the slow cooker, set it on high, and two hours later I was home and dinner was ready. It doesn’t get easier. Or deliciouser.
Team Ra-Ras Kicks Breast Cancer: Very cute video of 136 cheerleaders dancing to raise breast cancer awareness. BONUS! United Healthcare is donating 10 cents for every view the video gets, so clicky clicky clicky!

Happy Halloween, y’all. Seeya later this weekend!

Half-Assed Half-Birthday Cake

2010-10-24T18:40:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned earlier this week, October 20th was my half-birthday. Usually such an occasion is marked by no more than an unspoken thought such as, “Hey, it’s 10/20…that’s my half-birthday. 20 = 2 x 10. Cool. I should pee.”

Or something like that.

But this year I was inspired to honor my half-birthday with half a cake. This was less likely because I was excited to be six months closer to 28 and more likely because I just wanted cake.

Now that it’s done, though, I’d like to think it was destiny that made me do it, because I’ll be repeating it, perhaps at Thanksgiving. Dearly though I love pumpkin pie, this pumpkin spice cake kicked its sorry ass down a few notches on my Desserts I’d Surrender My First-Born For list. (Actually, Pumpkin Pie, you were never on that list—scram.)

Unfortunately (or not), the thing about half-birthdays is that they stop being significant when you stop being proud of growing older. (For the record, me = not proud of growing older, and I have the gray hair to prove it.) The celebration:effort ratio therefore creeps further and further from 1:1 with each passing year. You can understand, then, why at 27.5 years old I desired to bake and eat a cake (celebration) that involved minimal time/money investment (effort).

Furthermore, it should now also be obvious that for the sake of this blog post, pi shall equal 3.14 and indeed not the desired result of employing the celebration:effort ratio (see paragraph 4).

(Sorry, I took the math joke too far. Effort:laughter = 1:0)

Half-Assed Half-Birthday Cake (with vegan option)
or Pumpkin-Apple Spice Cake with Coconut-Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake Ingredients:

1 cup pumpkin puree and/or applesauce (ideally about half a cup of each)
1/3 cup coconut oil (solid)
1/2 cup NuNaturals baking blend (or sugar/sweetener of choice)
1/3 cup almond (or other non-dairy) milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg (or egg substitute such as 1 tbsp ground flax mixed with 3 tbsp water and allowed to thicken)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt

Frosting Ingredients:

~ 3 tbsp cream cheese (or substitute such as Tofutti)
4.5 tbsp coconut oil (solid)
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar
splash of milk to thin, as needed

So maybe I was a little excited to use my new mixer as I embarked upon this experiment…

…but mostly, I just wanted cake.

First, I preheated the oven to 350* and whisked together the dry ingredients in a small-ish bowl (flour, spices, baking powder and soda, salt) and set it aside.

And then I began to combine the wet stuff in a mixing bowl—recall that I was improvising at the time—and decided I wanted to make a carrot cake-like cake, just minus the carrots. Enter pumpkin and cream cheese dregs:

Hmm…not much, even for a single-layer cake. Let’s throw in the applesauce snack pack that has been feeling sorry for itself in my fridge for way too long.

Ok, now that I have sufficient cake goo to make this tasty, let’s get serious. Activate other half of ass.

Combine pumpkin/applesauce mixture, coconut oil and sugar in a mixing bowl. Blend smooth with an electric mixer (or tons of elbow grease).

Feel sorry for your new mixer that is already filthy.

Then add the egg and blend again.

Add flour/spice mixture little by little, until well incorporated.

Pour batter into a greased 9-inch cake pan and bake for 25 minutes, or until cooked through.

Allow to cool enough to handle, then invert onto a dinner plate and go to bed because it’s 11pm and at 27.5 you are too old to stay up late enough to frost and eat this. Maybe at 27, but 27.5? Hell no.

At some point, though, you should make your frosting by creaming together the cream cheese, coconut oil and vanilla with an electric mixer. Add sugar and/or milk until it reaches the desired taste and texture. Mine was a little lumpy, but as this was a half-assed effort, I decided that taste > aesthetics and left it alone. Whatever. You might want to use more cream cheese than I did, too. I would have, but I didn’t feel like walking across the street to the store. Too far.

Once the cake is cool, cut in half. Frost one half, place the other half on top and frost it as well. You probably won’t have enough frosting to frost the sides too, but if you want to, you might want to double the frosting. Or something. I don’t really care.

Sprinkle with cinnamon if you care about it looking pretty to its viewership of 1.

Enjoy with a sh*t-eating grin when you realize that your cake is totally blog-worthy, even if you did pull it out of half your ass.

Freestyle: October 21

2010-10-22T00:05:00.002-04:00

Greetings! I’m checking in with this week’s freestyle nuggets o’fun. And a lot of fun it was—my half-birthday was yesterday! I celebrated by working 9-5. Actually, I went out to dinner with my bestie as well, but that was unrelated. I did, however, come home and improvise my way to a half-cake, which I baked at 10pm. I know.

I’m just enjoying my first bites right now since I couldn’t frost it until it cooled, aka a day later, and dang. It’s actually kind of amazing. The 0.5 part of 27.5 obviously makes a big difference where cake-baking is concerned. I’ll post the recipe soon. It involves coconut-cream cheese frosting. I know.

But seriously, folks, some links:

Willow (yes, WillOW) Smith’s new single, Whip My Hair. I’ll just say it—I love this song. And the video. (That’ll be the 7.5 part of 27.5 talking.)
HEAB’s Coconut Curry Rice. I “made” this in my new rice cooker for dinner tonight and like the half-assed cake, it tasted WAY better than it deserved to. I’ll post my adapted version of that soon as well, along with a review of the rice cooker itself.

Butternut Squash-Goat Cheese Lasagna. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t link to my own post, but as I make my way through the leftovers, I’m realizing that this is probably the one thing I’ve ever made that’s actually restaurant quality, so it bears re-posting. Put it on your bucket list.
Have you decided what to be for Halloween? Perhaps I could interest you in a slutty Cookie Monster costume, or even slutty wookie…eeeeee (I can never remember how many e’s are in that word)? I can’t even describe how ludicrous that costume looks, but hey, any excuse to dress as a slutty-anything, I guess.

As for myself, I’m kind of a party pooper where dressing up for Halloween is concerned. My interest in costumes expired when the flow of candy stopped. I do have a plan, though. I’m not going to dress up, but if anyone asks, I’m Alice Cullen.

Happy Halloween…?

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Meh. Close enough.

Do you plan to dress up for Halloween?

My First Lasagna

2010-10-18T22:01:00.001-04:00

I’m proud. I’ve tackled and conquered a quintessential culinary milestone: the lasagna. And not just any lasagna—this one was teeming with fall veggies and goat cheese. I had a bit of a moment when all the hard work was over and I got to take my first bite of the finished product.

To say I came up with this recipe on my own would be a lie. I feel like lasagna is something I should be able to make, though, so I’ve always had my eyes peeled for a recipe that was inspiring enough to give me the kick in the pants I needed to give it a whirl. I mean, I’m as much Italian as I am the President of the United States. Things like lasagna do not exactly come naturally.

I have Shape Magazine’s October issue to thank for delivering the kick I’d been waiting for. They printed a feature on pasta recipes, most of which were fairly simple and straightforward. On a recent Saturday night, however, I found myself with no plans and a fridge full of all the right stuff. Might as well go for the Everest of pasta, then. Such is how this lasagna came to be.

Go Big or Go Home Lasagna
adapted from Shape’s Harvest Lasagna

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds peeled & seeded butternut squash
3.5 tbsp olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 oz whole wheat lasagna noodles
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups lacinato/dino kale, washed and cut into ribbons
2 tbsp sliced fresh basil leaves
3 tbsp whole wheat flour
2 cups homemade almond milk
10 oz goat cheese/chevre, at room temperature
1 large egg
3/4 tbsp dried oregano
1 package TJ’s sliced goat’s milk Dutch cheese (8 oz), diced

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*. Cut squash into thin slices and place in a ziplock baggie. Drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil and pinch of salt and pepper. Seal baggie and shake to coat. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet; roast for 30 minutes or until tender. Remove squash from oven and set aside. Keep oven on.
While squash is roasting, bring a large pot of water to a boil with a touch of olive oil. Add lasagna noodles and cook for 7 minutes, or until al dente (they will cook more in the oven!). Drain and rinse under cold water to prevent sticking—this will probably happen anyway, so be careful and separate them very slowly.
In a medium skillet, heat 1.5 tsp olive oil over medium-high. Add garlic, saute 2 minutes. Stir in kale and 1 tbsp basil. Add 1/4 cup water and cover; cook 5 minutes. Remove cover, reduce heat to low; cook 3 minutes more. Set aside to cool.
In a medium saucepan, heat remaining 2 tbsp olive oil over medium-high. Add flour; whisk 1 minute. Slowly whisk in milk and pinch of salt; bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Continue whisking for 2 more minutes or until white sauce thickens. Remove from heat.
Stir goat cheese (the 10 oz of chevre) into the kale mixture. Add egg and oregano and stir until melted and creamy. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Coat a 9”x13” baking dish with cooking spray. Spread 2/3 cup sauce over bottom. Arrange a layer of noodles over sauce. Gently spread half the kale-cheese mixture over noodles; top with roasted squash. Sprinkle half of the Dutch cheese over squash. Top with remaining kale-cheese, followed by noodles. Top with remaining sauce, basil and Dutch cheese.
Coat a sheet of aluminum foil with cooking spray. Tent foil (more like tent FAIL for me—do your best), sprayed side down, over lasagna. Bake 25 minutes. Remove foil, bake 15 more minutes to brown cheese slightly. Let lasagna rest for about 5 minutes before cutting.

Serves 8

(…or 1 + my freezer)

So maybe it was a tad anticlimactic to have been slaving in the kitchen for 3 hours, Mandarin Oriental Cooking School apron and all, only to have a little dinner party for one in front of the boob tube. Still, the sense of accomplishment (and the wine) made the whole thing worth it, and I went to bed very content.

There’s a happy ending to this story, anyway. On a visit to my sister this past weekend, I brought along a few slices of the lasagna from my freezer stash. It must have gone over well because said sister has now requested that this very lasagna be Christmas dinner!

While I am indeed flattered and happy to oblige, I’m not sure how I’m going to feed the whole family on two and a half freezer-burned slices of lasagna from October…

Are there any particular culinary accomplishments you want to check off your list before you die?

Freestyle: October 13

2010-10-13T22:41:00.001-04:00

As promised, I’m back again this week for my Freestyle handful o’links. I have to say, it’s kind of fun collecting amusing little nuggets to share! So here we go:

Obviously, link #1 is the above video of Grover spoofing the Old Spice commercials. You probably didn’t need my help finding it, but I had to post it anyway, just to cover my bases. You can read the story behind this hysterical clip here. (Thanks, Sonia!)
This weekend I made Brittany’s Healthy Homemade Apple Butter in my crockpot, and it’s amazing – I’ve been putting it on everything. And my apartment STILL smells like cinnamon.
Antoine Dodson finally got his ~~15 minutes~~ 46 seconds of live fame: “The stage at the BET Awards was set on fire last night with pieces of charbroiled glitter when the legendary Antoine Dodson took to the stage looking like if Mushu from Mulan joined a TLC cover group as Chilli.” You can’t make this stuff up, people. Click on the link for the video of Antoine and his shimmering locks.
And lastly, I figure I can’t get away with ignoring THE hot topic in the blogosphere right now. I’m going to forego comment in favor of directing you to Heather’s post (including all the comments that follow!) discussing blogger responsibility. Major food for thought.

Where do you stand? (Feel free to answer this regarding Grover as the Old Spice guy and/or blogger accountability.)

Seasonal Highlight: Tomatoes

2010-10-10T19:57:00.001-04:00

My once-a-week blogging schedule has me a tad behind in the “seasonal highlight” department, but I’m actually still seeing tons of tomatoes at the farmer’s market these days so I won’t feel too bad about it.

Tomatoes don’t need too much explanation—they’re very common in the US and we can get them all year round. However, we cannot get good tomatoes all year round. I actually grew up hating tomatoes. I made my mom cut up tomatoes on the side rather than tossing them in with the salad because I thought they were mushy and tasteless.

That’s because they were. I grew up in Connecticut, and locally-grown tomatoes were just not a commodity to be had. I suppose there are farmer’s markets in my hometown now, but all this local-and-organic buzzword nonsense was still considered actual nonsense back in the day, so we were stuck with the mealy tomatoes from the A&P.

I still remember Dad (or was it Mom? Probably both.) commenting on my tomato-hate at the dinner table: “She only hates tomatoes because she’s never had a good one.” Never a word so true! Lucky for me, I have had many, many good tomatoes since then, and these are just a couple things I’ve been doing with them.

We’ll start with the ugly:

This is a red lentil-vegetable stew I made with basically everything that looked good to me at the farmer’s market that day. It didn’t come out great, so I won’t post the recipe, but you can bet there were some beautiful tomatoes in it…

…along with just a couple other things…

I may have gotten carried away. In every sense. The veggies were totally over-cooked, but it was edible enough, especially with the addition of my favorite multi-grain baguette from Stew Leonard’s.

Semi-fails aside, I couldn’t let tomato season go by without repeating my Tohini Soup. This is one of my best recipes, if I do say so myself, and when I made it again recently I began to wonder why I don’t eat it every damn day.

Alongside, I had a glorious massaged kale salad topped with Mezzetta sweet cherry peppers and a goat cheese sandwich with…more tomatoes.

Speaking of goat cheese…

Trader Joe, will you marry me? Surely I owe you my first born for selling goat cheese in individually-wrapped ounces. My sandwich and I love you.

Sorry, I may or may not be more tipsy than I was when I started writing this, seeing as I’m rather emotionally attached to Trader Joe at the moment…I have no idea how this wine glass ended up on my desk…

But it wouldn’t be a proper seasonal highlight post if I didn’t have a new recipe for you, so let’s forget about the failed and recycled ones and move on to something cute:

Mini heirloom tomatoes! Because everything is cuter in miniature.

Using these and my free sample of Buitoni’s Wild Mushroom Agnolotti (thank you, Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program!), I made a dinner that gave me pretty much everything I could ever want on my dinner plate.

Pasta-Veggie Explosion

Ingredients:

1 package Buitoni Wild Mushroom Agnolotti
2 medium zucchinis
1 lb mini heirloom tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
~1/4-1/2 tsp Italian seasoning and/or oregano
salt and pepper to taste
grated parmesan cheese for topping

Directions:

Prepare agnolotti per package instructions
Grate/spiralize/shred zucchinis and divide between 2 bowls
Preheat oil in a large skillet over medium
Add garlic and sauté 1-2 minutes
Add tomatoes, herbs and S+P, stirring constantly
When tomatoes are tender to your liking, turn off the heat. Divide agnolotti between the two bowls of zucchini and then top each bowl with half of the tomato mixture. Sprinkle parm on top.

Serves 2

You say “tomato,” I say “ohmygodthisisdelicious.”

What have you been making with tomatoes this season?

Freestyle: October 6th

2010-10-06T22:19:00.001-04:00

Social media is glorious precisely because it is social: it allows us to share thoughts, opinions, laughs, photos…anything you want. It also allows us to overshare, but I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder, eh? Keeps things interesting, at least.

Being that the Internet has an overwhelming amount of interestingness to ~~gossip about~~ enjoy, I thought I would test-run a feature that I would like to become regular here on Soap & Chocolate: a simple weekly links post. I’m calling it “Freestyle” because I am not requiring that these links be related to food/fitness/health blogs—these are anything and everything that may have caught my interest or made me laugh. Probably the latter, for the most part. I’ll try to keep it to just a handful, what for increasing the chances that someone else might actually click and enjoy too.

And with that, here’s what I’ve got!

First, an announcement with a “grain” of truth: CSN has offered me another opportunity to review a product, and after scouring their 200+ online stores for the perfect item (end tables, espresso machines, etc.), I think I found the ~~rice~~ right one.
“If you do this in an email, I hate you.” Link #2 courtesy of Gena, and then many others I notice are also displaying it in their Google Chat status. It made me LOL big time. If you could print, sign and fax this blog post back to me, that would be greeeeeaaat.
“This is why I’ll never be an adult.” This also cracked me up, all while providing a fabulous excuse for why it’s just so damn hard to “clean all the things!”
I made Angela’s gingerbread overnight oat parfait for breakfast on Sunday morning and nearly slipped into a coma, it was so tasty.
I don’t even watch Mad Men, but Michael K’s got a point about Christina Hendricks and her magnificent chi-chis. I bet they have their own gravitational pull. Homegirl’s got it goin’ on!

Feel free to comment and discuss if you end up checking out any of these links (or if you’d already come across them), and of course, share any others that are not to be missed!

Peanutty Pumpkin Blondies

2010-10-03T20:05:00.001-04:00

I have to say, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself right now, and I don’t mind telling you why. My busy summer put me in rather of a rut food- and fitness-wise, but this weekend I took some steps to bust out of it.

Worked out It has been my habit to use the weekend for rest days, but this time I challenged myself to try something new (I rested earlier in the week) and went out for an interval run both mornings. For an hour. Who am I?

Sub-accomplishment: running?!

Spent some QT with my kitchen Not much of this has happened since I moved in June…very little that was noteworthy, at least. This weekend I made almond milk from scratch rather than buying it boxed AND came up with two new delicious dessert recipes, including one that’s gluten-free, which makes me feel good. Believe it or not, 1/3 of my (small) office is Celiac, so we are all challenged to come up with treats that everyone can enjoy.
Cleaned house Self-explanatory.
Socialized I am very comfortable spending time alone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like a million bucks when I hang out with quality people. Thank you to Katherine and her Huz for sponsoring Proud Point #4!
Conquered a culinary fear In my last post I wrote about how I came to identify myself as pescatarian. That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable cooking seafood! Last night, as Katherine and I were brainstorming over what to make for dinner, she mentioned crab meat among the things in her fridge. My brain immediately flashed an image of a succulent, golden brown Maryland crab cake. The problem was, neither of us had the foggiest idea of how to make such a thing! But we did it anyway.

They even came out rather delicious, if I may say so. In the interest of time, we didn’t take notes on the process, but I can give you a rough estimate of what went into our 9 crab cakes (Katherine, feel free to add your commentary):

~ 1 lb crab meat
2 eggs
2 kinds of bread crumbs: traditional style and panko…maybe about 1 cup total
~ 2 tbsp whole grain mustard
plenty of Old Bay seasoning
a couple sprinkles of salt
fresh chopped parsley and garlic flowers

…am I forgetting anything? I mushed all this up with my hands, formed patties and fried them on the stove top in enough canola oil to cover the bottom of a large skillet over high heat: about 5 minutes on one side and 3-4 on the other.

Meanwhile, Katherine prepared our sides: a delicious sautee of collards and mushrooms (baby bella and white)…

…as well as a green salad with homemade vinaigrette, plus a stunning kalamata olive baguette, which we enjoyed with both freshly roasted garlic cloves and manchego cheese.

I didn’t get a photo of everything—my hands were pretty gooey most of the time—but I did make sure to capture the crab cakes because they should serve as a reminder to me (and you!) that so much of cooking is learned by doing. Sometimes it’ll be a massive fail (cough3alarmburnedpizzaFridaynightcough), but other times, you’ve just got to stick your hands in the crab meat and try.

I’m lucky to have a second example of this learn-by-doing principle to share today as well. As I brainstormed desserts to bring to Katherine and the Huz, I looked to some blondie recipes for inspiration. Jenna’s Lazy-Girl blondies and the Fat Witch Bakery’s pumpkin brownie recipes, to be specific. Neither quite provided what I had in mind, however, so I just muttered a prayer to the baking gods and went for it.

Turns out said baking gods were feeling generous that day.

Peanutty Pumpkin Blondies

Ingredients:

4 tbsp coconut oil (warm enough to be liquid)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree, room temperature
1 2/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour (I used whole wheat pastry)
1/2 cup peanut flour (found at Trader Joe’s)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*.
Melt coconut oil if not already liquid and whisk in pumpkin until smooth.
Add brown sugar and whisk.
Add egg, vanilla and salt and whisk.
Add both flours and stir together just until combined—do not overmix.
Fold in chocolate chips.
Spread into a greased baking pan (mine is 8x8) and bake 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool completely before slicing.

Makes 16 blondies

Serve with a tall glass of pride.

Becoming Pescatarian

2010-09-27T21:51:00.001-04:00

There’s something fishy about the way I’ve been eating, and it has nothing to do with dubious food.

It would appear that I’ve become a pescatarian over the past year or so. (Previously, I would have called myself a flexitarian, if anything.)

It’s a curious thing, this dietary evolution of mine. My reasons for becoming pescatarian are certainly not ethically motivated—if that were the case, I would be a vegan. To be honest, I feel as though this “-ism” landed on me, rather than the other way around. Or perhaps I should say, “beached itself,” if we’re going with the ocean theme here.

No? Ok have a picture instead.

Along with the arrival of this label has come a conscious effort to expand my fish recipe repertoire. I may be a (recent) fan of seafood, but up until now I’ve left its preparation to the professionals. I have some magazine recipes to thank for breaking that streak. These photos are from the August issue of Fitness Magazine. It’s their Shrimp-and-Avocado Rice Bowl. Easy enough, especially when Trader Joe’s freezer aisle does the cleaning and shelling of the shrimp for you. :)

This recipe includes brown rice, edamame and a small omelette as well, all infused with Asian flavors like sesame oil and ground ginger. I spooned it over arugula for a little extra volume and veg-factor.

So, what happened to turn me pescatarian? I’m not sure, as there was no decisive moment in which I pronounced myself as such. Instead, I can see in hindsight that meat and poultry have been gradually dropping out of rotation for some time now, replaced by a preference for vegetarian fare. Naturally, I can’t help but be affected by things like Food Inc. and The Omnivore’s Dilemma—both are compelling examples of the dangers of factory farmed food, and if I were to choose to eat a steak these days, I sure would want to know where it came from first.

But this kind of knowledge (factory farming, government influence, hormones and chemicals in food, etc.) is a relatively recent development, exposed to me not only by the mass media, but by this here glorious blog community! I’m up to my eyeballs in bountiful e-produce, and it’s hard not to want to get in on that, especially when, for me, it all boils down to a long-standing love of vegetables. That pre-dates my involvement in the healthy living blog world, so with support from the wealth of health I read about every day on the internet, maybe I should have seen this coming.

Ok, maybe not that in particular. There was a time when you could not have paid me to eat a sardine, let alone cook them with my own hands. Turns out they’re mighty tasty, though! Not to mention a formidable source of heart-healthy Omega-3s.

This dish is from Shape Magazine: whole wheat Pasta with Peppers, Mushrooms and Roasted Sardines.

Simple, healthy and Mediterranean, it’s not something I would have thought to make a year ago. I’ve been too busy combining odd partners in casserole dishes and sauce pans, using every spice in my arsenal. There is a time and a place for that. I’m not sure when or where, but once upon a time I thought I knew!

Once upon another time, I was horrified by all things seafood. The day I agreed to taste Dad’s tuna noodle casserole was a milestone indeed. Now I can’t imagine life without it! Perhaps more significant was a dinner on vacation in Hawaii some 10 years ago, when in a bold move I ordered the coconut-macadamia encrusted mahi-mahi—my first time ordering a fish entree all for myself (as opposed to tasting from someone else’s plate). Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly torture getting that dish down my throat.

Since that fateful evening, I have experienced precious few meat/poultry dishes as exquisite as that mahi-mahi. I am not ignorant of the poor fish-farming practices out there, but as with meat, we can make sustainable, ethical choices when well informed. Having been so informed, I find that a vegetarian diet with the occasional bit of seafood suits me best, both mentally and physically. So it was that “pescatarian” branded itself across my hiney. Maybe it will change one day. In the meantime, I am not going to go around introducing myself as “Hi, my name is Diana and I’m pescatarian.” I happen to fit under that label’s umbrella right now, and since I often think about how that might have happened, I figured I might as well have a good public think on it at the appropriate venue: my food blog.

So now the thinks have been thunk, for better or for worse, whether or not they make sense. How did you arrive at your dietary preferences, standard-American or otherwise?

Seasonal Highlight: Thai Chilies

2010-09-19T15:20:00.001-04:00

I probably have no business writing a seasonal highlight post on these chili peppers, considering the date stamp on these photos is August 2 and the farmer’s market already looks quite different. But consider the alternative: photos of me, unshowered, surrounded by a sea of used snot rags and an endless flow of Yogi tea that smells like a strange combination of eucalyptus and something I can’t quite put my finger on…damp basement? Maybe stuffy attic.

I’m happy to narrate my nasal excretions as well.

Not delicious? Thai chilies it is, then. Works for me—in my current head-cold misery, blogging is pretty much the only thing I have energy for. Come to think of it, these chilies are probably the only thing that could possibly clear my colossal head-balloonyness, anyway.

So here we go. About six weeks ago, one of my coworkers introduced me to these tiny, devilish chilies. She ended up going on a chili pepper bender, actually, purchasing a new plant from the farmer’s market practically every week since. Even she couldn’t quite keep up with the plant’s proliferation, however, so she shared a handful with me. I was wary, not being a huge fan of spicy-hot flavors, but these little guys come in such tiny packages that I figured I should give ‘em a try.

It was worth it! Just one of these peppers lends a noticeable yet manageable kick to a single-serving dish. I contemplated purchasing a plant of my own,

but remembered that my thumb is not so much green as whatever color represents “plant killer!!!” (Rest in peace, dear basil plant.)

So I settled for playing around with the market’s chilies several nights in a row. It was fun! I came up with several meals that benefitted from the chilies’ spice quite nicely. Paired with another seasonal highlight, the zucchini (which, I’ll admit, is more like a year-round obsession for me), I’ve added a few dishes to my regular rotation.

This one is super-simple. I spiralized a zucchini to make noodles and drowned them in a gargantuan portion of Gena’s Carrot Miso dressing. It’s a wonder that any of this stuff makes it out of the blender, since I inevitably start eating it straight with a spoon immediately. In this case, I was lucky to have some on hand that had escaped said spoon.

As for the chilies, I diced one up finely and threw it in a small skillet along with about a teaspoon of coconut oil and a pinch of minced garlic. Once that became fragrant, I stir-fried some broccoli and cashews with salt and pepper and topped my bowl of zucchini with the contents of the skillet.

I guess it’s a bit anticlimactic to be writing a whole post on an ingredient that barely comes through in photographs, but please take my word for it that the flavor is most definitely there.

The next dish I made with a chili and some zucchini was the following mess, and while it doesn’t look beautiful, it immediately became a dish I love so much that I often dream about it all day until dinnertime when I can finally make it.

Seriously, I’ve eaten this meal at least once a week for like, two months now. The best part? (Besides the taste, that is.) It’s so totally easy and comes together so quickly that I don’t mind making it even on the nights when I’ve come home late and am dog-tired. The key is having cooked brown rice (or other grain) on hand. To ensure this, I like to cook a large amount of rice whenever I know I won’t be leaving the house for at least 45 minutes, which is no big deal—just put the pot on the heat, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, set the timer and go about your business. You can even freeze any portion of rice you don’t think you’ll use within the week—if you can keep from repeating this dish, that is! ;)

Zucchini Thingie

(I can’t think of a clever name when I’m this medicated…)

Ingredients:

1 medium-large zucchini
1 tsp oil (I like coconut oil)
1 tiny Thai chili pepper, minced, or red pepper flakes (optional)
1/8 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup-1 cup cooked grain (such as brown rice)
1 egg
salt and pepper
Toppings: grated parmesan cheese and tahini

Directions:

Grate zucchini. You can do this with a normal box-grater type tool, but I highly recommend pulling out the food processor with the shredding attachment/disc thing (pulsing in a blender might also work if you are FP-less). By grating my zucchini this way (I usually chop it into 8 or so sections first), it doesn’t start to ooze its water the way it does when you’re pressing it against a box grater the whole time. Plus it takes approximately 4.36 seconds to do this in the food processor, not to mention the spared elbow grease. I’m just sayin’.
Place a large nonstick skillet over medium heat and drizzle in the oil. Throw in the minced chili pepper and garlic and sautee until fragrant and starting to brown, a minute or two.
Add the rice and stir a bit until coated with the oil mixture and warmed. Make a hole in the center and crack your egg into it. Scramble until cooked through. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Turn off the heat. Add shredded zucchini and start stirring to distribute the egg-rice mixture throughout. The zucchini should get warm in the skillet, but won’t cook so that it starts releasing a lot of water. Add more salt and pepper, if desired.
Pour the contents of the skillet into a nice, big bowl or plate. Dust with parmesan cheese and drizzle with tahini.

Serves 1 (generously!)

Ugly? Yes. Odd? Perhaps. Delicious? Seriously.

This may very well be one of many recipes that never makes it out of my own kitchen, but I’m just glad it found it’s way into my kitchen in the first place! I’m sure this zucchini thingie phase will pass eventually, but in the meantime I shall eat quite well indeed.

If I can convince myself to step out of my rut ever so slightly, I’m thinking a vegan version would come together equally well by substituting crumbled tofu for the egg and nutritional yeast/vegan parm for the parmesan cheese.

Sounds like I better get started on this week’s batch of rice so I’m prepared for the chili-zucchini crave to strike! What do you think of chili peppers? Fun flavor or evil ingredient?

A Laos-y Trip

2010-09-13T21:12:00.001-04:00

One of the reasons I reduced my blogging schedule to one post per week was an impending business trip to Bangkok and Laos. Now that it’s safely behind me, it would be tragic if I didn’t share at least a few pictures! I went by myself, so I’m thinking of that old saying that goes something like, “if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, did it make a sound?” Or in this case, if I travel to Laos alone and don’t share the evidence on my blog, did I even go?

Well, comrades, I am here now to say that BOY HOWDY did I go.

(Sure was a bitch getting that elephant through customs, let me tell ya.)

The trip was amazing and I encountered many things (both edible and otherwise) I’d never seen before.

(Buddhist monk editing photos)

These, for example, are in fact NOT Lao crunk cups, contrary to my first guess…

They are items used in Buddhist ceremony. But Laos sure is a great place to buy silver and gold!

And textiles. Ah, the silk is like buttah…

And these little guys are in fact NOT peas:

(It’s less obvious when you find them floating in your Lao stew, take my word for it.) They’re pea eggplants!

Me: “Sorry, Chef, did you say those are eggplants?”

Chef: “Yes, they’re pea eggplants.”

Me: “Oh lover, where have you been all my life?”

That last bit was directed at the eggplant, not the chef, I swear. Maybe.

I did get to see all manner of eggplant on my tour, though. For a girl whose favorite raw ingredients are eggplant and coconut, I was in the right place.

Behold:

Seriously, the eggplant gods have been holding out on me. And here I was thinking the best I could do were the the usual gigantic fleshy kind we have here in the States. Maybe some of the nice skinny Japanese kind if I’m lucky.

But no, finer things await me.

One of my favorite lunches of the whole trip was a dish of stewed eggplant (both the pea and purple varieties), green beans, Luang Prabang mushrooms, fish from the Mekong River and some greens I couldn’t identify.

It’s hard to describe it other than to say that everything was super fresh and light—Lao cooking emphasizes fresh ingredients, leafy herbs and lightness. After all, if a dish was dripping with oil, how could you eat with your hands with only this for help?

That, friends, is the ubiquitous Lao sticky rice. It’s more common to get the white kind for a typical meal (purple is more expensive), but both colors behave the same way: STICKY! To eat Lao food, one makes a small ball of rice (think ping-pong ball size) and uses it to dip and pick up bites of the main dishes, such as my eggplant above. To be honest, I played the tourist card and used a fork and spoon, but did give the rice trick a try on a few other occasions. It works better than you might think!

Needless to say, I ate very, very well in Laos. I enjoyed the lightness of the traditional food as well as the influence of French cuisine.

Maybe you’re wondering what it is I do that takes me to places where I ride elephants and delve into local cuisine. Well, I’m inclined to keep my professional life more private than public, but let’s just say that if I’m sent overseas, I’m there precisely to do things like ride elephants and eat at a variety of restaurants.

Working in the travel industry is hardly a nonstop vacation, but on the rare occasions that I do travel on business myself, I’m not ashamed to admit that this

is just another day at the office.

Spicy-Sweet Egg Burger

2010-09-05T18:51:00.001-04:00

Hell hath frozen; pigs doth fly. I am blogging. Indeed, it has been a whirlwind of milestone events (others’, not mine) and travel, but now my calendar is full of wide-open spaces for the first time in a while. I have hundreds, even thousands, of photos from said events, and I’ll be happy to share them soon, but first, I have a rather time-sensitive topic to address:

Sandwiches.

I fear it’s too late already, but since I’ve been out of the country for a while, I will have to settle for slipping this one in under the wire. You may or may not be aware that Mezzetta is sponsoring a sandwich recipe contest right now, and tomorrow (Labor Day) is the last day to enter. Since Mezzetta was so kind as to send me a huge supply of inspiration,

I just had to put together a little something in honor of this most worthy competition.

It stands to reason that I have a bit of a backlog of blog post ideas (and materials with which to make them happen), so it happens that this sandwich turned out to be a double-whammy in the free samples department.

I received my Arnold Sandwich Thins via the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program—both the Mezzetta samples and the sandwich thins were provided to me for free. So, with my Mezzetta products as paints and the sandwich thins as a canvas, I was quite ready to put together my ~~lunch~~ recipe!

Spicy-Sweet Egg Burger

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks*
1 Mezzetta sweet cherry pepper
2 Mezzetta kalamata olives
1 Mezzetta Castelvetrano olive, pitted
~1 tbsp Mezzetta julienned sundried tomatoes in oil
1 Arnold Sandwich Thin (I used whole wheat)
schmear of cream cheese**
several slices of Mezzetta tamed jalapeno peppers

*Substitute 1 whole egg for the 2 egg yolks, if you prefer. I made protein pancakes this morning, which call for egg whites only, so this was a great way to use up my yolks.

**I also thought about spreading avocado on the bread in lieu of cream cheese. Let me know if you try it that way!

Directions:

Combine egg, pepper, olives and sundried tomatoes in a small blender or food processor and pulse until evenly combined (doesn’t have to be smooth).
Heat a small skillet over medium and spritz with cooking spray if not nonstick. Pour in the egg mixture as you would with pancake batter, so that you have the shape of a small patty.
Cook for a minute or two on each side until browned and no longer runny inside.
Meanwhile, toast your bread (if desired) and spread cream cheese on on half. Top with your egg patty and a few jalapeno slices.

Serves 1

This took less than 5 minutes to put together, but it sure does taste a lot fancier than it really is. I credit the flavorful Mezzetta products, which thankfully have no preservatives, so my sandwich was far from dull!

One of my favorite sandwich toppers is roasted red peppers, which Mezzetta also sent me, though that’s actually the one thing that didn’t make it onto this particular sandwich. Good thing tomorrow’s Labor Day—I will have another chance before it’s back to work for me!

What will you be eating (grilling?) this Labor Day?

I give up.

2010-08-18T22:02:00.001-04:00

A real blog post is just not going to happen this week. Or next week. Or even the week after that. I have babies, weddings and international travel to juggle, and blogging has no place in between. Dry your eyes.

My new niece, Annie

I’ll have much better material come September anyway!

Hope your summer is as full of exciting events as mine! Do tell.

See you in a couple weeks!

Buns of Meal

2010-08-09T19:57:00.000-04:00

Foodbuzz not-so-recently sent me some free samples of new products from Nature’s Pride, but clearly it has taken me a while to make good use of them. Thank God for freezers!

I shared the Country White hot dog and hamburger buns with my parents, so I’ll have to check in with them to see how they’ve enjoyed using this stuff. As for me, I’ve been slowly but surely making my way through the bag of 100% Whole Wheat hamburger buns. Actually, I think I’ve used them for just about everything but hamburgers.

For example:

Snobby Joes! I’m so late in trying this recipe, considering how popular and reliable it seems to be. My impression was right—this vegan take on Sloppy Joes comes together easily and the seasonings will definitely remind you of its bemeated cousin, if you’ve ever tasted the beef version, that is.

To round out the meal, I roasted up some brussels sprouts, broccoli and diced butternut squash (note to self: roast frozen butternut squash at your own risk, as it may or may not “squash” itself all over the other veggies). I also blended up a quick raw kale soup (water, kale, avocado, carrots, EVOO, lemon juice, Bragg’s…the usual suspects).

This is how food babies are made.

I ended up enjoying the leftover Snobby Joes open-faced on the buns for a higher filling to bread ratio. I highly recommend eating Snobby Joes this way, considering you’d probably be happy to eat the filling straight from the pot by the spoonful anyway!

The most recent use of my Nature’s Pride buns was far more spontaneous. I wanted a sandwich and my only criteria was that it involve bread. I’m easy to please.

I ended up spreading 1/4 avocado on one half of the (toasted) bun. Meanwhile, I broiled some sliced crimini mushrooms (spritzed with cooking spray and dusted with Adobo) for 5 minutes and layered those onto the sandwich along with a tahini drizzle and a touch of Sun In Bloom sauerkraut.

I’m a little obsessed with tahini these days…it’s just so rich and creamy and drizzle-able! I considered drizzling it directly onto my tongue but settled for a lick of the spoon.

I was a bit worried that this sandwich would suffer from the all-too-common bite ‘n’ splode effect, but it actually held together very well. I credit the tahini. :)

And on the side, a delightfully peppery salad:

Organic arugula topped with roasted brussels sprouts, artichoke hearts, pistachios and balsamic vinaigrette.

And tahini.

Not like it’s earth-shattering news, but clearly hamburger buns are useful for infinite vegetarian sandwich options, so I’ve really liked having these whole wheat buns around. I’m not a huge sandwich person, so having bread that is specially made just for sandwiches has challenged the flabby and underused sandwich portion of my brain. Many thanks to Nature’s Pride for helping me tone and tighten my sandwich muscle.

What goes in your favorite sandwich?

Seasonal Highlight: Peas (Giveaway Post!)

2010-08-02T21:05:00.003-04:00

Don’t think I can’t see you through the computer screen. You opened this post with a schtank eye and a smirk. You’re waiting for me to unleash a torrent of horrendous pea puns, and I’m offended by your lack of faith.

Doesn’t mean you’re not right.

If you recall my recent clafouti experiment, you’ll note that I sang the praises of The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook. Well, I’ve had another success with one of its recipes—this time, with peas.

Behold: Risi e Bisi.

Risi e Bisi is a risotto recipe typical of the Veneto. I know many people are intimidated by the thought of making homemade risotto, but it’s really not hard at all. It’s not as though it’s challenging technique-wise, so long as you follow the recipe. It just takes time (and a lot of stirring) to complete the process. I didn’t find it unpleasant at all—in fact, I’d consider the repetitive motions a form of kitchen thera-pea. Bazing!

Indeed, shelling two pounds of peas becomes fairly meditative after a while, and though it took nearly an hour, I decided there was something both deeply satisfying and depressing about putting in so much work for relatively little yield.

As suspected, however, the result was creamy, buttery and well worth the effort.

This dish will definitely need to be re-pea-ted.

Speaking of which, what do you call it when you eat leftover peas?

Give up?

Re-peas!

…

…no?

Fine, just for that, I won’t share how I came up with the improvised pea drizzle-garnish stuff.

Ok, you talked me into it. Here’s the reci-pea:

(And you thought you were safe!)

After you’ve boiled the pea pods to make the risotto’s broth, ignore the instruction that says to discard them. (Sorry, can’t share the book’s recipe since I didn’t change anything, but do check it out sometime!) Before you get wrapped up in risotto pour-and-stir process, throw the drained pea pods in a blender with a cup of water, a couple tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese, a dash of garlic powder and S+P. Blend smooth (and to taste) and set aside until you’re ready to top your serving of risotto.

No need to waste all that tasty pea by-product, right? And trust me: this addition to the Risi e Bisi recipe makes it all come out really well. ;)

Speaking of reducing waste (no more pea jokes, I swear…except for that one), I have a mini-giveaway for any readers who happen to live in NYC. Remember when I got to attend the opening of Otarian? Well, I have since dined there a couple more times, and it really is mighty tasty (not to mention quick, veg- and environmentally-friendly). There are two locations here in Manhattan: one on Bleecker Street and one on 8th Avenue in midtown. You must go try the paneer wrap!

To sweeten the deal, I have precisely 23 Otarian Carbon Karma Cards to give away. Every time you use your card, you rack up Karma Credits depending on how much carbon omission you conserved by choosing an Otarian meal. Once you have a certain amount of points, you become elegible for free stuff (the first 100 points will get you a free Choco Treat, for example).

So if that sounds good to you (and why wouldn’t it?), let me know in the comments and I will mail a card to the first 23 New Yorkers to do so. While you’re at it, go ahead and email your mailing address to diana at soapandchocolate dot com.

Peace.

A Pancake for Every Occasion

2010-07-26T21:45:00.001-04:00

Safe to say that I’ve been dealing with a bit of a pancake obsession since I moved (nearly two months ago now!). When you are spoiled with a high speed blender, as I now am, pancakes come together in no time at all, so I’ve indulged this obsession to the point of obliterating it completely.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t come up with a few pancake plates I wasn’t proud of! (It also seems that I can’t not form a sentence that doesn’t contain not too few negatives.)

The pancakes in these pictures came from the Blendtec recipe book—they’re a hybrid of whole wheat and cornmeal; not sweet at all. I layered them with grilled slices of eggplant and zucchini, then drizzled on a “syrup” of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Don’t let the savory-pancakes-for-dinner thing throw you off too much. If I’d have called them crepes, you wouldn’t have batted an eye.

But since I aim to please, I’ll also include a pancake concoction that I did indeed eat for breakfast.

The orange blob threatening to consume my whole wheat pancakes is a little something that I shall call carrot cake…sauce.

I guess a similar effect could be accomplished by throwing a carrot cake in the blender, but that sounds wacky even to me, so that ought to tell you something. Let’s go the traditional recipe route instead. It might even be a little bit healthy.

Carrot Cake Sauce

Ingredients:

1/2 cup milk (non-dairy or otherwise)
4 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 packet stevia (or other sweetener to taste)
4 tbsp cream cheese (or vegan alternative such as Tofutti)
generous shake of cinnamon
splash of maple syrup, to taste

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend on high until smooth. This should make you 2-3 servings, depending on your love for carrot cake.

I hate to admit that this is pretty much the pinnacle of my kitchen creativity in the last few weeks, but it’s basically true—my schedule has kind of exploded, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I adjust my blogging routine. I’m thinking once a week is about right, pitiful as it sounds. But on the other hand, it can’t be forced! I mean, I could post daily on the state of my dust bunnies, but they’re pretty camera shy. The odd pancake will have to do in the meantime.

What’s your favorite way to eat pancakes?

Winner of $50 to CSN!

2010-07-19T12:00:00.000-04:00

It’s Cherloo! Drop me an email at diana at soapandchocolate dot com and I will forward it to the CSN peeps. Congratulations!

Fiddy Dolla Giveaway

2010-07-12T20:55:00.002-04:00

I’mma hitcha with the punchline right here: I got fiddy (50) bones with your name on ‘em for the low, low price of a comment on this post.

The kind folks at CSN online stores have given this here blogger a chance to redeem herself for keeping their first offering of a Tribest Blender all to herself. Now I get to pay it forward and offer you a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to any of CSN’s wide array of online stores. Don’t feel limited to things like blenders—they’ve got all manner of fabulous curiosities for sale—wall sconces, BEAN BAG CHAIRS (awesome.), bombe chests (whatever those are…) and my personal favorite, ice cream makers.

Considering the makeup of my readership, few though you may be, I think I know where your loyalties lie among the aforementioned choices. But I’ll refrain from pigeonholing you. You wanna spend your $50 on a bombe chest, be my guest.

A’ight, you know the rules:

To enter, just leave a comment on this post (US and Canada only, por favor). For additional entries, you may:

Link back to this giveaway on your own blog. You must leave an additional comment on this post to let me know you’ve done so, or the additional entry will not be counted.
Tweet a link to this giveaway, making sure to include my Twitter handle, @soapnchocolate. Again, you must leave an additional comment here to let me know you’ve done so. You can use the following message:@soapnchocolate is giving away a $50 gift certificate to CSN Stores! http://bit.ly/aaIVwN

I’ll post the winner next Monday, July 19.

This giveaway is the bombe.

Butter Me Up

2010-07-05T21:06:00.001-04:00

Hi.

There is butter on my face and in my belly. Allow me to explain the former before you skedaddle off to some more dignified blog.

Maren of Butter Your Body skin care sent me a sample of her Green With Life face mask. All the Butter Your Body products are vegan, natural, organic and handmade. I could tell—it smelled like salad!

But in a good way. With some skin products, I have a sense of inhaling frankenfumes, which can’t be doing much good, so I was glad to use a product that had me 100% confident in its integrity and benefits. Thanks for the sample, Maren!

Rest assured that I limited my sampling of the above product to topical use. I decided against testing my theory that the mask was indeed granulated salad.

Instead, inspired by Gena’s recent praise of the sweet potato-avocado taste combination, I decided to try it for myself. I wanted a baked sweet potato for dinner, but not just any old butter for topping…

…and I didn’t want just a simple chopped or mashed avocado.

No, I wanted a fat party in my mouth. Into the mini blender went 1/4 avocado, 1/2 tbsp coconut butter and 1/2 tbsp coconut oil…

…onto the grill went a sliced yellow squash…into the oven went some broccoli florets…

…and into my belly went all of this:

At which point out came an “I should probably put this on the blog.”

So I did.

Clafouti! Bless you.

2010-07-01T22:19:00.001-04:00

Hi! If I’ve seemed remiss in blogging, I’m sorry…but not really sorry, as I’m more into real life than blog life these days. The way I see it, that’s ok and I can just stop by here when the foodie spirit moves me. This also means I have a nice backlog of photos and post topics to choose from! And so today, I bring you clafouti.

Don’t feel bad, I had to read the name twice the first time I saw it mere weeks ago. I’d never heard of such a thing. For that matter, as I write this, I can see that spell check has never heard of such a thing either. So we’re all entitled to a little Wikipedia at this juncture, I’d say.

Clafoutis, sometimes in Anglophone countries spelled clafouti, is a baked French dessert of black cherries arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a thick flan-like batter. The clafoutis is dusted with powdered sugar and served lukewarm.

A traditional Limousin clafoutis contains pits of the cherries. According to baking purists, the pits release a wonderful flavor when the dish is cooked. If the cherry pits are removed prior to baking, the clafoutis will be milder in flavor.

I will go ahead and be “Anglophone” by spelling it without the ‘s’ because clafoutis looks obscene to me. Therefore, Diana > French.

Anyway, I came upon the recipe for clafouti in my copy of The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook. I had a huge surplus of cherries that would go bad if I didn’t use them up, so I turned to this most trustworthy of seasonal recipe guides and was thrilled with the result, liberal adaptations and all.

Cherry Clafouti a la Anglobrat
adapted from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook

Ingredients:

1 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 cup sucanat (or sugar, or 1/3 cup NuNaturals baking blend)
3 eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 cup coconut milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
pinch salt
3/4 pound unpitted red cherries, stemmed
powdered sugar for dusting, if desired

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400*. Spread coconut oil across bottom and sides of a shallow 9” or 10” round baking dish. Set on a rimmed cookie sheet.
Whisk together the sucanat/sugar, eggs and lemon zest until well blended. Add coconut milk and vanilla and whisk again until blended. Add flour and salt and whisk until batter is frothy.
Pour about a third of the batter into the prepared baking dish. Scatter cherries on top in an even layer. Pour the rest of the batter over top, careful not to disturb your cherry arrangement.
Bake until golden and puffed and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean, 35-45 minutes (mine was done after 35). Serve at once, dusted with powdered sugar, or cool on a wire rack to room temperature and dust with powdered sugar just prior to serving. Don’t forget to spit out the pits when eating!

Serves 6-8

Ok, so I can’t really say whether or not this clafouti looked or tasted anything like it should have, but I thought it was delicious, and I even got a second opinion to support it. If you’d like something closer to the traditional version, feel free to use cow dairy versions of the coconut ingredients above.

Why do we have the word custard when clafouti expresses so much more? Say it out loud: cusTURD? Stupid yankees.

And on that note, Happy 4th of July weekend!

NuNaturals Stevia Winners!

2010-06-28T22:07:00.001-04:00

HEY! Popping in really quick to post the winners of the NuNaturals stevia giveaway. Here are the 4 luckies:

Gabriela said...

Great giveaway!! I love those muffins- can you ever go wrong with bananas, nuts and chocolate? Negative. Hope you've had a great weekend!

Randi said...

Hey, I have never commented but I am a huge fan of this blog. Thanks for all you do. Hope I win the contest!

1:53 PM

Natalie @ cinnamonbums said...

great giveaway! i definitely want to try this recipe!

2:40 PM

Mo 'Betta said...

Love muffins, love chocolate! I use stevia and now I really want to try the Vanilla Stevia liquid!

Congratulations! Email your mailing addresses to diana at soapandchocolate dot com and I will let the proper authorities know to ship your prizes!

Back later this week with a fun recipe or two. :)

Stevia Giveaway with a Muffin Top!

2010-06-20T18:35:00.002-04:00

Hey party people, I know it’s been an ice age since I blogged, well, anything, but I’m back today with a GOOD one. To make up for my absence (since the world doesn’t turn when I don’t blog…), I’m hosting another bad-ass stevia giveaway! Those folks over at NuNaturals are too generous for their own good, I tell ya.

Knowing that I’d be posting this giveaway was actually the impetus for me getting back in the kitchen for the first time since my move—I finally bought a bunch of fresh produce so that I could stuff my face full full of veggie goodness…

Scale: 1/829374939857489th of actual size.

I think I pretty much cleaned out the kale lady at the farmer’s market. It was glorious.

But I digress. Also part of said shopping were the goods to make a rockin’ recipe that showcases NuNaturals stevia. In this case, the Baking Blend. Behold:

Banana Chocolate Chip Pecan Muffins
(adapted from the Blendtec recipe book’s Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins)

Ingredients:

1 egg
1 banana, broken into 1-inch pieces (I thawed a frozen one and it worked fine)
3 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 cup milk (non-dairy or otherwise; I used rice milk)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup NuNaturals baking blend (or 1/3 cup sugar)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup pecans, chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350*.
If using a blender, such as a Blendtec, combine egg through vanilla and pulse for 5 seconds. Add stevia/sugar through salt and blend smooth (or select Sauces/Dips cycle). Add chocolate chips and pecans and pulse briefly to incorporate. Pour into a muffin tin and bake 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
If no blender, follow the above procedure and simply whisk (vigorously!) by hand. Should be fine!

Makes 12 small muffins

I recommend trying this in the blender if you have the means—you’ll get a really nice fluff factor as well as a sort of chocolate-flecked effect. I thought they came out with a great texture!

And as much as I enjoyed eating one just plain for lunch dessert, I won’t say these muffins can’t benefit from a lil extra somethin’-somethin’…

Such as a big bowl of HEAB’s protein ice cream, perhaps?

That’s my kind of muffin top.

But right, there’s a giveaway involved here.

NuNaturals has generously offered no less than four prizes for this giveaway, so chances are pretty good that you could win yourself a box of NuStevia packets + a bottle of Vanilla Stevia Liquid! I used a packet of NuNaturals stevia to make the protein ice cream above, and I love putting the vanilla liquid in my coffee.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post (USA residents only, sorry!).

For additional entries, you may:

Link back to this giveaway on your own blog. You must leave an additional comment on this post to let me know you’ve done so, or the additional entry will not be counted.
Tweet a link to this giveaway, making sure to include my Twitter handle, @soapnchocolate. Again, you must leave an additional comment here to let me know you’ve done so. You can use the following message: @soapnchocolate is giving away NuNaturals stevia! http://www.soapandchocolate.com/2010/06/stevia-giveaway-with-muffin-top.html

BONUS:

NuNaturals is offering all participants who enter this giveaway a special BONUS promotional offer of a –15% DISCOUNT off of any participant’s future web order placed through their website : www.nunaturals.com . When you check out, enter this code : BLG710 , and you will receive a special –15% discount on your TOTAL ORDER. Don’t forget, you also receive FREE SHIPPING to the Continental 48 U.S. States on all orders totaling a net of $35.00, and over, AFTER this special discount.

I’ll post the winners on Monday, June 28th. READYSETGO!

Simple Stuffed Squash

2010-06-14T19:57:00.001-04:00

Before I moved, I had Gena over for one of our bitchin’ kitchen dinners, but a blog post about it kind of got lost in the hubbub that followed. Now that I’m settled, I’ve thought back on it and wondered whether I ought to post the recipe. I’ve hesitated because it seemed too simple and shortcut-ified to justify a whole post, but upon further reflection, that may just be the beauty of it.

I feel like a broken record on the whole easy-yet-healthy theme, but if you’ll forgive me, I have a feeling that we can all use an abundance of ideas that offer the most taste bang for your simplified (and diminutive) buck.

Here’s what I came up with:

Simple Stuffed Squash

Ingredients:

1 acorn squash, halved with seeds scooped out
cooked brown rice (or other grain of choice)
shredded veggies (i.e. broccoli slaw, carrots)
nama shoyu/tamari/soy sauce
brown rice vinegar
sesame oil
mirin

Directions:

Bake the squash halves cut side down on a cookie sheet in about an inch of water at 400* for about 30-35 minutes, until easily pierced by a fork.
Meanwhile, combine rice (I started with about 3 cups) with shredded/chopped veggies in a large skillet.
Add equal parts nama shoyu, vinegar, oil and mirin (I used probably 3 tbsp each). Stir over medium-low head until warmed through. Alternatively, marinate all these ingredients overnight and warm briefly before adding to the squash.
Once squash is done, place it cut side up on a plate and fill with rice-veggie mixture as desired.
Optional topping: mash an avocado with some lime juice, salt and pepper. Highly recommended!

Note: If you can’t find/don’t have mirin, I think that an alternative sweetener, such as honey, maple syrup or agave would work too. It will taste a little different, but still totally fine.

As you can tell, this is more of a formula than a recipe, but it comes out so fancy looking that it’s more than impressive enough to serve to a guest. Gena will never know that I barely lifted a finger to make this dinner!

…Whoops.

Basically, the key word here is easy. Easy on the eyes, easy on the tongue, easy on the belly, and most importantly, easy to make, start to finish. If I’m known for anything, it shall surely be for the word easy [a lifetime of ex-boyfriends raise their hands in protest].

And as I’ve yet to replenish my pantry since moving, easy continues to be the operative word. Off I go to spread avocado on toast and call it dinner!

Brooklyn Supper Club: Gina’s Cafe

2010-06-09T20:00:00.000-04:00

For the most recent meeting of the Brooklyn Supper Club (am I the only nerd who calls us that, ladies?), Sarah, Vani, Olga and I went to Gina’s Cafe down at Brighton Beach.

That’s the south-est of south Brooklyn, for those of you foreigners. Actually, I’m sure even I’d be considered a foreigner in those parts, given that the natives are mostly Russian. To that end, Sarah, Vani and I were mighty glad to have Olga with us for translation purposes, as Gina’s Cafe is authentic Russian and Olga was able to explain the menu items better than the actual menu could.

With our private interpreter, we were able to select a handful of dishes to share, and every single one of them wowed me with its freshness and flavor.

I figure beets should be a staple of any Russian meal, at least for a gringo like me. The above-pictured dish is venigret, which is a salad of boiled beets, potatoes, carrots, peas, fresh dill, vinegar, oil and some spices (to quote my translator herself). Loved this!

Next up was the eggplant caviar. As soon as I saw the word “eggplant” on the menu (and squealed…maybe), I think my dining companions knew we wouldn’t get away with not ordering it.

This was another cold, vinegar-y dish, and it was delicious as well. I need to get busy recreating this at home. And no, no fish eggs were harmed in the making of this particular caviar.

By now, you’re surely wondering where all the sour cream is. And I don’t intend to disappoint. Bam!

Potato pancakes with sour cream. AKA the very essence of what I came for. Believe me, McDonald’s hash browns these are not. Thank God.

Other bites included vereniki (known as pierogies in Polish) filled with cherries…

…and knishes filled with cheese and topped with sesame seeds. They were more like puff pastry than the dense potato-y versions I’ve had elsewhere in NYC. Light and crispy and amazeballs.

The real standout of the meal, however, was the Juliene.

Translation: mushrooms baked in a year’s supply of cheese…and happiness and rainbows and flowers and unicorns.

I feel like I should return the favor and escort my fellow supper clubbies through a meal of cuisine near and dear to my own upbringing, but I think we’d soon find that we all speak the universal language of pizza and ice cream.

Housewarming Post

2010-06-07T22:42:00.001-04:00

Hey there, stranger! It’s been a while since I paid a visit to this here blog, but I’ve moved, unpacked, decorated and nested to the point of exhaustion. In fact, I only just now got done really scrubbing the place. Unfortunately for me, the last tenant here was a dude, and a foul, FOUL dude at that. I won’t go into details, but even with my granny eyesight I could see the funk that had built up on the toilet. Now that I’ve cleaned, any funk ‘round here will be my own funk, at least.

I feel like I should maintain at least some degree of privacy, but I figure a couple snapshots of the place couldn’t hurt. Here’s where I catch my Zs:

Why yes, I did install that pull shade and those curtains myself, thank you for asking.

And this is where the magic happens:

Or rather, where I trust some magic will happen sometime in the not-too-distant future. At this point, feeding myself…anything…trumps creative concoctions. I’m getting there, though!

My new toy will help:

I decided that I mean business where blending is concerned, so I bought myself an itty bitty housewarming gift: a Blendtec. And yeah, that’s the Tribest blender base sitting next to it on the left. I said I mean bizniss!

So while I haven’t been doing much in the way of cooking (thanks to Trader Joe and his guh-lor-i-yuss freezer aisle), I have gotten to tinker with the blender a little, and what with the warmer weather these days, I’ve been enjoying a little light frozen dessert each night.

Maple Slushie

Ingredients:

1 cup non-dairy milk (I used So Delicious coconut milk beverage)
1/3 cup maple syrup
generous shake of cinnamon
3 cups ice cubes

Blend into slushy goodness! I recommend letting the ice sit out on the counter for 5 minutes or so prior to blending.

Tip: It’s extra good topped with the maple cream sandwich cookies from Trader Joe’s (pictured). Crush them into the slushie with your spoon and you’ve got some fancy cookies and milk, summer style.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for the moment—I’m still recovering from all the work that went into the move and subsequent obsessive nesting. I had a lovely massage after work tonight, which was just what I needed. Hope you got to do something more fun than moving for Memorial Day weekend!

Quick “Cream” Sauce

2010-05-23T19:04:00.001-04:00

I recently received a coupon for a free Buitoni agnolotti product via the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program. My choices at the store were for the four-cheese variety or the wild mushroom. It had to be the mushroom! But what to do with it…?

This. Definitely this:

Based on my experience with throwing raw ingredients into a blender to produce a sauce, I came up with this mixture on the fly, and it was actually so good that I had to blog it so I’d be able to repeat it!

Quick “Cream” Sauce (Vegan)

Ingredients:

1 pint cherry/grape tomatoes
1 avocado, peeled and pitted
handful sundried tomatoes
generous shake of Italian herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, sage)
garlic powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Blend smooth and pour it on! You’ll get 2-4 servings from this, depending on how hungry you are. I enjoyed mine over the mushroom agnolotti and some raw zucchini noodles. Certainly one of my favorite meals this month!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Soap & Chocolate must take a leave of absence. With all the packing and moving about to happen, I expect to be gone from the blog for about two weeks, at most. Don’t forget about me! I expect you to come back for a tour of my new kitchen.

Catch you on the flip side!