Month: February 2009

BSI: We have a winner!

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In case you’ve been living under a rock, here are the Blogger Secret Ingredient: Dates entries one last time:

  1. Submitted 1/27 by ttfn300 at Tri to Cook: Butternut Squash & Date Puree
  2. Submitted 1/28 by Meghann at The Inner Workings of a College Graduate: Perfectly Portioned for One Roasted Eggplant, Date, & Kale Curry
  3. Submitted 1/29 by Denise at Denise’s Kitchen: Pork Candy (aka Stuffed Dates with Goat Cheese & Prosciutto
  4. Submitted 1/31 by Brandi at Bran Appétit: Barley Date Pudding
  5. Submitted 2/1 by Kate: Mystery Date Muffins
  6. Submitted 2/1 by Emily at Sheila Moon/Big Swingin’ Cycles Team: Powdered Sugar Coated Date, Walnut, & Butter Balls
  7. Submitted 2/1 by Vani at Fit for Free: Whole-Wheat Coffee Cake Muffins with Date-Nut Streusel
  8. Submitted 2/1 by Victoria at The Idle Loaf: Banana Date Coffee Cake
  9. Submitted 2/1 by Kath at Kath Eats Real Food: Blue Cheese, Date, & Pecan Stuffed Pork Tenderloin
  10. Submitted 2/1 by Tina at Carrots ‘N’ Cake: Oatmeal Date Cookies
  11. Submitted 2/1 by Biz at Biggest Diabetic Loser: Date Wontons
  12. Submitted 2/1 by Andrea at Bella Eats: Peanut Butter Date Blondies
  13. Submitted 2/1 by my mom: Date, Feta, & Toasted Nut Stuffed Butternut Squash
  14. Submitted 2/1 by Jenna at Eat, Live, Run: Whole Wheat Date-Banana Bread Cookies

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This was pretty much an impossible contest to judge. Have you looked at those entries?! Every single one of these recipes could not help but be delicious. Obviously, I could not make my decision based on potential deliciousness alone (since everyone would win). I returned to my original post about the contest to review the challenge I had initially set forth: “I’m looking for creative and innovative ways to work dates into more substantial meals and side dishes.”

I went back over the submissions and narrowed the list down to a few whose recipes addressed that specific challenge: ttfn300’s Butternut Squash & Date Puree, Meghann’s Perfectly Portioned for One Roasted Eggplant, Date, & Kale Curry, Kath’s Blue Cheese, Date, & Pecan Stuffed Pork Tenderloin, and my mom’s Date, Feta, & Toasted Nut Stuffed Butternut Squash.

Before I go on, let me just take a moment to drool over all of the other recipes for appetizers and desserts. Have you seen Andrea’s pictures of her Peanut Butter Date Blondies???? My jaw is still on the floor from looking at those last night … over 24 hours ago! And Brandi turned one of my favorite comfort desserts ever — rice pudding — into the nutrition-packed Barley Date Pudding. Vani & Victoria made two unique and dazzling versions of coffee cake — Whole-Wheat Coffee Cake Muffins with Date-Nut Streusel and Banana Date Coffee Cake — and Biz developed a dessert recipe for Date Wontons unlike any I have seen before.  The list does not end, and I am pretty sure I’ll be buying dates every week for the next six months because I plan to try all 14 of these recipes!

So, back to the winner. I was down to the four finalists. The recipe that really made my mouth water the most — if I have to be totally honest — was my mom’s! What can I say? Good taste runs in the family! But I can’t choose my mom to be the winner! (Sorry mom — I’ll make it up to you next time I’m home.) Meghann’s recipe was another highlight of the bunch — clearly I was a fan since I made a variation of it for lunch this week. One recipe, however, stood out for its use of dates as the star ingredient. If I were eating this meal, I would be able to recognize the dates — both flavor-wise and visually — and I know that this combination of ingredients is failproof. So, now that you’ve been dragged along through this whole deliberation process, it is time to announce the BSI – Dates winner: Kath of Kath Eats Real Food with her recipe for Blue Cheese, Date, & Pecan Stuffed Pork Tenderloin. Congratulations, Kath!

As the lucky winner, Kath will be receiving:

– TWO boxes of Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Tea

– one dozen Earl Grey Biscotti Bites

– plus a couple more little mystery prizes

Thank you to everyone who participated! I appreciate your thoughtful and creative entries, and I can’t wait to try them all over the coming months :-).

Your host for next week’s BSI is going to be Brandi at Bran Appétit, so check out her blog because she’ll be announcing the new ingredient sometime in the next 24 hours!

Lunch does not grow on trees, part 2

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Note #1: Check out all the amazing BSI: Dates Submissions here. The winner will be announced tonight!

Note #2: Heather and Mark are giving away free almond butter at HangryPants!! Go check out the contest here.

Note #3: Biz at Biggest Diabetic Loser is giving away the 30 Day Shred DVD. Enter here.

Note #4: Thanks to Victoria at The Idle Loaf for posting this coupon for free rice crackers!

Onto lunch …

I love how joining the blogworld has motivated me to be even more creative with the food I make. My lunches for this week were inspired by Meghann’s BSI Submission. The idea of incorporating dates into a savory dish — and especially into an Indian curry — intrigued me, so I followed Meghann’s basic procedure for the Kale & Date Curry, adjusting for the ingredients I had available and un-perfect-portioning her recipe so I’d have enough for the whole week. My curry included kale, red cabbage (steamed ahead of time), tomato sauce, onion and garlic (sauteed first in canola oil), chicken and vegetable broths, seven jumbo Medjool dates, 1 cup dry lentils (cooked ahead of time), homemade garam masala seasoning, tons of curry powder, coriander, cinnamon, freshly grated ginger, one grated Fuji apple, and maybe that’s it?

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I simmered everything for a looooooooooooong time until it was very tender and then took my immersion blender to the mixture:

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This made a little over six cups of curry:

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For lunch purposes, I’m using 3/4 cup curry atop a bed of 1/4 cup brown basmati rice. You can sort of see the layering effect here:

img_2987As I mentioned last night, I ate a lot of this curry as I was cooking it to get the spices just the way I wanted them, so I know how delicious lunch is going to be. I can’t wait!

Here’s the rest of the lunch spread in order of planned consumption from top to bottom and left to right:

giant orange for mid-morning snack, date + kale curry for lunch, greek yogurt with apples/bananas/cinnamon/ginger for lunch dessert, broccoli trees with roasted red pepper hummus for afternoon snack, apple with a tbsp each of pb and raisins for evening snack/dinner in class, Quaker True Delights bar for evening snack/dinner dessert in class

giant orange for mid-morning snack, date + kale curry for lunch, greek yogurt with apples/bananas/cinnamon/ginger for lunch dessert, broccoli trees with roasted red pepper hummus for afternoon snack, apple with a tbsp each of pb and raisins for evening snack/dinner in class, Quaker True Delights bar for evening snack/dinner dessert in class

As you’ve seen in recent weeks, my food plans have a way of evolving based on the food I encounter throughout the day, so this food plan is only tentative. If other food that I need to eat appears in front of me, I’ll just keep this lunch for tomorrow. But I hope I get to eat it today because it’s all so yummy!! I’ll be back later (I hope) to report on how things panned out and to announce the winner of this week’s BSI: Dates contest!!!

Running behind

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BSI Dates: Final Recipe Tally

  1. Submitted 1/27 by ttfn300 at Tri to Cook: Butternut Squash & Date Puree
  2. Submitted 1/28 by Meghann at The Inner Workings of a College Graduate: Perfectly Portioned for One Roasted Eggplant, Date, & Kale Curry
  3. Submitted 1/29 by Denise at Denise’s Kitchen: Pork Candy (aka Stuffed Dates with Goat Cheese & Prosciutto
  4. Submitted 1/31 by Brandi at Bran Appétit: Barley Date Pudding
  5. Submitted 2/1 by Kate: Mystery Date Muffins
  6. Submitted 2/1 by Emily at Sheila Moon/Big Swingin’ Cycles Team: Powdered Sugar Coated Date, Walnut, & Butter Balls
  7. Submitted 2/1 by Vani at Fit for Free: Whole-Wheat Coffee Cake Muffins with Date-Nut Streusel
  8. Submitted 2/1 by Victoria at The Idle Loaf: Banana Date Coffee Cake
  9. Submitted 2/1 by Kath at Kath Eats Real Food: Blue Cheese, Date, & Pecan Stuffed Pork Tenderloin
  10. Submitted 2/1 by Tina at Carrots ‘N’ Cake: Oatmeal Date Cookies
  11. Submitted 2/1 by Biz at Biggest Diabetic Loser: Date Wontons
  12. Submitted 2/1 by Andrea at Bella Eats: Peanut Butter Date Blondies
  13. Submitted 2/1 by my mom: Date, Feta, & Toasted Nut Stuffed Butternut Squash
  14. Submitted 2/1 by Jenna at Eat, Live, Run: Whole Wheat Date-Banana Bread Cookies

They all look so good!!! How will I ever choose? I’ll be back late tonight (prob won’t get home from work and class until about 9) to announce the winner.

I bundled up like crazy this morning for the gym as usual, only to run outside and smack into a wall of temperate climate. Weather.com says it was 30 degrees, but it felt more like 40 to me! As I jogged to the gym, I had to take off my scarf, my ear flap hat, and my gloves — and I wished I could take off my fleece pants and two long-sleeved shirts, too! I only did 30 minutes StairMaster this morning because I was running late. Stats:  53 minutes, 391 calories, average heart rate 142, max heart rate 166.

Breakfast was, of course, my crockpot gingerbread spice oats that spent yesterday slow-cooking. I’d been looking forward to these all night, and they did not let me down! Along with one cup of the oats, I had 1/3 cup healthy cream cheese icing, 1/4 Greek yogurt, two crumbled graham sticks, and a sprinkling of powdered ginger:

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And a chocolate caramel enchantment chai tea with Silk on the side.

See you at lunch!

BSI prize sneak-peak (!!) plus cracker pizza

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Ahhh, what a day. And I’m not nearly done with all my reading for class tomorrow! I’m going to try to make this post quick (although whenever I say that, the post ends up going on for ages and ages).

Make sure to submit your BSI recipes by midnight tonight! Scroll down to the previous post for more details and list of entries thus far.

While I’ve been working all day, a pot of chocolate caramel enchantment chai tea with unsweetened Silk has been keeping me company. Clearly the teapot is struggling to stay afloat just like I am!

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(I think something exciting might be happening with the Superbowl? I’m hearing lots of “Oh my god!” shouts coming from the apartment downstairs.)

For lunch, I made leftover cracker-pizzas. On my pizza stone, I placed two Kavli Crsipy Thin Crackers:

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Tomato sauce:

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Roasted veggies and tofu left from last week’s lunches:

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The last of Thursday night’s cheese and butternut squash seeds:

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The stone went into the oven at 450 for about 12 minutes. And then it came out:

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On the side, I had the rest of the roasted veggies that did not fit on the crackers:

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I ate the pizza taco-style:

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This was SO good. I’m really excited I finally found a use for these crackers! I’ve had the box sitting on top of the fridge since September. Expect pizza crackers to be appearing again at some point.

For dessert, I had a jumbo Medjool date stuffed with goat cheese  (Fitnessista-style) and sprinkled with cinnamon (expansion-style ;-)):

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Ahhhh, this was delicious, too! Perhaps next on the agenda is a date & goat cheese cracker pizza??

I also had a few more bites of frozen cake:

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Because I ate all this so late (around 4:30 I think), I never really got hungry for dinner and contented myself with lots of tasting as I worked on cooking my lunches for the coming week. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for details on that. Can you stand the suspense?

In honor of tonight being the last night for BSI submissions, I decided to give the BSI prize a test-drive. Here’s my sugar cookie sleigh ride tea (and some sort of apparition riding out of it) with two Earl Grey Biscotti Bites:

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As “toasty” on the bottom as they are, these bites were delicious — even better today than last night! I hope the winner likes them. I’m always a little bit apprehensive about feeding other people my healthified and substituted-to-death desserts!

OK, off to take care of some more loose ends and prep for tomorrow … and hopefully bed by 9. Can’t wait to see the rest of your submissions!

Dates ‘n’ oats

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Update: Blogger Secret Ingredient — Dates

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Remember that today is the last day to submit your recipes! You must email either your recipe + photos OR the link to your BSI post to talesofexpansion@gmail.com by midnight tonight. I will judge the entries tomorrow based on creativity and potential deliciousness. The winner of the contest will receive:

– TWO boxes of Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride Tea

– one dozen Earl Grey Biscotti Bites

– plus a couple more little mystery prizes

Here are the submissions I have received so far:

Think you can top those?? Send your recipe to me TODAY!

Breakfast

I could think of nothing but oats when I got up this morning. I got my laundry going at the laundromat and then raced back to start preparing this week’s edition of crockpot oats: gingerbread spice oats! I had to run to the store for eggs and ginger root (and cheese samples!), bringing this week’s grocery tally to $31. The oats are gurgling away in the slowcooker as I write. Can’t wait to eat them tomorrow! This batch includes:

– 1 cup steel-cut oats

– 1 cup unsweetened Silk Soymilk

– 1 cup water

– 3 eggs

– 1 tsp vanilla

-4 small shredded apples

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– 1/2 bag fresh cranberries

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– 1 inch grated fresh ginger root

– 1/2 tbsp powdered ginger

– 1 tsp coarsely chopped whole cloves

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– 1 tbsp molasses

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Since I got such an early start, I decided to do the authentic slow-cooking five-hour method.

For today’s breakfast, I made a batch of stove-top Strawberry-Banana Cardamom Oatmeal with 1/4 cup old-fashioned oats, 1/4 cup unsweetened Silk, 1/4 cup water, 3 chopped strawberries, 1/3 mashed banana, coarsely chopped seeds of 3 cardamom pods, tsp vanilla, dash sea salt. I mixed in 1/4 cup plain yogurt and topped the oatmeal with 1 chopped almond toasted in dry skillet, cinnamon, and unsweetened coconut:

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So creamy!

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So laundry’s done, gingerbread spice oats are cooking in the crockpot, belly’s satisfied, and now it’s time to move on to studying. Be back later!