Approximately three weeks ago, Erik and I woke up before the crack of dawn at 3:45 am on a Sunday … on purpose. All according to plan, we left Park Slope at approximately 4:30 am and enjoyed an endless subway ride (with half of New York still drunk from the night before) up to East Harlem, where we met up with dozens of fellow morning-people-for-a-day, eager to begin our trip to Washington, DC to participate in the March for America to promote immigration reform.

Our office had organized the trip for anyone interested in coming along, and I was all for it.

After a few hours of fitful bus-sleeping attempts, we pulled into a rest stop in Maryland for a stretch. Erik ordered a pecan caramel Cinnabon. I drooled.

I may have had a few pecans, but really I stuck to this masterpiece: peanut butter, cinnamon, and banana sandwiched between two slices of Rudy’s.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm …

With daylight well underway, we continued on for the final hourish of our journey.

And then we arrived!

There were tonnnnnnnns of people, and this was just to get on the Metro!

We arrived at the National Mall a few hours before the formal speeches began, so we had time to observe all the action taking place around us.

Erik got caught up in the emotion and the passion of the day:

And then we continued observing:

The speeches started just in time for me to need to escape from the crazy sun in order to avoid heat stroke. In a feat of semi-planned but mostly coincidental luck, we met up with Erik’s mom and stepdad who happened to be in DC that day, visiting from Minnesota:

We set off on a mission with them to check in at the Capitol for progress on the health care reform bill.

We couldn’t get close enough to find out anything (though we all know what happened by now!), so we headed back toward our group in preparation for the march.

And then we marched!

And made Tim Burton faces:

But in all seriousness, it was pretty cool to be involved in this momentous event for immigration reform right alongside the people who need it most!

And as a side note, the houses on the marching street were so pretty. Anyone want to give me one of them?

Hmmm, I just realized there was hardly any food in this post! The Cinnabon must have short-circuited my camera’s photographic capacity 😛

Have you ever been to DC for a march before? The last time I went was for the pro-choice rally with my mom and aunt when I was 5!

Once upon a time (like maybe a month ago?), my friend Becka came for a visit. Becka was my first friend at NYU. We met when I came to New York for freshman orientation, nearly 10 years ago.

We spent many an NYU event getting full together, such as at our senior formal at the Hilton (see below photo, taken moments before we both had to leave the premises and head home due to explosion potential).



Anyway, Becka moved back home to Minnesota after we graduated, and I hardly see her these days as a result! I was crazily excited when she and her boyfriend Aaron were in town last month.

We met at the Patsy’s in the village, an old favorite spot of ours, for a triple date with Erik, Gina, and Chris. I had not been planning to take pictures, but I got so worked up at the sight of these freshly baked rolls with olive oil and parmesan cheese that the camera was in my hands before I knew it:

Mmmmmm, crusty bread with cheesy olive oil … not much beats it!



Becka, Aaron, Chris, and Gina split a pizza and a beautiful platter of penne a la vodka. Action:

Chatting ensued:

I broke the camera out when my pizza arrived, and Becka leapt into photography mode, too:



Erik and I ordered our pizza because we have really big appetites and don’t share food well with others 😛



We ordered our pizza with extra sauce and half sausage. Mmmmmm, look at that meltiness!



We did not face any challenges obliterating the food.



After pizza, our full bellies decided a walk was in order. We somehow ended up at Cafe Dante. Hmmmm, how did that happen?



Erik ordered a hazelnut gelato, and I helped myself 😀



I also tried some of Gina’s hazelnut gelato rum ball …



… and some of someone’s tiramisu …



… and some of Becka’s cheesecake …



… but mostly, I had my own individually French pressed Earl Grey tea:





Yay for visiting long distance friends!

Have you taken any trips down memory lane lately?

I know, I’ve been soooooooooooo absent. And likelihood is high that I will be soooooo absent again very soon, as I am coming into the home stretch with grad school. The end is near in terms of time but very far in terms of work! Invent me another day? Thanks.

Taking a break from the school drama, please inspect this masterpiece!



On the left is a whole coconut, extracted from its shell on the right. I think the coconut gods are smiling on me. This coconut allowed itself to be removed WHOLE, without need for life endangering screwdriver chiseling or anything of the sort.

I followed my usual method of (1) twisting a knife in the eyes and draining the water into a cup (for immediate consumption of course), (2) putting the drained coconut in the oven at 450 for 15 minutes to loosen the flesh from the shell, and (3) tapping around the circumference of the shell with the back of a big knife until it starts to crack. This time, however, the shell cracked in half and fell right off the coconut meat!



I was left with the most beautiful sight ever: this globe of edible miracle food nutrition.



I sliced off the top immediately and devoured it as my reward 😀





Also, I made a cake. But not just any cake!

I’ve been working on cutting my sugar wayyyyyyyy down because it actually seems like it may be linked to my outbreaks of psoriasis, aka itchy skin. When I eat less sugar, I feel less itchy. Obviously, I’ve been eating a ton of sugar in recent months, and I’ve also been a ton of itchy. Maybe the link is all in my head, but cutting back seems to be working. I accept the mental cure 🙂

Anyway, about the cake. I cooked and pureed apple and blended that into the batter for sweetening purposes. The rest of the cake involved things like whole wheat flour, whole kamut flour, ground flax seeds, wheat germ, vanilla, cinnamon, eggs, baking powder, and who knows what else. I generally find that batter turns into a decent baked good as long as it contains flour of some sort, eggs, and baking powder. Quantities don’t seem to matter (though I’m sure many will argue with that statement).

I made a delicious frosting by blending avocado, fresh squeezed orange juice, and banana. And I sprinkled gluten-free sprinkles (yay for free samples) over the top!

It was delicious! Even Erik (boyfriend/roommate #1) and Clare (roommate #2) agreed.

So, there you have it: cake and coconuts, two of life’s greatest pleasures. I’ve got a few more posts in the hopper, so we’ll see how many decades it takes me to pull them together. In the meantime, AHHHHH HOMEWORK!!!

What do you think of cake and coconuts? And what do you think of homework?

Approximately three weeks ago, I got home from work and saw one of the most exciting sights a girl can see: a completely unsolicited mystery box from Bob’s Red Mill!!

Even more exciting were the contents:

A full package of steel cut oats (the best kind ever!) and a new tool for my kitchen craziness: a spurtle! What is a spurtle, you ask?

A real, live oatmeal stirrer!!! I have to admit that all my regular wooden spoons have left my possession along with their original owners as a result of my high rate of recent roommate turnover, so I’ve been using a wooden salad spoon to make oatmeal because it’s the only thing that won’t scratch my pots. This spurtle came just in the nick of time!

Along with the oats and spurtle came an enticing recipe for Oregon Orchard Oats Brulee:

I finally had the time and the ingredients to make it last weekend:

Did you notice that half of the oats are darker than the other half? The recipe called for half of the oats to be pre-toasted before cooking, an idea that I found quite intriguing since I had never thought to do that on my own.

I was also thrilled to use my new spurtle for the purpose of crushing coriander seeds, as per the instructions in the recipe.

Crushed! I think I’m in love 😀

In an uncharacteristic move, I continued to follow the instructions in the recipe by melting butter in a pan until it just started to change color …

… and then adding the crushed coriander, followed by diced pears, dried cranberries, and cinnamon. I nixed pretty much all the sugar and just threw in a sprinkle of sugar in the raw.

Once the juices began to “caramelize,” I mixed the pear and friends combo into the cooked oatmeal (side note: I deviated from recipe slightly here by cooking the oats in unsweetened almond milk instead of the heavy cream prescribed!):

(See my fancy spurtle hard at work??)

I divided the mixture into several oven-safe bowls …

… and sprinkled a bit of sugar in the raw (downgraded from the 1/2 cup suggested in the recipe!) over the top of each dish:

I am kitchen torch-less, once again due to roommate turnover, so I threw the bowls into the oven right under the broiler flame:

When the sugar melted and browned, I decided the job was done:

Ohhhhh, yummmmmm! This sight had my taste buds doing a real, live jig:

I was so pumped to devour my “oregon orchard oats brulee” that I knew I needed an equally decadent drizzler. Luckily, I had this can of coconut milk on hand from Edward & Sons, and it was very clearly calling my name from the back of the cabinet:

I whisked the coconut milk with a bit of unsweetened almond milk …

… and went to town!

Ohhhhhh myyyy goodness!

Every single bite of this indulgent breakfast was an exquisite delight for my senses!

Thank you to my best friends at Bob’s Red Mill for introducing me to the joy of the spurtle!

Have you jumped on the spurtle wagon yet?

Sitting in my freezer for quite some time has been a box of Pepperidge Farm Puffy Pastry that Foodbuzz sent for review. I’ve been hanging onto it for so long because I haven’t been exactly sure what to do with it. It’s not whole grain, nor is it particularly nutritious. Not to say that I only eat nutritious things, but the thought of this puff pastry just didn’t thrill me the way, say, cake does. However, I hung onto the puff pastry because it is food and because I figured some fun use would arise. Lo and behold, it did! Just last week, I found myself craving calzones.



I thawed one of the puff pastry sheets, rolled it out on a floured cutting board, and used a plate and a pizza-cutter to get the right shape. I then loaded half of each calzone with a mixture of roasted broccoli, tomato paste (sauteed with onions, garlic, and Italian seasoning), and shredded Asiago cheese:



I folded the other half over and used a fork to pinch the pocket closed:



I ended up with a whole family of calzones! One giant, one slightly less giant, one a bit smaller, and one itty bitty baby:



I shredded a bit more Asiago over the top …



… and popped them in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, I had a teeny bit more dough left, so I rolled it out as thin as I could and filled it with pumpkin pie filling (canned pumpkin, mashed banana, vanilla, and the holy trinity of spices):



The little pumpkin pie calzones went in the oven when these guys came out!



Here’s the whole spread, complete with leftover salad from my office party the night before:



(You can’t tell from the picture, but Erik has the giant calzones on a full-sized dinner plate; I took the smaller calzones on an appetizer plate!)

Mmmmmmm, crispy bread and cheese:

And crispy, gooey inside:



I was so excited to have found a delicious use for the puff pastry … and I still have one more sheet for future adventuring!

While we’re on the subject of free Foodbuzz loot, I came across this recipe for Hoisin-glazed Tempeh with Green Beans and Cashews in an issue of Vegetarian Times and got super excited because I had nearly every ingredient already thanks to the Tastemaker Program and product samples that I received directly from the food companies.



Presenting Nakano seasoned rice vinegar in roasted garlic flavor (from Foodbuzz), Hoisin Sauce (from Edward & Sons), Kikkoman Ponzu Citrus Seasoned dressing and sauce (from Foodbuzz), and garden veggie tempeh (from Lightlife):



Of course, I ended up eating the finished product before I could photograph it, but please take my word that it was delicious!!! For once, I was excited to have so many condiments squeezed into my refrigerator door 😛

Have you come across any good food samples lately?