Yay for people who love food [almost] as much as I do! Last night’s blogger dinner, masterfully organized by Heather as a way to welcome (or bid farewell to, as the case may be) a visiting VeggieGirl, took place at Candle 79, a fancy vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side. I didn’t want to make all the ladies pose for the millionth time, so I snuck all these pics on the sly so I could give a quick orientation to NYC blogger brilliance.

Left to right: Amelia, Katharine, Diana, Marina, Amie

Caroline, Liz (aka VeggieGirl), Katie, Ari:

Olga‘s hair and Deidre:

Danielle and Liz:

Marina, Amie, and Heather’s arm:

Since I didn’t have any cake at work yesterday, I was hungry for dinner! First to arrive at our table was the “amuse-bouche” of polenta chips with walnut-lentil pate and julienned radish:

I ate two of these while we waited for our food (and I ate four more after the food when I was still hungry!):

Olga and I got crafty and decided to order two dishes to share so that we could have a taste of each. Dish #1 was the Moroccan Spiced Chickpea Cake with seasonal vegetables, red pepper-coconut curry, apricot-date chutney, and roasted almonds:

This was good, but I had two reservations: (1) the chickpea cake was the size of my big toe and (2) as Heather so astutely pointed out, the texture was akin to meatloaf. I liked the flavors, especially the apricot-date chutney, but I really could have gone for some crisp on the outside instead of a mush-patty through and through.

Dish #2 that Olga and I split was the Live Zucchini Enchiladas with cashew cheese, spinach, guacamole, chipotle tomato sauce, cashew sour cream, pumpkin seeds, baby romaine, and cucumber-tomato salsa:

This was also tasty, and the zucchini ribbons were pretty:

Despite the impressive-sounding ingredients and the raw factor, however, the fact remains that this dish was simply a slice of zucchini topped with mashed avocado. Delicious … but I could have made it myself for way less than the $26 I spent! Again, the food was tasty, but I don’t think it was worth the money at all. I’ve heard much better things about Candle Cafe, the more casual and less pricey sister of Candle 79, so that will be next on my agenda!

VG Liz had to book it out of there at 7:30 for another engagement, so we didn’t get to try dessert (which is when the four remaining lentil pate-topped chips made their way into my system). No dessert was really fine with me though — my wallet was feeling the strain, and Pinkberry had free froyo right around the corner to market the new summer flavors of passion fruit and coconut. Olga and I raced over there in an attempt to multi-task to the max: we needed our free froyo, but since dinner was done so early, we also needed to get from the UES to Park Slope stat to see if we could catch any of the Blonde Redhead show at Celebrate Brooklyn. Diana and Katharine materialized in the line behind us shortly after our arrival. I had to snap them on the go (hence the blur) since we were in a rush!

My pinkberry prep-master put on quite the show for documentation purposes as he put together my passion fruit and coconut swirl with chocolate chips and fresh cherries:

Carefully accessorizing the froyo:

Busting out some more moves for Olga:

Big sigh of relief because my dessert is finally here …

Mmmmm, love my froyo! It was tasty but not $6 worth of tasty, so I’m glad we were able to make it in time for the free cup.

And, miracle of all miracles, we arrived at Prospect Park around 8:45, and Blonde Redhead was just starting. I guess the start of the show (which was FREE, fyi) had been delayed for over an hour because of the thunderstorm, so we made it just in the nick of time! (Olga and I should have taken a picture of ourselves in all our blonde-redhead glory, but I guess we were too excited to think of that.)

With her connections, Olga snuck us into the VIP section so that we were close and could see the music:

Before the show, I knew nothing whatsoever about Blonde Redhead, but they were great!

I’m so glad Olga mentioned she was going to try to make it to the show. The park is only two blocks from my house so, not only was it an excellent way to spend my Friday night, it was ridiculously convenient.

I was having a definite I’m-so-lucky-to-live-in-Brooklyn moment while watching and listening! Thanks Olga 🙂

(And if you’re at all curious about the food-drops on my desk today at work, they went a little something like this …

Morning snack of buttered whole wheat toast because the breakfast man gave Myrna extra:

And afternoon snack of 1/4 a buttered bagel left from Belkis’ breakfast;

The bagel needed doctoring:

Smothering the bagel with peanut butter and almond slivers was bound to take it to the next level.)

OK, this morning on the list I’ve got hot yoga, CSA pickup, and topic selection and research for my final paper that’s due on Thursday! Ack, I’d better enjoy my four hours outside the apartment now because I’m not going to be leaving it for the rest of the weekend. Rararararrrrrr homework. We finally have some nice weather after all the rain drama, and I am stuck inside! How do you console yourself when you have loads of inside work but wish you were outside?

Featured food finds: Wednesday and Thursday

I knew I was in trouble on Wednesday morning when I walked into my office (after a full breakfast at home, of course) to these fateful words coming from Nydia’s mouth: Sarah, there’s food in the conference room. And, as usual, it was my favorite Dominican breakfast of all time (well, since September when I started working at my agency): mangu and Dominican oatmeal! I kept my portions small and snack-sized because I tend to think more reasonably at 9am than I do at, say, 3:30pm when baby showers start to roll around …

I won’t go into details of what comprises these delicacies since I have now described them on my blog about 7,000 times thanks to my coworkers, but rest secure in the knowledge that I was in breakfast heaven.

In the afternoon, I had a lunchtime meeting, so I brought my CSA salad and supplemented with these meeting snacks: carrots, red peppers, salsa, and grapes.

Plus a perfect oatmeal chocolate chip cookie homemade by Sarah (the other one):

Also during the meeting, Deborah shared a bite of her eclectic rice creation that included lettuce, pork chop, cilantro, beans, and a number of other secret ingredients:

As you know, the mother lode of all food finds (Lucia’s baby shower) happened shortly thereafter 😛

On Thursday, Beryl put together some cheddar and guava jelly snacks for us:

(I had about 6 :-P)

Myrna also brought a stewed eggplant dish for me that her stepdad made. I had it on top of all my CSA leaves:

I can’t remember the name of it, but it was sooooooo good.

Lillian gave me the salad that came with her tacos. Yay for more greens!

(See that avocado in there? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.)

Belkis had a slice of cake leftover from the shower Wednesday, so she shared it with me.

My half:

And then, Deborah and I got wind that there had been a birthday party upstairs, so she called in a favor to one of her 5th floor connections :-D. We went to the conference room up there and found this:

So Deborah loaded up a plate for us to share:

Custard filling!

And the cake goes on … How is it possible?!

I’m off for some NYC food blogger excitement. Can you guess where I am and who I am seeing??

Quite frequently, I end up eating enough at my office to remove the need for dinner (and then some!) when I get home at night. Earlier this week, though, I had the unusual experience of getting to eat my own Sarah-made dinners two nights in a row!

While I love to make dinner for myself, I’ve stopped planning for it because I got tired of feeling the pressure to use my food before it went bad even though I wasn’t hungry. Therefore, when I found myself with a dinner-sized hole in my belly on Monday night, I had to think fast since the only thing at-the-ready in my fridge was the same salad I’d had for lunch. Then, I remembered the eggs!!! I had a half dozen farm-fresh eggs in my fridge from the CSA, so I decided breakfast-for-dinner was in order.

I toasted half of an Arnold’s Sandwich Thin that my roommate Tara (I mean ex-roommate — I keep forgetting!) left behind and gave it a healthy smear of my three-leaf pesto before topping it with the poached egg, a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper, and a dusting of homemade parmesan:

I didn’t quite poach the egg long enough for it to reach my standard of firmness, but the slightly running yolk didn’t bother me out as much as it usually would since I knew the egg was fresh and handled humanely. (What one has to do with the other, I’m not sure, but the reasoning works for me!)

Monday’s second dinner course was 1/3 of a freshly-baked sweet potato stuffed with a scoop of homemade coconut-banana ice cream and garnished with an Oh!Nuts dark chocolate-covered strawberry, a homegrown basil leaf, and a sprinkle of nutmeg:

Seriously, healthy tastes so good!! I wish I had tummy-space to do this every night. (That should be something within my control … but tell that to my eyes and my mouth when cake materializes in front of me every afternoon without fail!)

One more for good measure:

I got to eat my own dinner again on Tuesday night. I realized Tuesday morning that I was short a meal and hadn’t packed anything to get me through my late evening class, so I scrambled around to throw something together and ended up with another amazing combo. I pressed the remaining 2/3 baked sweet potato against the outer edges of a tupperware container and then filled the hole with a mix of plain yogurt, chia seeds, and cinnamon. I topped the whole thing with a spoonful of peanuts:

Oooh, this was so good! Especially after sitting all day and thickening as the chia seeds did their job. This meal was definitely a candidate for repetition!

How do you stuff your potatoes?

With all of the indulgence going around this week (and every week), I am thrilled that my CSA is now in full swing and provides (almost) everything I need to balance all the sugar with lots of green.

This week’s salad consists of a 100% CSA base with mesclun, pea shoots, and spinach. Each day, I pack a bunch of those leaves in a giant container and then pack a “dressing” separately for last-minute addition so that I can sidestep the wilt. The dressing for my CSA salad this week consists of CSA garlic scapes (sauteed in olive oil), CSA cilantro, CSA-inspired three-leaf pesto, CSA spinach stems, frozen corn niblets, chopped dried apricot, red wine vinegar, olive oil, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

Thanks to my coworkers, I’ve been able to use my CSA salad all week long as a base for addition enhancements! For Monday’s parents’ group, Inginia and I ordered roast chicken, yellow rice, and beans. I added some of the rice and chicken to turn my glowing green salad into a well-balanced protein powerhouse 🙂

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

On Tuesday, my salad came back again with some of the leftover chicken from Monday and a couple of spoonfuls of Myrna’s homemade rice, beans, and meat (hiding in the top left):

The salad has continued to serve me well all week long. Thank goodness for greens!

Of course, every lunch needs a dessert, so I’ve re-invited an old favorite into my life: pumpkin yogurt (equal parts of each) with chopped apples, loads of cinnamon, and hemp seeds:

Sigh, it feels so purifying to do a post all about healthy food. I really do love to eat this way — it just gets impossible for me when cake and authentic multi-cultural delicacies lie in wait around every corner!

What is one food you will never ever ever turn down?

So, I got home from class at 10:30 on Tuesday night (my bedtime is 9pm, mind you) and decided it would be super smart (sarcasm) to embark on a kitchen project right then. I raided my stores of shelf-stable items and came up with the following. Can you guess where this is headed?



Motivation for the insanity? Lucia’s surprise potluck baby shower was scheduled at my office for 3pm on Wednesday, and I had signed up to bring cookies. (Yes, we had another baby shower! ‘Tis the season …) I could have just grabbed a package of cookies and called it a night, but that would have been too easy. Instead, I tried to come up with delicious items I had hanging around my apartment that I certainly did not need to be eating all by myself. The project evolved as I worked, but I started with a package of Newman’s Own Organics honey wheat pretzels (and I sooo nibbled my share during prep because I am powerless when it comes to salty-sweet!), Peeps, and this bar of Russian chocolate from Olga:



(I definitely nibbled on the bar as I worked, too. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.)

Plan #1 was chocolate-covered pretzels. Plan #2, in honor of the anti-chocolate crowd at work, was marshmallow-covered pretzels. Melting ensued (oven-based since, once again, I have no microwave):

I added a dash of soymilk to the chocolate to aid in dipability but, aside from that, I did not doctor my dippers whatsoever.

I placed the pretzels on parchment paper and let them relax in the fridge overnight. In the morning, the Peep pretzels were still impossibly sticky, so I had this brilliant idea to mix them in a bowl with the rest of the pretzel pieces and a bag of Skittles to minimize stickyness.

I sort just ended up with a giant glob of pretzel-marshmallow-skittle deliciousness. I was very confident in the taste, but I was not as confident in the eat-ability. How could I serve a giant pretzel-marshmallow-skittle glob as a dessert for 30 people?! I was running late, so I stuffed everything into a tupperware: chocolate-covered pretzels on one side, pretzel-marshmallow-skittle glob on the other side, and Newman’s chocolate Os in a ring around the outside.

I kept brainstorming throughout the whole subway ride to work (a lot of brainstorming since my commute is an hour and 15 minutes) and started to think about plan #3: turning the glob into pretzel bars. When I got to work, I went to the kitchen and used the bottom of a glass to smush everything down as aggressively as I could. I cut the contents of the tupperware into squares and put it in the fridge in the hopes that it would firm up.

Just before the shower, I went to check progress. The marshmallow pretzel-pieces stuck together pretty well, but the chocolate covered pretzel pieces and cookies were a crumbly mess. At that last-minute, make-or-break moment, plan #4 came into being: pretzel salad.

I poured the crumbly chocolate cookie and pretzel mess into the bottom of a bowl and broke the pretzel-marshmallow-skittle globs into smaller clumps to use as a colorful garnish:

I threw a spoon in the bowl and my “salad” joined the impressive line-up.

Also on the crunch-time snack-preparation brigade were Inginia and Danilda, who were hard at work in the kitchen on some serious guacamole (because guacamole is critical!) right up until the very last second:



In addition to pretzel salad and guacamole, the lineup included corn chips, fruit platters, veggie platters, salsa and other dips, [nurse] Sarah’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies …

Tortellini salad with tomatoes and pine nuts, rice and beans, quiche, more chips, fruits and cheeses …

Custard fruit tart!!!!! (my favorite)

Plus more! Before we could eat the food, however, we had to surprise Lucia!

(And I think she was actually surprised! As Pura was leading her into the room, Lucia asked, “Whose party are you taking me to?”)

The crowd:



And then, it was onto the food! Here’s my plate #1 with tons of (buried) green salad, tortellini salad, jalapeno cheese cube, pineapple, fruit tart, Pansy’s ambrosia (!!!), roast chicken, the afore-mentioned guacamole, and two blue corn tortilla chips:



And plate #2 with more salad, some rice, pineapple, and more ambrosia topped with pretzel salad:



(I may have also had thirds and fourths of ambrosia …)

Inevitably, my favorite time of day rolled around: cake time! How adorable is the cake decor?

Awww, sugar baby sleeping …

This cake was actually made by one of the women who volunteers for our agency, and it’s a Dominican-style pound cake with guava-berry filling and sugar-and-egg white frosting (that tasted exactly like a marshmallow).

And my mountain of a piece:

Phew, nothing like a 3:30 dinner to get you excited for the last hour of the work day! I was so stuffed after all of this that I couldn’t even contemplate going to my hot yoga class even though I had packed and lugged all of my yoga gear with me that morning. My belly was sticking out so far at that point that I wasn’t even sure I had it in me to touch my toes! Plus, I had a weird sore throat/congestion thing going on all day and thought I might be better served by sufficient sleep and prep for my looooooooooong Thursday. I think I might need to start finding a way to eat just for the moment and not for the rest of the week every time I see food …

OK, two questions: (1) Craziest thing you’ve seen that was labeled as “salad”? and (2) Best cake decorations you’ve ever encountered personally (as in, not by watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network!)?