The rest of yesterday involved lots of locally grown freshness. Lunch, of course, had to incorporate my CSA goodies!

I put together a salad in three layers: (1) fresh arugula and pea shoots; (2) mix of CSA radishes, garlic chives, asparagus, dill, and (non-CSA) cucumber, cherries, red wine vinegar, my mom’s herb-infused olive oil, and sea salt; and (3) thawed and re-seared tuna from this event ages ago, homemade parmesan, and freshly ground black pepper.

I had a pretty much identical salad for dinner (followed by my very last slice of healthy cheesecake with rhubarb sauce, fruit salad, and a Newman’s chocolate chocolate O).

The salad was delicious, but the highlight of lunch came on the side! I toasted the piece of naan I had left over from Indian food Friday night and spread it with homemade three-leaf pesto. To make the pesto, I mixed CSA radish leaves, CSA pea shoots, and homegrown basil:

And used an immersion-blender to “puree” the leaves with mom’s herby olive oil, south-of-the-border pistachios, CSA garlic chives, and homemade parmesan.

Mmmmm, pesto has to be one of my all-time favorite foods.

Dessert was just as blogworthy as — or perhaps more so than — the pesto because it nearly gave me a stroke from its tastiness. I pulled out a hunk of frozen coconut (from the ones Jessica gave me at work a couple weeks ago), slathered it with homemade peanut butter, and topped it with a chopped square of Newman’s Own Organics espresso dark chocolate:

Ooooooh, I could eat this allllll day long. (To be clear, I could not eat this exact piece all day long because it only took me about 30 seconds to devour, but I could eat about 80 of these all day long and be very happy.)

I’m so happy to have warm weather and all the freshness that comes with it. (I feel like it was just snowing yesterday! Soooo glad that’s over with.) All my summer CSA goodies are reminding me of how much I wish I lived right where they were grown. Have you ever lived (or would you ever live) on a farm?

I woke up this morning with a craving for pancakes. The craving was problematic for one main reason: I had a number of other already-opened starchy foods hanging around, and I did not want to add to the collection! Enter tapioca goop.

My fruity tapioca goop pudding from yesterday got mixed with an egg, baking soda baking powder, lucuma powder, and goji berries. (I did not measure anything.) I heated canola oil in an oven-safe frying pan and then poured in the batter. The whole pan went into a 425 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

Half became my breakfast crepe for the morning:

I stuffed it with fruit salad and a ricotta/yogurt/cardamom mix:

And topped it with peanut butter!

Oh my goodness, this little spur-of-the-moment crepe was soooooooo good. There was no chocolate in these, but they somehow tasted like the chocolate pancakes that my grandpa used to make for me when I was little. I promptly turned the rest of the batch of goop into several more crepes so I could keep being gourmet all week long 😀

I spent the morning being ridiculously productive, doing things like sipping on iced yerba mate with yesterday’s homemade ball-bits while completing three loads of laundry at the laundromat while talking to my mom hands-free on the phone for over an hour while completing the afore-mentioned baking project while getting some schoolwork out of the way. Phew!

There were other snacks during the morning. Some are not worth mentioning, but some definitely are! I have pieces of a cinnamon bun muffin in my freezer left from a City Harvest donation at work, so I took a little hunk out and smushed two super-ripe CSA strawberries between the layers:

These strawberries are so so so sweet! Who needs jam?

I also had a snack that needs no explanation and was absolutely perfect in its natural form:

Are there any foods that taste like other foods to you even though the actual ingredients are different (i.e. my “chocolate without the chocolate” pancake)? Does that question even make any sense? Sometimes I write/talk so much that I forget how to write/talk, and the things I am trying to say come out as gibberish!

Last night, I chopped my precious half stalk of local CSA rhubarb and tossed it into a pan with a teeny bit of water, covered it, and simmered until the rhubarb broke down.

At which point I mashed in three CSA strawberries:

And voila! Rhubarb sauce to top my healthy cheesecake:

I followed the cheesecake with the last piece of Pat Shannon’s famous carrot cake:



This piece had a cute white chocolate seahorse on top:

I couldn’t stop taking pictures!

Soon after my cakes, I heard all sorts of cheering outside and remembered that last night was Brooklyn Pride! I scurried downstairs for a bit to cheer on the paraders:

Brooklyn makes me proud! What makes you proud of your town?

This morning began with my new favorite way to start a Saturday: hot yoga! Actually, the morning technically started with a light breakfast and getting my blood drawn for work-mandated blood tests, but we can pretend that part didn’t happen. All that matters is that I was entering the yoga studio at 10am with Vani, Olga, and Kate. Yay for enjoying yoga!

After yoga, Kate and I booked it down to Brooklyn to pick up our very first batch of CSA goodies!

Since Kate and I live only two subway stops apart, we decided to go in on a CSA share together for the season, and I’m so glad we did. The weather has been abnormally wet (understatement) lately, so pickings today were slim … but still exciting. Strawberries, arugula, asparagus, radishes, dill, chives, strawberries, rhubarb (we got half a stalk each, haha), and eggs:

Oh right, and loaaaaaaaaads of pea shoots! I started snacking on them immediately at the pick-up site:

Half of my pea shoots didn’t even make it all the way back to my apartment with me. Yeah, I was that girl chowing down on handfuls of leaves and flowers on the subway.

More bounty:

Obviously, lunch needed to involve some of the goods: the rest of my massaged kale salad with non-CSA arugula, cherries, and cucumbers; CSA pea shoots, radishes, and chives; the last bits of yesterday’s mangu and Diana‘s Indian food leftovers from last night; and drizzles of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and hemp seeds.

The salad hit the spot. All three times I’ve done hot yoga, I’ve left craving greens. It’s a lovely feeling!

My roommate Tara moved out this morning while I was gone (only six blocks away, but it’s still sad!!) and took all her pretty artwork with her. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to re-inject some homeyness into the apartment … and found a gold mine of artwork that an old roommate left behind over three years ago!

So excited that my stairway looks happy again! The star of the wall is this very appropriate birthday present part 2 from the crazy-generous Olga:

Isn’t it perfect?

My other project of the day involved this earth-shattering find from Emily:

YES, it’s the BALLS!!!! I was so excited to set to work on making my very own bubble tea. I poured half the package of jumbo tapioca into a bowl:

I soaked the tapioca in water for about an hour as I would regular tapioca … but these balls reacted, errr, differently:

These balls must have been instant because they completely lost their ball shape and turned into sludge.

Far be it for me to waste sludge, though. I still poured it into a pot of boiling water and stirred and stirred until everything was cooked through. I saw that the tapioca was still developing the ball-texture — just in a more clumpy format.

I used a slotted spatula to remove all of the ball-clumps.

And then chopped them into little ball-bits:

Which found their way into the bottom of my yerba mate:

Just like the real kind! Except the balls were bits and I had no thick straw to suck them up. Next time, I will not soak the balls first.

With the rest of the tapioca goop that did not form into bits, I set to work on a pudding.

To the goop, I added some smushed CSA strawberries, an overripe banana, a bunch of fruit salad, spices, and vanilla. After immersion-blending, it was a bit too liquidy, so I tossed in 1/3 cup chia seeds to get some absorption action going on:

The pudding successfully thickened over the next couple hours in the fridge, and I enjoyed 1/2 cup of it with some fat free ricotta and a sprinkle of nutmeg:

It was fruity and refreshing and delicious. I love playing in the kitchen! (newsflash)

Have you eaten flowers before? And what is the goopiest food you eat?

Well, I was not even going to blog about my daytime food today because I had nothing exciting planned. But, lo and behold, my coworkers came through! (Is anyone even surprised?)

You may by now be able to identify that photo as the delicious Dominican delicacy that is mangu! I had barely been at the office for 30 minutes (and had already had a very full breakfast and a mini-snack) when Nydia, Belkis, and Lillian lured me into the conference room with promises of that mangu and this avena dominicana:



Seriously, this Dominican oatmeal is sooo good. I had all the ladies (see below for more) at dinner tonight sniff the [empty] container it came in, and Diana accurately nailed the scent when she exclaimed that it smelled like a tub full of flan. After this breakfast #2.5, my coworkers could not finish the mangu OR the oatmeal, so they gave it all to me! I estimate that I drank another 1.5 cups of the oatmeal over the rest of the morning. And the mangu came back for an encore on top of my packed lunch salad:

Belkis also added some tostones to the mix (check out the piles of minced garlic all over them!):

I had one angelic slice:

My other food for the day was not that exciting or new — just know that there was a lot of it!

After work, I went right down to the East Village to meet Diana, Olga, Vani, and Emily for Brooklyn blogger meet-up part 3! Now, I know the Village is not exactly in Brooklyn, but some things warrant crossing borough lines. In particular:

Milon has been my favorite favorite favorite Indian restaurant since my freshman year of college, errrr, nine years ago. When I found out Emily had never been to “curry row” or even eaten real Indian food, I immediately pounced on the opportunity to drag her there expand her food horizons. I haven’t been to Milon in a couple years. Since I was last there, they have apparently begun to use their “gardenlike view” as a selling point. What is a gardenlike view, you ask?



I can almost see the tomato sprouts pushing their way up through the hot chili pepper lights?



Obviously, Milon is a super teeny, crowded, and chaotic restaurant that is a crazy experience in itself. It wasn’t all about the sight-seeing, though. Food clearly had to make an appearance.

We enjoyed our complimentary papadum and chutneys:



And I ordered the only thing I have ever ordered at Milon because it is heaven in a metal bowl: chicken tikka mussallum.

Also, Milon has caught up with the whole grain times and added brown rice to the list of rice options!

(The meal also came with cabbage and lentil soup.) I had tastes of everyone else’s meals, too, but you’ll have to check their blogs for more details! (Ohhhh, the suspense :-P)

Every meal at Milon inevitably involves a birthday celebration … or seven, depending on how crowded the restaurant is. I guess we decided to pretend it was my birthday tonight.



The complimentary candlelit mango ice cream comes complete with a birthday celebration of flashing lights and festive birthday music. And I was extra lucky tonight because still-vegan Vani handed her ice cream off to me.



Emily got cozy with our waiter:



This man has been at the restaurant forevvvvvvvvvvvvver. We’ve shared many a birthday dance up and down the aisle. I love how affectionate the staff here is!

And more little goodies arrived with the bill:



Happy tummies, and all for only $9:



I love how my day began in the Dominican Republic and ended in India! Where would your ideal day begin and end?