Tag: grains

Souvenirs

11 Comments

Ohh my goodness, I have so much to talk about today!

First, I ate the last serving of muffin-cauliflower oat bran for breakfast.

IMG_9774

This was not, however, any regular old cauliflower-muffin oat bran. Something special (and I’m not even talking about the cauliflower or the muffins here) was hidden inside the creamy depths.

IMG_9773

Lucuma powder!

IMG_9775

Lucuma is a fruit that grows in the South American highlands. Everything was lucuma-flavored when I lived in Peru last summer: yogurt, ice cream, cookies. Proof:

IMG_9776

(Yes, I saved all my cookie/candy/ice cream wrappers from the trip. Obviously.)

It took me a while when I was in Peru to even figure out what lucuma was. A spice? A candy? Its flavor is not particularly fruity. I finally asked my host family, as I was chowing down on my 15th lucuma cream-filled sandwich cookie, What the heck is this stuff? When I found out it was a fruit, I wanted to go hunt it down so I could see it in person, but they explained that it wasn’t really sold fresh because it’s kind of hard and inedible in its fresh form. So I have still never come across a live lucuma. However, I was super-excited when I found out that Navitas Naturals had a lucuma powder, and I immediately put in a request. And I was so happy to see such Peruvian love all over the packaging!

IMG_9762IMG_9764

While lucuma is not my favorite flavor in the world, tasting it brings me back to my perfect Peruvian summer. It’s a worthy sacrifice.

I mixed 1 tbsp of the powder into the muffin-cauliflower oatbran and enjoyed it atop 1/2 cup yogurt decorated with re-hydrated goji berries. I added the last 2 tsp of Artisana madademic-cashew butter as icing for my lucuma mountain.

IMG_9770

Ohh, memories. Dear Peru: I will be back.

After breakfast, I did some bedroom organizing/spring cleaning and then threw on my gym clothes (I plan to exercise eventually today) and went out for errands, some of which were food-related. I stopped at the grocery store because I read on Soap & Chocolate that blackberry sales in the city were in full swing. Diana was right! I got two bigger-than-normal (but still pretty small) containers for $4. I also hit up the post office to pick up some belated birthday treats from my sisters!!

IMG_9780

They know me so well 😀 Emily sent me running sleeves (those crazy-colored things spilling out of the “sister present ball”) that I can roll up or roll down depending on the weather, and Allie sent a bunch of tasty goodies: cherry pie and cashew cookie larabars, plum-flavored gummy candies, and yerba mate. Plus this perfect birthday card:

IMG_9781

I tried a plum gummy right away:

IMG_9782

Yummmmmmmm.

Followed by yerba mate, which I prepared with soy milk and honey as per the recommendation on the package (gotta follow instructions, right?).

IMG_9786

Delicious! Smoky and sweet — I love it. Thank you, amazing sisters!

Side note: the honey I used for the tea came from some Smuckers sample honey packets that my mom collected for me from various hotel breakfast buffets (like mother, like daughter). But, the point of this side note is that the baby Artisana nut butter jars are perfect holders from the honey, since I rarely use a whole packet in one go. My five packets of honey perfectly filled up two little jars, and now I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to finish that honey packet before it spills all over everything in the fridge.

IMG_9784

This just in: Look how green the mate turns as it cools!

IMG_9789

Also, you can get free chocolate today if you hurry (Thanks to Erin Gunn for the tip!)

What’s the craziest “souvenir” you’ve saved from a trip?

Cacao powow

20 Comments

After my tea yesterday, I bummed around a bit (ohhh, the luxury of this new and temporary lifestyle!) and then set myself up with a bit of dinsert: Carrot “Pudding” Cake.

IMG_9698

I finished the last of the original batch Tuesday and loved it so much that I instantly made two more. I keep surprising myself that this concoction tastes like actual carrot cake, except more moist, dense, and rich. I’ve really outdone myself here 🙂

IMG_9706

There were a few differences between this batch and the last due to changing ingredient availability. Most notably, I used a package of Peeled Apple-2-the-core in place of whatever fruit I used last time.

IMG_9550

In place of the strawberry cake icing that I no longer have, I used a mix of plain yogurt, molasses, cinnamon, and vanilla. To thicken it, I dissolved less than a tsp of unflavored gelatin in a tbsp of boiling water, mixed it into the icing, and let it chill for a bit in the fridge before spreading.

IMG_9700

On the side, I had a whole strawberry in dark chocolate from Oh! Nuts:

IMG_9717

Oh! my goodness. You can probably imagine how delicious this tasted. And with a real, live strawberry inside (the seeds, too!):

IMG_9721

(Those are knife marks and not teeth marks. My teeth are not that perfect.)IMG_9722

I went to the gym this morning and came home for some muffin-cauliflower oat bran. After heating it, I had it on top of 1/2 cup of yogurt with a tsp each of Astisana macademia cashew butter and cacao bliss:

IMG_9727

I also sprinkled coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg, and coriander on top.

IMG_9725

And I ate breakfast with a big mug of soymilky Numi Chocolate Puerh tea after “tempting fresh water to a boil” as per the instructions:

IMG_9729

The chocolate flavor in this tea was actually very understated. It was good, but it tasted like regular black tea to me with just a minor hint of subtle chocolateyness. Out of curiosity, though, I did lick the tea bag (shhhhh) since it actually has cacao nibs in it. That tasted like chocolate. Maybe I should break open the tea bag and dump the whole thing in next time. Hmmmmmm …

OK, time for some classssssss! Today, I get to turn in my final paper, yipEEEEEEE.

What do you get to do today?

Can it be true?

15 Comments

Guess what!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s DONE.

At 11:02 this morning, I officially finished my LAST paper of the semester. It happened way sooner than expected, and I am thrilled. Now, for the next 2.5 weeks, I am completely free of school AND work (except for two more Thursdays of class and one half day retreat for work).

For breakfast while I worked this morning, I had half an apple sprinkled with cinnamon because I still had plenty of food in my belly from last night.

IMG_9651

When I finished, I had a celebration lunch of muffin-cauliflower oat bran. I made cauliflower oat bran yesterday morning (thanks to Heather for inspiration, once again!) and was a fan, so I decided to jazz it up today with some extras. I actually prepped the bran yesterday by immersion blending these ingredients:

IMG_9539

That’s one cup of steamed cauliflower, 1/2 cup raw oat bran, 1/4 cup unsweetened soymilk, and 1.5 cups of chopped frozen pumpkin muffins and bran muffins. These muffins did not make the strawberry birthday cake cut the other day because they were too seedy:

IMG_9541

In addition to the above ingredients, I also blended in 3/4 cup water, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. All of that sat in the fridge overnight.

IMG_9654For lunch today, I scooped out 1/2 cup of the cauliflower-muffin oat bran and heated it in the oven for 30 minutes while I addressed some long-neglected cleanliness issues in the kitchen. My stomach was still feeling confused from last night’s feast, so I decided simple would be better with the bran. All I was really wanted was a big, melty pile of nut butter, so I pulled out yet another gem from Artisana.

When the oat bran was ready to go, I served it to myself on a bed of 1/2 cup plain yogurt and topped it with that big tbsp of pecan butter, lots of cinnamon, and some strawberries:

IMG_9661

IMG_9656

Hit the ol’ spot!

I’m off to take care of some other long-neglected necessaries. I have two weeks to get my life under control before it becomes unmanageable again!

What is long-neglected in your life?

One down …

18 Comments

I’m almost there! Just one more paper due Thursday, and I will be temporarily free. Plus, since I got tomorrow’s paper done already, I will be free to spend my birthday lazing around and feeling sorry for my elderly status before I have to go to class 😛

Today, however, is NOT my birthday (although one premature facebook “happy birthday” seems to have started a chain of people unintentionally wishing me happy birthday a day early). Today is Mother’s Day and my sister Allison’s birthday! Soooooo …

Here I am with my mama in December:

IMG_0107

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I love you.

And here I am with my Allie, meeting our first niece, Ella, in 2005:

sf ella allie smile

Happy happy birthday, Allie! I love you, too 🙂

Unfortunately, I could not spend the day with either of these two ladies, as one is in Massachusetts, one is in San Francisco, and I am in New York! Instead, I spent the day writing a paper and fueling my way through the drudgery in the following manner. (Once again, this is an incomplete representation of all I ate, so don’t start to panic that I’ve stopped expanding or anything. Expansion is still
quite in progress. Excellent.)

IMG_9425Today’s overnight breakfast cookie actually involved the last 2/3 cup cooked couscous-lentil mix from dinner at Quercy. Because the couscous was already cookied and quite moist, I needed to add dry things! Into the cookie went a package of freeze-dried strawberries and bananas from Just Tomatoes (it was sooooo hard to keep from eating all of these straight out of the package — they were delicious and crunchy and perfect), 2 tbsp dry milk, and 1 tbsp homemade pineapple-coconut-ginger peanut butter. My plan worked, and the cookie had firmed up successfully by this morning.

IMG_9430

I frosted my cookie with a mix of plain yogurt and Artisana cacao bliss, and I topped it with fruit salad:

IMG_9426

Later, I had the rest of my spicy spicy Indian food mixed with lots of yogurt and arugula. I sopped up the sauce and yogurt left in the bowl with some pieces of cornbread liberated from the freezer:

IMG_9436

In the afternoon, I had some pumpkin pie flax pudding with a dollop of the two butters of the day:

IMG_9449

IMG_9440

I also did some serious baking in honor of the three special occasions going on, but more details will be arriving tomorrow. Just know that I ate a lot of batter.

IMG_9457

“Dinner” at this point ended up being more pumpkin pie flax pudding with oat bran immersion-blended in, chopped strawberries, and the two famous butters once again:

IMG_9466

Are you celebrating special days this month?

The bakery

25 Comments

… aka my apartment.

IMG_9352

It’s been a busy couple of days around here since I can’t sit still for more than 3.7 seconds. I have too much on my mind with the end of the semester, the last week of my internship (which will be followed by a three week break before my full-time job there starts), my imminent 27th birthday (doom), oh, and the 10k trail walk run up at Bear Mountain this weekend. Never mind that my hamstrings, glutes, and groin are still shot and I haven’t run more than three miles (at a 15-minute mile pace, mind you) in six weeks …

So, back to the bakery.

Featured Bakery Item #1: Raw Macaroons

On Wednesday, I brought home a hunk of fresh coconut that Jessica gave me at work. Remember this?

img_9299

Between having raw coconut in my hands and all the raw talk that’s been going around lately, I had only one thing on my mind: raw coconut macaroons!

IMG_9325I’ve been drooling over Gina‘s Fitnessista macaroons for nearly a decade (ok, maybe only six months), so I was thrilled when Elisabeth at Jogger’s Life posted a similar recipe last week. I followed Elisabeth’s recipe with a few modifications: (1) after shredding my coconut, I only had 1/3 cup … so I halved the recipe and used (2) 1/2 cup almond flour (almonds ground in my coffee bean grinder) and (3) 1 Medjool date, chopped/mashed (I am processor-less) and (4) 1 tsp vanilla extract (I’m out of almond) and (5) nothing else, as the date was plenty sweetener for my minimized batch. (Oh, except I made half of the batch chocolate and mixed in unsweetened cocoa powder there).

IMG_9329

I formed my batter into eight little balls.

IMG_9334

And then, it was time to put them in the dehydrator.

Oh wait, I do not have a dehydrator! And, just as the folks at Turtle Mountain ignored my request for coconut ice cream, the folks at Excalibur ignored my request for a dehydrator. I guess I’m not worth a $300 top-of-the-line kitchen appliance. However, those of you blessed with dehydrators have nothing on me because I have an oven with a pilot light. Jealous?

Here are the little balls of delight after an overnight (nine hours!) in my off oven:

IMG_9339

IMG_9344

They don’t look any different, do they? To tell the truth, while the texture was actually different (they were no longer sticky in the morning), the batter tasted just as yummy as (if not better than) the finished product.

Featured Bakery Item #2: Jam-Filled Berry Mini Muffins

Today at work (aka my last day as an intern!), my department was planning to have a potluck staff breakfast. It got rescheduled, but I kept to my original baking plan anyway!

I loosely used this recipe for Jam-Filled Almond Muffins from Eating Well. Changes included: (1) halving the recipe to make 12 mini-muffins instead of 12 regular muffins, (2) using only whole wheat flour, (3) replacing the sugar, buttermilk, juice, and oil with the cup of frozen fruit-on-the-bottom from the four fruit-on-the-bottom hotel yogurts I collected a couple weeks ago, (4) using the homemade black raspberry jam from Wife, and (5) eliminating the almond extract because I didn’t have it.

Here’s the jam-filling in progress:

IMG_9348

Topped off:

IMG_9351

And baked:

IMG_9356

Cross-section:

IMG_9358

Some of them got a little too jammy, but that’s actually a benefit in my opinion.

Featured Bakery Item #3: Carrot-Berry Mini Muffins

I was (probably unrealistically) afraid that I wouldn’t have enough muffins, so I decided to bake a second batch using this recipe for Pineapple Upside-Down Muffins, also from Eating Well. Changes included: (1) eliminating the upside-down topping so the muffins became carrot muffins, (2) halving the recipe to make 12 minis instead of 12 regulars, (3) using only whole wheat flour, (4) replacing the sugar, oil, juice, and crushed pineapple with a 4 oz. Dole tropical fruit cup and 1/4 cup of the homemade black raspberry jam, and (5) putting nuts only on top instead of mixing them into the batter.

They looked a little green after baking:

IMG_9371

But they still tasted yummy!

What’s your stance on baking substitutions?

P.S. First, I was famous for my balls. Now, it’s my eggs. What’s next?