Something new

May 19, 2009May 21, 201715 Comments

I woke up super late today (10:00!!) for the third morning in a row — I think my mind is finally recovering from racing all semester long! I’m not sure if this is a good thing, though, since it is going to need to resume racing faster than ever in June.

Because it was so late, I put together a different and very simple breakfast:

I sliced an apple in half, cored it, and baked it covered in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes:

The apple got transferred to a plate, and I filled its core with a tsp or so of Artisana almond butter (which, strangely, tasted sort of chemically to me, even though almonds are the only ingredient. Maybe it’s the rawness?) and then sprinkled unsweetened coconut and cinnamon over the top:

It was sooo yummy and did the trick to hold me over for the hour or so I needed until lunch.

Sadly, I’m out of greens (I ate them all yesterday!) and don’t want to buy more since I’m tentatively planning to go visit my parents in MA this Thursday night through Tuesday. I put together a fun snacky plate on a cutting board so I could transfer it to the couch with me for TV time (oh, this is the life!) post-photo.

The spread included carrot sticks with humbecuemole (2 tbsp my hummus, 1 tsp Country Bob’s BBQ, and 1/8 mashed avocado):

An Eggland’s Best peeled and hard-boiled egg, heated and topped with spray butter and freshly ground black pepper:

And a contribution from these new finds:

Last week, my roommate Tara alerted me to this new fruit called Peppadew that she had discovered in the course of researching catering options for a work event. I found it a little strange that this fruit is actually owned, but I still had to test it out regardless. For now, I think Peppadew is only available from the online store, though the Chop’t restaurants in NY have a salad with it.

Spicy and sweet (just like me, haaaaaaa):

They were both pretty tasty — kind of a pickle-y sweet pepper taste with more of an apricot texture. The spicy one had a yummy zing to it, but I wouldn’t call it hot-spicy. I got adventurous with a sweet peppadew and added it to my yogurt:

But it looked lonely with that hole, so I stuffed it with some Artisana cacao bliss 🙂

The yogurt also had lucuma powder, goji berries, 1/3 sliced banana, blackberries and BRM hulled hemp seeds:

Before this, I had never tried hemp seeds. I was pleasantly surprised. They had a toasty (probably because I toasted them in a dry pan first!) and nutty flavor that I loved. I hope I can get around to some baking experiments with them soon.

What is the latest produce item you’ve tried for the first time?

Missy’s got free bread on her hands! Go check it out 🙂

And Coconutgal has free Coconut Bliss ice cream, YUMMMMMM!

Restaurant Review: La Fonda del Sol

May 18, 2009February 6, 201518 Comments

Dinner tonight was the most amazing deal ever, thanks to Kate!

As part of Dine Out New York, Kate received a 50/50 coupon in honor of her birthday two weeks ago, so she invited Gina and me to help her out with it. With the coupon, we could choose from the list of participating restaurants and get $50 off our meal as long as we spent $50 between the three of us. We chose La Fonda del Sol, and I’m so glad we did since we basically just enjoyed a very affordable 11-dish tasting menu!

We knew we wanted to order about $100 worth of food to take full advantage of the deal (i.e. spend as little as possible but still get the full $50 value of the coupon). Our server was so helpful and counseled us through the best strategy, and we decided to order mostly from the tapas menu (rather than from the main courses) so we could share and get little tastes of as much as possible.

While we were waiting for our little dishes, our server came back around to present us with a baguette option: black olive or traditional. I went for the black olive baguette, of course!

I loved this baguette. The olives gave it a fruity flavor, and look at how prominent they were:

Our food came out all at once, and after I spent about 20 minutes taking pictures (Kate and Gina are so patient with me!), I set to work on the task of thirding everything. I am a pro with utensil Olympics, but mostly I want to make sure that everyone gets to try equal amounts of everything, so this is my favorite job 😀 I got out my knife and split it all into thirds … some split more easily than others though!

The server noticed my excessive photography and asked what was up. When I explained about the food blog, he came back with extra menus for me to take home so that I could consult them when I wrote about the meal. Thank goodness, because I’m not sure I’d be able to remember all the critical details on my own!

Here’s how the feast went down …

Garlic shrimp “cazuelita” with olive oil, chile pods, and garlic chips:

Salchichon de Vic with cured pork loin, chorizo, and fuet Catalan:

Empanadas filled with chicken and chorizo:

Piquillo peppers stuffed with Spanish rice and rabbit:

Tuna tacos with avocado and jalapeno pickled onion:

These baby tacos were delicious — kind of like sushi with a Spanish flair.

“Albondiguillas” meat balls skewers with tomato and pimenton:

Sea scallops tiradito with chiles, citrus, tomato, and cilantro:

When we were debating between these scallops and the day boat fluke tiradito (with pickled golden pineapple, avocado, and jalapeno), our server told us we needed to choose the scallops. He said they were so good that he dreamed about them at night. He was right!! I’m pretty sure that visions of scallops tiradito will be swimming through my dreams tonight.

Queso Iberico croquetas with membrillo:

This was my favorite of all the dishes. Queso Iberico is made from a mix of cow, sheep, and goat milk, and it was so creamy and melty when we cut into the croquetas. Membrillo is a paste made of quince (a fruit that’s sort of apple-y), so the sweet sauce plus the farmy creamy cheese was an insurmountable combination.

The table kind of fell silent as we ate because every single bite was jaw-achingly delicious. We each kept saying over and over, How does everything taste so good? and, I can’t get over how many flavors there are! We were thrilled that we chose to do the meal this way because it felt like a fancy tasting menu at a fancy restaurant, which it pretty much was. Our server did tell us that we needed to come back to try the main courses, too — “It will give you tons of material for the blog” — because that’s what they’re known for. He hadn’t steered us wrong yet, so I believed him! Just have to wait until the money starts coming in …

But we weren’t done yet! Our ever reliable server gave us three dessert recommendations, and we took all of them 😛

Wicked chocolate cake with manjari chocolate, guajillo chile, cinnamon, and mint ice cream:

I adore spicy chocolate, so I was excited about this cake. Of the three desserts, though, this was my least favorite because the rich rich chocolate overpowered the spice. Not really a problem, since I enjoy rich rich chocolate, but I wanted to taste the chile and cinnamon!

Tarta de manzana deliciosa (“delicious apple tart”) with almond cream and apricot ice cream:

Is that tart not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?? Those thin thin slices of apple were so painstakingly arranged! The apricot ice cream that came with it was some of the best ice cream I have ever tasted (and I’m usually not a fruity ice cream girl!):

Bunyols/cinnamon fritters with salty caramel sauce, maracuya (passion fruit) peppercorn rose sauce, and orange chocolate sauce:

These little cinnamon sugar donuts were so fun! The dipping sauces were genius (salted caramel, helLO) … so good that I finished them off straight from the spoon after the donuts were gone.

That would be enough to qualify as a sufficiently mind-blowing meal, right? Except that this case of miniature (think thumbnail-sized) pastries arrived with our bill … all for us!

The case actually had three layers that pulled out like drawers. We all wanted to take it home!

I requested a knife again so that I could do the Olympic honors and slice everything into thirds. The goodies (the specialty of the in-house pastry chef) did not come with labels, but my guess is that the little squares were almond cakes with buttercream icing, the yellow circles were sandwich cookies with maracuya cream, the triangles were lemon tarts, and the chocolates were filled with dark chocolate hazelnut cream. For drool purposes:

So … I guess you could say that I loved this restaurant. I recommend it 100 million percent with no reservations. It is pretty pricey, but if I had the money, I would pay full price to eat here — it was that good. Thanks to Kate’s incredible birthday deal, the entire meal (including tax) came to just $59 for all three of us. We definitely walked out of that restaurant feeling quite pleased with ourselves (and perfectly satisfied with our perfect food amounts). As Kate said, “It’s been a good food week for us!”

So, if you’re in New York and you can afford it, you have to eat here, or at least sign up for Dine Out New York so you can get in on the 50/50 action, too!

What’s the best dining deal you have encountered?

P.S. I am entering Danielle’s Vacation Giveaway, and you should, too. She’s got some cute and tasty treats up for grabs that I can use to pretend I actually went somewhere fun and beachy this summer 😀

Humbangu

May 15, 2009February 6, 201517 Comments

Hummmmmm, what does that title mean?

Wellll, I’ve been wanting to try Bender’s humbecue sauce forEVER, and today seemed as good a time as any! Except, I didn’t have any hummus. What I did have, however, was a serving of collard greens and BBQ baked beans in the freezer from ages ago.

I also had a serving of cauliflower-mangu left, and that’s kind of the texture of hummus, right?

I had initally planned to immersion-blend everything, greens and all … but then one of the greens jumped into my mouth and tasted so good that the rest followed. So, I just blended the BBQ beans and the mangu.

Next, I broke out some fancy tuna in olive oil.

I’ve been noticing this Cole’s brand of tuna (and other fishies) in some gourmet grocery stores lately because the packaging is so pretty. I recently starting liking canned tuna, and I only discovered this from being fed foods that contained it. So I don’t think I’ve ever actually opened a can of tuna myself. Until today.

I was so impressed with the quality of the tuna in this can! It wasn’t mushy at all and was so tightly packed that it flaked apart almost like a piece of tuna steak:

Very promising. I dumped the can of tuna (minus the olive oil, which I drained into a baby Artisana jar for another time because tuna-infused olive oil might come in handy at some point!) into the humbangu sauce:

Since I combined three meals to make this tuna humbangu, I incorporated 1/3 of the total mix into my lunch. Here’s my finished salad on a bed of arugula with the mangu’s hammy bits, some blackberries, the last of the tostones, and a teeny dollop of plain yogurt for presentation’s sake:

It was so so so so tasty!

Eventually, I made my way to the gym for some bicycling (no running!) and arms. When I got home, I decided that I needed to remedy the no-hummus situation. I cooked a bunch of chickpeas from dry and combined about 1/2 cup of them with a piece of roasted red pepper, Italian seasoning, a whole garlic clove, coarse sea salt, and 1/2 a baby jar of Artisana tahini.

After immersion-blending, I fork-mashed another 1/2 cup of chickpeas to mix in because I like it a little bit rough:

To fuel myself through the ever-so-grueling hummus work, I pulled out the rest of the yerba mate that I brewed this morning and left in the fridge. It had gotten even greener!!

Does anyone know how that happened?? You can see how white it was when hot in the previous post, and making it cold completely converted it to this vivid sea foam color. I love it.

I also had the last 1/4 cup of chickpeas that didn’t fit in the hummus:

Anyway, I got around to dinner eventually and mixed about 2 tbsp of my fresh roasted red pepper hummus with a chopped hard-boiled egg (once again, thanks to Eggland’s best for doing the boiling and peeling for me!). I had my egg salad atop a bed of arugula (lots of mushy arugula salads today, right?) with 1/8 chopped avocado, sprinkles of paprika and black pepper, and a few crushed Newman’s spelt pretzels:

For dessert, I had a slice of healthy cheesecake alongside half an Ulimana raw chocolate hemp brownie and 1 tsp pineapple-coconut-ginger peanut butter.

Yes yes yes, absolutely holy-yum worthy! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Ulimana definitely knows its way around a raw dessert … or any dessert for that matter!

Do you do anything wild with hummus?

Cacao powow

May 14, 2009February 6, 201520 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.

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 🙂

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.

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.

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

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

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

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:

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

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:

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?

Ancient mysteries

May 13, 2009February 6, 201515 Comments

I broke my own rule this afternoon and went for a secret run.

I know I’ve been saying (at least in my head) that I’m not going to run at all between now and the half marathon on May 30 because I need to let all of my muscles heal for real, but I couldn’t help myself. After finishing my paper, all I wanted to do was run. Perhaps because I really just needed an excuse to wear my official Endurance Challenge 2009 tech shirt:

Hello giant teeth.

(Speaking of which, I updated the race post with official mid-race pictures of me dying.)

I made it 25 minutes before the pain forced me to stop, and then I finished the loop of the park with a 30-minute walk. And now that that is taken care of, I really promise that there will be no more running until the half. Maybe.

I came home and felt hungry for a snack, so I heated up some of the leftover mangu I’ve been saving in the freezer since a mom made it for me at work a few weeks ago. Remember the mangu? I do! Here it was back then:

picture-024

And here’s my doctored version:

The doctoring took place yesterday (I actually ate some yesterday, too, but I never got around to blogging about it). I had about one cup of the mangu left, so I mashed that in with half a head of steamed cauliflower to (1) make it last longer and (2) increase the healthiness of the dish. Mangu is basically mashed plantains, but I saw how the mom was cooking it, and let’s just say that this mangu was not wanting for oil or salt! I had to spread the wealth, and cauliflower seemed the perfect way to do it 😀

I topped 1/2 cup of the revised cauliflower-mangu with one of the mom’s tostones and a little piece of her vineger-ed onion (which used to be bright purple but lost its color in the oven-reheat process):

Around this time, I also decided I was in the mood for tea. What to do, what to do … Oh wait! What’s inside this random jewelry box-ish thing?

It’s a sampler of
Numi teas! I’m sorry for the product placement that is about to occur, but the packaging excited me so much that I can’t help myself. I found out about these teas a few weeks ago when Brandi mentioned them, and I knew I had to get my hands on some, if only because the website is full of flowery prose: “Numi elevates the tea experience through quality, creativity, and authenticity.” Elevate me, please!

The sampler has all four flavors of their puerh tea which has been “picked from wild-harvested tea trees up to 500 years old.”

I’m generally not into showing labels from foods since you can just look at them yourself, but the flowery prose continued in the brewing instructions, and I had to share:

You might think I went for chocolate first, but I did not! My tum is still feeling iffy, so I opted for the mint even though I’m generally not a fan of minty teas. Also, I really wanted to “capture the full taste as the ancient mystery is revealed.”

I actually enjoyed this tea (maybe because I followed the instructions for once and only let it brew for 3 minutes as opposed to 20), and it was soothing for my belly. Though I don’t think I experienced revelation of any sort of ancient mystery.

Have you had any mysteries revealed to you lately? Most recently (as in, this afternoon), I experienced the ancient mystery of how running in a moisture-wicking shirt feels … and I must say I’m a fan!

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: Reviews

Something new

Restaurant Review: La Fonda del Sol

Humbangu

Cacao powow

Ancient mysteries

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