Sometimes I feel this way

Courtesy of XKCD

This Saturday I made Margarita Mac and Cheese from "What Megan's Making," a blog I've been following for longer than I've even had a blog, thanks to my trusty Google Reader. (J looks at my Google Reader sometimes and shakes his head sadly, as if there is no hope for me and my endless stream of recipes... he's probably right.) Unfortunately, despite the lovely pictures on Miss Megan's blog, my Mac and Cheese was far less delicious. First of all, I am pretty sure I cooked the pasta too long. Secondly, I didn't have a casserole dish and so I had to use a square-ish brownie pan. Thirdly, my "diced" tomatoes from Aldi, while a mere 59 cents per can, were not exactly "diced" and more like chunked, which overpowered the pasta, which were small. It came out of the oven looking more like a casserole, which is fine, and the mozzarella was yummy, but not the best experience when making my first baked mac n' cheese... I just wanted it to look as nice as Megan's! Maybe next time.

So apparently around here we're preparing for a storm of "historical proportions" that includes "snow squalls" (whatever the heck those are) and I was planning on making some shrimp bisque tonight, but I might have to settle for something a little more quick because I should probably run to the store and stock up on the essentials. We'll see. If a snow day happens in my near future, (keep those fingers crossed) I may be working from home with plenty of time to shrimp it up!

In the meantime, everyone stay safe and warm! I hope this storm of epic proportions blows over relatively quickly and keep on eating warm and healthy food!

Soup (it's what's for dinner)

Surprising no one (except maybe me), the $1.19-for-five servings lentil soup was not a smashing success. While it wasn't the worst soup I've eaten, it was pretty... lentil-y... kinda salty, and not very exciting. I really think that it would have been helped if I added a can of diced tomatoes, ground turkey, really ANYTHING. But mostly tomatoes. Maybe the same kind from when I made that chicken, those were amazing.

Anyway, the soup I made last night? Delicious. It even had garbanzo beans in it, not my fave. But yum! So hearty. Very filling. Nice and eggy. Fiberous (yes I know fiberous is not a real word) pasta. Serious Eats wins again! Thank you for saving my evening.

The wonderful thing about this recipe is that it is ridiculously easy to make. 25 minutes from start to finish, and the hardest part was getting the spinach chopped to put in the soup. You begin with your chicken broth base, add nutmeg, pasta, garbanzos and boil... add spinach and cook for one minute, add eggs and cook for two more minutes. It was really nice and zen to listen to the State of the Union on the radio while shredding spinach and chopping green onions. (Side note on green onions: my favorite "condiment" ever? I think yes.)

You can find the recipe here. Although it didn't cost me $1.19, it is definitely worth going the distance to get good spinach, whole wheat pasta, and reduced sodium broth (all those things just make a good tasting soup feel even better).

Stay warm! Next time I'll be plying you with creamy shrimp bisque which is basically the furthest thing from healthy... so suck it up now, get your greens on, and thank me later.

Happy New Year!

So I'm already way behind on one of my perpetual New Year's Resolutions, which is to write more. Faithful blog reader of mine, I can only beg for forgiveness. Something tells me you're not too beat up about it :)

In talks with with the other Martha, it seems she is resolved to up her repertoire (what an oddly spelled word!) this year by trying a new recipe each week. I've encouraged her to chronicle her journey here but unless we get a new name/url for this little guy, I'm thinking it might not happen. I hope to hear from her soon on her kitchen adventures!

As for me, I'm about to head on a soup kick. I feel like the soup options in my life are pretty bland and boring, so I'm hoping to try out a few new recipes in the next few weeks... First one, starting tonight, will be soup from a lentil package I picked up from Gene's on Sunday because omg hello this store is my absolute dream come true and I'm so depressed it's taken me so long to discover it. M had visited it before with rave reviews, but I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was too fancy and expensive and just never bothered. Newsflash, kids: the soup I'm making tonight will make five servings and cost me a whopping... $1.19. Let's see how it holds up (it is, after all, lentil soup...eek)! Gene's is so wonderful not only because of their inexpensiveness, but also their crazymazing meat selection, and I will definitely be coming back here for special occasion dinners... or just to get their chicken thighs, which at $2.99/lb, are half as cheap as Whole Foods (sorry Tyrone) and I am sure just as quality. Produce selection was definitely not as cheap as Harvest Time, my new Stanley's, but hey, a girl can take having a nice deli mere steps away. Seriously. Amazing discovery, so so happy!

Other soups on deck for the next few weeks: Shrimp Bisque and Italian Egg Drop Soup. It's nice out today but I have a feeling winter's going to stick around a bit longer... like til April or May. Call it my Chicago intuition ;)

In the meantime, stay warm and healthy! Eat that vitamin C. It's a nasty time out there.

love love,
a

Wafflin'

I've been in California about two weeks now, (okay fine, a week and a half, but it does seem much longer...) and have had all sorts of culinary adventures, starting with cookie baking the Monday after I arrived and continuing with a trip to "The Meat House" with my Dad on Christmas eve. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be taken around downtown LA by a friend and we stopped at one of her favorite restaurants in Hollywood, The Waffle. I'm a sucker for waffles, and tell anyone that will listen how I gained 20 pounds studying abroad in Belgium eating waffles. I know they're trending now, too, at least out here on the west coast, so I was eager to see what the hoopla was all about.

I ordered a waffle grilled cheese sandwhich (affectionately known as "a double wide" but really something like quadruple wide) and it was ridiculously amazing. It wasn't what I was expecting (it was much wider) but it was still delicious. It was a savory waffle (twist!) and had three kinds of cheese, a slice of tomato, and a hunk of avocado to boot. It was a bit complicated to eat but I hunkered down with knife and fork, and was able to eat only about half before I squirreled away the rest for a satisfying leftover lunch today. I would reccomend The Waffle if you're in the Hollywood area, but it was a bit pricy... Although tax in California's got nothing on tax in Chicago.

In other news, I'll be not eating out again for the entire month of January and hope to bring this blog back up to snuff (ah, New Year's Resolutions). Armed with some new recipes and cookbooks I'm thinking it's going to go off swimmingly but who knows, I may cave and grab Chipotle on a cold blustery Friday.

Meanwhile, here is a (slightly) disturbing webcomic that illustrates some of the struggle I feel when thinking about dinner... Ah, The Oatmeal. Good times.

Cheers for now :)

a

Amazing discoveries every day

So maybe it's the fact that I've been in meetings for longer than I care to divulge. Maybe babysitting early in the mornings is starting to take a toll on me. Maybe it's because it's Friday, and it's hot in this darn office and I have a headache brewing and a million things to do before I leave yet I'm updating this blog instead...

But ya'll are about to get ranted at.

CHECK THIS OUT: http://www.familydollar.com/pages/pop-tarts-trifle.aspx

First of all, ew. Trifles are supposed to be wonderfully delicate, the stuff that southern belles dream of as they while away an afternoon with some nice mint juleps or maybe an afternoon tea. They are elegant. They are placed in pretty glass containers. They are made by Martha Stewart and not with PopTarts!

Here is a nice example:Yum!

Yer doin' it right.

But seriously. Poptarts? High Fructose Corn Syrup? No! This is why we're fat, America. Don't stoop to this nastiness! Stand up for yourself and your heart! Make quality desserts for the people you love, if you really love them. You do not have to compromise your waistband, your wallet, or your values to do this! Sure, I've extolled the loveliness of Zebra Cakes in this blog before but this is something different. This is more serious. This is about access to good quality food for people who don't have a lot of money (I struggled to buy food when I was unemployed and I continue to struggle to buy food on my current budget).

When I go to grad school and try to figure out my place in this crazy, wonderful, messed-up world, one of the things I hope to ease is the inequality that our food systems present us with. There is no reason that in this country, in this day and age, that people should go hungry, or that the under-served populations in our cities and elsewhere are also the ones that have the highest rates of obesity and heart disease. It's not a coincidence, folks. It's all part of a bigger, grander design. And I am not going to stand here and watch 10-year-olds get diabetes and not try and stop the madness.

Okay, I feel better now.

Check back soon for updates from cookie potluck :) (Yes, I am aware of the irony).

Delinquent blogger award

Hello friends old and new :) Sorry I've been away from the blog lately, but I recently had my wisdom teeth out and have subsequently been eating a lot of yogurt... and more yogurt... and still more yogurt. Also pudding. The whole situation has made me rather cranky and childish, and poor J has had to deal with me not wanting to get out of bed, be reluctant to eat anything, feel nauseous, whine, be dizzy, and generally not eat very much... sometimes (if he's lucky) all in the same day!

I think I'm on the mend, though, and have been eating more solid foods recently, starting with... soup. Attempts at tacos on Friday bordered on disastrous. Maybe it was the tortilla chips. Tonight I'm going to try pizza. Mmmm. Cheesy goodness.

Being incapacitated in the eating department as of late has really been a challenge. I'm not eating a lot but what I am eating is crappy, and I thought I'd lose weight but I just binge on ice cream instead. I feel like a lot of people struggle with balancing what they want to look like and how they want to eat, so I won't waste a lot of time here laying it all out, but I'm tired of being sluggish and tired and feeling like a flabby. Especially since bike riding season is over (sadness!), it's going to be up to me to get myself back on track and my weight under control, or at least fit into my pants so I don't have to buy new ones (best reason I can think of to lose weight!).

I'm pretty pumped to be joining the Chicago Park District starting in January. I have a hunch that once I start working out my cravings for sweet and fatty foods will diminish. At least I hope. I remember something similar happening when I joined track and field many moons ago. Healthier recipes coming your way in 2011! (ugh, 2011, when did that happen?!?)

Consistent Deliciousness

Been a little lacking on my Monday updates and for that I apologize, my lone reader or three :)

Last Friday (not this past one, but the one before), my roommate and I started receiving a CSA from Growing Power. For those of you who don't know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and is a way to connect folks to local farmers, as opposed to running out to Jewel where your mangos may come from Chile and most of the fruits and vegetables are "seasonless". I have thought about joining a CSA for some time but couldn't justify the cost and amount of food alone, so N and I are splitting the cost and getting a big bag of fruits and vegetables delivered every other week. We're due for our second shipment this upcoming Friday and so I sat down with her on Thusday and was like, "let's do this thing"... meaning plan out our meals for the next week or so to ensure maximum usage of our veggies. She laughed at me and thought it was all too domestic but it's actually worked out pretty great and we've gotten some amazing meals made over the past few days.

Our CSA included a huge head of cabbage that neither one of us wanted to touch with a ten foot pole. I suggested making cabbage rolls, which I had eaten at the amazing German restaurant up on Lincoln with M and her parents after first moving to Lincoln Square. We looked up a recipe on Smitten Kitchen and were not disappointed. With a whole head of cabbage, however, we definitely got more rolls than we bargained for. Guess who's having cabbage rolls for lunch a lot this week? This girl. Luckily the recipe did state that they freeze well, so when we're just about over it we'll probably stick the rest in the ice box.

Amazingly, we still had a few leaves of cabbage left that were too small to roll up. So last night we decided to take the cabbage, shred it, and make fish tacos. Again, this is not something I would readily advocate for. Despite my family's embrace of fish tacos since moving to California I have always been a bit wary. Yet... these were delicious! We actually made two kinds, fish tacos from this book (yeah Martha Stewart!), and black bean tacos from the ever lovely Smitten Kitchen. I also made the other Martha's guacamole :) and we had a very complete and satisfying meal. As N remarked, "It's nice to know that Smitten Kitchen is so consistently good." And I had to agree.

Meanwhile, for those keeping score, I've only mentioned one vegetable out of our entire two week CSA! We also received a bag of spinach, which M and I hardly made a dent in when we made a yummy spinach lasagne. The rest of that will be used in a quiche sometime this week, probably tonight. We also have a head of broccoli and a bag of green beans, used in a stir fry to come, as well as potatoes, mixed greens, mangos, (sadly from Chile, so we're a bit confused as to how they made their way into our bag) and apples. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of it all right now, but be assured that we have had many incredible, easy, homemade meals around these parts lately, which completely curbs the desire to eat out. For real. As the weather gets colder, I am excited to have more and more recipes under my belt so I can leave the house less and warm the kicthen more. Mmmm hibernation. Get excited.