Month: December 2009

Using My Leftovers: Part I

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Today has been a busy day!  My land use plan is due on Thursday so today I had a group meeting at 10:00am and we worked from 10am til about 4pm, with only a short lunch break!

Then I needed a break so I headed to the gym, where the fire alarm went off about 30 minutes into my work out… after waiting outside a few minutes I went back inside and finished up.

Then I came home and was ravenous.  Oatmeal and a cup of soup is not enough for a day!

So I decided to throw together a bunch of stuff that needed to be used.  Sadly my wine mushroom dream was squashed when I realized the wine was a sweet wine!  Oh well… I made due with what I had

I sauteed 2 carrots, 1/2 an onion and 6 mushrooms with some rosemary, paprika, salt and pepper, then added a chopped up morningstar patty to create this fabulous thing:

The other side dish was my version of homefries.  Microwave as many potatoes as you’d like to use.  Then after they’re pre-cooked, chop them into large pieces.  Heat up a teaspoon of olive oil and put them in the pan with the olive oil to get brown and crispy.  I also added rosemary, paprika, salt and pepper to keep the trend alive, but chili powder and cumin is a great combo too!

They were pretty tasty, healthy and a million times faster than roasting potatoes!

New Moon was fantastic once again, for the record. It’s terrible in every way but fantastic if you’ve read the books!

Now I’m off to work on land use some more and hopefully start packing!  2 days til I’m back in California!  Woo!

Hope you all had a great day!

P.S. I have a surprise post on December 20th that I’m super excited about!  If you know *cough* Laura and Tim *cough* don’t say anything!

Cleaning Out the Fridge

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I turned in my final stats paper today!  Woo!  I can’t believe I wrote an empirical paper.  It sounds so brainy of me!  (Trust me, it’s really not)

So I’m going home on Thursday! Woo!  Which means I have to clean out the fridge so my food doesn’t go bad.

I have:

-3 Ripe Bananas (perfect for Green Monsters and Oatmeal)
-1 sweet potato
-6 potatoes
-1 broccoli crown
-1/2 spaghetti squash
-6 mushrooms
-about 10 carrots
-1/2 bunch of spinach
-some salad lettuce (w/ left over lemon tahini dressing)
-left over lentil burgers (new batch I made today, I’m sure they’ll be gone VERY quickly)

What should I do with these carrots and potatoes?

Also can you freeze cream cheese?

I have something up my sleeve involving the spaghetti squash, mushrooms and an open bottle of white wine 🙂 Stay tuned for that.

Also, since I finished my paper… tonight will involve a little bit of fun… I’m seeing New Moon again, because I’m obsessed I have a friend who has yet to see it and has no one who is willing to go with her.

Hope you’re having a wonderful day!

Green Monster/Smoothie My Way

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I love green smooties/green monsters.  They’re refreshing and tasty!  You’ve probably seen them on here quite a bit.  Yesteryday my brother in law requested a recipe for my green smoothie.  So here is my version of the Green Monster:

1 Ripe Banana (the riper the better)
2 handfuls of Spinach
4-5 Frozen Strawberries
1 tbsp Almond Butter
about 1 cup of water
2 or 3 ice cubes

Put it all in the blender and blend for about 1 minute or two.  Serve and enjoy!

But a one more thing… Honestly though, I usually keep adding spinach until I get the right color so it may be more or less than 2 handfuls.  I like to be a bright green color.  You should make it and see what tasted best to you. I also like mine kind of runny, not thick like a smoothie, that grosses me out for some reason. If you want it thicker freeze the banana and add more ice.

Everyone probably makes their’s extremely different from how I do.

What’s your favorite green smoothie/green monster recipe??

Ugly Sweater/Liz’s Birthday Party!

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Last night was our Ugly Sweater/Liz’s Birthday Party! It was really fun!  We crammed over 20 people in our little shoe box of an apartment!  A lot of people had some really great sweaters! The birthday girl was quite clever…

Check out the camel on Liz’s sweater.

Azuredee’s sweater (on the right) has a built in turtleneck!!  By the way, this girl is my new best friend, she a total foodie and fantastic in every way!

The roommate and me.  She’s pretty much a foot taller than me, yet we somehow manage to cohabitate.

Rhoda with her strategically placed bows…

I thought my sweater was pretty amazing!

I also tried out my entry to the Pepperidge Farm 1,2,3 Puff! Recipe contest!  I can’t share with you all but it was a hit!

Since Ugly Sweater parties are a very hipster thing to do, we decided to have an anti-hipster playlist.  Beyonce was at the top of the list, but Lady Gaga, Shakira, Britney and Lucacris were also included.

I had a ton of fun! I hope my guests did too!

Have you ever been to an ugly sweater party?  or seen anyone rock one on an everyday basis??

The Lady Has Spoken

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Liz has chosen her birthday cake of choice!

She chose the Red Velvet Cupakes submitted by Laura.  Laura is actually my sister so I won’t be sending her anything special (dont’ worry Laura, I’ll be sending you myself in a few days!).

Liz’s second choice however (which sadly I did not make today) was the Cinnamon Babka submitted by Gina so I’ll send her the something special I had planned to send the winner.  Gina, please e-mail me (foodologie00@gmail.com) your info so I can send you a treat!

Thanks to everyone for submitting recipes!  I think Liz enjoyed getting to choose!

On to the cupcakes… These were DELICIOUS!  You all seriously need to try this recipe.  They were divine!  The crushed candy cane on top adds a great crunch and isn’t chocolate and mint just the best combination?!?!

The party hasn’t started yet but my roommate and I tried one because we couldn’t resist had to make sure they were eatable.

I’ll be back with Ugly Sweater pictures!

Have a wonderful night!!

December Recipe Challenge: Potato Gnocchi

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I should probably preface this with the fact that this was a fail…

About a month ago, I bought a 5lb bag of potatoes for under $2.00.  Since it’s been a month I decided I should probably make use of them.  I also happened to have an open jar of pasta sauce that needs to be used.  Here’s the next addition to the December Recipe Challenge…  it seemed like a few ingredients, a little labor intensive but manageable!

Again I got this recipe from 101 Cookbooks, Heidi calls it How to Make Gnocchi like an Italian Grandmother.  I call it potato gnocchi.  Here’s my version, only 1 change (whole wheat flour for all purpose, which I think was the cause of fail):

Potato Gnocchi

2 lbs of potatoes
1/4 cup egg
1 cup of whole wheat flour
Salt

Boil the potatoes with the peel until tender, save the water.  Then lay the potatoes out on a large cutting board, peel and mash with a fork.

Leave it to cool a bit then add the egg and 3/4 of the flour.

Knead it very lightly, add more flour as needed.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll each piece into a long worm shape.  Cut worm into 1/2inch – 3/4 inch pieces.

Shape them on the side of a fork (I can’t show this since I only have two hands).  Reboil the water and put gnocchi in the water until they float to the top.

Enjoy with olive oil and salt or some pasta sauce.

Sadly this wasn’t very delicious.  I didn’t even finish making the batch 😦  Not very delicious… In fact my dinner ended up being this:

Oh well.  We can’t win them all!

What’s your most recent recipe fail?

Knock Off Moosewood Dressing

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Remember when I went to Moosewood and fell in love with the lemon-tahini dressing??  Well I decided to recreate it today.

After a trip to the Salvation Army all the way in Cortland (because the Ithaca one simply would not do) to shop for our ugly sweater/Liz’s B-Day party (My sweater is fantastic! I can’t wait to show you all!), we stopped by Ludgate Farms a local farm/store.  I bought a lovely Fingerlakes Salad bouquet!

I ran home and started making my salad with: Fingerlake Lettuce, Carrots, and left over lentil burgers chopped into pieces.  Then I added my knock off Moosewood Lemon Tahini dressing:

Knock Off Moosewood Lemon Tahini Dressing:

1/2 cup tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp cumin
few shakes for cayenne
salt and pepper
enough water to make it the right consistency

These are all estimate measurements as I started with a certain amount and added more as needed.  So if you try it making it you’ll have to try it occassionally and add more or less until you get it to be fantastic!

This made kind of a lot of dressing, so it’ll probably last a long time.  But the final product was pretty tasty!

Now off to write my statistics paper and work on my fitness (Fergie anyone?)

December Recipe Challenge: Vegetarian Lentil Burgers

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As you may have gathered, I’m a huge fan of veggie patties.  I eat them all the time.  Unfortunately, they’re expensive and I’m broke.  So I was looking around for a recipe for some sort of patty that’s cheap to make that would fit the need of my December Recipe Challenge (aka healthy).

While perusing 101 Cookbooks, I came across this recipe for Vegetarian Lentil Burgers and decided to try it.  The recipe is really basic so I added a few things to it to spice it up.

Vegetarian Lentil Burger:

adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1 and 1/2 cup cooked lentils
2 eggs (or 1/2 cup egg beater type product)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 shake of cayenne pepper
1/2 onion finely chopped
1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1 tsp olive oil

Ingredient, minus the onion because I forgot to include it in the picture 😦

I cooked some lentils (slightly undercooked since the recipe said to use black lentils which apparently are less mushy than the lentils I have), then put 1 and 1/2 cup of lentils in the food processor with the egg, salt, garlic and cayenne.

Then I processed it for a few seconds, til it looked like chunky hummus.  I wanted to have who lentils still in it, but you can probably process it more if you prefer.

Then I combined the lentil mixture with the onions and breadcrumbs in a bowl .

I formed the mixture into patties (I think I got 8 out of this, medium sized).

Heated the oil and cooked them (covered) for about 8-10 minutes.  On medium heat.  If you have a lid that’s great if not, use foil like I did.

Enjoy!

These turned out pretty well!  I like them!  Next time I would add a little more salt or other spices to make them a little more fun. I still have a ton of lentils that I cooked so I think next time I’ll try making them with a Moroccan twist by adding cumin, corriander, cinnamon and lemon!

Also, don’t forget to suggest a cake!

Breather

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Last night was my poster presentation for my land use class.  Thanks goodness that’s done with!  This is our poster:

After that, I decided to take a break from studying for the night.  So I went over to my friend Rhoda’s place to watch her bake (baking hiatus for me!) and watch Julie and Julia.

Luckily Rhoda had many an apron for us to wear.

Rhoda and Amber ready to bake!

Amber and me

Rhoda made these delicious cookies (I ate about 3658939218774 million, that’s what happens when you don’t eat lunch! shame on  me!)

The cookies were great, the movie…not so much.  Sadly I wasn’t a fan.  There were a lot of things I hate about the characters, especially Julie.  Have you seen Julie and Julia?

Anyway, today I’m doing statistics stuff and I have a new recipe to try!

Don’t forget to submit your cake ideas in yesterday’s post! No one has suggested plain yellow cake with chocolate frosting yet 🙂