Tag: Dinner

Pumpkin Pancakes for the Soul

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Dinner tonight was perfect.

Pumpkin Pancakes using Trader Joe’s pumpkin pancake mix that my roommate had from a previous trip to NYC. Breakfast for dinner.  What could be better?

I’m not sure if this is seasonal, but next time you see it floating around TJ’s, snatch it up!  It’s delicious!

What’s that on my pancakes???  Greek yogurt and….

Wait for it…

BARNEY BUTTER!

Last week, I broke down and bought it online.  It arrived today, all 3 creamy delicious jars!  (Don’t worry, only two are for me.  One is for Rhoda.)

Not gonna lie, I’ve gone and dipped my finger in the jar multiple times today!  I need to cool it!  The expensive factor should be good enough motivation to make it last!

I’ve sort of over done it this week and today so I’m going to cut back on sugar this week.  I feel like when I eat sweets, I crave them more.  If I don’t eat them, I don’t really want them as much.  Anyone else feel the same?

Now back to homework, reading and randomly distracting myself on the internet!  Have a fantastic night!

P.S. You know you’re a food blogger when your boyfriend across the country e-mails you saying: “Costco has Almond Butter!” with this photo attached.

Gotta love him.

No SB for Me

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While the majority of Americans watched the Super Bowl, ate wings and drank beer today, I did pretty much the opposite.  I spent the day baking and reading. I think I prefer college football…  Did you watch the Super Bowl?

You’re probably tired of seeing these, but here is my latest granola bar creation!  I can’t thank Kim enough for this recipe and Karin for introducing it to me!  So my latest version:

Tropical Granola Bars

2 cups of oats
20g chia seeds
1/3 cup mixed dried fruit (mango, papaya, cranberries and raisins)
6 tbsp wheat germ
1/4 cup agave
1 oz of whole almonds
2 containers of Mott’s Blueberry Delight Applesauce

All baked for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees!  Delish!  Now they’re all wrapped up and ready for my  enjoyment(and that of others)!

The blueberry applesauce gave it a great new flavor!  I really liked it!  I had a blueberry applesauce on its own too!  Pretty tasty!  They also have peach and strawberry flavors I want to try!  But enough about that…

Baking Adventure #2 of the day was Bagels.  I’ve made bagels a few times (as seen on my former personal blog), but I found whole wheat bread flour at the local grocery co-op so I decided to give them a try again.

I followed this recipe.  But used the whole wheat bread flour instead of regular bread flour and agave nectar instead of sugar.  I halved the recipe and got 8 bagels.  As I mentioned, I’ve made bagels before and today I had the same issue as the very first time I made them!  That time I didn’t knead the dough long enough, this time I think it was the whole wheat flour.  Even if it’s bread flour, it just never seems to work well in bagels.  I should have used half whole wheat bread flour and half regular bread flour.

They turned out a little too flat, but tasted good! Have you successfully made whole wheat bagels?  Or any kind for that matter? Any Tips?

For dinner, I had the remainder of my egg wash (1 egg + a bit of water) with two more egg whites added on a corn tortilla with tapatio! (and 2 bagels… oops!)

Someone asked me what Tapatio is:

Delicious!  But not as good as Cholula but I can’t seem to find that here!

I’m still trying to decide if I want to bake something for my class tomorrow, but I’m still not sure!  I’ll let you know if I do.  Don’t worry I haven’t been baking and eating all day!  I did manage to go to Target, the public library and to the gym for a sweaty 5 miles!

That being said… I should probably go watch Mad Men since I’ve had the last available disc for about a week 😦

Have a great night!!!

Take Two!

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Today was all about repeats.

Take Two #1: Dinner at Moosewood! On Thursday nights, students get 15% off!

Remember when I went with the lovely fella a while ago?? This time I went with some friends.

Sadly, I forgot my fancy camera!  It was packed up and ready to go but in my rush out the door I left it behind.  I did however have my crappy point and shoot (I really need a new one!).

Started with a delicious salad exactly like last time.

As an entree, I had a delicious Caribbean Pineapple-Peanut Stew: “Sweet potatoes, cabbage, tomato, bell peppers, and fresh pineapple simmered with ginger, lime, chiles, cilantro and peanut butter; served on rice, with jerk tempeh.”  Spicy and tangy!

Ohh goodness!  Sooooo delicious!

I also had a bite of Rhoda’s Alsatian Cheese Tart (Flaky pie crust baked with a filling of caramelized onions, Fontina, Gruyere and smoked cheddar
cheeses and egg custard; served with apple-celeriac remoulade).

Holy deliciousness!  This was amazing!  Although I still thought my stew was better 🙂

Take Two #2: Granola Bars!


Here’s my upDATED version:

2 cups oats
20g chia seeds
2 tsp cinnamon
1/5 cup of whole wheat flour
4 Tbsp Toasted Wheat Germ
1 oz dried coconut
5 dates, chopped
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 cup applesauce

Combine all ingredients, bake at 350F for 25 minutes.

They turned out great!!!  So excited!!! Here’s the nutrition info for these babies:

Delish! Make these!!

Anyway, I’m pooped and I still have a ton to do!

Thanks for all your tea suggestions!  I’ll be looking around for them in stores 🙂

Have a great night!!

Soup It Up!

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Hi all!  Hope you’ve had a great day!

Thank goodness my presentation is done!  Honestly, it was pretty terrible!  Basically, me and another guy had to lead the class discussion for a 3hr seminar! Ugh!  First, I couldn’t connect my computer to the projector because I have a newer Mac that doesn’t have the right port.  Thanks Apple and Cornell, but it was okay I could go without.  Sadly those hours I spent on the power point were all for nothing!

Then, the professor kept interrupting me asking me to talk about specific things. He didn’t want to discuss what I had prepared until the end of the class!  So basically I had to search in the book for things he was asking for.  Even though I had read it and it was basically the most basic thing even (push/pull factors of rural-urban migration… really we need to talk about this for an hour??) I got flustered and it was terrible.  I should have talked to him beforehand to make sure I covered everything he wanted since I was the first to present all semester.  Oh well, It’s done.

I was nervous before class so I had a light lunch (soup + cottage cheese + cucumbers).  By the time I got home, I was starving!

I made a quick veggie lentil soup using a Thai Veggie Stock I found on sale at Wegman’s this week!

Delish!  In my soup: 2 cups Thai veggie stock, ~1/2 cup dried lentils, 1/2 broccoli crown, some kale, and bok choy.  First I cooked the lentils in the stock for about 10-15 minutes then added the veggies for a few minutes and voila! (Next time, I’d thicken it up with a little corn starch or throw in an egg!)  For a little extra protein and just plain deliciousness I had 2 Morningstar Sausage Patties.

One in a tortilla because that’s how brown people roll.

Corn Tortillas > Flour Tortillas.  What do you think??

Then the wonder that is Karin, inspired me again (I should really just start a fan club).

I made some homemade granola bars using a tweeked version of this recipe.

Sadly I messed these up for a few reasons…
1. Forgot to add the flour
2. Forgot to add vanilla
3.  Needed more apple sauce but didn’t have any more.

Regardless, they taste delicious!!!

In my granola bars I used:

2 cups of oats
20g chia seeds
1-2 tsp cinnamon
some dried cranberries (only had 16g)
1 oz dried coconut
1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
1/4 cup agave nectar (use more if you want sweeter)
1/2 cup of apple sauce (use more next time)

I mixed all these ingredients together and baked them at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  I could probably get 12 bars out of this.  Here is the nutrition info for the ones I made:

Delicious, easy, inexpensive and healthy!

I think they turned out okay without the flour, but I think they would have been more bar-like had I used more apple sauce.  Oh well!  Next time!  I can’t wait to make variations of these!!  (PB in the future???)  I need to run to the store to get more applesauce!!

Have you ever made your own granola bars? Any tricks of the trade I should know about?

Well, now I’m off to read a huge pile of things about climate change!  Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading 🙂  Have a great night!!

P.S.  Get a free sample of Kashi bar or cereal!! Click Here!

Pour Some Sugar on Me

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Happy Groundhog day!

I hope you had a fab Monday and an even better Tuesday!

You’ll be happy to know my class devoured the Banana Chip Cookies!  I managed to resist and not eat a single one (except for the one I ate hot out of the oven on Sunday)!

Yesterday, I talked about my lack of February challenge.  Even though I don’t have an official one, I really like Anna’s from Newly Wed, Newly Veg.  For the month of February, she is cutting back on added sugar (it’s in the most unexpected places sometimes!).  This doesn’t include natural sugar in fruits and veggies.

I think this is a great idea!  Out of curiosity, I decided to count how many grams of added sugar I consume on an average day.

I don’t usually post everything I eat but for today’s experiment, here are today’s eats along with the added sugar count.

Breakfast: Coffee, PB Toast and Green Monster

Lactaid (3.3g) + GM (0g) + PB (0.5g)+  Toast (2g)= round to 6g

I’m shocked at how much sugar Lactaid has!  7g for 1 cup!  Luckily, I only put 1/3 cup in my coffee each morning!  Actually I sort of knew this… the added enzyme apparently starts to breakdown the sugar in the milk while it’s in the carton.

For mid-morning snack I had an unpictured apple and string cheese: 0g added sugar.

Lunch: Wrap, Fruit and Yogurt

Wrap: Honey Wheat Flat Out Wrap (3g)+ Hummus (0g)+ Pepper Jack Cheese (0g)+ Tapatio (0g)+ Cucumbers (0g)+ Tomato (0g)+ Lettuce (0g)= 3g

Kiwi: 0g added sugar

1/2 cup Plain Non-Fat Greek Yogurt (4.5g) + Strawberry Jam (6g)= 10.5

Total Added Sugar in Lunch= 13.5g

I had no idea plain Greek Yogurt would have 9g of sugar per cup!  It doesn’t taste sweet!

Afternoon Snack: PB Toast + Tea

Wegman’s Omega-3 Bread (3g) + PB (0g) + Tea (0g)= 3g

Ugh, I’m pushing through this bread that is not very tasty 😦  Wegman’s you failed me!

Dinner:

After my afternoon snack, I was still starving, so I decided to have the first part of my dinner early.  I started with some Kale chips.

Usually I just use some rice wine vinegar then throw them in the oven for 10 minutes.  But today I decided to try out a sauce that I got from Tina‘s Open Sky dealio she had a few weeks ago.  It was only $0.99 and free shipping so I figured why not.

I think had I seen the nutrition information beforehand, I would have saved my dollar.  A serving (2oz) of this sauce has 120 calories, 2000mg of sodium and 28g of sugar!  Essentially it’s sugar, salt and water.  I’m a little shocked that this was on Tina’s Open Sky page (by no means am I trying to judge!).  I suppose anything is okay in moderation.  On my kale chips I used a little less than half a serving.  Honestly, it did make the Kale Chip ridiculously delicious!

Kale (0g) +Wild N Mild Sauce (13g) = 13g added sugar

The other half of dinner was a corn tortilla with cheese both of which had 0g of sugar.

Although I may have something else later, probably a piece of fruit or something…

The Grand Total Added Sugar Consumption for the Day = 35.5g

That’s 142 extra calories, about 9-10 teaspoons.

I’m not entirely sure how to analyze this but it doesn’t seem like THAT much to me.  What are your thoughts?

Is it realistic to not eat added sugar?  Obviously it should be avoided where ever possible but is there such a thing as too healthy?  Any thoughts?

Ugh so much to do tonight!  Hope you’ve had a great day!!

Anyone else SUPER EXCITED about Lost?!?!?!

Italian Toad in a Hole

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Hi all!  Thanks for all your nice comments about my 100! and my International Food Assistance post!

Is anyone else experiencing crazy weather today?!  All of a sudden there was a blizzard at about 11:00am!  I was not properly dressed!

On to food…I had the best dinner tonight.  It was quicky, easy, healthy and most importantly delicious.  It may not look that pretty but it was TASTY!

This sort of reminded me of a toad in a hole (you know, bread with egg in the middle) for some reason.

Behold:  Italian Eggs over Polenta!

I haven’t quite mastered the pretty aspect but flavor was spot on!

I have a ton of recipes bookmarked and with all the talk of Italian food on Nicole‘s blog this seemed like the perfect way to get my fix.

I made a single serving since it’s just me.  It was the perfect portion!

The recipe calls for a tube of polenta, but I didn’t have that so I made my own.  It was super easy!  I had never made polenta before! 
Have you made polenta before??

I brought 1 cup of water to a boil with a pinch of sea salt in a small saucepan then added 1/4 cup of cornmeal and stirred like crazy for a few minutes until it started to come off the sides of the pot.  I transferred that to a plate and let it solidify.

In the mean time, I added half a cup of pasta sauce to a pan with 1-2 cups of fresh chopped spinach.  Then I heated it until the spinach wilted it.  Then the best part… this is where the toad in a hole-ness comes in… I made a little well in the sauce/spinach, cracked an egg in it!  Then it cooked covered for about 3 minutes, because I love runny yolks! (Cook longer if you want a solid yolk)  Any runny yolk fans around??

Serve on the polenta!

The recipe calls for asiago cheese, which I didn’t have so I sprinkled it with some grated pecorino romano cheese.

Delish!

All this goodness for only 300 calories! (For full nutrition info, see the sparkpage)

Best dinner I’ve had in a long time!  Highly recommend it!  Really it could be enjoyed any time of day!

Now I’m off to watch Mad Men, because I’m obsessed!  Have a great night!!

January Recipe Challenge: South America

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I go through travel bug stages.  Last year, I was itching to go to India, then I went.  This year I’m itching to go to China and Peru, I’ve yet to go.  Not entirely sure why I want to go to those places but they seem awesome!  I really would love to do the Inca trail.

So tonight for the January recipe challenge, I made Peruvian Chickpea Stew.  Sorry for all the soups/stews, I’m a huge fan of soup/stew, and when I look for recipes I look for things that I would like.   Peruvian cuisine is such an interesting mix of many different cultures.  I find it really intriguing.

I first tried Peruvian Chickpeas at Super Pollo.  If you live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, please please please go to Super Pollo in Arlington, VA for some wonderful pollo a la brasa (yes I’m promoting meat eating because this stuff is amazing).

Tonight I put my chef planning kit to work!  I decided I needed some company for dinner, so I had a mini dinner party.  I only invited a few people so we could all fit at my tiny table (plus sadly I can’t afford to feed the 20 people I wanted to invite).

Peruvian Chickpea Stew

inspired by Recipezaar’s Peruvian Chickpea Stew

1lb dry garbanzo beans/chickpeas
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions or 3 small onions, diced
3 garlic gloves, minced
1 can whole canned tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 tsp coriander powder
3 tsp cumin powder
3 tsp allspice
2 small yellow squashes
8oz (approx) of vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

First,  cook your chickpeas until tender, a little under cooked is fine as they will simmer for a while later. You can probably use canned garbanzo beans too, but honestly I don’t think those taste as good.  You’d be amazed at how much better cooked dried beans taste over canned beans.

Then sautee the onions and garlic in the olive oil on pretty high heat until slightly browned and translucent.

Then add the chickpeas, tomatoes, spices, squash, and broth.  Stir and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.

Serve with quinoa for a high protein very healthy meal!

I really liked this recipe.  It’s very healthy but hearty and tasty!  The spices are an interesting flavor combination.  I definitely recommend this! It wasn’t the same as the ones I had at Super Pollo but still delicious and probably a million times healthier!

To round out my mini dinner party, I made an Arugula and Pear salad using this recipe from Eating Well.  Honestly this salad was ridiculously good.  I tweeked the dressing a bit adding a bit more dijon mustard and a little less olive oil.  I also only used arugula, no other lettuce.  It was delicious!  I highly recommend this salad if you’re looking for a wonderful side dish!

For dessert, I made Fitnessista‘s Almond Butter Chocolate Chip cookies!  They were a hit!  No one knew they were vegan!    I made a few tweeks as well.  Instead of maple syrup, I used agave nectar and omitted the molasses since I didn’t have any and didn’t want to spend all that money for a teaspoon of molasses.

I just realized, actually this whole meal was vegan!  Very tasty and very balanced. Here’s my plate:

Salad side above and chickpea/quinoa side below.

A note about calories:

I decided to not count my calories for this meal.  I enjoyed it and made sure not to over eat too much, I filled half my plate with salad, 1/4 with chickpea stew and the other 1/4 with quinoa.  I also had 2 cookies, no big deal.  I splurged a bit, but I’m okay with that.  By the end of the meal, I wasn’t stuffed I was good and satisfied.  Yes, I probably could have eaten more but I didn’t feel the need to.  Life is about balance.  I want my weight loss to be manageable and sustainable, not painful.  One meal is not going to derail my efforts, I tracked the rest of the day (see my sparkpage) and tomorrow will be a normal day again and all will be well in the world.

I like to live by the 80/20 rule: Eat well 80 percent of the time and indulge 20 percent of the time.  Good rule in my opinion. What do you think?

Anyway, I’m off to watch more Mad Men!  Have a great night!

January Recipe Challenge: Asia

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The lovely fella lives in the Silicon Valley.  The first time I visited him here was when I had just gotten back from India in July of 2009.  I kept noticing a ton of Indian markets, restaurants and shops.  I’m not sure if it’s because I had India on the brain or there are legitimately just a lot of Indian places!  Apparently, the Silicon Valley (or the South Bay in general?) has a large Indian population.  So for yet another addition to the January Recipe Challenge, I decided to make something Indian!

Indian is probably one of my favorite foods, I love everything from curries to dosa, but I’ve always been too scared to make it as it seems really daunting. With the availability of Indian products and the January Recipe Challenge as my impetus, I sucked it up and decided to try making something Indian.

Tonight, I actually made two recipes!  Palak Paneer (Spinach and Cheese) and Channa Masala.  Both are fairly common at any North India/Punjabi restaurant.  They are also vegetarian!  Actually in case you didn’t know… A lot of people in India are vegetarians for religious reasons.

I found two great recipes from Manjula’s Kitchen.  I really liked her site because she had videos of her making the recipes!  This inspired great confidence in her!

Just as in the Swedish recipes I made earlier this week, I had to make due with the appliances the lovely fella has, which means no measuring cups or spoons or a blender which was kind of necessary.  I had to eyeball it all but surprisingly it turned out really well!  So here are the recipes with the tweeks that I made to them (remember I eyeballed these amounts).

Palak Paneer

Inspired by Manjula’s Kitchen Palak (Spinach) Paneer

4 cups fresh spinach, chopped
6-7 oz store bought paneer
1/2 can tomato puree
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
salt to taste
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 tomato, sliced for garnish

Ingredients all together:

Can you believe they have Goofy on the spinach package?! Not sure how I feel about this...

First we quickly browned the paneer in a bit of oil and then set aside.

Then we added a tad more oil (probably a total of 2 tbsp, you really don’t need to add more in my opinion…) and added the spices (coriander, turmeric, cumin seeds) and cooked those for about a minute.

Then we added the tomato puree and ginger and let that cook for a few minutes.  Once the tomato sauce reduced by half, we added the spinach and a little bit of water (I saw her do this in the video that’s why I did it too) and covered it and let it simmer on medium/low heat for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime, we combined the cream and flour in a small bowl.  After the spinach mixture has simmered, we added the cream mixture and let it cook for a few minutes.  Then cover it again and let is simmer for about 5 minutes.  Then added the paneer back and and let is simmer for a few more minutes! Then it’s ready to eat!

Ours didn’t look quite right but I think it was the lack of blender.  It still tasted great!

Next we made the Channa Masala.

Again we didn’t have all the necessary equipment (mainly a blender and measuring spoons so I eyeballed it all and just finely chopped all the ingredients).  Also note that the channa masala is also vegan!

Channa Masala

inspired by Manjula’s Kitchen’s Chola (Channa Masala)

1 can (15oz) garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 can tomato puree
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 small green chili (use less for less picante!)
2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chopped cilantro
1/4 tsp garam masala powder

I forgot to take a picture of all the ingredients for this one but they were kind of similar to the Palak Paneer ingredients.

First, we heated the oil in the pan.  Once the oil was hot, we added the cumin seeds and cooked them til they made a cracking noise.  Then we added the flour and cooked it for about a minute. Once that had cooked for a minute or so, we added the tomato puree, ginger, green chili, coriander, turmeric and red chili powder.  This simmered for about 4 minutes.

Then we added the garbanzo beans plus 1/2 cup of water and let that simmer for about 7-8 minutes, stirring every so often.

Lastly, we added the cilantro and garam masala and let that cook for a minute and it was all ready! Serve with rice, naan, raita, tomato slices or anything else you like!

We enjoyed these two fabulous dishes with some Naan we got at Costco (the Costco here sells a ton of India products… large Indian population I guess…).

Of course, it was eaten with fingers not silverware…

I thought this was very delicious!  The lovely fella liked it too!  The Channa Masala was a little too spicy for him but nothing a little water couldn’t fix.  We actually realized we pretty much doubled the green chili, so it was extra spicy.  I thought it was perfect but I really like spicy food.

I know Indian food sounds intense and complicated (or at least it did to me) but give it a try!  It really wasn’t that difficult, just requires a bit of ingredient hunting!

Tomorrow I’m headed back to LA then Friday I go back to Ithaca!  I don’t want break to end, but I have a little bit of a blog revamp coming when I get back to Ithaca so stay tuned for that!

Have a great night!

Napa: Wine, Wine and More Wine

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Yesterday we left about mid-day and headed up to Napa!  It’s only about an hour and a half drive from the lovely fella’s place in Mountain View.  We found a deal on Travel Zoo for a hotel plus wine tastings at 3 vineyards and 3 half bottles of wine!

The first stop was Peju.  This was one of our free wine tastings.  The vineyard and tasting room was very lovely!

They had some interesting trees in the entrance…

We tasted 5 wines: 1 white, 1 red/white blend, 2 Cabs and a Port.  My favorite was the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon.

This also happened to be the half bottle that they gave us!  So that was convenient.  I liked this place but sadly there was another couple tasting next to us so I felt really rushed.  They flew through it and it felt like we needed to go at their pace.  Oh well.  It was still fun and tasty!

The next stop was: Castello di Amorosa.

It was a lovely location with a great view, not to mention the winery was in the shape of a castle! This wasn’t included in our three free tastings but the lovely fella heard it was good so we went.  I’m glad we did! This was my favorite of the three we went to!

We tried some wonderful wines here too!  I don’t usually like sweet wines but the ones here were particularly delicious!

The final winery we went to Madonna Estate for a free tasting.  It was very small but nice.  We were the only ones in the tasting room.  They didn’t have half bottles so we got a free full sized bottle of Riesling.

The man in the tasting room suggested a restaurant for dinner.  He was Italian so naturally  he suggested an Italian restaurant (Zagat also said it was delicious).  So for dinner we went to Bistro Don Giovanni.

We were wined-out so we stuck to water.  First, we were served some rosemary focaccia.  It was extremely oily, but naturally very delicious!

The lovely fella and I shared a beet and haricot verts salad with avocado, fennel and roquefort vinaigrette.  This was very good.  Light and flavorful!

As an entree, I got the Ricotta and Pesto Ravioli with a lemon cream sauce.  This was OOH SO GOOD!  I can’t even tell you how delicious it was!  I love lemony things but this was literally out of this world!

The lovely fella got an (unphotographed) Rigatoni with lamb meatballs.  He enjoyed his as well!  I definitely recommend Bistro Don Giovanni for anyone going to Napa.  It was delicious and reasonably priced!

We decided to skip dessert there since nothing looked too good.  Instead, we stopped by Whole Foods for a bakery treat!  I got a cupcake (which took me hours to eat since it was so sweet):

The lovely fella got an almond cannoli.  I’m not a huge fan of cannolis but he really enjoyed it…

Warning: Hipster Hating Ranting to Come!

The next day we left and stopped in San Francisco for breakfast/lunch.  We went to Tartine Bakery.  This hipster watering hole was delicious!  I got a 3 Cheese Pressed Sandwich and the lovely fella got a ham croque monsieur.  Mine was simply to die for!  It was also HUGE!  I ate 2/3 of it and thought I was going to explode!

The food was fantastic (I seriously can’t get over how good this place was); however, I didn’t like the cafe itself.  It was ridiculously crowded with hipsters talking about Europe and art.  I didn’t feel like I could really enjoy my meal to the full extent.   I also felt silly pulling out my camera, maybe I would have if I had been sitting outside with a little more arm room.  I literally felt like I was living in the this blog.  I’m not sure why I was so irked by the patrons of this place.  I think it just felt a little pretentious to me.  Strangely enough, the place was kind of dirty too.  You bus your own tables (which isn’t a problem at all) but that means all the tables were really dirty.  The occasional wipe down would have been appreciated.

I would love to go back!  It was seriously amazingly good!  But next time, I’ll get it to go and enjoy my sandwich or pastry elsewhere 🙂

Now we’re back in Mountain View trying to figure out what to do the rest of the day!  Maybe we’ll have some more wine… because obviously we haven’t had enough…  On that note, this blog is supposed to be about healthy eating… don’t worry that will resume soon!  When I’m back at home (aka Ithaca) I rarely eat out plus I have a healthy plan for the next few months, more on that later!

What’s your favorite type of wine?

January Recipe Challenge: Europe

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The lovely fella bought a Swedish cookbook at Ikea last week.  So I thought it would be a great for the January Recipe Challenge.  Again, I don’t know much about Sweden other than its neutrality in WWII, they have a lot of immigrants and Alexander Skarsgard is from there… so I have no idea how authentic this is but it looked delicious and vegetarian (which seems rare in Swedish cuisine from looking at that cookbook!).

We decided to make Forest Mushroom Soup (Soppa på blandsvamp).

The only difficulty in making this recipe was finding the right mushrooms and the fact that the lovely fella doesn’t have measuring tools.  So here’s our tweeked version (estimated as we couldn’t actually measure):

Forest Mushroom Soup/Soppa på blandsvamp

inspired by Ikea’s Swedish Cooking

2 tbsp butter
8oz cremini mushrooms
3.5 oz shitake mushrooms
6 oz portabella mushrooms
1 onion
1 garlic clove
3-4 tablespoons whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons red wine (or really just a splash!  The recipe called for sherry but we didn’t want to spend money on it so we decided to use red wine instead… not the same… I know but it was still really good!)
3 cups low sodium vegetable broth
about 1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

We enjoyed a glass of wine while we cooked!  The lovely fella got me this bottle of wine for Valentine’s Day last year with the intention that we would drink it then but it didn’t happen and he’s had it ever since.

It was very tasty, especially after it aerated for 20 minutes!  So we gathered the ingredients:

Then cleaned and sliced the mushrooms then chopped the onion and garlic.

From what I’ve heard… Mushrooms should be wiped with a damp cloth or paper towel not run under water.


We melted the butter then sauteed this all for about five minutes.

Then added the flour and stirred it.  Added a splash of red wine.  Next we added the broth, cream, salt and pepper and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Then we served and enjoyed it with our wine!

This recipe was quick, easy and delicious!  The mushrooms were fantastic and made it really “meaty.”  It was a perfect light meal!  It would be great with a big hunk of crusty bread (unfortunately we ate our fair share of bread and cheese while the soup simmered!).

Then we went to see It’s Complicated, which was hilarious!  I won’t spoil it but I really enjoyed it!

Tomorrow, we’re headed to Napa for wine tasting and all around fun!  Hope you had a great weekend!  Goodnight!