Apple Picking; Weekend Wrap-Up

by Emily

This weekend I got to cross something major off of my fall bucket list – apple picking!

I drove upstate to Lawrence Farms with some girlfriends and we came home with pounds and pounds of tasty apples.

I also snagged Adam and I two pumpkins for carving next weekend.

Check out my gorgeous haul (this is only a portion of it, the rest went into the fridge) –

So far, my favorite variety is the Candy Crisp.

Yum! We had a ton of fun and I definitely want to repeat this activity next fall.

I don’t have much to share for this post, just three things. I’m a bit under the weather and I spent almost all of Sunday tucked in bed.

Breakfast on the go.

A smoothie – water and meat from a Thai young coconut with canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, frozen banana, and maple syrup – and a Clif Maple Nut bar that I shared with the husband. The bar was much better than the smoothie, which did not emulsify at all.

Getting in my green before a dinner of orange hues.

Spinach salad with sweet and spicy pecans, dried blueberries, and buttermilk blue cheese, dressed with honey, evoo, and lavender salt.

The oil came home from Italy with a friend and it was fantastic.

Our main course was tuna casserole that I made and froze awhile back, so I don’t totally remember what was in it. Definitely tuna, barley, spinach, green onions, peas, water chestnuts, roasted garlic and mushroom condensed soup, cheese, and crushed Cheez-Its on top.

Plus carnival squash that we roasted with salt, smoked brown sugar, liquid smoke, and maple syrup.

Dinner was delicious. Sweet and smoky squash with cheesy casserole? You can’t really go wrong!

Best bite of the week goes to dessert from Ample Hills.

I got a kids’ cup of pistachio and honey and the flavors went together perfectly.

Hopefully I am over the hump with my sickness now. The temperatures are finally dropping here and I really don’t want a cold to go with the cold!

18Oct2014

Books And Bites; Five Favorites From The Week

by Emily

{1} Coffee

I made a fantasmic batch of cold brew this week. Brooklyn Roasting Company Iris Espresso brewed with pumpkin spice and vanilla bean paste. Two notes – 1. Go read all of the coffee descriptions on BRC immediately; you’ll drool all over your keyboard. 2. I am adding vanilla bean paste to all of my coffees from here on out.

Served over ice with Almond Breeze Hint of Honey. <– I’m a fan.

{2} Chocolate

Dark Chocolate Mint from NibMor.

Did y’all know that NibMore lives right up the road from me in Great Neck? I’m excited that this tasty bar is local.

{3} Oatmeal for lunch

I know that these overnight oats look a little rough, but the flavor was perfect. In the morning before work I stirred together 1/3 cup pumpkin puree, 1/4 cup oats, 3/4 cup almond milk, and 1 Tbsp chia seeds. The mixture thickened up nicely by lunchtime.

The blob on top is butterscotch peanut butter. <– Ahh-mazing! Adam and I are obsessed.

Another day, another (oat)meal.

Veggie and fruit leather, a SweeTango apple, and *new* Quaker Caramel Apple Oats.

{4} A great, Greek, green dinner

Leftovers.

I was worried about the phyllo dough, but my Greek Tofu Pie reheated just fine.

Plus leftover green beans sautéed with garlic aioli mustard sauce and sliced almonds.

We had a rough week health wise – one night Adam had a fever and I had a migraine and we sat on the floor and ate chips and aspirin for dinner – so having leftovers available was great.

Worth mentioning too – My leftovers from Max in Williamsburg.

The pasta and sauces are all made in-house and they are out of control.

{5} A new favorite novel

The Center of Winter by Marya Hornbacher. I haven’t actually gotten all that far into this book yet – partially because I’ve needed to nap on the train and mostly because the writing is so beautiful that I go back to the beginning of the page and reread when I hit the end of most of the pages.

Hornbacher is one of my favorite authors and her first book, a memoir focusing on her eating disorder, shaped the way I think about literature. <– I am planning on blogging about that in more detail next week.

Her first novel has been truly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. I wanted to share a short {meta!} passage to give you guys a taste –

All the seasons here in the north move toward their own end, except winter, which moves towards its center and sits there to see how long you can take it. Spring twitches impatiently in its seat like a child wanting to go outside, straining toward summer, and summer, all lush and showy, tumbles headlong toward the decay of fall. Fall comes and goes so fast it takes the breath away, arriving in brocades of red and gold and whipping them off in only a few weeks, leaving a landscape ascetic, stunned with loss.

Outside, in the soft blue-gray dark, the snow fell. A child sat at the kitchen table and pretended her father had not died, because you were there. As long as you were there, she did not need to be afraid, or go outside, and so she was not afraid, of cold or anything else. Death did not kill her off but merely left her maimed, like a shot animal that startles at the noise more than the pain and scrambles even faster through the underbrush, wide-eyed and sweating at the flanks, not pausing for the ripped and useless leg it now drags behind it as it runs. The animal has three legs left. Terror makes that enough.

Have you read any of Hornbacher’s work yet?

14Oct2014

It’s All Greek To Me! – Greek Tofu Pie

by Emily

As promised, the killer dish from yesterday’s dinner.

This recipe requires you to dirty your food processor and deal with phyllo dough, but I promise it’s worth it. We couldn’t believe how well this all came together!

Greek Tofu Pie, serves 4 – 6

1 Tbsp and 2 tsp evoo
3 cups frozen spinach
10 oz sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 tsp salt
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 a large lemon, juiced
16 oz silken tofu, drained
6 oz feta cheese
4 oz sharp white cheddar
3 Tbsp butter, melted
8 sheets phyllo dough, thawed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Warm 1 Tbsp evoo in a large pan over medium-high heat. Sauté mushrooms, spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes for 10 minutes, until the mushrooms have softened and the spinach has fully thawed. Stir in salt, oregano, and lemon juice and remove pan from heat.
Use a food processor to combine the tofu, feta, and cheddar. Add cooked veggies and process until the mixture is homogenous.
In a small bowl, stir together melted butter and 2 tsp evoo. Set up phyllo dough according to the package directions.
Use a pastry brush to wet the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie dish with the butter mixture. Brushing on the butter between layers, place 4 slices of phyllo dough into the bottom and up the sides of the pie dish. Spread the filling into the pie dish, smoothing the top so it’s level. Top with remaining layers of phyllo dough, continuing to brush butter between the layers. Use kitchen shears to trim off the excess phyllo dough that is hanging outside the edge of the pie dish.
Bake for 30 – 40 minutes. The filling is safe to eat raw, but the longer it cooks the firmer it gets. Cook for 30 minutes then check regularly and pull out of the oven as soon as the phyllo dough threatens to burn (you want it to get a light tan; pull from the oven as soon as any dark brown spots appear).
Allow pie to cool and set for at least 20 minutes before slicing and serving.

13Oct2014

My Giant Post Disappeared, OMG

by Emily

Uggggggggh! Welp the title kind of says it all. I spent more than an hour last night recapping all of the fabulous eats from last week and the post has disappeared. I’m dying, dying!

Photo-dump style, here are a few key players…

Amazing fruit salad with blueberries, strawberries, banana, orange, and toasted coconut.

Pumpkin yogurts for lunch.

Plus two cafeteria winners.

First pumpkin smoothie.

So much good candy, including trail mix with pb pretzels, raisins, and candy corn m&m’s.

Duh.

The best pumpkin brew of the season so far.

A salad bar lunch date at Whole Foods.

Smorgasburg eats! Duck buns and other good but not as good buns (peanut chicken for me and pork belly for Adam) smothered in amazing chilli sauce.

Plus an awesome good batch ice cream sandwich of coffee ic, caramel, and espresso beans on salted brown butter cookies.

A fantastically “fall” meal that Adam said made him feel like a forest troll. Shredded brussels sprouts sautéed with turkey bacon, roasted butternut squash, baby spinach, shredded chicken, barley, sweet and spicy pecans, honey mustard dressing, and pomegranate.

Delicious Greek Tofu Pie that I promise to retype the recipe for tonight.

That is most of it. I hate computers!

25Apr2014

Weekly Wrap-Up; Eggs And Easter Candy

by Emily

I’m bouncing back from a bad migraine this afternoon so this post might be lacking my usual witty prose (<– just go with it). I don’t want to think that too much sugar may have been a potential trigger for the migraine, but it will probably be hard to convince you otherwise once you finish the post 🙂 Also, upon completion I am forced to note that 90% of these pictures are pretty god-awful. The food was yummy though, I swear!

lunch

Oatmeal Monday.

Apple on the side.

Quaker Summer Berry Oatmeal,

topped with Reese’s eggs.

I read the egg carton further that night and discovered that they contain trans fat, dun dun dun! – so I had to throw the rest out. My only hard and fast nutrition rule is never eat trans fats.

Spicy Sandwich Tuesday. A whole wheat Sandwich Thin with Applegate Farms Herbed Turkey, Fontina cheese, strawberry jam, and pickled jalopeños that seemed to have retained a lot of their heat.

I cooled down with cinnamon applesauce.

And crunched through kale chips.

Worst. Photo. Ever.

Egg Salad Wednesday.

This batch of egg salad was made with tons of caramelized onions, miracle whip, smoked paprika, and raisins. It was fabulous stuffed inside a Pocket Thin.

With the rest of the kale chips and an apple.

Leftovers Thursday.

See more of this casserole down in dinners.

With a wonderfully crisp Lady Alice apple and Haribo colas.

Last of the Egg Salad Friday, aka today.

This time with a slice of Fontina.

dinner

Stir fry night.

Served on top of packaged Kung Pao noodles.

My ‘fry contained edamame, bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, and pineapples, cooked in pineapple juice and green curry paste.

I usually try to put too much into my stir fries and I end up hating them; this simple version was fantastic.

Stir fry leftovers.

My veggies, plus steamed sweet potato chunks, and fish sauce and soy sauce, cooked in evoo, with an egg at the end.

A winning new recipe.

Turkey Reuben Casserole.

Click here for the recipe.

Plus spinach and baby kale sautéed with evoo and dried blueberries.

Let’s be real, I pretty much choked down those greens.

Chipotle post-migraine.

Brown rice with peppers, chicken, lettuce, cheese, and lots of mild salsa.

snacks, aka Easter candy

I made a Cadbury Cream Egg Cream. What?!

It actually didn’t work all that well, I felt like my eggs got burnt in the microwave, but I salvaged it with a bit of chocolate milk. Adam and I were both pretty pleased with the final result.

Speaking of candy eggs, these Ferrero ones from my basket were sure gone in a hurry.

Just like a Rocher but without the nut in the center.

Grape Crush licorice.

When I veered away from the Easter goodies my snacks went horribly awry. I got an email from Dunkin that a Coolatta would earn me 25 bonus points and, sucker for loyalty rewards that I am, I had to get one.

Disgusting. It wasn’t homogenous at all; the coffee, milk, and sweetener separated into terrible layers.

That was a bad note to end on, but overall it was a tasty week.

22Nov2013

Weekly Wrap-Up; My First Cold Of The Season

by Emily

Have you stayed healthy so far this flu season? I’m finally on an upswing, but I spent the past week with a bad cold. Achoo!

The husband gets (2) 2-week periods off this year and his first started last Friday evening. We took advantage of the break and drove over to visit my sister-in-law’s family in Pennsylvania. I spent our entire visit with the dog and/or my niece on my lap so I don’t have a single picture from Saturday.

On Friday, I had a large, late lunch at Whole Foods before we got in the car.

A hot bar assortment.

Clockwise from top left – green beans, gnocchi, broccoli, mac and cheese, big noodles, and Cesar salad.

For dessert, I surprised Adam with a bag of limited edition chocolate dipped wavy Lays.

I had read negative reviews about them online, but we both loved them. They had the perfect ratio of salty and sweet; the chocolate was only on one side of most chips so it wasn’t too overwhelming. The bag said it contained five servings, but we didn’t find that to be true 😉

My youngest niece had the sniffles all weekend and I came back with them too. Here’s what I ate before I realized just how sick I was – A Siggi’s 2% Pumpkin Spice Yogurt.

This flavor was great, definitely the best pumpkin yogurt I’ve tried so far. Sometimes Siggi’s can be a bit sour/chalky but this flavor was nice and creamy.

A new kind of tofu.

We quartered our block of Soy Boy Caribbean pre-seasoned tofu and gave it a quick sear.

A comforting dinner.

We shared a can of Bar Harbor Lobster Chowder.

With a (giant) side of beer bread.

Cheddar Garlic Beer Bread(!!).

So good. That bread was my best idea yet, but I made it in a daze and now I can’t remember the proportion of ingredients.

When I woke up on Monday I realized I had more than the sniffles, I was sick, sick, sick. This is where I tell you that I have not eaten a single fruit or vegetable since last Sunday. In fact, Adam went out-of-town for a few days mid-week when I was at my sickest and I ended up eating cheese and crackers for five meals straight! These TJ raisin and rosemary crisps were featured heavily.

Very tasty, but I don’t think I’ll be eating cheese and crackers again soon.

Here are the things I ate last week that weren’t cheese, or at least weren’t 100% cheese (though I’m now realizing that I did stick exclusively with sandwiches and cookies) – A killer sandwich.

A leftover slice of tofu with smoked Gouda and grape Crofters.

An even better sandwich.

Applegate Farms honey maple turkey with cream cheese, smoked Gouda, grape Crofters, and banana peppers.

A take-out sandwich.

Turkey burger with mozzarella. I ate too many fries.

A mug cookie, jazzed up SCM and salted caramel sauce.

It looks giant and fluffy like that because I double the recommended baking soda.

On the store-bought front, my mother-in-law sent us a cookie jar of Cheryl’s.

Thanks, Barb!

Finally, I received two samples this week that were perfect for trying when I was under the weather.

Please note – I received the following products free of charge. Neither company provided me with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

Numi Organic Tea sent me some Pu·erh Variety mini samplers.

That includes Chocolate Pu·erh, Emperor’s Pu·erh, Jasmine Pu·erh, Basil Mint Pu·erh, Cardamom Pu·erh, and Ginger Pu·erh.

So far I’ve tried the Emperor’s and Jasmine varieties and was a big fan. I’m looking forward to the others a lot, though I will probably give the Ginger to Adam because that’s not my favorite flavor. Chocolate didn’t appeal to me with my cold, but look at the yummy description – “With a rich velvety, chocolate aroma, Numi’s Chocolate Pu-erh is an enticing blend of deep, dark pu-erh and organic cocoa nibs. Whole vanilla beans and sweet accents of orange peel enhance this blend along with nutmeg and cinnamon rounding off a spicy finish.”

I also received a bottle of powdered wheat grass from Pines.

I used to love the wheat grass shots at Jamba so I used them as inspiration and combined 1 tsp of wheat grass powder with 3 oz each orange juice and unsweet vanilla almond milk.

So delicious! Though next time I might shift the ratio a bit in favor of the oj; Jamba used a vanilla soy milk that brought more sweetness to the table than my almond milk. If you are unfamiliar with the flavor of wheat grass and want to try it you definitely can’t go wrong with the vanilla and orange pairing.

How many times a year do you usually get sick? Have you caught a cold yet this winter?

15Nov2013

Weekly Wrap-Up; How Is It Mid-November?!

by Emily

I keep thinking “I can’t believe it’s October!” but actually we are in the middle of November. This year is flying!

This week makes another wrap-up that is pretty light on content/photos. We are in the middle of yet another big life change and I’ve been all over the place. All over the place, figuratively speaking. Literally I’ve been in the apartment. On the couch. Eating. Have I mentioned that none of my pants fit?

Here’s some of what I’ve been eating (and eating, and eating)…

I discovered that my leftover salted caramel cream cheese macaron filling makes a pretty awesome fruit dip.

I even gave it its own recipe page.

With green apple.

And since there was clearly more dip than apple, I also dunked in some TJ everything crackers.

So good. There was a lot of this snack this week. Another day I topped the caramel with a dollop of my cinnamon maple pecan butter.

Spoonful by spoonful, the pecan butter container is getting pretty empty!

I loved this chocolate raspberry breakfast.

TJ European Style Low-fat Chocolate Yogurt topped with fresh raspberries, a scoop of Cascadian Farm Dark Chocolate Almond Granola and a spoonful of cinnamon maple pecan butter.

And cold (we were out of ice) coffee with skim milk on the side.

I planned on using SCM in my coffee but it exploded everywhere when I heated it in the microwave. Just as well because the chocolate yogurt was pretty sweet. I was impressed with the yogurt, I’ll have to check out some other varieties of their European style.

I’m going through some of my old recipes to reshoot the photos, and this week I made my pesto pasta casserole.

That picture’s not too great though, is it? And I used a bottle of pesto from Trader Joe’s that we both hated and it basically ruined the dish. Boo. But on the positive side, I think this was the very first TJ product that we didn’t love.

Another old (old blog!) favorite, turkey cheese crisps.

Classed up with crumbled blue cheese and a drizzle of honey when they came out of the oven.

The honey was sent to me from Golden Blossom Honey. {This product was sent to me free of charge. I was not provided further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.}

The GBH is a 100% American-made product with a signature patented blend composed of extra-white clover, sage buckwheat, and orange blossom.

My blue cheese and honey crisps were definitely a better dish than the original. The honey earned two thumbs up from me; the flavor was unique, but not savory the way I find some orange blossom honeys to be.

Our fridge is very bare, and I finally ate the frozen meal I bought the day we moved in, a Kashi Mayan Harvest Bake. Plantains, roasted sweet potato, black beans and kale with a spicy ancho sauce served over 7 Whole Grains & Sesame Pilaf, amaranth and polenta topped with a pumpkin seed garnish.

This is on my top-5 list for frozen entrees, both flavor and texture are great. Not quite large enough for dinner for me though. I planned on eating it with this truebar,

but it was disgusting so instead I ate a slice of seedy bread with Smart Balance Light and smoked gouda.

Much better! Though I was still feeling snacky after dinner and ended up eating a bag of Smart Fries as well.

I love those. I need to get to a 7-11 asap so I can buy more.

One night we got take-out from Jessie’s.

My fries with blue cheese for dipping were the best part, but my sandwich was pretty good too.

They have a fun group of Turkey Day inspired specials right now! My sandwich was turkey with stuffing and cranberry dressing on top. I want to go get the salad special soon, it has cornbread stuffing croutons.

The best sandwich of the week was one I made myself.

A slice of TJ seedy bread (one cut in half since this bread is much larger than the kinds I usually eat) with Applegate Farms smoked turkey, cream cheese, blue cheese, grape Crofter’s, and banana peppers.

So many good flavors. Having banana peppers in the house for sandwiches has been fun.

Number 1 food of the week?

Lavender and Salted Caramel Macarons. Obviously.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

27Sep2013

Long Week Wrap-Up; Pizza Pizza

by Emily

Whoops. I guess it’s been longer than usual since I’ve done a wrap-up. And I don’t even have a ton to share; we ordered take-out pizza this week and through a miscommunication ended up with a lot of pizza so that’s mostly what we’ve been eating.

Here are some of the other things that made it on to the meal plan…