feting finkle

My little sister Malindi turned 19 today, Lordy Lordy.

She arrived home at 12:30 or so having had her friends sing her happy birthday at midnight (yay!) but having eaten bad Chinese food (boo) and her stomach got worse and worse and she was wandering around the house at 4:30 in the morning waking up my mom.

Basically, if it is a day ending in y, Malindi is sick.

After hoofing it to church alone, I got home and made my poor tired family soup. Made birthday girl a rather beauteous breakfast tray.

With some Coke classic (in a glass bottle!) for the tum.

But wouldn’t you know it, she rallied, and we set off to do one of our favorite family things to do that we haven’t done in years: afternoon tea!

At this lovely place, with my lovely sister posing outside…

The Mandarin Oriental, the starry and shwanky hotel on the waterfront in DC.

Inside is quite lovely- on the modern side, with beautiful and dramatic flower arrangements.

But we didn’t come for the decor… we came for the afternoon tea buffet. I am slightly scared of buffets because sometimes they cause me to lose all restraint but this one was lovely and I left definitely having splurged but without feeling nauseous!

We sat down and my sister went “You can’t be embarrassing me taking pictures of everything like a tourist”.

Well, fine. It is her birthday. I snuck this one waiting in line for a plate.

You get a whole selection of beverages: black, green, white, and herbal teas; five different kinds of french-press coffee; and even cocktails for only like $3 more for the regular brunch price.

On the right is wonderful wonderful Darjeeling tea, one of my favorites. Apparently Darjeeling is a really really wonderful, beautiful part of India to visit, too. I want to go to there!

I decided to go the traditional route and start with savory and then move to sweet. To that end, a cucumber sandwich garnished very prettily with pecan, and a scone with a trifecta of toppings: lemon curd, homemade strawberry jam, and Devonshire cream.

The scone was buttery PERFECTION! I love love love jam and devonshire cream.

Multiply that plate times two. For my second scone I tried the golden raisin flavor, which was equally fab.

Then for the sweets. I love when they do them miniaturized so you can try more!

From the top that is nectarine-cardamom creme brulee (nice but vair rich, ate half); white chocolate cake with pear (ate about 1/3, wanted more pears); fruit tart; an awesome chocolate thing with crunchy nutty outside and boozy ganache within; and an UNREAL lemon bar.

There is an overabundance of sub-par, excessively sweet lemon bars in the world, which is terrible. On the other hand, it means it is cause to rejoice when you find the real, tart thing. Which is why I went back for another :D

Also consumed was a bazillion wonderful strawberries, some dipped in the chocolate fountain (!)

We’d eaten a hefty amount of food, but then the concierge guy was all “Happy Birthday!” and brought Malindi complimentary tiramisu. Which was nice, except… it was frozen solid. I get that commercial kitchens often premake and freeze desserts, but… you have to thaw them.

Anyway, after all the griping about my “touristy” picture taking, then Malindi wanted a shot of her with her cake. I obliged.

And one more of my sister and my mama. Crikey that girl is tall (she’s wearing heels and my mom’s in flats, but still!)

Finally, in a food theme (one of) her gifts from me:

Oh right, the name. So my little sister’s name is Malindi. A misspelling on a form led some people to call her by the cute typo, Malinki. Then my best friend took it beyond: Malindi>Malinki>Malinkle>Finkle Dinkle Doo>Finkle. And now I call her Finkle. Tangent.

Inside that package was:

Homemade ice cream!

I thought about making her a birthday cake but with this chick it’s either feast or famine- one year her friends literally made her six cakes and then one year there were none and we had to take one out of the freezer. I decided to prevent having 6 cakes slowly going rotten taking up our refrigerator, I’d make something that you can freeze for months! Plus, her boyfriend has celiac disease and ice cream is gluten free. PLUS cmon it’s late June. And ice cream is awesome.

I am intimidated by making homemade ice cream, since the last time I did it I accidentally made butter. Which Malindi, the birthday girl, to her credit, pretended to like.

We had super ripe bananas and Malindi loves coconut so an obvious first step was this recipe for banana coconut ice cream. But, I tweaked some things with what I had on hand, the most crucial difference being my use of fresh pineapple, whoo!

Coconut milk (the real stuff- they now think the type of saturated fatty acid in coconut may actually be GOOD for you so everyone relax, k?), sweetened condensed milk, last tupperware of fresh pineapple with accumulated juice, and those dark things up top which are REAL ripe bananas (they aren’t rotten or anything, though; they got so dark in part because I put them in the fridge because all the ingredients are supposed to be chilled).

Banana Pina Colada Ice Cream

1/2 cup fresh pineapple, juice reserved
2 extra ripe bananas
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups liquid- as much fresh pineapple juice as you can get (I had about 1/3 of a cup) with the rest milk (you can use any milk you want- I used a blend of soy and 1%, just what I have around the house)

Chill all ingredients until very cold.

Combine pineapple and banana. Mash. Set aside.

Combine milks, sugar, and pineapple juice (juice may curdle milk- that’s okay, it’ll all come out fine in the freezer) with sugar, and stir slowly (I used my stand mixer) until sugar is dissolved, ideally producing minimal bubbles.

Pour into your ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturers directions.

Going into the machine:

Aaaaand after it came out, all gorgeous:

And wowza so luscious! Smooth and creamy and complex and gelato-y. Yum yum yum.

superb sunday

This Sunday was ideal.

My eats began, as all my best Sundays do, with a post-church pancake brunch, today enjoyed al fresco on the deck. With coffee and the Post!

I used my new fave whole wheat pancake recipe (found on the Favorite Recipes page) and included the rather brilliant addition of a ripe banana, very thinly sliced. I tried in vain to capture, on the plate and griddle, the extraordinarily delicious banana caramelization.

Just… believe me.

I did a tasty trifecta of toppings—I could not tell you which was the best.

Topped with pumpkin butter in the foreground, peanut butter and blackberry (just accidentally wrote blackberrie! Aw) preserves at the 2 o’clock, and maple syrup and toasted pecans up top. Mmm mm.

This fueled me to play TENNIS for the first time in forevs. It is the one sport I am (vaguely) good at.

Then I took a jaunt to HMart and stocked up on fresh produce and goodness for ludicrously cheap and sampled my little brains out.  One could (and I likely would have were there an HMart in the vicinity of my college campus) get an entire meal out of just going around sampling. Multitudes of noodles, dumplings, fish cakes (so good!), fruits, tofu things… soooo much fun.

In other news, I like Green Monsters now!

The consensus about my experiment last time and its iffy results was that I shouldn’t have used still-frozen spinach or water. So I went bare bones with this one, and used THAWED spinach and my exciting HMart purchase of green tea soymilk, in an adorable single serving box.

 

Night and day, friends! I once again did Smoothie-in-a-Bowl, but though the results may LOOK similar, the taste was absolutely fantastic!

Sweet, pleasantly textured, and MAD FILLING! It’s so true, you don’t taste spinachyness when it’s cooked! It just tasted like green tea soymilk (which was yummy!).

I also avoided the problem of thinking I was going to die of hypothermia after I drank it last time by

1. Using fewer frozen ingredients
2. Drinking it in 70* weather on the decksie!
3. Accompanying it with hot tea! Along with the smoothie overflow still in the blender.

So stoked about all the possibilities now that I am a green monster believer. It’ll be great come summer!

Dinner was the return of an old friend, also better this time of year: fauxlafel! I invented it last spring. My thinking was: falafel is awesome. But who has chickpea flour? And who feels like deep-frying and making a mess and using tons of oil? I decided to use lentils- an ingredient I always have on hand- and pare down the cooking method to ensure flavorfulness and moisture without the inherent annoyance factor of frying. I love it. It  had been far too long and I had to make it again! And you know now it’s in Favorite Recipes!

This was one of the better sammiches I’ve had this year.

Faux-lafel

1/4 cup lentils
3/4 cup water
2 T veg broth (or just more water)
1 T multigrain breadcrumbs
1/2 t. dill (or whatever spices you like- cumin is a nice one!)
1/2 t. olive oil
salt and pepper

Bring water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add lentils, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes. Remove from heat and add breadcrumbs, broth, spices, oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Mash with the back of a fork until smooth (some lentils will remain chunky) and form into balls. Put on a greased baking sheet, spray tops with more cooking spray (or brush with oil), and broil 3-4 minutes per side.

They don’t look like much when they come out of the oven, but man are they tasty.

I layered them on one of my homemade pitas with napa cabbage leaves, pickles, and tahini sauce (1/2 t. tahini, at least twice that much lemon juice, stirred together vigorously).

 

I’ve also made it with tzaziki and radishes, which was a great combo.

I was feeling dill-y, so I used this:

   

You keep it in the fridge and it stays almost frighteningly fresh (we’ve had it a whiiiiiiiile!). It’s good stuff. I love dill. The pickles were dill, too! Do you know I used to hate pickles?! I’m so glad I got over it!

I had it with the last (*sniff*) of the Chobs.

It was sort of a lunch-y dinner, which was fun. It’s odd how I like a big bowl o’ something for breakfast, a bazillion different little things for lunch, and “dinner food” (more entree-style, less sandwich-y, etc.) for dinner. But this was really good and exactly what I wanted!

springtime and swag

It is SPRING!

I have been living spring: I took a walk in the park in a t-shirt, admiring the crocuses! And ducks!

And I have been eating spring:

Bliss. But let’s rewind because the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in a few days arrived in the form of a UPS package.

Lookit my box of goodies!

My coffee table can barely contain the goodness!

Newmans Own Organics HOOKED ME UP with products to review!

That is Fig Newmans (low fat and nonfat), mints (ginger, cinnamon, peppermint, spearmint), hermits (original and ginger), Newman O’s (2 boxes of chocolate, two boxes of original), pretzels (mini, round, and rods), cookies (orange chocolate chip, chocolate alphabet, and espresso chocolate chip), soy crisps (lightly salted and barbecue), and CHOCOLATE! (milk, mocha milk, dark, extra dark, orange dark, espresso dark)

I am wonderfully overwhelmed with carbohydrate love. Mmm.

It began with teatime, on the decksie.

 

Let’s have a look at that lil plate, shall we?

That is three chocolate alphabet cookies (I just randomly drew them out of the bag and was so excited when they made a pattern- it’s every other letter! God I’m so weird), and also a Hermit.

The chocolate cookies are gooooooood. Usually when you buy chocolate flavored cookies, they taste like sugar and not a lot else. These actually had the richness and complexity of real cocoa. Their texture was also perfect- nice and crisp, but not so dry they sucked the air out of your mouth.

As for those famous hermits…

This was what I was THE MOST excited to try, because I’ve seen so many other bloggers going gaga over them.

Well, they did not disappoint. Their texture is absolutely perfect and buttery and homemade tasting (I can’t believe they don’t have butter!) and the flavor is heaven. They are definitely sweet, but not cloyingly so: they get complexity from molasses and dried fruit (raisins! figgies!). They are definitely a nostalgia cookie- took me back!

Then I just sat on the deck for awhile staring at my view.

There was a really awesome bird flying around- a vulture? I think? Couldn’t catch him on film, though.

For dinner, I pulled out another Newman’s Own Organics goodie: pretzel rods! Why are pretzels so much more delicious in stick form?

I like my pretzels dipped in things, so I made my mama and I a tasting assortment. My dippers of choice:

   

Sweetish Vidalia dressing, savory and sour tapenade.

Secret confession though: my favorite all-time pretzel dipper is ranch dressing (ideally peppercorn ranch). My friend Lauren turned me on to it in high school. It’s rare that I have ranch dressing (or pretzels for that matter) but man oh man is it good. Do other people have favorite pretzel dippers?

The pretzel rods are really good! They have a perfect crunch level, but again, taste nice and fresh and thus don’t dry out your mouth. Also, props on the sodium- big chunks of sea salt give nice texture and flavor, but they taste like wheat, not salt (which, in my opinion, pretzels should!)

For the main course, this gorgeous quasi- Salade Nicoise.

I love laying out a salad like this, it’s such a feast for your eyes.

This combo was excellent. From your 10:00 going clockwise, I used the last of the asparagus; the last of the artichoke-walnut-parsley-lemon zest topper from the pasta I made the other night; a huge red potato; tuna; spring (!) greens, and a hardboiled egg.

I’m still workin’ on my Eggland’s Best eggs I got from the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program! I am seriously hoarding them. Including hardboiled egg meant I got to use my favorite kitchen tool ever:

Do other people have egg slicers. Are other people IN LOVE WITH THEM? Because I am :D

I used my favorite cooking method for red potato of late- wrapped in foil, baked at 350 for an hour or so (I use my countertop oven- thanks Linda!), and then sliced. I hate boiling potatoes. You suck out nutrients! Oh and don’t even get me started on peeling. Red potato peel is so delish!

    

And finally, I dressed everybody with this:

1 T-ish chopped parsley, 1.5 t. lemon juice, 2 t. olive oil, 1/2 t. dijon mustard, salt and pepper.

I actually made dinner earlyish so I could take daylit pictures (the things we do for food blogs, eh?) but even in the dim light on the kitchen table (er, plus I keep meaning to replace the lightbulb over the table) everything looked REAL tasty!

sandwich of beauty

This is going on the Greatest Hits list:

Spelt bread shmeared with white bean, garlic, and rosemary dip. Hard boiled egg. Avocado.

Bellissima! Enjoyed it for lunch with:

Trader Joe’s carrot-ginger soup and

My love! I have missed you, plain yogurt. With chopped apple and cinnamon.

 

Apples and cinnamon= heaven.

Now for THE BEST MUFFIN RECIPE I HAVE EVER INVENTED.

Background: The mama has IBS. It means that (this is horrifying) whole grains are rough on her tummy and she is encouraged to AVOID whole grains and eat WHITE BREAD. Yeurgh.

The one exception to the painful whole grains? OATMEAL! SOLUBLE FIBER, YAY! Another reason oatmeal is freaking perfect.

So the base of my muffins is….

Oats! More specifically, based on a trick my dietitian godmother taught me, give ‘em a spin in the food processor and you have…

Oat flour!

Combined with the other dry ingredients (this one, for the college kids, is one you want to make at home with your fully stocked pantry!): oat flour, regular flour, wheat germ, brown sugar, baking powder, salt.

 

Ze wet: egg, plain yogurt, pineapple juice (!), vegetable oil, water

 

Combined:

 

Ze mix ins: apricots, almonds, and DATES!

All together:

 

Into ze oven!

Do other people leave their oven doors open because it makes their house so wonderfully warm? Anyway, ze finished product!

Date-Nut Muffins

1 1/3 cups oatmeal (measured then ground)

3/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 T wheat germ

2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup pineapple juice

1/3 cup plain nonfat yogurt

1/4 cup clear colored oil of your choice

2 T water

1/2 cup almonds (measured then chopped)

1/2 cup dates (ditto)

3 large dried apricots, finely chopped

Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients. Make a well in the dry ingredients, add the wet. Fold in almonds and fruit. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-22 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

 

SO GOOD! They are SO SWEET despite having hardly ANY sugar! Gotta love natural sweetness :D And the texture? THE TEXTURE?

Freakin’ gorge. Super moist and tender with nice chunks of sweetness!

I enjoyed my first (of what will be many!) with my afternoon tea:

Ahh.