ready for its closeup

Lunch today: I am obsessively photographing my lunch from multiple angles. Patricia goes “… what are you doing?”

I say, “I have to take pictures of it because it’s the best yogurt I’ve ever tasted and it was FREE”. Obviously then she was jealous of me. Not that she wasn’t already cause just LOOK LOOK AT THAT YOGURT THAT IS SOME FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE YOGURT WHOO MAN.

Chobani sent me a package! I sent them an email being all “Don’t even hold out on me I know you have new flavors and my blog slash life would be improved if you sent them to me to try and then they DID!” J’Adore, Chobani!

Black cherry, lemon, and mango THANKS Y’ALL.

 

Sheila loves them too cause it came in a large box.

Anyway all the flavors, like all Chobani flavors I have tried, are yummy. Like all Chobani flavors I have tried, they do not skimp on the sweet. As someone who has a relationship with sugar much like a relationship Charlie Sheen has with… anything, it works for me.

Black Cherry: (0% fat) if you have tried Chobani Blueberry, it’s a very similar experience. Nonfat yogurt up top, fruit on the bottom. And by fruit on the bottom I mean “sort of chunky but mostly goo and very sweet.” Like the blueberry flavor, whilst eating a Black Cherry I tend to scoop up yogurty goodness off the top and leave a fair amount of goo on the bottom.

Lemon: (0 % fat) the one I was most excited about cause I am what they call a lemon head.
So, let me preface this by saying that I love all lemon-flavored things to be super, even painfully acidic. Thus, I found it to be quite quite sweet. That being said, it contains lemon ZEST rather than lemon juice or always-sketchy-sounding lemon “flavor”. So that is admirably natural of them, incorporates some of that wonderful healthful essential acid goodness of the zest, and finally means TEXTURE. Some people will be skeeved out by this. Not I!

Okay okay blah blah blah but fiiiiiiiiiinally today’s lunch featured the intense awesomeness of 2% MANGO GREEK YOGURT OF AWESOME.

Sweet holy heavens. LOOK AT THAT CREAMY AWESOMENESS! LOOK AT THE HEFTY FLAVORFUL REAL MANGO CHUNKS! It’s like a deconstructed mango lassi. It is so intensely satisfying and delicious.

Lunch was rounded out with:

Leftover gypsy soup I made and froze the other month (still vair delicious, particularly on a, lest the lighting didn’t clue you in, gloomy-weathered day).

And a tangerine. And for dippage a bagel thin I toasted in the morning and then smelled really good of toasted bready goodness so then I ate some.

        

And so documented, and interrupted by the arrival of the food bank delivery at work, I then shnarfed down this lunch, saving the head spinning deliciousness of that yogurt for last.

Chobani, anytime you want to send me anything else awesome, I will gladly embarrass myself in front of my coworker, photograph it to the absolute best of my ability, and eat it in roughly twenty seconds.

beans!

My mom’s lentils and rice.

Maybe the greatest comfort food of all time?

Stayed home sick from church last Sunday. Slept til 11 (who am I?!) and woke up lookin’ to make lentils and rice. My mama had company on the way and had dog-eared the recipe but not had time to make it. So once again, I took it upon myself to do so.

This recipe really is magic. The ingredient list is deceptively short, the preparation is absurdly easy but OH MY HEAVENS IT IS DELICIOUS.

You begin with, quite simply, lentils and rice.

 

You cook them (a cup of lentils, a cup of rice, giving the lentils a five minute head start) for twenty minutes in boiling stock of your choice (five cups), vegetable or chicken. I used my homemade veggie stock. I love how my stock is seasonal: I collect my veggie scraps based on what’s ripe in delicious, so right now it’s a lot of carrot and turnip and squash tops; whereas in the summer it might be more asparagus and red pepper-y. Fun!

The real secret is what happens while those lentils and rice are cooking: the sauce. The recipe hails from one of our Greek cook books (a consolidation of recipes from the women at a large church: seriously, if you can get your hands on one of those cook books, they are a gold mine. I should really do myself a favor and see if synagogues do a similar thing, cause you know me and Yiddish food).

So the sauce begins with that miraculous ingredient, so adored by the Greeks, so heart-healthy, so FLAVORFUL, one realizes when preparing this recipe that really gets most of its oomph from it: olive oil. Lots. I slightly cut back on it (1/2 a cup for 6 servings seemed like overkill, since it meant more than a tablespoon each) to a mere 1/3 of a cup.

Mmm.

Into that goes 1 cup onion to saute

 

Then open up a can of tomatoes, at which point if you have a cat they will likely go “Can being opened?! Can being opened?! Tuna juice for me?!”. Sorry champ.

She consoled herself by playing with her favorite toy of all time, my laundry hamper.

I added 1 cup of the tomaters, which is what the recipe calls for, but I’d forgotten that my mom usually just throws in a whole 28-oz can. So if you make this (and you should, particularly if the weather is nasty, which it continues to be), use the whole can.

Anyway, you squeeze ‘em up. Cook ‘em awhile. The sauce is soooooooooo rich!

 

  

Combine. Devour. This makes a ton, and it’s so great to just have in your fridge to heat up when you’re hungry. Or even to not heat up when you’re hungry. It’s yummy cold!

    50

 

Exciting ethnic grocery store purchases:

So here’s what happened: I desperately wanted to recreate that heavenly yellow lentil dal I ate at Indus Valley in New York City. So I saw that bag and went ooh! Yellow lentily Indian looking things! In retrospect, they are probably mung (moong!) beans. But whatever.

Then I bought the chayote because I had a whole love affair with it over the summer.

Didn’t plan on combining them but searching for something healthy to do with the chayote with the ingredients I had on hand that particular day led me to curry… which led me back to the dal.

This was so-so because the boy and I were rushing off to go swing dancing (yay!) but the ingredients were yummy enough that I will give it another go-round when it can cook for the amount of time it deserves.

Spice-itude:

Ginger, garlic, jalapeno, mustard and cumin seeds, turmeric, coriander, and asafetida (FASCINATING spice! Once you smell it you will recognize it and it will remind you of delicious Indian food.)

I started with cooking up my seeds, turmeric, and coriander in hot oil to activate their flavors.

Then ginger, garlic, chile, and chayote. Let that all get golden.

Throw in lentils and liquid, and let it cook. A long time. Longer than I did.

It was aight. That thing on the side was peas with scads of slow cooked ginger and onions and garam masala, and THAT was good!

 

Another night all I really wanted was some roasted veggies. So I did that first. Turnips, brussels sprouts, sweet potater.

Then made a quick dal with those lentils and some berbere spice mix (Ethiopian seasoning- sweet and spicy and smoky. Yum!) that I had leftover from something I made ages ago.

Wholesome goodness!

Finally, my black bean soup.

For some reason, it was not quite up to my exacting standards this time (tasted too much like chili. Next time, less chili powder and more cumin! Perhaps even some chipotle? Ooh, and I just remembered I forgot the lime!) but the key is to make a base of flavor with veggies (lots! Onion, bell pepper, garlic, jalapeno) and spices and cook the spices in the oil to really amp up their flavors.

Plus dried black beans (presoaked) and a long cooking time for maximum textural awesomeness.

 

A very delicious, easily transported and reheated meal is that soup plus sweet potatoes.

yawn

I don’t necessarily post my blog pictures in chronological order- instead I have a folder on my computer that I call “recent blog pix.” I do a big upload whenever my camera’s memory card is full (which is often cause it’s rubbish) and then fling (metaphorically) the most recent pictures there until a coherent, thematic blog post comes together.

Thus, I didn’t immediately notice I had (almost) the exact same (boring) lunch til I saw them next to each other in that folder.

The lunch began with salad. With greens, mushrooms, and some measly carrots.

 

Yogurt and apples…

Aaaaand a bagel thin (with hummus) to round it out.

As for the next lunch… we have… salad. Greens, mushrooms. Minus carrot, plus hardboiled egg.

Yogurt plus apple

And… a bagel thin (with a thin shmear of sunflower seed butter) to round it out.

One lunch:

The other:

Yawwwwwwwwwwwwn Ileana you are BORING.

Boring… and craving cheese.

So I bought some cheese.

It seemed like a good first step. When doesn’t it? “My life is going poorly… I think I’ll buy some cheese.” (Can I get an Amen, Malindi?)

 

And we have wraps, which are nice. For whatever reason, a sandwich is inherently slightly more exciting to me just by virtue of being in a wrap.

 

Here’s where the brilliance happened: my mother had made a sweet potato. “Made”. Not “roasted”, the way God intended, cooking it low and slow making wonderful chemical reactions and sweet potato sap, in an admittedly sort of lengthy process. No, she microwaved it. And I rejected the half she offered me at the time, being a sweet potato snob.

However… on a sandwich… with cheese… could it work?!

I set out to try.

 

Plus spinach (from the farmer’s market! So delicous!)

Plus apple and some lentil soup (to get my protein on) on the side, for a complete lunch.

 

DELICIOUS! VICTORY! Herby tangy creamy cheese. Sweet sweet potato. Crunchy virtuous spinach. Solid wrapsie. I LOVE IT!

I was all set for a repeat performance with more cheese, cucumber, and canned salmon…

… healthfully rounded out with homemade coffee yogurt (plain yogurt, 1/4 tsp. decaf instant coffee, 3 drops liquid stevia) and apple slices.

Butttttttttttttt we had a work event. Full of rich people we were begging for money.

Thus, fancy catering.

Thus, OH EM GEE, LEFTOVERS.

This.

 

This.

 

Oh, did you want some hummus?

Did you want any hummus?

 

Many of the leftovers are designated for the night of debauchery I’m heading to imminently (much needed following event stress), but we noshed all day at work.

Thus, regular lunch was vaguely incorporated, but got… enhanced.

  

1/2 a sweet potater (cooked the PROPER way! Look how much more beautiful!); two tomato-basil-mozz skewers, tabbouleh, smoked salmon I peeled off mini bagels…

And coffee yogurt and apple slices!

Took some stuff home to my mama. A motley crew of leftovers!

Tabbouleh (she loves)

Pasta and cheese (she loves)

Carbs ‘n lox (she loves)

Hummus (which I od’d on after coming back ravenous from the gym just now and she’s gonna have to laugh cause I won’t be able to stomach it for awhile)

 

As for the avocado-crabmeat thing topped with black bean and corn salsa? Suffice it to say we ran out of tupperwares and bags at work… but have latex gloves to comply with serve safe regulations. They work.