international delights

Man I ate well today!

Breakfast I was excited because we currently have Greek-style (I will never call the stuff outside Greece fully “Greek” again) yogurt, courtesy of TJ’s. I decided to recreate one of those awesome breakfast buffets.

Plain nonfat (a heresy in Greece!) yogurt with honey, a beautiful MASSIVE kiwi, dates, almonds, and the last of the mini bread leftover from the tea sandwiches (I weighed them out of curiosity- 3 slices equaled one ounce, so one serving) with preserves on top. I had tea on the side- I knew the coffee wouldn’t compare :(

The verdict? The figs, almonds, preserves, yogurt, and honey weren’t as good as Greece! Of course! But they were nonetheless not bad at all. And the kiwi was as fresh and delicious.

Lunch I migrated to Mexico:

 

A leftover homemade empanada (these bad boys are getting a post of their own, this is just a teaser), and tomato and avocado salad (more yummy deformed tomato!)

But dinner. Ohhhh, dinner! Long story short-

1. I live in Annandale, Virginia, a city known as “Koreatown”. There are a lotttt of Korean people, ergo there is really really really good Korean food. Everywhere.

2. It was my stepmother’s birthday last week, which my stupid father forgot to tell us at the time (well, admittedly, he was distracted) and she is a lover of tofu.

So we went to LIGHTHOUSE TOFU!

 

Okay, so the outside is, to be kind, “unassuming.”

But the inside is presh!

Cute tables, happy clientele that was almost exclusively Korean (yeah, I’m silly, but I have found that it’s often a sign of good eats to come!)

The wall had a pattern of writing that my stepmother, a fluent and native Mandarin speaker, said was a mix of Chinese and Korean. It was cute!

They bring everyone out barley tea to drink, which is refreshing and delicious and just a wee bit… musty? If you’re a mate fan, you will likely like this. We perused the very brief menu.

They have some basic Korean stuff (like bulgogi, which my tofu-hating father got) but the main attraction of this place, as evidenced by the title, is tofu- hot tofu soup, to be precise, which is what my stepmom, sister, and I ordered. While we waited, they brought out this crazy stuff:

It is basically liquid salad. Cold, spicy, acidic soup with yummy yummy cabbage in it.

Then, as at almost every Korean place, the panchan (complimentary appetizers):

 

Spicy garlic relish and delicious sweet-spicy cucumber salad

Bean sprouts and, of course, kimchi.

But we wanted the tofu show!

And it arrived, in a steaming cauldron with rice and raw eggs on the side:

The trick with Korean tofu soup is to crack the egg in as quickly as possible so the steaming fabulous cauldron vat of goodness cooks the egg. It’s not tradition to break the yolk, but it tastes better, imo. My Asian stepmother did it, so I didn’t feel too gringo!

Here’s the soup up close:

While this soup is particularly warm and comforting in the winter, ESPECIALLY if you’ve got a cold, I love it year-round. The tofu is creamy and soaks up the flavor, the broth is spicy and flavorful and complex, and it’s fun selecting your fillings (there was a range of permutations of meats, seafood, and vegetables; and you could get it on a scale of “mild” to “spicy spicy”. Not being quite brave enough for “spicy spicy”, I got the regular “spicy”, which nonetheless got my sinuses going!)

Moreover, I love living in a neighborhood where for the same price as somewhere crappy like TGI Friday’s or the like, you can get a nice casual weeknight dining experience (and incidentally, the service was great! Everyone is always very doting and helpful to the unpracticed) and the food is WAY tastier, likely way healthier and not mass processed, and you also get some culture along the way!

sunnier

I got home from work in a not-bad mood on Friday. I couldn’t remember the last time that happened! Then I remembered how great it was to be in a good mood! So I kept it up :D The weekend included seeing The Ugly Truth (if you are easily offended, don’t see it, but I kind of LOVED IT!), hangin’ poolside, working out, bubble bath, a GREAT new book (The Cellist of Sarajevo- anyone read it?)—good things, in other words. We did start cleaning out my grandpa’s apartment, which is a little on the surreal side, but it was also sort of therapeutic to sit around with my aunt, swapping stories, laughing… good stuff.

So back to my good mood—how can my mood not be good? Look at all my tomatoes!

Incidentally, these are from three different sources, but all are local! The huge deformed (and thus delicious- we already broke into this guy!) one is from the Potomac farm stand. The regular ones are from the Ballston farmer’s market. And the cherry ones are from my sister’s godmother’s back patio, and are sweet as candy!

More goodness- cookies!     

My mom’s having a work retreat, and being a VERY nice coworker, decided to make everyone cookies (we were also visiting family this weekend, and brought some for them… basically at one point there were six dozen chocolate chip cookies in my house. Vair dangerous.) I suggested this recipe, which I’d been eyeing for quite some time.

It said they were crisp on the outside, soft in the middle.

DROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL and they were.

And, um, I hear the dough was pretty good too x_x Actually, I restrained myself and grabbed a biteful JUST as I was running out the door to the movies, because I have no restraint around cookie dough, so I had to eat it and immediately escape. My  mom, though, really went to town!

In the healthier but still sweet department, we had some super ripe peaches that would’ve been fun to grill but I lacked the energy to fire up the charcoal, plus it’d be stupid to do for just peaches. Thus, the saute. Heat up a wee bit of butter in a pan, toss in some super ripe sliced peaches and their juice (slice over a bowl)

 

Sautee til caramely, sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon sugar and lemon juice

And serve!

Delicious and easy.

Also sweet? My favorite salad dressing du jour!

We are not a family for bottled dressings, or for creamy dressings. However, this stuff is CRAZY TASTY! We got it quiiiiite awhile ago coming home from the beach and just got around to opening it, and it’s wonderful and sweet and tangy and flavorful.

And yeah, high in fat. But if you’re sprinkling a small quantity of it on raw vegetables, bee eff dee.

Crazy tasty salad!

Finally, another thing making me happy is something that always makes me happy- using up leftovers in a delicious way!

 

Leftover chicken became peanut chicken soba salad. Seriously, Cooking Light really delivers. I very rarely have one of their recipes that is not excellent. This was colorful, tangy, and texturally and tastily fun to eat. And healthy, no less!

tea sandwiches redux

For my grandfather’s memorial on Thursday, it being an afternoon event and all, my mom and I made tea sandwiches.

This is the midpoint process. I’d show the final ones but… it doesn’t matter how cute the food is if the event sucks.

However, when one makes tea sandwiches, it is tradition to cut off the crusts. Wasted food! Quel horreur! Naturally, I salvaged them. First I got leftover fillings:

Tomaters, cucs, and a TON of smoked salmon!

I used them, in part, to make myself a crazy tasty sandwich for yesterday’s lunch:

Picture does not do it justice :(

On side A, we have sliced avocado and tomato. On side B, we have spinach and smoked salmon. CRAZY TASTY!

But the main job, of course, is these:

The crusts! Fortunately I remembered something my love Mark Bittman said about panzanella- bread salad. I put the crusts in an oven with salt and pepper to toast up.

Meanwhile, I chopped up some veg (tomatoes and cucs), salted and peppered them, and added some basil, olive oil, and red wine vinegar

And the final result:

Bread and salad! Two of my favorite things! How can you go wrong?!

extra time

I had extra time this morning because I got off work to go to the memorial service for my grandpa. Extra time. Lucky me x_x

But it did make for something new for my oats:

Apple n cinnamon oats. I love the idea of the apple-cinnamon oatmeal packets, but they are too sweet for me (and instant oatmeal is generally gluey). So I sauteed some apples in the oat pan til they’d browned and softened a bit, then sprinkled on some cinnamon, then added my usual oats, water, and milk and cooked on medium til done.

The final result, topped with pb (we have crunchy at the moment, kind of a fun twist):

  

The verdict? Pretty good. It actually probably could’ve used just a LITTLE bit of sugar, because I’m used to banana oats and bananas are a bit naturally sweeter than apples. Still, it’s worth repeating (but definitely only on mornings when I have extra time—it took awhile)

I didn’t really have “lunch” today, just general bereavement nibbles of the unhealthy, made of white flour variety.

I felt icky and obviously sad. A walk with my mom this afternoon helped, and I knew that for dinner I wanted something fresh tasting, and we thawed some chicken last night. What better than a salad?

First the veg:

Last of the green beans, cucs, chopped green onion, mushrooms, and shredded carrot for color and sweetness.

To dress:

 

For bottled dressing, this aint bad, but it’s quite sweet, so I zinged it up with some lime juice (I also ended up adding some seasoned rice vinegar, my favorite ingredient du jour).

Then I sauteed up some chicken, which I cut into strips and seasoned with ground ginger, garlic salt, and crushed red pepper flakes:

And behold, a lovely Asian-ish chicken salad:

A nice refreshing, nourishing mix of flavors.

recycling!

Okay, this is a post dedicated to the awesomeness of the blog world. Because I never would’ve had the courage/wherewithal to make this ghetto recipe without the genius of Sarah and her baked good recycling recipe.

So we had leftover shortcake from Ma’s strawberry shortcake. Oh yeah, egg yolks in the fridge! Grabbed those. Oh yeah, still a stupid quantity of cinnamon sugar! Grabbed that.

Hmm, seasoning. Raisins are traditional, but we have currants… ooh, and we have red currant jelly, also from the strawberry shortcake!

Diced up shortcake+ batter of milk (1/2 to 3/4 of a cup), egg yolks (I probably ended up only using the equivalent of one egg yolk- I tried to pick out clumpy bits to avoid scrambled egg situation), and a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar (just a little, the shortcake was already a bit sweet)+ currants+ currant jelly dotted on top=

Baked in the oven for 12 minutes or so yielded:

The verdict: DELICIOUS!

Bready, eggy without being scrambly, not too sweet but with the occasional sweet burst from the jelly blobs. Comforty, carby, and an excellent use of ingredients!

Texture shot:

As you can see, I dug right in!

Yet another cooking mountain conquered- baked goods recycling!

good start

I have been ALL ABOUT BREAKFAST lately. My job is wearing me out, and I still am feeling guilt/sadness over not being able to be with my family.

That being said, having a quality breakfast and some peaceful time in the morning (tea sipping, sudoku-doing, mind wandering) has really helped me through the past coupla days.

Beautiful breakfast number one:

 

Yogurt bowl! A layer of plain nonfat. A layer of sliced banana. A layer of Life cereal (in the original flavor). A layer of strawberries for color. A layer of slivered almonds for crunch.

Beautiful tasty layers! It’s perfect, because the nonfat yogurt isn’t sweet but the fruit, cereal, and even almonds make for sweetness, as well as some tang/nuttiness/oatiness. Lovely flavor combination!

The star of this morning’s breakfast was more fruit:

I am seriously in danger of cutting out all other food groups. Summer fruit is just so perfect!

However, I balanced it out: bite-sized shredded wheat with milk, and an egg.

Isn’t there something about brown eggs that’s just… cuter?!

But back to the fruit!

This salad featured apple, banana, strawberry, kiwi, and cantaloupe. It was the PERFECT sweet/tart soft/crunchy balance. The sweet/tart was also complimented by the dressing- I usually do honey and lemon or lime juice. Today I mixed it up and did lemon juice, currant jelly, and a bit of cinnamon sugar. It was great!

So great, in fact, it made a return appearance at dinner.

Along with half a corn on the cob, salad, and the BBQ meatballs I made over the weekend.

The meatballs were KILLER! I did this batch with more of the wetted garlic bread breadcrumbs, and flavored it up with some fresh dill. They tasted like SMOKE! I love grilling so very much. And it’s an inherently healthy cooking technique- when you pan fry meatballs, you add fat to them. When you grill them, you take fat away!

I admired my plate because I did what you’re supposed to do. Make your plate mostly fruits and vegetables, and small portions of starch and protein.

The green salad was quite good, too—mixed greens (red raddichio and baby spinach), sliced cucs and shrooms, and a very simple dressing of dijon mustard, lemon juice, salt and pepper, fresh chives from the deck pot, and of course olive oil.

choco chip!

I wanted cookies wicked bad. This craving was of the sudden onset variety, so I had no pre-softened butter. I also had a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal ripe banana to use up.

So I made Tina's recipe for banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

I put out the ingredients mostly to brag baout my MASSIVE MASSIVE BAG OF CHOCOLATE CHIPS! Oh Costco.

This used up my current carton of oats! Good thing I have a MASSIVE MASSIVE CONTAINER OF OATMEAL! Oh Costco.

Over 100 servings. For most people, that would be a lot of oatmeal. For me, the fear of running out of oats is strong. Maybe now it’s a 2 out of 10, instead of my usual 8 or so.

The batter:

No eggs means cookie dough sampling! Huzzah!

I scooped out the dough with my super classy COOKIE SCOOP! I usually think kitchen gadgets are for people who don’t actually know how to cook, but my godmother, a registered dietitian with a serious sweet tooth, swore by these, and they are FANTASTIC for baking.

  

Here they come out of the oven!

As you can see, these guys don’t really spread. They are sort of sweet, simple, cookie blobs. (totally just wrote “blogs!”)

As for flavor, they are quite enjoyable indeed! Definitely chewy and soft, not crisp, and with enough chocolate chips to make me happy :D