Passover Continues

No?  Not over yet?  Hm.  OK, fine, I'm still truckin'.

I've been enjoying some aspects of the holiday, like the way it almost forces you to eat whole foods, but I've been kind of low energy because I can't eat any whole grains!  I was running around all of Saturday on a scavenger hunt (yup, a scavenger hunt), and I was BEAT by the end of it.  I realized that I had pretty much only eaten protein and fruit all day, which really doesn't cut it for me.  I actually had a coke (!) at dinner because I felt like I needed sugar in my system STAT.  It helped.  And it came in an adorable glass bottle.

Anyway, Passover food.  I keep mentally referring to my breakfasts as Fiesta Bowls because they've been so bright and colorful, but I realize that might be the name of a Taco Bell offering or something.

This fiesta is black cherry yogurt, strawberries, 1/2 banana, and a hearty dose of Trader Joe's new trail mix.  OMG best trail mix ever!  Almonds, cashews, pistachios, dried cherries, and dark chocolate chips.  It's like they read my mind!  Delish.

And then we have LEFTOVERS!  I decided to eat my mom's leftovers for lunch so that I could take a pretty picture for you.  Not that brisket ever really finds a flattering lighting situation, but this is world's better than a flash and gives my mama's food its due justice!

And that right there might be the reason I am no longer a vegetarian.  I'm not kidding.  Brisket really factored in there.  FYI my mom still puts marshmallows in the sweet potatoes for me and my brother.  It's just not the same without it!  I actually should get that recipe.  There's some OJ and a touch of butter mashed in, but I'm not sure what else.

Once the leftovers had been gobbled up, I came to the sad realization that I would have to prepare my own meals again.  Wah.  I did a sort of repeat of a previous lunch one day, but I upped the ante from the last time.

Spinach, avocado, orange bell pepper, salmon salad, walnuts (awesome choice), and a balsamic/grain mustard dressing.

Then I made CHAROSET!  This is one of two Passover foods I crave year-round -- the other being matzoh ball soup, of course.  ALWAYS good.  Anyway, charoset is super healthy, super easy, and really, something you should make, holidays or not.

Traditional Charoset
This is definitely adapted from some classic Jewish holiday cookbook my mom has, but I couldn't tell you what it's called.  Will work on it.


Ingredients:
3 large apples, any variety, peeled, cored, and quartered (personally, I think peeling is optional)
1 cup walnuts
1/3 cup sweet red wine
2-3 tsp honey
1 tsp cinnamon

Method:
1. Add apples and walnuts to food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped.
2. Add remaining ingredients and pulse until desired consistency.

So, er, voila!  Pretty simple.  As you can see, I like mine pretty chunky, but some people process the stuff until it's more like a paste or a dip.  Just taste as you go.

Mmmmmmatzoh.  (Blargh.)  It's also pretty awesome by the spoonful.  Don't feel like you need a food vehicle to get this to your mouth.

I have a few more Passover treats and meals to share, so maybe I'll even get to a 2nd post tonight.  I mean, it ends tomorrow, and I wouldn't want to dwell once it has passed... :)

Happy bread day tomorrow!

A Week Without Fiber

Fine, maybe I'm being melodramatic with this post title, but Passover started on Monday night, and I'm already feeling that major lack of fiber in my life.  For those of you unfamiliar with the holiday, let me just say that matzoh is not known for its digestive benefits.  It's more like eating glue in cracker form.  Actually, I kind of enjoy the taste, especially egg matzoh and, well, chocolate-covered matzoh, but I've already got a hankering for oatmeal and BREAD.  I mean, toast is probably my favorite food.

As many of you know, this blog started with a challenge.  I think it would be fair to say that keeping Kosher for Passover is a food challenge in and of itself, so I am returning to my roots to bring you a week(ish) of daily posts about my Passover meals.  I hope that this can be some inspiration to those of you keeping Kosher, and a glimpse into the holiday for the rest!

I spent a couple of days at my parents' house for the start of the holiday and our "seder" (I use the term loosely), so I was well-fed and have leftovers that will make an appearance in a later post.  Score!

My biggest problem during Passover is usually breakfast.  That and protein.  Beans and all other legumes are out, which means protein has to come from nuts, dairy, eggs, fish, and meat.  You've probably noticed I love me some legumes (peanuts, lentils, and chickpeas, oh my!), and they tend to be the basis of my diet.  So I've had to adapt, mostly by way of yogurt, fish, and mooching brisket from my mama!

On day 1 I had lemon yogurt with banana, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries at home.  I missed having some crunch, but the variety of flavors helped.  I've had some variation of that breakfast for the past 2 days also, just with plain yogurt.  Yesterday I added trail mix, and today I added flax seed, which I contemplated for a while, deciding finally that it's probably kosher.  I went against my seasonal shopping rules and bought strawberries because they were on sale and I thought I deserved it.

Whilst at home, I also employed my brother to make macaroons with me.  These were a cinch, and so delicious!  I literally just used the first recipe I found online for almond macaroons, but it was a success.  I mean, the recipe is from Gourmet, after all.

Almond Macaroons

from Gourmet magazine

Ingredients:

1 cup blanched whole almonds (I used slivered, since I was grinding them up anyway)

2/3 cup sugar (I used somewhere between 1/2 cup and 2/3)

1 large egg white

1/4 tsp almond extract (we didn't have that, so we used vanilla)

confectioners sugar for dusting

16 whole almonds (to press into the tops... I tried a couple with the slivered almonds but gave up)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. and lightly butter a baking sheet.

2. In a food processor pulse 1 cup almonds with granulated sugar until ground fine. Add egg white, almond extract, and a pinch salt and pulse until combined. Roll mixture into 16 balls, about 1 inch in diameter, and arrange about 2 inches apart on baking sheet. Slightly flatten balls and dust lightly with confectioners' sugar. Gently press 1 almond into each cookie

3. Bake macaroons in middle of oven 10 minutes, or until pale golden (more like 15 mins). Transfer macaroons to a rack and cool completely. Macaroons keep 4 days in an airtight container at room temperature.

All right, so I'm good with breakfast and dessert.  Now on to lunch!

Canned salmon!  I was really glad I thought of this one.  It's such a fast protein.  I mashed it up with some canola oil mayo, dijon mustard, horseradish, diced carrots, celery, red onion, and green bell pepper.  Over spinach, with mushrooms, avocado, and a homemade vinaigrette of olive oil, balsamic, and more mustard.

When I was home, my mom and I made chicken salad with mayo, celery, walnuts, and dried cranberries (if you're looking for more ideas!).  Will blog some leftovers later!

Back in Action

I'll just be honest here.  I am not very good at managing stress.  I happen to enjoy something about the thrill of stress, and I work incredibly well under it.  In fact, I've probably produced some of my best work during the all-nighter time crunch.  However, I do not do well when this type of work is demanded of me two nights in a row, let alone two weeks in a row.  What I'm really getting at is that I have been incredibly stressed at work, and I really allowed it to billow out to most other areas of my life.  My plan for the next couple of weeks is to slow down, make game plans, and allow myself to enjoy life outside of work.  Which will involve not working after work.  Sometimes I have to set fake deadlines for myself in order to get things done quickly, and I think that might need to happen this week.  I just can't mentally afford to have dreams about test script numbers, which, mind you, is how I spent my nights this weekend.

This will also involve COOKING.  Both for my health and for my personal enjoyment.  Last week I was in Dallas, so cooking wasn't an option, but I'm relieved to back in control this week, working from home.

I promised some of my recipes from 2 weeks ago (eeek, that's not good), so here we go.

1. Polenta with broccoli rabe and shrimp

This is hardly a "recipe," but I cooked some garlic, onions, and red pepper in EVOO, and sauteed the broccoli rabe in EVOO in a separate pot until it wilted down.  The I added the greens and the shrimpies (frozen, pre-cooked) into the pan with the onions/peppers until the shrimp were cooked through.  At the end I added some red pepper flakes and a drizzle of honey.  Broccoli rabe can be tricky, because it's so bulky until it wilts down a little.  Sometimes it helps to add a little water to kind of faux-boil it and speed up the cooking process.  As a side-note, I think broccoli rabe is AWESOME.  It's bitter, meaty, and texturally all over the place.  Try it.

2. Curried salmon salad

I started buying canned salmon in addition to tuna, for some variety.  Canned salmon sometimes comes with the bones and skin, which I personally find revolting.  I know... there's great calcium in the bones, blah blah blah.  It's gross.  No go.  Trader Joe's has a canned salmon that's bone-free, skin-free, and fat free, which I guess means you're also not getting the omega-3s goodness, but same idea as tuna, I guess.  (Wait a second... how DO they do that? Tuna and salmon are both fatty fishes... I'm confused.)  And now, to just really throw a wrench into things, big bad BPA is back.  You may remember BPA from its infamous takeover of the Nalgene industry, and the subsequent sky-rocketing of the Sigg bottle.  But BPA got fed up with water bottles, and is now dedicated to ruining beans, soup, and tuna for innocent people everywhere.  Bummer.

OK, regardless, I mashed up the salmon with a little mayo, curry powder, black beans, onions, (ginger?), and red pepper and served it over fresh arugula with chopped tomatoes.  The black beans were a great addition.  A very filling lunch.

3. Mark Bittman's sweet potato salad

I made some tweaks, based on what I had handy, but I kept the flavors the same.  I had to use lemon juice instead of lime, and I didn't have a jalapeno, so I just used some red pepper flakes.  It was missing something but I couldn't put my finger on what, exactly.  Maybe it really needed lime and not lemon.  Fine, it wasn't even lemon... it was that lemon juice that comes in a little lemon-like bottle.  I'm ashamed.  Don't tell Mark.  I ended up taking a large portion of the salad with me to the airport last week before my flight to Dallas.  And, somehow, I was so tired that I slept for most of the flight and didn't even eat it until I got to the hotel.  It held up very well, and wasn't even smelly, as I thought black beans might get.  Definitely trying this one again.  It reminded me of a chili I sometimes make, which, speaking of, should go on my fall recipe to-do list.

4. Berry Berry Oatmeal

Um, would it really be my blog if I didn't have some oats lurking around?  Certainly not.  This batch of oatmeal was particularly colorful due to the addition of frozen fruit!  Microwaved frozen fruit, to be exact.  When you zap 'em, there's always a little juice puddle in the bowl, and I usually just scoop out the fruit and dump the juice, but I was feeling like it might be fun to have purple oats.  It was.  Topped with a few salted peanuts.  Lately I've been feeling like, while effective in theory, adding peanut butter to my oatmeal doesn't actually hold me over any longer than plain old oats with some fruit or raisins.  I've been just adding a few nuts now and I think it works just as well for my protein-psychology.  It gives some nice texture variation without the same amount of calories as a tablespoon of nut butter.  I just figure if I'm gonna be hungry at 11am either way, then why bother?  That said, it does taste like heaven, so I'm going to try to keep the PB/AB thing to just workout days.

5. Dessert Oats

Sometimes it is necessary to have dessert for breakfast.  Last Saturday (er, 2 Saturdays ago...) was one of those days.  I ran the Nike+ Human Race 10K in the morning in Brooklyn (aka the other side of the earth when you need to be there at 8am), and was so dehydrated and exhausted afterward that all I wanted was a big ole bowl of mushy sweet fillingness.  I made an oatmeal/oatbran combo cooked stovetop with paper-thin banana slices and cinnamon.  Then topped with raspberries and... chocolate chips.  Completely necessary.  And incredible.  Breakfast, dessert, whatever you want to call it... I will be doing this again.

Now if you're really paying attention to my food philosophy, you are asking a very important question right now.  WHAT, you are asking, are fresh raspberries doing on your oats at the end of October?!?!  I can guarantee you that (good) raspberries cannot be bought locally at this time of year, so the answer is: they were given to me, and since "not wasting" trumps "eating locally," I ate them.  And I enjoyed them (shhh).  But raspberries will not be making any more appearances in my oats until it's warm again.  Promise.  Bananas, on the other hand, will be making constant appearances in and out of my oats.  That's something I'm just not willing to give up.  Maybe I'll build a greenhouse.  Right, in all my spare time.

My goodness, there is even MORE to share, including 2 cooking classes, some more Dallas travel, and my discovery of kale, but I have to leave you wanting more, no?

The 5th Avenue of Shopping Malls

Wednesday night I met up with one of Joanna's incredibly gregarious friends who relocated to Dallas after spending some time in LA, Mexico, and NYC. He actually grew up in Rye, which somehow doesn't surprise me -- of course I would meet someone in Dallas who grew up 3 train stops away from me. Thank you, Westchester Jewish Connection!

I got to see the temple, which is the 3rd largest reform synagogue in the COUNTRY (yowza!), and I met some other people my age. I think I had actually started to forget how lonely I was out there.

David took me to this huge, gorgeous mall, which contains ALL the super expensive stores that I didn't even know would even be caught dead in a mall. I'm talking Bendel, Oscar de la Renta... serious stuff.

Then we grabbed dinner at one of the mall restaurants. I had a Teriyaki salmon salad (greens, tomatoes, red pepper, tofu, salmon, unidentifiable dressing on the side), which was lovely, and we chatted about consulting, the neighborhoods of Dallas, teaching English, Spain, Mexico, Spanish, Larabars (another SERIOUS fan), tummy sensitivities, and Lactaid pills. We even spoke IN Spanish a little! Needless to say, we totally hit it off. I'm really excited to have a buddy there and may try to stay an extra night one week to really get to see the city and go out?

It was such a welcomed break from all my usual time alone. I forgot how nice it is to be social during the week, and now I feel like I have someone who I could ask for advice on places to go and things to see. Really nice experience. Oh, and now I have a STELLAR new place to shop! Anthropologie, here I come!

Feeling Crunchy

Anyone else feelin' a little crunchy? This morning I channeled my inner hippie alongside trusty old Mark Bittman, and I made granola. I have been wanting cereal like whoa this week (crunchy, carby goodness), so this was a pretty good way of killing the craving. Cereal is up there with bread as something that I don't think should necessarily count as processed. Lucky Charms? Totally processed. Kashi Go Lean? Nah-ah. But if anything were going to turn me into a wholly unprocessed believer, it would be this granola.

I used the recipe linked here as a base, and for nuts I used walnuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, and slivered almonds. As an afterthought I added a little PB, but next time I would swap out some of the nuts for more PB. It bakes up really nicely and helps make clusters. I think I cooked it almost 40 mins, which was just on the verge of too toasted, but I like that taste. Next time I would do like 35 mins. And, yes, there will be a next time.


So good that I had to have a taste before I even baked it.

And 40 mins later... voila! I wish I could post a link to a scent, because this was amazing. Toasty and nutty and coconutty... I still hadn't had breakfast, so I got to sprinkle some on my oatmeal! Oats, 1/2 banana, thawed frozen wild blueberries, and my homemade granola.

A hectic day at work (er, at the apt) combined with some baking, (and a lot of nibbling...), and the morning flew by.

Lunch:
- polenta
- hot cherry pepper
- tomato
- avocado
- blackened (by accident) Cajun shrimp skewer from WF
- drizzle of honey

Lunch with a side of Lotus Notes:

Snack time came a little bit later. I was craving something sweet (chocolate???? pleeeeease?), so I settled for an organic pluot and some yerba mate tea. I wonder what's more "natural"... an organic pluot or a conventional plum. I love pluots, but the idea of melding fruits is pretty un-organic, if you ask me.


And... I forgot to take a picture of dinner, but I had a pretty awesome salad:
- arugula
- tomato
- avocado
- red onion
- salmon baked with soy sauce and whole grain mustard
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- lemon juice
- honey

Too many dressing flavors. Diane took a picture of her beautiful salad, also a Mark Bittman masterpiece, so I'll put up a picture of her dinner instead.

Mixed greens, blue cheese, raspberries, and walnuts! Yummm. I also made some sweet potato fries with olive oil, cumin, paprika, and chili powder. Best, easiest, feels-like-it-should-be-bad-for-you food ever.


Yowza. Long post! I was too busy to get to it earlier. I leave you with dessert: banana "soft serve"... frozen bananas tossed in the food processor. I also melted some almond butter to go with it. Totally felt like dessert. Success! Do you like my high bun look?



Off to bed now in preparation for Ariel's bday Brooklyn beer tour tomorrow morning! Woohoo! Gotta be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! I foresee photo ops!