Photo Importing Setbacks

I have so much to share with you all about Rosa Mexicano and the sandwich I made for snack this afternoon, but I can't find my photo card reader!  So, while I frantically look for it, here's a little something to tide you over in the meantime:

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"Never Go to the Grocery Store on an Empty Stomach"

I understand this phrase.  I really do.  Because if you go to the grocery store and you're hungry, your irrational stomach is going to take over your rational mind that is telling you to stop buying all of this junky food.  Because if you buy this food, you'll eat it.  And then you'll hate yourself when you have to run even more due to your guilty conscience and desire to wear a swimsuit this summer.

Summer is way too close for comfort.

So anyways, what I was saying was that I definitely understand this phrase.  But what if you go to the grocery store after you've been in class for two and a half hours, given a tour to some prospective Fordham students, dropped off a percussion book at the theatre, and gotten some library books for your 15-page paper due next week?  What if you don't even realize that you're hungry until you enter the store and come to the horrible realization that you are, in fact, ravenous??

I'll tell you what.  You'll end up with these:

Yeah, you read them right.  "Fully Loaded Baked Potato" flavored potato chips.  What have I gotten myself into?

Well, I've had Kettle Brand chips before, and I do absolutely love them.  As the brand suggests, they are kettle-cooked, which I definitely prefer to your traditional greasy chip.  Also, Kettle Foods is all about making all-natural food that just tastes great.  There are no GMO's, no gluten, no trans fats.  So, when I end up buying a bag of chips at the store, at least I know that I'm not getting any weird additives in my food.

As for the flavor, it wasn't as strong as I had imagined.  It tasted really similar to Sour Cream & Onion flavor, with a hint of bacon flavor every once in awhile.  There are 13 other flavors of chips as well, from Death Valley Chipotle to Yogurt and Green Onion to regular old unsalted flavor.  You can check them all out at the website: www.kettlefoods.com.

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So, there's your lesson for today, everyone.  Take heed next time you go to the grocery store!  Once I find my card reader, there are lots more fun things to come, I promise!  Wish me luck!

A Very Gluten-Free Birthday

So I told you yesterday that I was baking a cake for the first gluten-free birthday that we’re celebrating, and guess what?  It turned out pretty good!  I used a store-bought mix, which made it a lot easier, but next time I definitely want to try to make it from scratch. 

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How to make it:

I bought Pamela's Classic Vanilla Cake Mix at Whole Foods (have you ever been to Whole Foods?  They have EVERYTHING!) and I was pretty happy with the result.  I made a traditional vanilla cake, but the cool thing is that on the back of the package, Pamela’s tells you how to make lots of other baked goods by using simple variations, which I definitely want to try.  You can make everything from lemon cakes to Snickerdoodles!

To the mix, you just add eggs…

 

…1/3 cup of oil…

 …and 1/2 cup of water.  Then mix and pour into a greased cake pan.  I ended up baking mine for about 26 minutes, and it seemed just right.

When it first came out, it seemed a little spongey and poofy on the top.  After awhile (because it was so, so hot in my apartment) it got really sticky, so I put it in the fridge and covered it until the next day.  This helped it from being too sticky to frost.

I also  bought frosting at Whole Foods, and I had used this kind before.  It’s made by Cherrybrook Kitchen, and they make many other dairy free/gluten free products as well.  My only complaint is that it is really sticky – kind of a cross between frosting and clear icing.  Again, I definitely want to make my own next time, but this worked.

You can also color this icing!  Most food coloring is safe for GF/DF, I have found, but you should definitely check the label (and the tube itself to make sure it isn’t contaminated!).  I picked green…because it’s Joe’s favorite color!

Finally, I bought these 365 Vegan Chocolate Chips (a Whole Foods brand) as an experiment, and guess what?  They taste EXACTLY like regular chocolate chips.  They contain soy rather than milk, but they’re delicious, and I have to say that I’ve been sneaking some on the sly.  I melted them in the microwave, added a tiny bit of oil, and drizzled the chocolate over the cake before I wrote on it.  Plus, once I refrigerated it, the chocolate hardened… it was yum yum!

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The end result:

The cake was very well received among our gluten-free dairy-free birthday boy and all of his non-food-allergic pals.  It was denser than I expected, so I couldn’t eat a lot of it, but I definitely kept picking off the chocolate pieces and eating them.  So was Joe, which he hasn’t been able to do in a long, long time (he was dairy-free even before he was gluten-free!).

I didn’t prefer the frosting to homemade frosting just because it was so thick, so I’ll have to improve on that, but I’ll bet it would be really good as a glaze on breakfast baked goods like scones.  It’s better in moderation than in excess!

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOE!  I hope your 21^st birthday was all you hoped, and I hope that this birthday cake made up for the one you didn’t have last year.  And I promise to go all gluten-free Betty Crocker on you next year and make an even BETTER cake… just as long as I don’t have a 15-page paper due the next day.

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But Joe’s birthday isn’t done!  We’re going out to a great restaurant tomorrow night, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you.  Seriously, you’ll die.

Also, I went out to the grocery store right after class to pick up stuff for not just one… but TWO (hopefully) great sandwiches that I’ve been thinking about for the past week.  And one of them is grilled cheese!

Kashi = Love

I hate running.  I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.  But I do it anyway because its something that every person should be able to do and also because this cooking blog has not always been conducive to practicing moderation with food.  This is mostly because, first, I have to cook recipes and then eat them in order to tell you about them.  Then, I have to write and format the blog posts, which includes looking at pictures of food and making myself hungry.  And finally, when I get sick of cooking and eating and taking pictures, I have to look at other food blogs and restaurant websites in order to have other things to write about.  This also, inevitably, makes me hungry.

So, what's a girl to do?  She makes herself work out, despite the nagging voice telling her to hit the snooze button and stay in bed longer.  Because I work out in the mornings (due to my insanely busy schedule), I try to eat a little bit of something and drink some water so that I can have early-morning energy.  Until recently, I was eating Clif Bars (which are also delicious and filled with good stuff), but they were too much chocolate for the morning.

And then.  I found these.

Oh, yeah, baby.  Kashi TLC ("Tasty Little Chewies"... it makes me laugh because Joe's adorable dog is named Chewy) bars, in three different flavors.  They are...

Cherry Dark Chocolate.  I take these suckers to work with me for the mid-day snack.  For some reason, I don't like taking my lunch break until at least 1:30pm (I think it's because I'm used to starving myself at work, after the busy days at the Today Show didn't let me have lunch until 3pm), so I need something around noon to keep me going.  You can really taste the oats in this one, but it's good!

Raspberry Chocolate.  These are my favorite for snackin'.  There are big chunks of raspberry inside, and the fudgey layer on top gives me just enough chocolate to get my hand away from the leftover Easter candy.  Wait... what Easter candy??  Did I just say that?  Nahhh....

Dark Mocha Almond.  And this one's my favorite for workouts.  It's not too sugary for my stomach in the morning, and the almonds really give you a good dose of what you need to get going.  Plus...

...look at the back of this box!  It tells you all the reasons why this granola bar is a super awesome way to fuel up before a workout.  6 grams of protein?  4 grams of fiber?  I'll take it.

I also love the "Tasty Little Crunchy" bars; they're a little bit bigger and have a chocolate layer on the bottom.  They're great for a post-lunch snack, but they're a little bit too big to eat all at once.  I've tried the chocolate peanut-butter bars.  They're great!

For more flavors and other products, check out www.kashi.com.  They make all of their products by the philosophy that food should be natural and taste great, which are two really important things to me.  So, excuse me while I go eat my Kashi bar... and then (maybe) go for a run!

One of those days...

So, you know when you have one of those days when everything's just a little more stressful at work than it normally is?  Where nothing is particularly bad, but you're reaching into the candy bowl at 11:30am and you feel like you've been looking at the computer screen for your whole life?  So much so that your eyes start bugging out because you just can't focus on a singly Excel spreadsheet cell?

Well, it was one of those days today.  Therefore, dinner was some straightforward pasta and sauce (actually, I made the sauce from scratch a couple of months ago and froze it... it was delish!  I'll give you the recipe when it's not "one of those days") and I can't bring myself to finish the last Easter post right about now.  I swear, it's almost done... just needs a little bit more tweaking.

While you're waiting on baited breath for the strawberry cheesecake post, I'll leave you with this:

It's the pasta we used tonight!  It's the best GF pasta I've found to date (I ate it instead of making my own batch... again, one of those days) and it's made completely of brown rice.  Literally, the ONLY ingredient is brown rice flour!  I'm not exactly how that works, but it does, and it cooks quickly.  Lundberg Farms has some other great products (risotto, flour, couscous, lots of stuff!) that I want to check out soon, too.  You should too!

Cheesecake recipe post tomorrow... promise!

Product Feature: TJ's Chicken Sausage

I first must start off with a big APOLOGY to everyone for my absence recently.  Because I was performing in a production this weekend, I had no time… which means no cooking OR writing!  Therefore, I have been very lonely and hungry this week without my blog.  However, I am back, and next week is spring break, so be prepared to have more updates than usual.  Mom and Dad are big fans of having their own chef during breaks.

Today’s post features a product from one of my new favorite stores: Trader Joe’s.  I’ve never seen a Trader Joe’s near me in Connecticut (the closest is over a half hour away), but when Joe and I were on Long Island a few weekends ago we made a trip.  Trader Joe’s has products with great quality for a low price, which is really all that you could ask for!  If there was a TJ’s near my house, I would go there ALL the time, and if you haven’t been, you should check it out too.

We discovered a product that is going to make me go back to TJ’s again and again just to try all of the flavors: Trader Joe’s Chicken Sausage!  And this chicken sausage was not just plain ol’ “boring” sausage; it came in many, many different flavors.  Here are some of them:

• Sun-dried Tomato
• Spicy Italian
• Sweet Apple
• Sweet Apple and Champagne
• Spinach and Feta
• Others that I can’t remember!

Now, what are the benefits of chicken sausage over regular sausage?  Personally, I like the taste better because it doesn’t have as much of a “bite” as regular sausage (but that is my personal preference).  But chicken sausage is much healthier and lower in fat than regular sausage, and this TJ’s chicken sausage is gluten free and mostly dairy free, depending on the flavor.  Also, it is pre-cooked, so no need to boil it before sautéing it in the pan.

As for the flavors, Joe got Spicy Italian and I got Sweet Apple.  It was a terribly difficult decision.  Joe’s review of the Spicy Italian was slightly lackluster; he said that it was definitely good, but it wasn't spicy enough.  Ultimately, it didn't meet our high expectations.  However, we both tried the Sweet Apple and it was DELICIOUS!  It had actual apple chunks in the sausage, which made it really sweet and something that was very unique.

All in all, I will definitely be back to TJ's soon in order to get, among other things, more TJ's Chicken Sausage.  I'll let everyone else decide... what is your vote for the next flavor I should get?  I'm debating between sun-dried tomato and spinach/feta; something savory this time!