As of RIGHT NOW.....this is no longer a food blog. but instead...just my regular old blog. no longer will i be restricted to just food recipes! (which i couldnt stick to on a regular basis. =/) but speaking of recipes, we're having a potluck for my Food and Environment class on Friday....and i just can't decide between yucca or curry cabbage!

Youd think that this being finals week, Id be more worried about exams and passing my classes. but.... i kind of hit this wall. and dont really care anymore. uh-oh!

it could be....because.....

im headed to Europe next week! Heres the travel itinerary:

Dresden, Germany May 3-22

Berlin, Germany May 22-25

Amsterdam, Netherlands May 25-30

Stuttgart, Germany May 30- June 3

Prague, Czech Republic June 3-9

Berlin, Germany June 9-12

Organic Farm:Bataholm, Sweden June 13-23

Organic Farm:hopefully, Sweden June 24-July 4

Stockholm, Sweden July 5-10

Budapest, Hungary July 10-13

Dubronvik, Croatia July 13-18

Milan & Venice, Italy July 18-23

Brussels, Belgium July 23-28

Madrid, Spain (mi gente!) July 28-Aug 5

Nueva York Aug 5- ?

Expect updates on a semi-regular basis! I plan on taking my laptop and will hopefully have internet in most places.

i have NO idea how im going to fit 3 months worth of clothes in my dad's hiking backpack.

The Treehouse Song

I counted all of the good things you are

and that list of charms was

longer than my chain of broken hearts

and when the day was done

I figured I had already lost

from the start – from the start

...baby we were made of gold.

Day One...

So, I am by no means a Catholic. But I just love giving things up for Lent!

So this year, I decided to go big. Im giving up high fructose corn syrup! Im really excited about this, because I think its going to force me to cook again! yay! I've been missing the kitchen and Im tired of eating Triscuits and other snacks. The time has come for real food again!

So today, for the first day of the 40 (I started a day late), I made some sauteed mushrooms and onions for breakfast that lasted me until linner (really late lunch/really early dinner).

Im lucky enough to have a roommate who loves to make salsa. He's made a fresh batch almost every week since the beginning of the year. Yeah, its awesome.

So for this part, I just used:

mushrooms

onions

garlic

salsa

Sauteed the onions in some olive oil for a little bit, and added the garlic, the shrooms and the salsa!

I put it on some (corn syrup-free) rice cakes that I had, since all the bread in the apartment has HFCS (its just too long to type!).....

For linner, I fried an egg and put the left over mushrooms on top of it! So good!

Just look at it! mmmmmm.

Southern Feasting!

So I went to a local farmers market last Wednesday, and it was so awesome!!! There were people selling sweet potatoes, homemade breads, okra, bitter melons (what!?) and all sorts of other things that i had never heard of before. Including something that looked like lettuce....but it was spicy!

The nice farmer that I bought the sweet potatoes from gave me 2 bitter melons to try them, but they went bad before I could cook them!!!

Anyways, I ended up coming home with okra, sweet potatoes, the bitter melons and my roommate bought some pineapple bread. It was delish.

In honor of these Southern foods, I decided to cook up a storm! Fried okra, and sweet potato & okra ....stuff. hahaha, I dont really know what the second one would be. It looked like it would make a great pie filling!!!

Ive only had fried okra from Shane's Rib Shack. And ohmygod. It was amazing. So i attempted to recreate its goodness....they must have a secret ingredient.

For the batter part, I used some flour, some red pepper flakes and some (okay, a lot) of curry! You could kiiind of taste the spiceyness.

I sliced up the okra, then dipped them in an egg (scrambled-like) and then in the flour. Then they were put onto the pan, which was full of hot oil! (Deep frying is not my thing...as you can tell by the burnt okra pictured above.)

It was fun, but I dont think Ill be trying that again anytime soon...they weren't nearly as good as the ones from the Rib Shack!

stuffed green peppers. mmmmm.

Ive been wanting to make stuffed peppers for the longest time....so I finally did! And they were yuuum.

Ingredients:

green bell peppers (or red. yellow. orange. ANY!)

barley (or rice. cous cous.)

onions

one tomato

a can of red kidney beans (or black. or corn. or garbanzos....really just any legume)

one apple (fun, no??)

some celery

minced garlic

curry powder

hot sauce (if you want it...)

some spicy brown mustard

a dash of balsamic vinegar

dried oregano and parsley

salt and peppa

I cooked the onions, garlic, tomato, apple, and some of the celery in a skillet with all the spices. Meanwhile, the barley was also being cooked. The oven was set at about 350. Cut around the stem of the pepper and pull out the stem and all of the seeds from the inside. Once everything is cooked a little, you can go ahead and mix the barley with the veggies (including the rest of that celery!) and the can of beans all together. Then cut the peppers open (unless youve got mad skills and can put the stuffing into the peppers without tearing them!), and spoon the mixture into the peppers.....put them in an oven safe dish, and set them in the oven for about half an hour or an hour....just check up on them every once in a while, and they should be fine!! Oh! Feel free to sprinkle some cheese on top of them, too!

VOILA! you now have....

STUFFED PEPPERS!

:]

Truffles

"When grandma used to make truffles, she would never give me the recipe. Probably because I was too short to reach the stove, and she didnt want me to burn my face off!" -Josh

Today, we made truffles! We decided to keep it simple, because we'd never made truffles before.....and we covered some in powdered cocoa, and some in chopped almonds. They came out delicious, and tasted like REAL truffles! (like from a store or something!)
Here's how we did it...

What you need:
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1/4 cup of butter
16 ounces of bittersweet chocolate
some cocoa powder & some chopped almonds for decoration!

Steps:
First, we chopped the bittersweet chocolate pretty finely, and put it in a bowl.....




next, we heated up the heavy cream and the butter in a medium saucepan (stirring, to make sure the cream didnt set.)....at the first signs of bubbles, we removed the cream&butter mixture and poured it into the chocolate, stirring it, and melting it. This made the ganache.



We covered the ganache with aluminum foil, and let it sit in the fridge for ........about 4 hours. Don't take it out too early, because sometimes it takes a little longer for it to set. After this, we just rolled the ganache into little balls, and covered them in cocoa powder and some in chopped almonds. Another thing to try would be to re-refrigerate the ganache balls and heat up a little bit more chocolate and cover the cold balls in the melted chocolate, and then roll THAT in the cocoa powder. (we didn't do that.)

TADA!!!

We had a bunch of left over chocolate, so we decided to make ....chocolate covered strawberries!
We just melted the chocolate in the microwave, and dipped the strawberries (and anything else that we had in the kitchen. everything is better with chocolate!) in it.........so good!