Colleeeege!

I just started college, which is going phenomenally. As far as eating goes, I've done an excellent job of balancing the dining hall with preparing things on my own. My school provides various meal plan options, and the one I felt was best-suited toward me was the block-120 plan. In a nutshell, I get 120 meals per semester, which basically translates to 1 or 2 meals a day. I can also feed guests from my plan, which comes in handy when my boyfriend stops in to visit and we're hungry.

My school has an incredible amount of options when it comes to eating healthy. There are fresh salad bars in each dining hall, complete with spinach, romaine, sunflower seeds, blue cheese, feta, tons of vegetables, and even hummus. Grass-fed beef is served on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and there is a selection of certified organic produce daily. There's also a great vegetarian bar. As far as good food goes, we're covered. However, I don't want to rely on my food plan...I want to assert some independence and also take advantage of the kitchen on the third floor of my dorm. Thus, I will be cooking for dinner once or twice a week. Lunch and breakfast I throw together daily. None of this Freshman 15 business for me.

(I have to walk 2 miles too and from class daily...so I don't see why that would be an issue in the first place. =P

Soon I'll also be writing for the university's paper. As a reporter I'm only allowed to stick to a certain topic, but I AM allowed to pitch stories with the editor's approval. I'm hoping to pitch a story about healthy dorm eating...and incorporate a few yummy recipes.

I'll keep you posted on the new recipes I try!

Black Bean Brownies!

I've had a wild sweet-tooth lately.

I couldn't figure out what I wanted to bake, but I knew I wanted to bake something low-fat, innovative, and of course...delicious.

I've been thinking about black bean brownies for a while, so I looked up several recipes and picked my favorite. Voila!

Courtesy of allrecipes.com :

BLACK BEAN BROWNIES

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
3 eggs (I used cage free, my brownies are humane! Haha)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used 3 tbs applesauce instead)
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp instant coffee (optional, but I put it in)
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips (again, optional, but who DOESN'T need chocolate in brownies?!)


Basically, you combine all of the ingredients (minus the chocolate chips) in a blender and blend. It took about a minute for my blender to work all the ingredients down into a smooth liquid. I poured the mixture into a square baking dish (pre-greased, of course) and slid them into a 350-degree pre-heated oven. They take about 30 minutes to bake.

This is a TERRIBLE quality picture. My Blackberry wasn't doing it's typical awesome job of picture-taking. But here they are, in all their glory:


















They were sooo amazing. Besides from having a SLIGHTLY chalky nature (I suppose from the cocoa powder and beans) I couldn't tell the difference between these and real brownies. The lack of flour makes them gluten-free, so these are an outstanding option for anyone who is gluten-intolerant or doesn't want it in their diet.

My other motive for baking was this:

http://eatngroove.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/namaste-giveaway/

The twins' Namaste Giveaway! They're giving away a Namaste tote as well as assorted goodies. The muffin/toffee frosting mix they sampled looked great, so I figured I'd give entering their giveaway a shot. It's the first I've ever entered, and I probably read about 97973973 blogs that offer monthly giveaways. Wish me luck!

That's it for this post...I'm gonna go stuff myself silly on some more brownies. ;]

New Addictions

As the title/picture suggests, I'm officially addicted to coconut milk yogurt. It tasted just like regular yogurt, except creamier. It was incredibly coconutty, and was seriously just plain DELICIOUS. I think I'm going to try the coconut kefir next, yummmyyy.

I've also started trying my hand at barbeque tempeh. My first attempt, the sandwich on the bottom with pepperjack cheese and tomatoes, was spot-on. The only change I would've made was the barbeque sauce I used; the flavor just didn't complement the soy tempeh at all. It actually went against it and just made this weird kind of gross flavor combo, although it was more noticeable in the second barbequed tempeh sandwich, the one at the top with cucumbers. I still have some left over, so I'm going to probably marinade it for about an hour in a smokier flavored sauce and then bake it a tad longer. Overall it was not a bad attempt, and tempeh will for sure stay in my diet. It kept me full for a while, which is important considering I'm working 8-hour shifts daily.

I've got a ton more entries to write on food I've had in the last two weeks! I'm such a slacker with my blog. =[

Blah sinuses!

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past few days, I've been sick! =[


And thus not hungry...grrr.


I more than made up for that today, though:


SUSHI!

"Can you hold this while I go tinkle?"

(She'll be back in a moment folks....)


...^ Isn't my boyfriend great? Heehee...heeheee... (Aren't I?)

...Ignore him. =D


ANYWAY.















Yeah, sushi!

My sister and I went out today, as I had a mild case of cabin fever. We decided to venture to the sushi place down the road from our house, which I had been dying to try.

Each roll had spicy salmon on top (marinated in sriracha, it seemed), along with a small drop of the aforementioned INCREDIBLE chile sauce. The roll contained crab, cucumber, and some yellow vegetable that was bitter...I wasn't very fond...maybe it was yellow ginger? Not sure. Dipped lightly in soy sauce, this totally satiated my sushi craving.


For dinner, my sister and I decided to try something a little different:
















Salmon bagels.

I found the recipe here, on my cousin's blog.


This was a really simple recipe, and will definitely be something protein-packed to eat for lunch or breakfast when I leave for college.


As the video above will detail, the salmon bagels consist of a whole wheat bagel, cream cheese, canned (or oven-baked) salmon, hard-boiled egg, red onion, and avocado.


I started picking the red onion off mine. As much as I love it, it was a bit to harsh for the mellow tastes of this bagel.


Aside some hashbrowns with hot sauce, this dinner was delish.


Until next time, blogging world!

Indian food, you complete me.

So I've had chickpeas and curry (in London! Wooo!), Amy's paneer tikka masala, and a sample of some Indian my co-worker brought to lunch one day, but I've always been eager to to try an actual Indian buffet.

Today the aforementioned co-worker and I did just that, and decided to go to what I've heard is the best Indian buffet in our city, Bombay Bistro.

Look at this heavenly spread of deliciousness:

Alright, that's not such an impressive spread. This was my 2nd or 3rd plate. ;]

But THIS is an impressive spread:

I can't even tell you all that we ate. This place was all I wanted it to be, plus more. All of it was incredibly fresh, and healthy to boot.

...Except for maybe the spinach pakora. Fried spinach anyone? Oh well, it was still EXCELLENT. If you look at the first picture, the pakora is the crunchy-looking stuff to the left of the naan and to the right of the celery chicken.

They had a nice selection of chutneys, and I chose my favorites, the cilantro chutney and the yogurt chutney. I ate those with the naan. In addition I had basmati rice, coconut chicken curry, tandoori chicken, a potato/spinach combo (saag aloo?) and a few other things whose names escape me. I think I could eat Indian food for the rest of my life and be very content.

To top it all off, for dessert they had THIS:

Sev khir! To die for! It's coconut milk with vermicelli noodles and spices. I'm not sure what spices in particular, but they taste like the spices that go in chai tea, so I dubbed them chai spices. This was unbelievably great. I thought its appearance was odd at first but one taste proved otherwise.

I think I see a lot of Indian food in my future. I may experiment with making curries and maybe I'll try my hand at sev khir, because it doesn't look that difficult to make.

Jeez. This post has left me craving more Indian, big time...

Beach food!

My boyfriend and I traversed to the beach yesterday, and I insisted upon packing food for our trip.

No pictures of that unfortunately, but I packed us crackers with my favorite Sabra hummus, a nutella and organic peanut butter sandwich for him, a organic peanut butter and Crofter's fruit spread sandwich for me, peaches, and plenty of water.

We ate that and were hungry later on, so we ventured to one of our favorite restaurants: Mellow Mushroom. Yay!

He ordered a 10-inch white pizza for himself, while I opted for the half tempeh hoagie:

One word for this hoagie: perfection. Tempeh has been on my list of things to try for a while now, and what better place to try it than at Mellow Mushroom? It was tender and very meat-like; the taste of soy was very, very subtle. Whatever they marinated the tempeh in (I'm going to guess teriyaki) seriously did it justice. Combined with the grilled vegetables, saltiness of the feta cheese, and light pesto mayo, it was truly satisfying. The only thing disappointing was that they left off the sprouts. I was looking forward to those. Ohhh well.

This has nothing to do with my trip to the beach yesterday, but today I tried out Chobani's Pomegranate greek yogurt. I'll take Oiko's over Chobani almost any day, but this yogurt made me re-evaluate that decision.

I've only been able to find pomegranate at one particular grocery store in my city, and it's one that I absolutely detest, but with a 5/$5 deal, I simply couldn't turn down a visit. =]

Basically, not even going to lie, this tastes EXACTLY like the Trix yogurt of my youth. This is going to be a staple flavor from now on. It's right up there with my favorites: Oiko's honey and Oiko's caramel. Yummm. The only thing that was sort of odd was the pomegranate arils at the bottom, but I guess you can't have something pomegranate flavored without those. ;]

I'm baaack!

So I'm back after a long hiatus. =]



This morning I decided to make a lassi-okay, I could call it a smoothie but I was watching Bobby Flay and he made one so I was inspired-and it was awesomely delicious:






















In case you're unfamiliar with a lassi, it's a yogurt-based Indian drink. They can either be savory or sweet, and of course in this instance I made a sweet mango one.


Ingredients:

1/2 a mango
5 or 6 raspberries
1 container honey Oiko's greek yogurt
a splash of soy milk


I only used a splash of soy milk and it made the lassi really thick, but if you're looking for something creamier then use upwards of 1/4 cup.

I just blended everything together aaand there it was! A refreshing mango lassi on a warm summer morning. =]