No, Really...I'm Back

I know, I know, it' been a while. But I really am back this time. And I'm doing these things differently this time.

After much reflection, I realized that the way I ate when I started this blog was unhealthy. I was so driven to look healthy that I sacrificed my eating habits in the process. But I was losing weight while staying in the healthy part of my BMI, so it never occrred to me that I wasn't eating correctly. Unfortunately, after hitting my weight loss goal, my weight spiked back up.

Since the summer of 2010, I've put on a total of twenty pounds. Now I want to take it off and keep it off...the right way.

I recently started seeing a nutrition major at my university. She told me that I wasn't making it to 1200 calories every day and too much of what I was eating were empty calories. Plain and simple, I needed to make positive changes to my lifestyle.

Following my nutritionist's meal plan, I'm not only eating better, but I'm exercising differently, too. When I'm not taking a fitnes class, I was just doing thirty minutes on the treadmill and two sets of ab work. I'm now doubling my time on the treadmill, spending several minutes doing floorwork between thirty minute sets on the treadmill/bike.

Since making all of these changes, I have managed to drop eight pounds. Though through all this weight gain and loss I have stayed within my healthy BMI range, I am living proof that BMI is not the most accurate way to measure whether or not a person is overweight. My tiny frame shows gain and loss this dramatic in an obvious way, and I was tired of having a gut.

No, this blog is not going to become a weight loss blog. I want to continue to focus on healthy eating, but in a way that emphasizes eating the right way. I won't just feature a recipe, but I'll also include the vegetables to eat on the side.

If anyone has feedback on these changes, please share it!

Recipe: Couscous with chickpeas and fresh vegetables

Now that my summer classes are over, I have a lot of free time on my hands. This can only mean one thing as far as I'm concerned...more time to cook for myself! I decided to put my box of whole wheat couscous to work. The original recipe calls for cucumber, but mine went bad so I just omitted it. I'll still include it in the recipe, though, since I'm sure it's good with the addition.

Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 cup uncooked couscous
1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
2 roma tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced
1/4 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
garlic powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Bring water to boil in a medium saucepan. Stir in couscous, and remove from heat. Cover, and let stand about 5 minutes, until liquid has been absorbed. Fluff with a fork.
2. In a large bowl, mix couscous and garbanzo beans. Toss in tomatoes and cucumbers. Stir olive oil and vinegar into the mixture. Season with garlic powder, salt, and pepper

My New Favorite Gadget

This is a bench scraper. I was first introduced to this amazing tool by Carole Walter during her baking class. She used it for everything.

Bench scrapers can be used in the following ways:
1. level off dry goods when measuring them

2. making slits in dough

3. transferring delicate dough/flipping said dough over

4. cleaning the flour off your workspace during and after kneading dough

Bench scrapers are fantastic tools and far from expensive-I bought a large one for myself for $7.

Off topic, but I recognize that I should have preceeded my last post with an explanation for my hiatus. Well, here are the reasons:
1. grad school sucks. no, really. I have no life now because of my classes. I'm registering for my summer and fall classes soon, so I'm hoping for an easier schedule before I lose my life to student teaching.

2. work. I'm still working twenty hours a week at my retail job, which sucks away my free time during the weekend.

3. vacation. I just got home about a week ago from a ten day trip to Israel. It was amazing and I cannot wait to go back.

An Homage to my Vacation

Exactly a week ago, I returned from a trip to Israel. It was absolutely incredible-an experience I will never forget. In honor of the ten days I spent there, I will share my ten reasons why I love not only Israeli food, but middle eastern food in general.

1. chickpeas
Or for that matter, food made from chickpeas-hummus and falafel, to be exact. I still dream about my first Israeli falafel. It was perfect...crispy, but still moist on the inside and seasoned to perfection.

2. the spices
As a vegetarian, it is all too easy to fall into a routine of bland, unseasoned vegetables. That is not a problem with middle eastern food. The food is spiced to perfection, in that it doesn't sacrifice flavor in the process.

3. legumes
Vegetarians sometimes claim it's hard to find good sources of protein. That is not a problem in this area. Quite honestly, I've never seen so many different uses of legumes outside of Indian food.

4. iced coffee
Some may not consider this a food, but they have clearly never tried Israeli iced coffee. It is nothing like the American version, where it is brewed, cooled, and served on ice. Israeli iced coffee tastes almost like a milkshake.

5. Bamba
Popular Israeli snack food. It was first described to me as cheetos with peanut butter in the middle. There is one flavor that tastes like that, but there are a wide variety of flavors to choose from, ranging from chocolate bamba to barbeque bamba.

6. the tomatoes
I don't know why, but the tomatoes I ate in Israel were almost in a world of their own. They tasted as if they were picked the morning before I ate them.

7. pop rock chocolate
self-explanatory.

8. mango sauce
I discovered this on one of our last days in a shwarma restaurant outside of tel aviv. Everyone had their own way of describing how it tasted, but we all loved it.

9. Bagels
Let me tell you something about Israeli bagels: they are amazing. You can buy them off a food cart, where you are also given a small cup of spices to dip the bread in. It is absolutely amazing.

10. hummus
I ate it so often it deserves to be mentioned twice.

A Weekend Well Spent

This past weekend I had the honor of taking a two day baking class with renowned cookbook author, Carole Walter. It was an amazing experience that I will remember forever.

The first thing you should know about Carole is that she does not let her age get the better of her. She rolls in on her electric scooter, props herself up on the counter, and commands the class. She reminded me of Julia Child's personality a bit in that she is outspoken and strong-willed. The look she gave me when I said that I don't own an electric mixer will always be burned in the back of my mind

Our first day was spent focusing on dough. We learned two doughs that served as the base for the recipes we covered: sweet dough and croissant dough. The great thing about these doughs is that you can make them ahead of time and freeze them so you can always have them on hand. In the interest of time, Carole demonstrated the croissant dough, and we all made our own sweet dough. We also shaped several croissants, some of which we ate that afternoon. The others were consumed at the beginning of day two.

Things were much more intense on day two. We were put in teams of three and given a specific coffeecake recipe. My team was assigned an apricot braid, which we got a lot of compliments on by the teaching team. As people finished their assigned recipe, we all filled and shaped pain au chocolats.

After a lunch break, we tasted all of the coffecakes we made-swedish tea ring, apricot braid, cheese kuchen, crumb buns, babka, pain au chocolat, brioche, and croissants.

I'm definitely looking forward to having company soon so I can bake these for people!

Recipe: Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Hummus

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

After a month long hiatus, which was spent being ridiculously stressed out over school and three part-time jobs, I have finally found the time to cook something that didn't include sugar and flour as ingredients.

I had some friends over last night for a movie night and decided that I wanted to serve something different than popcorn. I had already made mint chocolate cookies, so I wanted something more on the savory side.

That something turned out to be hummus.

picture to come soon-I promise!

Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup sundried tomatoes, drained
1/4 cup shredded fresh basil

Directions:
in a blender, combine garlic, salt, tahini, and lemon juice
add chickpeas and olive oil and blend until smooth, scraping the sides of the blender occasionally.
add sundried tomatoes and basil, blend until fully mixed
refrigerate for at least an hour before serving

Recipe: Whole Wheat Strawberry Banana Muffins

Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to snap a picture of these before my coworkers ate them all. I plan to make them again in the future, so next time I'll try to take a picture!

My inspiration to bake these was pretty simple: I had an excess of strawberries and bananas in my kitchen! I also still have a lot of whole wheat flour left over from my thanksgiving pumpkin dinner rolls.

The original recipe called for frozen strawberries, but I opted to use fresh strawberries, instead.

ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 bananas, mashed
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup sliced strawberries

directions:
1.Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease 16 regular muffin cups, or line with paper liners.
2.In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, applesauce, oil, brown sugar, vanilla and bananas. Combine the flour, baking soda and cinnamon; Stir into the banana mixture until moistened. Stir in the strawberries until evenly distributed. Spoon batter into muffin cups until completely filled.
3.Bake for 20-30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops of the muffins spring back when pressed lightly. Cool before removing from the muffin tins.