Category: Food

Green Machine

Sadie2 Comments

This Summer I’m surviving largely on salads.  I have extreemly limited cooking capabilities in my kitchen, not even a microwave, combined with zero cooking energy when I get home from work and the gym.  I usually get home around 8pm, so I need something ready to go because I’m not waiting around for a delivery, or trying to prepare anything.  I’m not a fast food burger kind of gal, so my go-to options are usually a pre-made salad, salad bar, or soup from the prepared foods section of a grocery store; or Panera.  Both are quick, easy, delicious, and affordable.

Confession: I suck at buffets.  For three reasons.  1. Sometimes I take the phrase “all you can eat” too seriously.  2. I don’t pick a theme or flavor profile, and while I love a good garbage salad, I manage to pick opposing ingredients.   I usually start in one direction, like greens/craisons/pecans/blue cheese/apples, then I see salsa and I want to turn around and make a southwestern salad so I just add it to the pile.  I have the same problem at fro yo places.  3. I need to remind myself to add nutritional value with a variety of veggies and protein.  Just cheese, nuts, and lettuce does not a healthy salad make.

To trouble shoot my problems, I do my best to take a couple warmup laps around the salad bar to decide the optimal combination based on the ingredients available (this tip is in every healthy eating publication ever).  And I also try to pile on the lettuce so it will fill me up and add negligible calories, making the “all you can eat” a little safer for me.

This summer I also have a decent salad bar at work, which I treat myself to once or twice a week (otherwise I try to bring my lunch).  I feel kind of nerdy though because I love it, and a lot of my co-workers see the salad bar as the boring option for lunch.

My Favorites:

Salad Bar: Whole Foods ( I typically go with, romaine, fresh spinach, pecans, blue cheese, craisons, squash, cucumbers, black beans, red onions, maybe bell peppers, and some oil & vinegar)

Fast Casual Salad: Thai Chopped Chicken Salad at Panera

btw, have you seen the new to-go containers?

Salad ingredients I love: edemame, craisons, salsa, red onions

Salad ingredients I hate: olives, avacado, bacon, egg

Fave Dressing: oil and vinegar or a lite raspberry vinagrette

Least Fave Dressing: french

At the moment I’m favoring the cheese/nut/fruit type of salad, but I’m also a sucker for a good greek or southwestern salad.

What kind of salad are you loving right now?

The Right Decision

Sadie1 Comment

Growing up people always tell you that everyone is good at something.  When you are grown, the task is to figure out what you’re good at and leverage those skills into a career.  Easier said than done.

What do you mean I can’t make a career out of crocheting doilies and telling my brothers what to do?

But that’s what I’m good at…

Grad school has come in handy in this respect, it helps me turn bossiness into “leadership skills” and crocheting into “creative thinking,” but it’s not so helpful with my baking habit.  When I decided to make a cream cheese pound cake last weekend, however, I knew I should turn to a specialist.  Considering the traditional ingredients in pound cake, along with the addition of cream cheese, one name came to mind: Paula Deen.

It was the right decision.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

yields 2 8×4 loaves or 1 tubular bunt cake

From Paula

Ingredients

  • 3 sticks room temp butter (1 1/2 cups)
  • 1 (8oz) package cream cheese
  • 3 cups sugar
  • 1/2 tsp almond extract (or vanilla if you’re not an almond fan)
  • 3 cups AP flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 6 eggs

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 325 and prepare pans.
  2. Cream together butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy.  Add sugar and extract, beat to combine.
  3. In a separate bowl combine flour and baking powder.
  4. Add one third of the dry ingredients to the wet along with two eggs.  Mix to combine.  Repeat process twice more.  Try not to over-mix (Also try not to eat all the batter before you bake it, it tastes very much like cream cheese frosting and is hard to resist).
  5. Pour batter into pans and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until tester comes out clean (mine took longer).

My advice: If you need to meditate on your own “special skills,” do it over a slice (or five) of this cake.  It will make for a much more positive experience.

This is what happens when you put you oven racks too close. But it didn’t detract from the taste!

Ice Cream Jubilee Cake

Carrie1 Comment

Here’s a cake that will simply make you smile. I know it makes me think of all the wonderful trips to the old fashioned ice cream parlor in Ocean City, NJ after a long night at the boardwalk. I would go there with my cousins and we would all order our favorite ice cream treats. Too be young again when the only worry in the world was if you should order your vanilla cone with chocolate or rainbow sprinkles!

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