Sunday mornings are all about sleeping in, sumptuous breakfasts and a lazy day that follows. Sleeping in is a thing of the past in our house and so there is little energy left for sumptuous breakfasts too. Besides, we’re trying to be healthy this week, month, now. Healthy doesn’t have to be bland! I present to you … the easy vanilla parfait with strawberry vanilla stew, and a vanilla almond granola.
The vanilla yogurt was low fat — I refuse to eat anything non-fat because fats help you stay sated & are good for you in moderation. The strawberry vanilla stew was whipped up in 5 minutes while making Sophia’s whole-milk oatmeal (yum) and the granola was Bear Naked!
It is no longer summer outside, the holidays are coming and with them the cold and holiday parties. We decided to whip up a healthy breakfast in order to suppress the inevitable weight gain and stave off the wintery blues. I present to you: A whole grain english muffin topped with baby tomatoes, avocado and an egg (sunny side up). It was delicious and worth the effort.
We planned a nice celebration what with Sophia turning one. Although not exceptionally girly, I decided that a little tea party was in order to toast her with our family and friends. We sent out proper invitations and planned to serve tea sandwiches, scones and the likes. The day finally came last Saturday. All in all, after recuperating from the exhaustion of prepping and the hard work of celebrating, we’ve got pictures to look back on.
Today is Yom Kippur and tomorrow happens to be my mom’s birthday. I decided to bake a cake as a surprise to augment her already fairly significant dessert table. I know it is going to be a reverse dinner (much more dessert than savory foods) when she announces a menu of strudel, sochinskoe (more on that in a minute), apple cake and another layered vanilla cake. I realized that she is making this delicious break-the-fast meal and yet tomorrow is her birthday and no one really made plans to celebrate. I decided to make a birthday cake fit for a Bubbie: a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and a rich chocolate frosting from here.
Sochinskoe by the way, is another dessert that my mother learned to bake while we were in Baku. It is really a sweet pastry filled with nuts and sugar and vanilla. It is utterly divine and remains one of the two desserts (the other one is her famous strudel) that I have yet to master. After a little bit of googling, I found a comparable recipe and read that it happens to be an Armenian dessert. I shouldn’t be too surprised as there were many Armenians living in Baku in the late 80ies before the Karabakh Conflict. I was there and lived to see too much for a child my age. In any event… it is heavenly and maybe I’ll make it one of these days.
But this post is really about the cake… so here it is in parts and as a finished masterpiece.
I’ve been meaning to go on a healthy kick as of late and my latest trip to the grocery mart started out with the best intentions. I remembered to pick carrots and zucchini for the latest installment of Sophia’s soups and had every intention to pick up fish for our Thursday dinner. The fish counter was uninspired and uninspiring. I pushed ahead to the meat counter being incredibly tired of chicken and fairly lazy to wrestle a roast or complicated stew. When all was said and done, I walked out with some steak tips which were destined for my 20 minute stir fry. Why healthy? Well, we omitted rice and stuck to lots of green and orange veggies.
There is something incredibly inviting about a plate full of greens and ginger, scallion and garlic.
The beef is sliced in one inch chunks approximately (350 grams) and marinated for 15 minutes in 2 tbsp. of soy sauce.
I sear the beef in a hit skillet with peanut oil until almost done. Empty the skillet for these beauties:
After pouring a little water and covering to steam, I uncover and saute the garlic and ginger (incredibly generous portions of each) in a little sesame oil.
Everything is reunited in a pan and a sauce of 2tbsp. of soy sauce, 3 tbsp of hoisin sauce and 1 tbsp of sesame oil, 1 tbsp of potato starch and 2 tbsp of water is poured over. One quick toss, a sprinkling of scallions and shaved carrots and ta-da; Dinner is ready to be served.
The weeks seem to run by recently and when Friday finally comes around, I want nothing more than an easy fun evening that doesn’t involve a complicated dinner and much clean up. Fish seems to fit these requirements quite well and putting an asian twist on it certainly makes you feel like you’ve instantly travelled to a far away place. So here we have hubby’s Steamed Rockfish. It is actually topped with Ginger and Serrano Pepper and drizzled with sizzling oil and a homemade soy sauce reduction.
Fresh, healthy, low-carb and high in protein seems to be the mantra for those who are looking to maintain or better yet shed some unwanted pounds. I’ve long held on to this wonderful easy summer salad that packs a delicious flavor punch and is also a very fast meal. 1 can of tuna packed in oil, 1 can (15 oz) of cannellini beans, 1/4 of a medium sized red onion (diced) and a 1/3 cup of italian parsley (chopped). Drain the tuna and reserve the oilive oil in a separate bowl. Rinse the beans and add to the tuna. Add chopped parsley and diced onion. Drizzle some red-wine vinegar into the reserved olive oil, whisk to emulsify and pour of the salad. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy! As a rule of thumb, a balanced dressing should have 3x the olive oil as it does acid (vinegar).
By the time Friday comes around, I am mentally checking into the weekend. I like to make sure the house is clean, laundry is done and groceries are at least purchased. If that sounds like a tall order, it usually is. By dinner time, I am exhausted but oh so happy that the weekend has finally arrived. Back in the old days when hubby and I lived for ourselves and didn’t have an infant to take care of, Friday night dinner was within easy reach. This was especially so since we lived in the heart of Philadelphia within ten minutes of most neighborhoods and their specialties. Easy dinner takes a little more planning now and going out to dinner is a little more daunting than it seems worth. So the simple solution? A no fuss, no mess, 20-minute meal. I spotted beautiful Prince Edward Mussels at the grocery store and decided to recreate a favorite of ours from Monk’s in Philadelphia. The muscles at Monk’s are prepared in all different ways, but in our opinion, the simpler the preparation the better the end result. The exact recipe can be found here, but as usual, a picture speaks 1000 words. Best enjoyed with a white wine or a Wheat Beer.
The sun was still out before Sunday’s torrential rains and nothing screams springtime, grilling and outdoors more than bagna càuda. The name of the dish literarly means “hot dip” and it is a great idea for serving as an appetizer to hold off hungry guests while you frantically finish preparing a delicious meal. I was inspired to make this while my parents were visiting this weekend so we could reminisce with them about our 2008 Côte d’Azur trip. Reminisce is all we’re planning on doing as something tells me international, intercontinental travel with an infant is more trouble than it is worth. Lastly, this is also a nod to my anchovies as big flavor creators post.
There I was, looking at the extra large batch of baked sweet potato I had made for Sophia. I quickly realized that freezing it seemed like a hassle. Besides, who knows how well the sweet potato will fare the freezer. I decided that since we are making our own baby food and it is really just a slightly more pureed version of what we eat anyways, there is nothing wrong with making our meal out of Sophia’s. I decided to also use up some goat cheese we’d had in the refrigerator and the idea of making fried balls of goodness (like Arancini) was born. I took the mashed sweet potato, added an egg, salt, pepper and about a half a cup of flour. The dough that it became, was still very wet and sticky. I used two spoons to shape canelle-like balls inserting rolled up goat cheese inside. Once shaped, each one was rolled in Panko. The faux arancini were ready for a quick bath in the hot oil.They were divine served hot! But then again, what fried food isn’t?
