Butternut Goodness

It's a beautiful balmy day (31F with flurries) back home in northern Wisconsin. I've been lucky enough to have spent the past two and a half weeks on the road visiting friends and family from Pennsylvania to Arizona and many places in between. I've also had delicious food at every destination: tamales and chipotle black beans in Arizona, spicy peanut wrap and tasty Belgian beer in Pittsburgh, Lebanese food in Michigan, a hearty tofu scramble in Minneapolis, wild rice pilaf and vegan blueberry muffins in Duluth, and lots more!

Vegan Soul Food, part 2

View from the apartment window - a departure from the usual clear sunny fall days we've been having in KC this fall

I love fall. It's my favorite season by far. The clear blue Midwestern skies, the crisp and vibrant leaves and the cool breezes catch me by surprise and flood my senses with beauty every year. I'm also a fan of fall because I love the bounty of the fall harvest.

This next recipe helped warm me up on a particularly chilly and rainy fall day (the only one we've had so far in KC).

Vegan Soul Food, part 1

I made it through Musculoskeletal and now we're on to Cardiopulmonary I. What better way to kick off the new section than to make a batch of tasty black-eyed pea fritters?! My next few blog posts will be recipes from a cookbook my sister sent me last month: Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry (Thanks Krsitin!). What I love about this book is that Terry adds personal stories to go along with each recipe and he also suggests a music, art, and even reading selection to "pair" with each delicious creation.

Thai Obsession

The past three weeks have been a hectic whirlwind of lectures, trying to stay caught up, laundry piles growing out of control, studying, studying, and more studying! I took my first midterm on Monday - it was scary simply because I had no idea what to expect. My dad's mantra applied to this midterm, as it applies to most challenges in my life: put your mind to it, and you will do great.

A New Direction

It's a beautiful summer night, the moon is huge in the sky, and I'm reflecting on changes that are taking place in my life right now. You'll notice a new theme on my blog. I've decided to cut animal products from my diet.

I'm Back!

Hello my fellow food lovers! I'm back from the abyss otherwise known as writing and defending my thesis, walking 400 miles across Spain, moving across the country, and starting my first week of medical school!

Ever Hopeful

Today I realized something. As stressed out as I may get, and as crazy as some parts of my life seem, deep down, I remain an optimist. Phew - I'm glad! Tonights gray and stormy skies that threatened winter storm helped me reach this conclusion. As I sat eating my dinner, looking out the window, I felt an unexpected sense of joy, hope, excitement. I wondered why on earth I would feel this way, since the view outside my window appeared to be a drab drizzly March evening in Michigan. After a few Minutes, I realized that upon paying closer attention, the view outside my window was much more than drab and dull. The trees looked different. The tips of all the branches were swollen (not quite buds yet, but almost). The grass was just a little bit greener than it was even two weeks ago. I love early spring for this reason. It's full of hope, full of anticipation.


So, tonight, embracing the spirit of spring, I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning. No, I did not pull out the vacuum or scrub the bathroom tiles. Tonight was spring cleaning for my freezer. After a little bit of rummaging, I found a bag of frozen rhubarb from last summer. Perfect! I decided to make a double batch of rhubarb muffins. These muffins are only very slightly sweet and they make a wonderful breakfast. The rhubarb gives the muffins a little zing - the kind you feel in the back of your mouth (think sour patch kids). Happy spring, friends!

Reunited and it Tastes So Good

I'm back from my seminar induced hiatus - and I'm so glad to be reunited with my kitchen. Somehow this past month I've managed to subsist mostly on free food provided by my department and by friends. There was very little cooking (other than toast and oatmeal) going on in my kitchen. The seminar is done now and it went splendidly. The faculty posed some tough questions, but I was able to engage them and actually provide coherent answers. I guess this means I've learned something in graduate school! It was a great feeling to be able to engage in conversation with faculty who specialize in everything from Gestational Diabetes to Nutritional Immunology.

Move Over Dough Boy

Last weeks post inspired me to revisit an old favorite from the Simply in Season cookbook. I realize that so far all of my posts indulge the carbohydrate lover in me (at least most of the grains are whole - nutrition major guilt coming out?). Regardless, I'm in a baking groove and I think I'll just go with it.

Top 5

Happy Sunday (day after World Nutella Day: http://www.nutelladay.com/)!

English Muffins with a Twist!

What perfect timing! We got a decent accumulation of snow last night and the consensus around these parts this morning was to stay home and bask in the peace of this snow day.  It also happens that today was the day that I wanted to try out my sourdough English muffin recipe. And since there was a foot of snow outside, I figured that staying in and baking was in order (xc skiing and birthday dinner with Em Hill at Soup Spoon are also on the list!).  Oh, and I'm also working on my IRB training renewal today (has it really been two years already?!).

The process for this sourdough started a week ago on 1/26. I mixed up the starter (flour, water, yeast, honey) and set it out on the counter to ferment. Every morning I stirred it up to mix in the liquid that had separated. By the fifth day, the mixture had taken on an almost sweet, yeasty, beer like smell.  I figured this was a good sign.

The Perfect Pancake

From Sunday, January 30, 2011

Last week's recipe yielded 6 delicious (and a bit gooey) cardamom scented pancakes. Over the course of the week I realized how handy leftover pancakes really are. I took a pancake with me to work every morning, tossed it in our office toaster oven, and had a hearty homemade breakfast on campus by 8 am.  Perfect. So I decided that this week I would make pancakes again, A LOT of pancakes.  Considering the time investment of making the mother load batch, I decided to stick to a tried and true recipe, one that I knew would not disappoint.

The first time I made this recipe, I was living on a farm in northern Minnesota. The mornings were early and cold - and we had plenty of winter squash on hand. So, naturally I started experimenting with winter squash recipes: winter squash ravioli, winter squash soup, winter squash bars, and the list goes on.  This creation is one of my favorites from that fall.

Also, on a side note, I used the immersion blender that dad and Beth got me for Christmas for the first time today. I LOVE it!  Perfect for puréeing squash. 

When it's 3° F out, there's only one thing to do: MAKE PANCAKES!

From Sunday, January 23, 2011.

Well, I didn't get to breakfast for dinner this week but I suppose breakfast for breakfast is a close second. After spending the past 5 days transcribing interviews for my thesis to the point of finger cramping and typing failure, I decided that it was time to reward myself.  I was super excited to see a plethora of pancake recipes last week in Mark Bittman's NYT post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/dining/19mini.html. What got me in even more of a pancake craving frenzy was that there was a recipe for cardamom pancakes!  Cardamom, my friends, is one of my two all time favorite spices (the other one is cumin). Call me a food nerd, geek, foodie, whatever, but, spices make me inexplicably happy.

After receiving some valuable input from Miriam, cherry pie baker extrodinaire, I decided to alter the recipe and use cherries instead of apricots and to use a bit of almond extract instead of the nuts.  

Diagnosis: Delicious (and a bit gooey)!

Getting Started

Hi friends! I've decided to take the plunge and start this thing up. After a short hiatus from my usual kitchen adventures last fall, I've returned and I'm documenting my comeback. I've been posting some of my recent recipes to facebook and I've decided that this page might be a more friendly format. I hope this blog inspires you to get into the kitchen and dive into some cooking adventures of your own!


My first few posts are repeats from my recent facebook notes.  More to come shortly.