Foodie Birthday

I love the fact that I have an August birthday. This year my birthday celebration ended up lasting a few weeks (lucky me!) and was culminated with a day dedicated to delicious local food - buying it, talking to the producers, cooking, photographing and eating it!

Orange Juice and Other Ramblings...

Today is the last day of my summer vacation. I can hardly believe it. Although this summer didn't involve any jet setting across the globe (like last summer), I enjoyed this vacation possibly more than any other I can remember. Summer vacation 2012 included a trip to Arizona to see my mom (Grand Canyon, Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, and Prescott), spending some time in Kansas City with friends, heading north to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to visit friends and family (bachelorette parties and a wedding, canoe trip with my dad in the Boundary Waters, celebrating my sisters birthday, catching up with college and grad school friends, camping, listening to live music, and getting a little time to RELAX!).

Gratitude, Part 3 (Finale!)

Floating down a crystal clear river in a canoe is one of my all time favorite pastimes.  

Gratitude, Part 2 (Side Dishes)

What springtime feast would be complete without fresh asparagus and a batch of red potato salad? These are both simple dishes that I make pretty regularly.

Gratitude, Part 1

                       

I'm back....with strawberry pie!! 

Mercimek Köftesi (Red Lentil Kofte)

Food prepared by and shared with friends is my favorite kind. Since starting medical school, I haven't done much cooking with others, mainly because all of my cooking buddies are scattered across the globe. So I was excited this week when a new foodie friend of mine taught me how to make Turkish vegetarian kofte (which paired perfectly with the baba ganoush that I recently posted). I found this kofte recipe especially interesting because the ingredients were all very familiar due to my background with Lebanese cooking, yet I had never tasted anything like it. 

Garlicky Baba Ganoush

I took my Cardiopulmonary II midterm earlier this week, and it just so happens that it was my best exam score yet! After the test, I did something that I've been dreaming about doing for two weeks...something that many of my fellow medical students also enjoy after a long stressful section of studying. Yup, that's right, you guessed it... I went grocery shopping (don't worry, I also went out and enjoyed KC's finest brew later that night)!

Glögg Blög

It may have made more sense to post this BEFORE the holidays. Looking on the bright side... I guess I'm just early for next year. For New Years Eve, I asked my dad (who works at a Scandinavian goods importing company in northern MN: http://www.bergquistimports.com/) to bring home a bottle of a delicious traditional Swedish mulled wine called glögg. Unfortunately, there must have been a run on the stuff and so dad came home with no glögg in hand. I decided to find a recipe and to attempt my own batch from scratch. I found the following recipe online and made a few changes. The final product was perhaps the most delicious mulled wine type beverage I've ever tasted!

Curry New Year

I spent New Years Eve day with two of my favorite people...and my favorite canine. The day was, of course, full of good eats. For dinner, I decided to make a meal that was a favorite for me during my first semester of medical school: curried potatoes and kale with tofu. This dish is pretty simple to throw together in a hurry. The curry spices give off the most delicious aroma, so be prepared!

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.