That's MY piece of pizza!

When I was a kid my mom use to put mushrooms on her fourth of the family pizza.  Everyone would avoid her two slices and leave the pieces right next to the mushroom ones until very last because some mushrooms would inevitably fall over the edges.

We were the kind of family that could snarf down a meal in the blink of an eye, and as a small kid many times I would have to fight to get my fair share when sharing a dish. I always thought my mom's mushroom thing was kind of genius.  She could eat as slow as she wanted, and no one would fight to take her pieces...

I think I may be following in her footsteps, because in the last six months I've learned I really like blue cheese on my pizza.  It's odd tasting, but sinfully good (and I'm sure wildly unhealthy).  But I realized today, those pieces covered in blue cheese are off the radar in my boyfriends mine, they are non-existent, no matter how hungry he may be I doubt he'd ever ask, "can I have one of those slices?"

WASTED

To me food is rather sacred.  I splurge on high end ingredients, and cherish them as much as possible.  However its inevitable, some food will be wasted.

Today I realized there are different forms of waste in my book... if one buys a piece of fruit but never eat it, its a little disappointing, but I realize you can't always win.  If one orders a meal at a restaurant and only eats half of it...good for you, I hope you enjoyed the half you did eat, but good for you on stopping when you were full rather than make yourself sick on the excess...however if I decide the other half is worth taking home, get it all boxed up, then leave it on the restaurant's table, this greatly saddens me...but, if I take it home, and then never get around to eating it, oh well, no biggie.

The biggest nails on the chalk board to me is when I forget to put leftovers from a home cooked meal in the fridge, or find that my boyfriend forgot to put an entire gallon of milk back in the fridge after pouring a tiny bit over his cereal.

This morning I found an unopened package of raw chicken sitting on the kitchen counter, abandoned and forgotten last night. My heart sank; what a waste!  And I started thinking about how I throw food out all the time that never bothers me...but some things, like half drunken glasses of sodas/juice or food that never makes it back into the fridge when it is removed only momentary, just drives me insane.

A Tale of Pomegranate Love

On one of the first dates with my boyfriend I brought a pomegranate over to his apartment and we spent about a half hour painstakingly opening the fruit, and smashing the seeds to turn them into juice. (Red juice splattered everywhere.)  The next time we met he brought a ‘gift’ for me…a home made pomegranate smasher that he made at work during his spare time.  I think from this moment forward we both had a soft spot in our hearts for pomegranates…We watched documentaries about them, learned how to open them correctly (chop off the top and bottom, then open them under water…it’s sooooo much easier that way), we carried two enormous pomegranates home on a plane after vacationing in California only a couple hours away from the POM vineyards, and fell into a habit of buying a jumbo bottle of POM juice at Costco almost every week - it’s expensive, but we’re splitting the cost, so I try to tell myself it’s not so bad, and every time one of us questions it, the other one says “I’d rather pay for good health now as opposed to bad health later.”  “Your right, it tastes good and it makes me healthier”…but lately we stumbled into making our healthy splurge not so healthy anymore… we discovered that it tastes fantastic mixed with sprite or 7up.

My family was a huge bread family, and I always assumed my life would be a tale intertwined with stories of bread, but with Blair and I it’s a tale of pomegranates, which is very fitting for us - quirky but sweet.

Making Better Smoothies

My boyfriend and I have been on a huge smoothie kick lately.  I love them because I feel like they keep me from wanting junk food so badly, and because it’s easy to pack them full of good for you foods.  My favorite of which is chia seeds (a type of grass seed, I kid you not).

We get the chia seeds at Whole Foods, and I put about a teaspoon in each smoothie because they are a good source of fiber, calcium, protein, and they have an astounding about of omega 3’s. (On top of all that they are rumored to help with weigh loss…never a bad thing when one loves smoothies!)

The seeds are amazing. If given 15 minutes or so in a liquid they will form a jelly coating on the outside of each seed and soak in what ever flavor they are submersed in.

After weeks of chia seeds mixed into our drinks my boyfriend got bold and suggested we try adding kale and chard to our smoothies too…which made them a funny color, but you couldn’t taste the leafy greens at all.  After a while I got tired of seeing my beautifly colored smoothies twisted into a strange unnatural color so we replaced the fresh leafy greens with GreenSuperFood…this stuff is quite expensive, and it tastes/smells AWEFUL, but it’s a powder that is packed with the nutriance from a wide variety of greens such as alfalfa and wheat grass…we only add 1/8^th of a serving to each smoothie since it has such a strong taste but I feel like anything is better than nothing.

And lastly, as I’ve mentioned before, in my opinion a smoothie must be served with a straw. However, we were drinking so many smoothies that I felt like we were creating a lot of trash with our straws, so we invested in metal straws.  The only catch is that it’s best to rinse the straw immediately after you use it, so food partials don’t dry inside the straw.  But the four pack of straws that we bought came with a little wire brush for cleaning the insides, so even if we fail on the rinsing, the straw is not destroyed.

My favorite smoothie recipe:

(which is great after working out because it is packed with protein and calcium and a little sugar for a great pick-me-up)

-          8 strawberries, hulled (or 4 strawberries and half a cup of frozen blueberries)

-          ½ cup of low fat milk

-          ½ cup of greek yogurt

-          3 tablespoons of white sugar

-          2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

-          and six ice cubes

-          ¼ of a scoop of GreenSuperFood (not necessary, it’s just what we do)

Blend all ingredients together, then top with chia seeds after pouring into drinking glasses (if you put the chia seeds in your blender it will be very difficult to wash them out of the blender so I like to add them as the very last step)

Long Lost Beloved Recipe

When I was a kid my family had a frozen strawberry lemonade smoothie recipe that we use to make constantly, until one day we lost half the recipe.  Ever since then I’ve gone through phases of scouring the internet seeking the long lost love, but never had any luck, until last week.  I got to thinking, maybe it’s not a “lemonade” maybe it’s just lemon, or lime, or limeade, so I broadened my search and notices some recipes were called “slushy’s.” Turns out that one little word was exactly the word I needed to find my recipe!  For this recipe you make a lemonade “base” ahead of time (heated over the stove, then cooled in the fridge), then blend the super sweet/tart condensed lemonade with strawberries and ice. As my boyfriend delightfully stated "It's well worth the effort."

Here's my family's long lost beloved recipe:

Strawberry Lemonade Slushy

For the lemonade base:

§                                      2-1/2 cups water

§                                      1-1/4 cups sugar (also works with Splenda® sugar substitute)

§                                      1/2 teaspoon finely shredded lemon or lime peel

§                                      1-1/4 cups fresh lemon or lime juice

Preparation

• In a medium saucepan, stir water and sugar or sugar substitute over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat; cool 20 minutes. 
• Add citrus peel and juice to sugar mixture (don't skip the peel, it makes a difference!). Pour into a jar or pitcher; cover and chill. Keeps for up to 3 days.
• After cooling, we poured the lemonade base into silicon cupcake tray and frozen them, but you’ll want to thaw out the frozen lemonade before you blend it into a smoothie or your blender will really struggle with lack of liquid...and be warned, if you freeze the mixture, it will be pretty sticky wet even frozen, so you'll probably want to keep it stored in the cupcake tray for as long as they are in the freezer. 

Then to make one 15 oz Slushy

§                        1/3 cup lemonade base

§                        1/2 cup strawberries

§                        1 tablespoon sugar

§                        2/3 cup ice cubes

Simply blend and enjoy – but if you don’t have a super powerful blender you may want to add the ice to the mix slowly.  (personally I have a ninja blender…which is fantastic for smoothies)...and please please please serve your smoothies/slushys with a straw! I swear they taste better that way.

Holy Mole!!

Back in the day I used to constantly eat at exciting adventurous places…but shortly after starting this blog I started dating a guy who had unknown but persistent food allergies, and leaned towards simple strait forward foods instead of wild mysterious foods. This quickly snuffed out my pastime of constantly seeking the next thrilling food adventure and caused me to lose focus on this blog…But a year and a half later, just randomly peeking at my old blog, I have found that 2000+ people have looked at this blog!  Maybe I need to dust off the old link, and bring it back again…..

I’m still dating the food stifler, but we have a balance now…we don’t go to a tons of exciting restaurants, but we do have a lot of food adventures… he's finally pinpointed his food allergies, so he will try most any food, but a good majority of our adventures are now in the kitchen not the restaurant…

I guess what I’m saying is – Hello world!  Sorry I strayed from my blog so quickly…but I think I’ll pick it up again, cause I’ve got a lot to say, and apparently someone out there is interested…and I’m delighted to know you’re out there…whom ever you are.