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What do you do when your local grocery store is giving away free sugar pumpkin on thanksgiving eve and your lactose-intolerance prevents you from enjoying pumpkin pie? You make pumpkin souffle of course!
You’re probably thinking I gave up on this blogging thing by now. I promise, I haven’t! I know its been a while – forgive me, life has a way of keeping me busy. But don’t worry, I’ve been cooking and gathering blog ideas all along, especially during my two weeks in Italy in May 🙂
Today though, I wanted to share one of my favorite summer salads. Its simple yet perfect! Satisfying the salty sweet cravings we all have while being super light and flavorful.
I never really jumped on the spaghetti squash bandwagon as it got popular in the last few years, but I admit I was curious what this vegetable camouflaging as everyone’s favorite carbohydrate actually tasted like. So, on this weekend’s trip to our favorite grocery store for produce, Russo’s, I saw a beautiful little squash and mustered up the courage to buy one. I got the inspiration for combining spaghetti squash with pesto from my friend Yulia’s blog. 
The same grocery store always carries the most appealing bundles of fresh herbs, so I knew when I laid eyes on the basil that I would have to make my own pesto – which, with the advent of a food processor is super easy. I will attempt to prove this to you, even though I know you are thinking why bother making it, when you can buy it. Trust me; it tastes so fresh and so delicious! Click here to read full post
At our house, guacamole and hummus, as individual products, are basically the sole staples of our diet (oh and greek yogurt but more on that in the future). In fact, the week before we got married, when I was working 15 hour days on a crazy project at work and had no time to cook, my husband essentially lived on a few tubs of Sabra hummus. These delicious dips and spreads have become the holy grail of trendy, healthy eating. Chock full of healthy fats from avocados or olive oil, full of antioxidants and the germ-fighting goodness of garlic, and breaming with fiber a-plenty – these international foods have made their way into the hearts and stomachs of Americans across the country.
So of course, it is only natural that these foods find their way into a blissful union. There is no exact science to this recipe, just as there is no exact science to my (award-winning) guacamole or hummus. The result was a very mild, extremely delicate and light tasting hummus with a green tint. On the first day, the avocado was barely discernible as a flavor, acting only through its fat content to emulsify and create a whipped texture for the hummus. On day 2 though (I am surprised the bowl lasted that long), the flavor of the avocado became more pronounced and created a delicate balance. Click here to read full post
The trouble with being lactose intolerant is that eating at restaurants can be a hazard, and forget about anything cream based – just forget about it. But I love dairy everything which means I have learned to cook things I can eat that don’t make me sick. I also love the fact that I know exactly what I am putting in my food. A few weeks ago, I had an intense craving for a seafood chowder, so I did the only logical thing possible – I invented my own recipe for one. This soup is quite brothy and not heavy and thick, but we loved that about it since it meant you could eat more. You can certainly use whole milk, or even cream in place of 2% milk and if you wanted to thicken it you could use more flour, or even a touch of corn starch. I feel that the depth of flavor – the sweetness from the corn, the seafood goodness, and the slight touch of heat more than made up for the lack of thickness. This is the perfect dish for a cold winter night like tonight.
I never imagined starting my blog with a dessert – here I am preaching about healthy food but its Valentine’s day and I love a sweet indulgence just as much as the next person. My sincere hope is that you will stick around to learn more about the food I so adore and the philosophy with which I prepare it. But tonight, just (barely) in time for this holiday full of treats, I bring you this playful, and slightly more sinful, personal creation (appropriate color scheme and all): Chocolate Dipped Red Velvet and Cheesecake Bites, or as my husband has named them, “Chocolate Covered Lasers”.
I made these for his company holiday pot-luck and they were a huge hit among the all-engineer group. To be fair, I originally envisioned these to be completely enrobed in chocolate but realized quickly that this would be far too rich and takeaway from the lightness of the ch
eesecake. Why lasers you ask? Because apparently the red velvet looks like the ruby tube and beam, and the cheesecake looks like one of the mirrored surfaces of a ruby laser (don’t ask me what that means, I am just quoting my husband for the sake of all you engineering folk out there).
I searched far and low for a red velvet cheesecake bite recipes and to my surprise, given the vastness of today’s culinary internet community, no such thing existed. Think about it, we put cream cheese frosting on red velvet cake – how is cheesecake and red velvet not a
match made in heaven?
I ended up combining a red velvet recipe I found online that uses yogurt (because I love yogurt and use it in everything), with a reduced but basic cheesecake recipe. You are welcome to use any red velvet recipe you like.
Disclaimer – this recipe may seem lengthy and overwhelming – don’t be afraid, its fairly simple it just has a lot of steps and requires an overnight refrigeration. Not all of my recipes will take this long – I promise!
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