A Thanksgiving Potluck/Feast

Lucy's turkey burgers with feta, spinach, and sundried tomatoes:

Barbara's salad with goat cheese, cranberries, and onions:

Alison's carrot souffle:

Jen's butternut squash and chickpea salad with parsley-hummus dressing (recipe here):

Ali's sauteed shitake mushrooms and sundried tomatoes:

Georgia's cranberry-apple-walnut stuffing

Note: I just bought pre-made stuffing mix, added hot water and butter and then once it had finished cooking, added pumpkin goat cheese, candied walnuts, craisins, parsley, apples and celery.

Alison's white cake with a lemon glaze and fresh berries:

Kristin's chocolate chip-macadamia cookies:

There were also mashed potatoes, sauteed collards and broccoli with soy sauce, and chicken apple sausages. All in all, a wonderful way to appreciate food and friends before Thanksgiving.

Sarah's Birthday Timez

For Sarah's Golden and Rose Birthday (21st birthday and it was nov. 21st) we went to town on the food front. We had a vegan curried carrot dip by Ali Lillehei:


Collards and Kale by Ali Burstein:
Roasted yams with lime, cinnamon and chili pepper and sweet noodle kugel by me with special help from Sarah, Barbara, Ali Ordman and two little red heads:)
And wonderful baked salmon by Jen, making the plate look like this!For desert, I baked my favorite birthday cake, banana cake with cream cheese frosting and a chocolate peanut-butter ganache in the middle. Ali Ordman BLINGED it out- and appropriately so for Sarah, a Jewish (chocolate gelt) 21-year old (rose) celebrating her (golden) birthday!
All in a day's work. Do I go to college??

Delish Last Minute Lunch!

Lu came over for lunch while I was finishing a research paper. I knew we had a lot of food in the house and we'd work something out, but I had no idea it would turn out this well. We sauteed chicken-apple sausage and spinach in a little olive oil and cracked three eggs on top after about five minutes. When the egg was cooked but still gooey, we threw it on some whole wheat tortillas with sharp cheddar cheese and leftover black bean-mango salad from the night before. A little salt, pepper and hot sauce and those babies were ready to be burrito-fied. Thanks to Ali for the amazing black bean salad (I could eat it everyday) and sorry I didn't get a pic of it in all its glory!

Orange Miso Tofu with Edamame Stir-fry

I found this recipe in either Shape or Self magazine while at the gym and tore it out. I always love reading about food while I'm working out:)
The tofu was super bland but the stir-fry was great. Al made some lentil and spinach stir-fry on the side.

Pozole!

Here's our pozole! Lucy's dad's famous original recipe. Says Lu, "its versatile, my dad makes it different every time (sometimes chicken, sometimes shrimp, sometimes shrimp and chicken...you can make with tomatillos instad of tomatoes, etc). also it seems to get spicier every time he makes it. he always makes spicy cornbread to go with it. and he makes TONS at a time and then we eat it for like a month."

it was literally overflowing so we transferred it to two pots.


Some bread to cut the onion tears.

A Shabbat Treat

Nutella challah with sprinkles! We made this at a Bayit challah-making event by spreading a layer of nutella on each strand of the braid and then braided it. We could barely wait for it to come out of the oven and it was immediately devoured, warm and fresh, with more nutella and marshmallow fluff.

Stir Frys of the Fishy Variety

Recently, I made a stir fry for lunch with napa cabbage, red cabbage, kale and lots o' veggies. For protein, I added a can of sardines (an acquired taste as they say). I would have liked it better with eggs or salmon but it was tasty nevertheless.



Kristin and I made the most delicious stir fry I have had to date (no exaggeration) with salmon, asparagus, spinach, leeks, carrots, and a bunch of other veggies. The sweetness of the leeks and added sage, chives, salt, and pepper made a wonderful combination. Mashed potatoes on the side gave the meal some textural variety.

Fall Harvest Quesadillas and Apple Salsa

I found this recipe on the blog Chocolate Chip Trips, and it looked amazing. Unfortunately, my final product DID NOT look amazing (due to an overeager attempt to stuff a tortilla with too much squash) but it tasted great, nonetheless. Here's my adaptation after making it the first time. This is definitely a dish I can't wait to make again with my adjustments.

Acorn Squash and Spinach Quesadillas with Apple Salsa

(makes 2-3 servings)
For the Quesadillas:

• 1 Tb olive oil
  
• 2 cups acorn squash, peeled and chopped
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 4 handfuls of spinach, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 chicken sausages, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• about 12 small mushrooms
  
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• salt, pepper to taste
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 large tortillas (I used whole wheat)
  

For the Apple Salsa:

• 2 medium crisp apple (I used fuji), diced
  
• 1 handful of cilantro, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• the juice from one lemon and one lime
  
• salt, pepper to taste

For the Quesadillas:
1. Roast the acorn squash in the oven for about 20 min, until softened, but not mush.
2. Heat the oil in a skillet, and cook the onion for about 5 min. Add the squash, spinach, garlic, sausage and mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes. Stir in the cumin, and salt and pepper.
3. Add a few drops of oil to a hot skillet. Place a tortilla on the skillet and add to one side half the squash mixture and half the cheese. Fold over and cook for about 5 minutes on each side, until crispy and browned. Repeat for other tortilla.

For the Apple Salsa:
1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix thoroughly.

Great Baking, Weird Baking and Spicy Hot Chocolate

This was the kind of desert that made me question why anyone ever puts in the effort to make anything more complicated than a good old rice krispy treat. I used this recipe, but I was afraid to burn the butter so I'm not sure I can technically call these "brown butter rice krispy treats." But nevertheless, they were in a league of their own, especially eaten warm, while the chocolate ganache (ghiradelli chocolate chips, crunchy organic peanut butter and a little half and half) was still melty.


Jen had purchased some limited edition "Pumpkin Spice Hershey's Kisses" from Target and realized why they were on sale after she tried the first one....So we decided to use them up with this recipe, except Jen insisted we use whole-wheat flour. We also substituted honey and maple syrup for molasses, which made our cookies turn out looking like this....
Nevertheless, a warm cookie is a warm cookie, and these babies got eaten right up, no matter how odd they were. They were much more like a breakfast scone and some people enjoyed them with strawberry jam.
For the record, although I do love chocolate pepper cookies, I'm not a fan of chocolate pepper hot cocoa. This was not an intentional experiment. A few weeks back, while I was making said pepper cookies, a fair amount of black pepper had been mixed with some extra cocoa. Instead of throwing the cocoa away, I decided to dump it back in to the container, forgetting about the pepper that was hidden within. Weeks later, when Lucy and I taste-tested our home-made hot chocolate, we could not figure out why the hell it taste so awful. We kept adding more and more sugar until we realized the problem. We decided to drink it anyways, which was a daring decision. And not an experience I would ever like to repeat.

Chef Bobo comes to LoRise

Barbara brought from home her high school chef Chef Bobo's cookbook a couple weeks ago. It's a wonderful book full of kid-friendly, health food. We picked three recipes from it for Barbara's first dinner as head chef: mac and cheese (we added some frozen edamame), roasted veggies, and carmelized carrots (I was dying to finally finish off our 10 pound bag of carrots from the co-op like 2 months ago). we also added some sausage at the last minute to turn this dinner into nothing short of a feast.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi

I tried to make gnocchi and halfway through the process realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had had gnocchi and therefore didn't really know what I was looking for. There were too many factors that could have/probably did go wrong and the gnocchi came out as hard as rocks, but with a great flavor, at least. Here's the recipe, if anyone wants to give it a shot.

Strawberry Bruschetta

Oh, summer, how I miss thee. Me and the homefriends made this strawberry bruschetta with french bread, chevre, basil, strawberries, and a balsamic glaze Ana had from a gourmet food store. Delicious!

Chocolate-Chip Banana Pancakes

An easy way to start a day off with pure joy. We used a Food Network recipe (but added the chocolate and bananas, of course) and it was super simple and super delicious.

Lentil Soup by Lucy

Ok, THIS is my favorite soup ever. There was so much leftover, but I had no problem eating it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and 2am snacks until it was all gone.

Jen made a side dish of some onions, leeks and asparagus and we repeated the same salad from the previous night because it was so delicious.

Yum- scrambled eggs and leeks

Wow, this was one of my favorite dinners so far, I must say. The recipe hails from a famous food blog, "Orangette." I discovered a new favorite way to make scrambled eggs, but it takes some patience.
The salad was an herb mix topped with poached pears (not raw chicken slivers as you may have guessed), pomegranate seeds, curried almond slivers, and avocado. Healthiest salad ever? Maybe not. But definitely a delicious combination. I made a quick balsamic vinaigrette with some of the poaching liquid leftover from the pears.

Curry- A first attempt.

I tried to make some curried squash and chickpeas, but didn't really have the appropriate spices to make it work. It was an interesting first attempt, and I didn't get complaints from my diners, but I was not at all happy with the flavors. It turns out we tried to eat it before the squash was tender enough, so after letting it stew for another half an hour or so, the leftovers were much much better. I improvised a raita with low-fat plain yogurt, cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, mint, and lemon juice and it was delicious. That alone with the toasted whole-wheat pita probably would have been enough! We were so happy to feed Babs' pre-frosh from last year, Zoe.

Butternut Squash Rissotto with Chicken

When my good friend Josh came to town, I was hoping to impress him with my new skillz...unfortunately I somehow managed to produce my first dinner disaster. I'm aware that I inherited the rice curse from my mother (we can't make rice), but tried to ignore and attempted my first ever risotto. Well, long story short, the rice on the bottom of the pan burnt pretty early on, giving the rest of the dish plenty of time to absorb the wonderful "smoky bbq flavor" as Josh kindly put it. I guess I'll have to stick with the fool-proof 20 minute Basmati rice-in-microwave method until someone shows me how to do risotto. Also, this dish would have been better if I had put in the effort to roast my own squash instead of using the canned kind. I'm not gonna link the recipe, because I'm holding it at partial fault, seeing as I followed it as carefully as I could.

It looked good at least! And as my mother always says, "Appeal is half the meal!"
Fortunately, the rest of the meal was both appealing AND delicious. (That's because I made the simplest asparagus recipe ever: roast asparagus on a baking sheet with LOTS of olive oil and salt for 20 minutes, turning over once--- and Josh brought CHOCOLATE CHIP CHALLAH(!!!!) from New York.