I finally got to go grocery shopping like a real human being today, after putting it off for nearly two months since moving into my new apartment. Life in the new apartment’s been a little rough, considering how tiny the kitchen is compared to the beautiful kitchen in my summer sublet apartment.

After getting so spoiled in that last apartment, I have to settle for this until next August:

But that’s ok. I’m done complaining. The small kitchen has its own charm. Sometimes my roommate and I pretend we’re living in a tiny apartment somewhere fabulous in New York.

Anyway, I’ve been attempting to eat a very flexitarian diet from here on out, and so I’ve been on a hummus kick. Beans are a great source of fiber and protein. I don’t usually get store-bought hummus because I find its extremely smooth texture to be really strange. It seems too perfect in an artifical way. I like to make use of my Magic Bullet, so tonight I got cans of black beans and garbanzo beans for less than a dollar each and proceeded to make regular hummus and black bean hummus. It’s so much cheaper when you compare it to a single tub of store-bought hummus which usually goes for about $5-7. Of course, if you add up the other ingredients you need, like olive oil, garlic, tahini, etc, it does cost more, but those other ingredients are more like pantry staples that you can use for several batches so in the end, it really is a better deal. Not only is it a better deal, it tastes much better and thicker - probably because there are more beans in it than store-bought hummus.

This time around was much, much better than the last time I tried to make hummus with the Bullet because I followed the sage advice of one of my readers. I forgot who commented, but I did add some water to the mixture to make the blending process much smoother.

And look how prettily they turned out this time around:

Black bean hummus on the left, regular hummus on the right.

For the black bean hummus, I drained a can of black beans, put them into the Bullet along with unmeasured amounts of tahini, olive oil, garlic and a splash of water. I made the regular hummus the same way but I used garbanzo beans/chickpeas instead.

I can’t wait to slather it on the whole wheat tortillas, celery, baby carrots and crackers I also bought tonight. Yummy!

Cheers!

Epic Noms

Hey guys. I know, it’s been a long ass time since I’ve written. Look, I’m back - that’s all that matters

It’s been a long day. I work at the Illini Apple Center now and tonight, in addition to my usual shift, we put on a promo event called Mac for Life and it extended all of our work days. I demo-ed a product about 1,000 times over and over, almost lost my voice and nearly lost my nostril hairs to how badly it smelled of bodies, BUT after the successful madness was over, I was invited over some co-workers’ house to cook dinner.

What to cook when you don’t know how many people to expect and want to keep it cheap and good? Cook a frittata. Gather all your leftover produce, dice it up, cook it down a bit in a pan, add your beaten eggs with a touch of cream so that it covers the veggies and broil for less than 5 minutes. Serve on top of a handful of greens - preferably arugula that’s been lightly tossed with olive oil and ground black pepper.

Voila. Proof that real cooking (no matter how hungry and tired you are), good company and a few Miller High Lifes and post-meal cigarettes will soothe any weary soul.

I love my new job.

Photo by Rex Wright.

Hey guys. I’m in the middle of editing a website for my class and needed a treat. I sliced a fresh pear (possibly my favorite fruit ever) and drizzled it with some chocolate sauce. MMMM! How perfectly nomnomnom-able.

I hope to start my food “log” style of food blogging soon!

Woke up at 9 a.m. Slept almost 12 hours. Good.
Didn’t make it out to swim laps this morning. Bad.
Tried to make a pancake from scratch. Wasn’t quite so “fluffy.” Bad.
Went to the pool, realized I didn’t have my ID, came back home, turned my room upside down to look for it. It was on the pavement by my bike. Lost my mojo to go back to the pool. Good and bad.
Met with my professor to discuss my final project. Have a lot left to revise. More print components to write up. Stressed. Bad.

So this is what happened.

It’s probably not a good sign that the guy that works there smiles at me in recognition. In my defense, our apartment does not have a coffee maker so I’ve been making regular runs out there.

Sigh. I’m just going to get used to being a workaholic again. I seem to have no choice. Well, I think I’ve got a choice, but at this point, whenever I get hopeful about having time off, something interferes and the inner perfectionist takes over. If I’m already having a messed up day, and if I’ve already made a lot of mistakes, then I just let myself go for the rest of the day. I tell myself that I’ll start fresh the next day. Hm.

Really, really good! Check this out from Nutritionista’s blog.

The multimedia reporting class that had me running all around town doing several interviews, editing video and putting all of this material onto a website has FINALLY ended today. I turned in my final project and now, I’m just waiting to hear back from my professor so I can make final adjustments and revisions. After that, I’ll just have one more print component to write for one of my videos concerning the mosque on Lincoln Avenue, but other than that, I’ll have the next two weeks to concentrate on the last of my econ class before I’m really home free. There’s a short synopsis of why my blog might not’ve been so fresh in the past week.

I also haven’t had much time to cook anything special in the past week or so because my parents visited me, which means my mom brought me a ton of Korean food - most of it already prepped so all I really had to do was reheat it. As much as I love my mom’s cooking, it gets a bit tiresome after a week and today, as soon as I was done with my project, I ran out to County Market for lots of fresh produce! I am definitely one of those people that always needs to be eating fresh produce. I just feel funny if I’m just eating pre-made food all the time.

The basil plant sitting on our porch hasn’t been receiving much patronage despite the fact that it’s been flourishing, so I got some ingredients to make a Caprese salad as a late afternoon snack (FYI, balls of fresh mozarella are buy one get one free at County Market this week!). This time I used a yellow tomato. These kinds of things always blow my mind. I mean, it shouldn’t really. After all, yellow’s not that far off from the orangey red color of traditional tomatoes, but it’s so weird to be eating a yellow tomato that tastes like a red one! It’s like that green ketchup gunk that was on the market (maybe it still is) for kids, or that Pepsi (or maybe it was Coke) that was clear, but still tasted like the brown stuff. This particular yellow tomato wasn’t quite as acidic as red tomatoes, but nonetheless, it played its part in my Caprese salad.

This would probably be a good time to think about how my relationship with food was this past week or so, considering how out-of-my-mind I felt juggling all those interviews and being chained to my laptop. It was almost perfect timing that my parents came when they did because my mom’s food kept me well-fed during some of my more harried moments. If anything, I was definitely reaffirmed of one thing this week: I am, without a doubt, a stress eater. Whenever I’m stressed, I’m in the kitchen - I’m either eating, or making big batches of food for later, or cleaning, etc. I really want to fix this because I know it has a lot to do with why I feel so drained right now. Sure, sitting in front of the computer for hours on end editing video can drain you, but I know in my heart that it’s because I haven’t been taking care of my body so well these past few days.

I’ve also noticed from my stress eating that too much protein, as well as foods that aren’t closest to their natural state really seem to clog my body up. You know that feeling when the food you eat seems to literally just sit inside of you for way too long? Yeah, that’s what I mean. I also notice that happens when I have too much alcohol. After one too many martinis at Boltini, the next day I feel like there’s a plug in my body preventing anything from moving through.

Of course, to some people, these points may seem obvious, but I guess I’m just starting to really listen to my body. Better now than later, huh?

I’ve made a decision to use this blog to chronicle my days pertaining to food - much more regularly than I do now. I’ll attempt to make it an everyday thing. I’m hoping that by chronicling what I eat everyday and how it makes me feel (a few hours after, as well as at the end of the day), I’ll learn how to maximize energy for my body, as well as really enter a meaningful relationship with food. Hopefully this means that I’ll soon end up chronicling my exercise endeavors as well.

Whew. I. Am. So. Tired. Especially because I’ve been starting at a computer screen ALL DAY. Dear god, I need a break. I am going to bed at 10 p.m. tonight and it’s going to be amazing. My goal for tomorrow? Wake up early and swim laps at the ARC (which I’ve neglected going to…)! Can she do it??? Let’s find out…

Hey everyone. Apologies if you thought I’d abandoned this blog. This past week has been utterly insane for me, and yes, I know everyone is always busy. I’ve been running around town with my tripod and camera doing video interviews nonstop, not to mention editing all that video and audio too. Blogging fell low on the list of priorities, but I missed it, so here I am, despite my Sunday workload.

I woke up this morning jonesing for bacon - I don’t know why. And, as Oscar Wilde said, “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.” County Market’s less than two blocks from my place, so off I went for some bread, bacon, tomatoes and lettuce!

I’m pretty sure I bought a cute little head of butter lettuce, but I’m not sure because it wasn’t labeled. It’s much more tender and almost sweeter than regular green lettuce. Probably my current favorite salad green!

via Google Images

Anyway, it’s not difficult to put together BLT. Just toast your bread (I used whole wheat bread), slather on a generous amount of mayo on both slices, lay some bacon, tomatoes (2 slices for me) and lettuce down. I took advantage of Maggie’s new sea salt and pepper grinder she bought in Tennessee to add some flavor to the BLT. By the way, everyone must invest in a pepper mill/grinder. You’ll never go back to McCormick’s ground black pepper, I guarantee it.

What I love about the BLT is that it’s one of those things that reminds you of how good the simple things are. There’s only five ingredients to it, not including the S&P, and you hardly have to cook anything (I didn’t anyway. I used those microwaveable strips of bacon).

And god damn, that BLT was so good - probably because I satiated my craving for it!

P.S. I was at the Blind Pig the other night and a girl was munching on a BLT (this one was wrapped up in a thick, fluffy pita) from Radio Maria, just across the street. Who knew Radio Maria sold delicious drunk food? God, those strips of bacon were luxuriously THICK. My friend Michell promptly got one herself. For $8 you get this thick pita BLT with a side of these Spanish potato wedge-like things. To. Die. For. And now you know

Last week, I went on a late night trip to Meijer with Ike and came across Rachel’s cottage cheese and yogurt! I’d read about these individual servings of what you might call “designer” dairy products in magazines before and didn’t think I’d have the chance to try them, considering I can’t get off campus much without a car of my own.

I tried Rachel’s Pear Mangosteen Cottage Cheese and Plum Honey Lavendar Yogurt. They were both lovely, though I liked the cottage cheese one more. I wouldn’t buy these regularly, but they certainly are a treat for dairy lovers like me. At about $1.19 or something each, it’s a bit pricey but that’s why it makes for an occasional treat!

My favorite food blogs are health food blogs. The two I’m ogling right now (instead of doing homework) are The Nutritionista and The Fitnessista. I, for one, love fresh food that makes me feel good and reading about how these women take charge of their lives and well-being by attempting to put only the best fuel into their bodies as they can really inspires me. The commitment they have to their well-being is really commendable in my opinion. It makes me think that I should get serious about it too, and not just for Miami - for the rest of my life!

I suffered from severe fatigue during high school, and it may just have been growing pains, but I’ve been feeling similarly - and it’s summer! There’s more time to sleep now, but I always find myself taking a nap at some point during the day because I just can’t keep my eyes open and my body turns to jello. I think I really need to start doing something about this. I’ve written before that one of the reasons I quit the South Beach Diet was because I didn’t need to be trained about what carbs and fats were bad or good because I already know that stuff. I mean, I hardly use any other fats besides olive oil (except butter from time to time). I just don’t think I am as conscious as these other bloggers are.

It’s time to get serious. So get ready to see me attempt to really think about what kind of fuel I’m, well, fueling my body with from now on. I figure if I can be committed and passionate enough to keep this food blog and really cook all of my meals like I tell myself, then I can kick it up a notch and cook only the best fuel for my body.

Cheers!