Week 45 - Whole Grains

I was very excited about Week 45 of the challenge. The theme was whole grains which is something I've been trying to incorporate more and more of in our diet (partially for health reasons). I decided to take the challenge up a level this week and make sure that any from-scratch homecooked meals would not include any grains except whole grains. We succeeded in that, eating mostly farro and quinoa (which I learned is a seed and not technically a grain, but many people still include it as a whole grain). But for the actual challenge I wanted to use a whole grain that I had never used before and I decided to go with millet.

First time making millet!

I had seen recipes from time to time using millet, but as far as A and I remember, neither of us had eaten millet before. I wasn't really sure what to do with it so I looked through some millet recipes before settling on this autumn millet bake recipe on 101 Cookbooks (which was based on a Bittman recipe). It was seasonal, which was great, and really simple to make, which was also really great since I'm such a slow cook. I followed the original recipe really closely, but ended up needing to make a lot of adjustments for cooking time at the end. 

Ingredients for millet bake

We had all of the pantry ingredients on hand already for this recipe, so I just needed to pick up millet, cranberries, squash, and pumpkin seeds. I used:

- 3/4 cup of millet ($0.70)

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)

- 2/3 lb of squash ($3.19)

- 1 cup of fresh cranberries ($0.67)

- salt and pepper ($0.05)

- dried sage ($0.10)

- honey ($0.35)

- 1 cup of chicken broth ($0.10)

- warm water ($0, for final amount keep reading)

- 1/4 cup of pumpkin seeds ($0.21)

The squash was an interesting shopping story. I intended to get the pre-cut butternut squash from Trader Joe's, but they were out of it and only had cut sugar pumpkin. I wasn't sure I wanted to eat sugar pumpkin, so I thought I'd check Whole Foods. No pre-cut boxes there, only the whole, which was really heavy, and if I was going to buy a whole butternut squash, I should have just gotten it from Trader Joe's. The only option I could figure out was to pick out pieces of butternut-looking squash from one of the pre-cut mixed vegetable bins (meals in minutes, or whatever they're called). I'm not entirely sure if it was butternut squash, or if it was acorn squash or something else. In any event, it was fine, whatever squash it was. I should have just gotten the whole butternut squash from Trader Joe's.

The total for this millet recipe was $5.57. I love when vegetarian dinners are so affordable and filling. (I realize that I used chicken broth, so this isn't really vegetarian, but it should be. I just didn't have vegetable broth or stock. I need to pick up some vegetable Better than Bouillon, but I forgot on our last visit.)

Layers upon layers

Putting together the baking dish was easy. What took the longest was cutting the squash into cubes. I set the oven to 375 degrees, and went through all the preliminary steps:

1. Rinse millet. [I was concerned that we wouldn't have a colander with holes small enough to wash the millet, but it just made it.]

2. Heat olive oil over medium heat in small skillet, add millet, toast it but don't overdo it. [The recipe said 3 minutes, but I barely made it for 2 minutes because I was worried about overdoing it.]

3. Spray baking dish with nonstick spray. Add millet as the bottom layer.

4. Add cubes of squash and cranberries on top of millet.

5. Season with salt, pepper, and sage. Drizzle honey all over the dish. [It was at least a few tbsp of honey and probably 1 tbsp of sage.]

6. Add the cup of chicken broth. Seal tightly with foil and bake undisturbed for 45 minutes.

That was easy.

After 45 minutes of baking...

After 45 minutes, the millet is supposed to be cooked through, but it came out looking like it did above with some fluffy grains but lots of grains that looked the same as they did when I put it in the oven. I added another 1/2 cup of water or so, like the recipe said, and popped it back into the oven (now up to 400 degrees) topped with the pumpkin seeds (how it looks below) and some additional salt, pepper, and sage. 10 minutes later, there wasn't much change. I added another cup of water. 10 minutes after that, I added another cup of water. I added water 3 more times after that, meaning I was up to almost 4 cups of liquid in addition to the cup of chicken broth that I used to begin with.

Pumpkin seeds!

I was starting to wonder what was going on, since the recipe said 1 cup of broth, and here I was going on 5 cups total. Part of it might be because I didn't use the equivalent of an entire butternut squash, but that couldn't account for 4 additional cups of water. I started reading more and more about millet, which was described as a "thirsty" grain, so that explains why every time I took it out of the oven, all the water had disappeared and there were still grains that hadn't fluffed up. Almost an hour after I expected the millet bake to be done, I finally called it quits on the few grains that were still not that cooked (luckily not as many at this point), because it was 10 pm and we really had to eat dinner. (Thank goodness we had an arugula and feta salad appetizer earlier in the evening!)

Finished product

I thought the millet bake was just okay when I first started eating it. I had been expecting something similar to a casserole when it came out of the oven, but it wasn't like that at all. It had the consistency of a fluffy porridge, and when I thought about the dish like eating oatmeal or porridge with some fruit and squash in it, then it was good. It makes a good oatmeal replacement. The squash itself didn't have a ton of flavor, so we couldn't tell exactly which squash it was, and the cranberries added some tartness, but not a lot of berry flavor. I think if I made this again, I would probably add more cranberries. I would also add a lot more seasonings (and broth, obviously). For an autumn bake, the sage was good, but I would throw in some cinnamon and nutmeg too, and maybe cloves. That would really give it that spice that accents all of the flavors of fall foods so spectacularly. 

I have a little bit of millet left, since it's hard to measure out exactly 3/4 cup from the Whole Foods bulk bin, so maybe I'll experiment with it on the stove, making some sort of oatmeal-like thing for lunch next week. Even though this didn't turn out as planned (either in timing or how I imagined it), it was good, and I'm glad to have this introduction to fluffy millet!

Middle Eastern Bakery

When I first moved to Chicago many, many years ago, I was living on the South Side and A was living in Uptown, meaning long, gorgeous drives up and down Lake Shore Drive to visit each other. One of the places that A introduced me to while he was living up there was the Middle Eastern Bakery and Grocery. We enjoyed their food so much that even after he moved out of the neighborhood and we were both living further downtown, we still drove up every so often to stock up on some treats. It's a great neighborhood spot that I wish we had a version of in our current neighborhood.

The shop has lots of grocery items, especially spices, but we didn't do a lot of from-scratch cooking back then, so we mostly went for one thing - the pre-made pies in the bakery cases. There are a bunch of different varieties, and I think we tried most of them during our time living in Chicago. Since we were in Uptown for lunch at Tank, we decided to stop by the bakery, see what was new in the shop, pick up some spices, and definitely buy some pies.

The only challenging thing about buying the pies (which didn't occur to us until after we bought them) was that we weren't planning to eat them until the next day. Back when we lived in the city, we would buy large bags of pies, stick them in the fridge, and then heat them up for breakfast (at least for me it was usually breakfast). Our hotel out in Rosemont had no fridge for us to use (and you had to pay if you wanted them to empty the minibar and let you use it as a fridge, no thank you), so we were faced with a dilemma. Leave the pies at room temperature overnight (probably okay, but still a risk) or try to cool them off somehow. I decided to try to rig some sort of rudimentary cooler using the ice bucket to try to at least keep the pies a few degrees cooler until we could eat them for breakfast. Nothing happened, so either the pies are fine to keep out overnight or the cooler worked. Who knows.

We only got two pies from the bakery, even though we wanted to buy more. The one above was chicken with mushrooms, onions, and peppers, and the one below is the artichoke and feta pie. Both were good. They probably would have been better if we could heat them properly instead of just taking them out of the cooler, but these were not ideal circumstances. I think I liked the chicken pie more, and A did as well. The chicken was cut very small, and the mushrooms, onions, and peppers were nice and soft so the textures paired up very well. The artichokes were marinated and had a nice sourness to them that went well with the salty feta. The pies were just as good as we remembered.

It was great to be able to stop by the bakery to get some pies and also buy spices to bring home. (Our "souvenirs" from trips always seem to be largely food-related.) It brought back a lot of great memories of our time living in Chicago and how life was, in so many ways, much simpler back then. What a nice treat for our weekend.

Middle Eastern Bakery and Grocery, 1512 West Foster Ave, in Andersonville/Uptown.

Back to Tank

On the first full day of our long weekend in Chicago, we made a beeline straight for Argyle where a lot of the Vietnamese restaurants are. When we first booked the trip, our original plan for lunch that day had been to go to Hot Doug's before they closed, but as the lines got longer and longer the closer it got to the closing date, we just couldn't deal with the long wait. It had been 2 years since we were last able to visit Tank Noodle and we were really in the mood for some of their awesome pho, so we were pretty happy to "settle" for a visit there.

We started out with cha gio, the spring rolls stuffed with ground pork, carrots, taro, and wood ear mushrooms. Each order comes with 2 long rolls (we got the shrimp spring rolls last time since it came with 3), lettuce leaves, and a side of dipping sauce.

These rolls were wonderful and exactly what we're looking for in a spring roll. The outside wrapper was crispy, and the insides were so tasty. You could definitely taste the ground meat and the vegetables, and it wasn't just packed with lots of filler. We love cha gio and these were really great. We could eat these all the time.

After our spring roll treat, it was, of course, time for pho. I got the pho ga (chicken with beef broth), just like last time and just like every other time I get pho at Tank. It was just as great as always. I don't really have anything different to say about the pho from last time, so if you want to read more about it, the last write-up is here.

A also got the same pho that he usually does, the pho xe tang combination with sliced beef, brisket, flank, soft tendon, tripe, and meat ball. Just like with my pho ga, it was just as good as he remembered, so probably best to read the old post about Tank, since it still held true 2 years later. Last time, he jumped into his bowl of pho before we got a picture of his artistic design, so here's what it looks like when he's done adding everything to his bowl. Isn't it pretty?

We were really happy with our visit to Tank (as always). Afterwards, we visited a nearby Asian grocery store that we never went to before (which was in a spot that used to house a different pho joint, actually the first one that A and I ever went to together in the city of Chicago) and then spent some time walking around near the lake on a truly gorgeous afternoon. We're not sure when we'll be able to make it back to Tank, but we would definitely go back. We still haven't found any pho that we've liked better than Tank.

Tank Noodle, 4953 N. Broadway (corner of Argyle).

Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner Soup

So we're approaching the holiday season, and despite retail stores wanting us to think that the next big event is Christmas, I'm glad to see Hale and Hearty offer a Thanksgiving based menu item. Their monthly soup special for November is Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner Soup. They describe it as "Why wait for Thanksgiving? Everything you like about the day after our favorite holiday can be had now, without your uncle snoring." While that all sounds nice, the description itself is really lacking. I decided to get this soup anyway, and I did so without tasting it first.

I made that decision because I want to start being more objective about my reviews. If I taste a couple soups beforehand, it will affect my decision on which soup to get and also almost ensure that all of my reviews are good. I want to take some risks with this and give as unbiased an opinion as I can.

The first thing I noticed about this soup was the rich, buttery flavor. I overheard one of the employees talking to another customer noting that there was butter in the soup, but there was no other dairy added, and on my first taste that was the biggest flavor I got. As I dug further into it, I started getting heavy herbaceous hits from the parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Or at least, that's what I think I was tasting. I will admit to not being the greatest at distinguishing all of the flavors of various spices. The rest of the soup consisted of the turkey stock, chunks of really soft turkey, carrots, peas, celery, sweet potato, and cranberries.

The cranberries and sweet potatoes added a subtle sweetness to the overall flavor of the soup. Overall the soup was very balanced. It wasn't too salty, and the sweetness really mellowed everything out. The only major component of Thanksgiving that they didn't throw in was some potato element (baked, mashed, etc.) but I get that they couldn't since that would have really thickened this soup up a lot, and there was already a lot going on.

This was a tasty soup that really captured a lot of the essences and flavors of what goes into a traditional Thanksgiving meal. I really enjoyed the blend of "dishes" and spices that coalesced into this festive soup. I would definitely consider getting this again later this month.

Pesto Tortellini

We've been starting to wonder if we just shouldn't buy tortellini or ravioli type pastas at Trader Joe's. There wasn't really one thing that was wrong with all of the ones we tried, but just a bunch of different reasons. Some of them, like the spinach tortellini, just didn't really have very much flavor. Others, like the girasoli ricotta and lemon zest that they've been sampling recently, are a bit too intense in flavor (that one was way too much lemon, kind of reminded us of the confetti rice). Some of the specialty ravioli are really expensive for very few pieces and I can't imagine we would be full. I thought maybe things would be different with a non-refrigerated tortellini, so I picked up a bag of the dry Italian tortellini with pesto filling ($2.99) a few months ago.

The bag of tortellini was 16 oz, and I figured we would just cook them, toss them with some tomato sauce (we've been using this really nice Classico organic tomato sauce we got at Costco this summer) and mushrooms, and that would be one dinner with maybe a little bit of leftovers for another lunch. It wasn't until I broke open the bag and started boiling the tortellini that I realized that if we ate the entire bag, that would mean that between the 2 of us we would have eaten over 1800 calories at dinner. And that's just for the tortellini, not including anything we were to add to it! If I had realized this in advance, I could have made half the bag. My mistake.

These tortellini were fine, but they were kind of heavy and a bit overwhelming in amount. Not only was it enough for dinner for two (and very filling for that), but we also ate quite a few while the sauce was cooking and had enough for multiple meals after that. That means it's a pretty economical purchase, but we didn't like the flavor of the tortellini enough to really want to eat that much of it. It didn't have a strong pesto flavor at all (the pesto from the jar at TJ's is better), but was just some vaguely mild Italian flavored tortellini. These might work better in a salad with lots of vegetables and dressing, or for bringing to a picnic or a potluck, than for a quick pantry dinner at home.

Buy Again? Maybe, but probably not, unless we're making a big bowl of tortellini salad or something.

November 2014 Custard Calendar

I can't believe it's November. That means Thanksgiving is almost here and I am totally not ready for that. Anyway, new month, new custard calendar. We never really got to Shake Shack last month to try any of the new (to us) flavors, but perhaps this month we will, especially if we're no longer feeling under the weather.

The custard calendar for this month (with our previous ratings) is:

Monday - chocolate cheesecake (new to us)
Tuesday - salted caramel (4.75/10)
Wednesday - pumpkin pie (8.75/10)
Thursday - maple ginger (new to us)
Friday - cinnamon cranberry almond (new to us)
Saturday - toffee pear (5.75/10)
Sunday - grandma's apple pie (new to us - missed it last year)

The ones that stand out to me are maple ginger and grandma's apple pie, which both sound a lot like fall and perfect for November. A is also really interested in trying the cinnamon cranberry almond. Let's see if we try some new custard treats this month!

Week 44 - Horror Movie Inspired

I had a lot of trouble coming up with a dish for the Week 44 challenge. The theme was horror movie inspired, which on its face doesn't sound any harder than other inspiration weeks like TV show inspired. But I don't watch horror movies and it's pretty hard to be inspired by something you don't know much about. I looked through tons of sites but nothing clicked (other than things I've already made in other challenges this year). Eventually I just decided to forget trying to find inspiration from a particular movie and to instead make mini mummy pizzas like the ones I had found on the Whole Foods site because they're Halloween themed and there must be mummies in some horror movies, even if I haven't watched them. So here are my horror movie mummy pizzas.

Ingredients for mini pizzas

I decided to do 3 English muffins for the pizzas, giving us 3 mini pizzas each, and then make the rest of the bag of kale (since the kale used for the pizzas barely made a dent in the bag) as a side dish. For the pizzas, I used:

- 3 English muffins, cut in half ($0.85)

- pizza sauce ($0.60)

- 1 red pepper, finely chopped ($0.59)

- a few handfuls of kale, finely chopped ($0.20)

- 1.5 pieces of string cheese ($0.45)

- 12 sliced black olives ($0.20)

The pizzas cost about $2.89. For the rest of the kale, I used an onion, a few cloves of garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, so the total for the kale was about $2.89 as well (what are the chances of that happening?), making the total for dinner a very reasonable $5.78.

These look like Christmas to me

Making the mini pizzas was pretty simple. Once the oven hit 400 degrees, I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper and put the cut muffin halves in the oven for about 5-10 minutes to get them a little crispy. After taking them out and letting them cool for a couple of minutes, I added a layer of pizza sauce and the chopped up kale and peppers. 

Mummy pizzas ready to bake

Next was the string cheese to look like "bandages" and the olives for mummy eyes. Then they went back in the oven for 15 minutes for the cheese to melt. Making pizza is pretty easy, which is probably why we do it so often, and these were super healthy with all the kale and peppers on top. (We had extra kale and pepper toppings so we just ate them raw as a "salad" while we waited for everything to cook.)

Looking slightly less mummy-ish but done

The mini pizzas were okay. They were (very) healthy and tasted fine, but they were more cute and amusing to us than anything else with their olive eyes. They reminded us of mummies with googly eyes and that made us laugh. These were certainly festive enough for our Halloween dinner and they worked for a difficult challenge!

Berries Gomega

When I was at Whole Foods last week, I saw that they were having a sale on Odwalla smoothies. $2.50 for a bottle isn't incredibly cheap but considering how expensive juicing is as a hobby (as much as we enjoy making fresh juice at home), it's fairly reasonable. I did a double-take at the high sugar content, but since I needed to rehydrate and regain energy after a fast, the sugar content was bearable (that time).

This smoothie combines juice and puree of 8 different fruits, and according to the bottle, it has the equivalent of juice from 1-1/2 apples, 3/4 orange (those were the 2 juices), 1/3 cup cherrries, 1/4 peach, 1/5 pear, 1/7 mango, 4 blackberries and 1 strawberry (and those were the 6 purees), along with 1500 mg of omega-3. I'm not sure how they measured that, but I'll take their word for it.

It was really, really sweet, but I love sweet smoothies. You could definitely taste that it was all fruit. I liked this, especially for $2.50. If we tried to get that much fruit and combine it into our juicer, it would be really tough getting this much to drink for that amount!

Week 43 - Candied

One of the difficulties with being up to date on the 52 week challenge (since I meal plan the week or weekend before) is that I don't have the luxury of being able to see how other people handled the challenge or the suggestions they put up in the weekly introduction thread. Even if I already have some ideas for a challenge, seeing those can be helpful for refining my choices or clarifying the theme. Usually not a big deal since the themes are often pretty self-explanatory, but I was apparently not spot on with the theme for week 43 - candied.

When I hear candied, what I think about immediately is candied yams. I don't even particularly love them since I find them very sweet, but I knew I wanted to try making them for the challenge. When the introductory thread got posted that Monday, they had changed the name of the theme there from candied to candying, which has an entirely different meaning. They even posted that candying was the "process of coating food in sugar or syrup" and cooking until there was a "hard, sugary shell around the outside." It seemed like most people knew that was what was meant by candied with their candied bacon or candied ginger or candied fruit. Not me. I wasn't going to get a hard, sugary shell around these yams, but it counts for me because I already had my plan, it really did fit the theme before the explanation went up, and I'm not even officially participating anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

I loosely followed this recipe from Simply Recipes for candied yams. To make the dish, I used:

- 2 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped ($2.06)

- salt ($0.03)

- 2 cups orange juice ($0.75)

- 3/4 cup brown sugar ($0.50)

- 1 tsp ground ginger ($0.05)

- 1 tsp ground cinnamon ($0.05)

- 2 tbsp butter ($0.50)

The total for the yams was a little under $4, which isn't too bad, but that was only one component of our meal (more on that later).

This is a pretty easy recipe. You bring a pot of water to a boil, add the sweet potatoes, and then cook them until they're "no longer crunchy." I think I let them go a little too long so they were really soft, but that was okay with me. When they're about to be done, start the sauce - the juice, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and butter - and bring it to a boil, then add the sweet potatoes.

Once all the sweet potatoes are coated in the sauce, you put the heat on high and let it boil until it has reduced down and has the consistency of syrup. It looked like this for a long time and I was starting to think I would have another recipe execution failure on my hands, but then I let it go for a bit without checking on it, gave it a look, and it was perfectly reduced.

If I was going to make candied yams, then we were going to have a mini Thanksgiving dinner, an idea I loved since I love Thanksgiving dinner. A made his green bean casserole and I heated up some of the new Trader Joe's turkey sausage (more on that here), and together with our candied yams, we had a pretty colorful Thanksgiving plate. (My favorite part of Thanksgiving - stuffing - isn't here, but we already had more than enough food for the night.) It wasn't a cheap dinner, coming in around $17.45 total ($3.94 for the yams, $4.99 for the turkey, and $8.52 for the green bean casserole), but it was tasty. (Technically it was a little less since there was some green bean casserole left over for lunch the next day, but that calculation is too hard to figure out precisely.)

The yams were good, but very, very sweet. There was a nice burst of citrus flavor throughout because of all the orange juice, but the predominant flavor was definitely sweet. Although this was good, and we did enjoy it, I think I'm more inclined to take sweet potatoes and roast them in the oven with some savory spices because I prefer savory. But if making a sweet preparation for yams or sweet potatoes, I definitely think this is a good recipe.

Turkey Cranberry Apple Sausage

Just in time for the heart of the fall season, Trader Joe's has an uncured turkey cranberry apple sausage ($4.99) on the shelves. I think it's new (if it's not, I haven't seen it before), and I was really excited to try it as the turkey part of a mini-Thanksgiving dinner (more on that soon).

The sausage is made up of turkey, sweetened dried cranberries, vinegar, cane sugar, dried apples, salt, celery juice powder, black pepper, dried onions, sage, and thyme. When I tried my first piece, it tasted like a wonderful combination of turkey and stuffing, which was great since I absolutely love stuffing. After some thought, I realized why. It was more accurately like the innards of a Thanksgiving sandwich and we all know how much I love Thanksgiving sandwiches and their awesome combination of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. The sausages also had a perfect level of sage, and we love sage.

Buy Again? Yes. We really liked this. It's a perfect sausage for fall.

Since we're trying to keep this sausage taste test project going, here are the current rankings (based on the ones we've posted about):

1. Turkey cranberry apple sausage
2. Sweet Italian style chicken sausage

Pumpkin Spice Salted Caramels

Trader Joe's is generally overrun with pumpkin everything during the month of October, offering way more products than we can really use up in a timely manner, so I am always thankful when they put a product on the sample counter so we don't have to buy it to try it. On one of our recent trips, they were sampling the dark chocolate pumpkin spice salted caramels. Salted caramel is kind of hit or miss for me, but A doesn't really mind it. I wanted to make sure we would like these if we were going to buy them.

A brought one back for me from the sample counter and I thought it looked really pretty. I popped it in my mouth and looked at A in a combination of horror and disgust. That doesn't happen with a lot of foods, even if I end up not being a fan in the end. It took an incredible amount of willpower to force it down and it left such an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I was so unhappy that I had to eat 2 samples of totchos (tots, bacon, and cheddar - so good) to "wash it out." Thank goodness for totchos.

I don't know what about this candy was so repulsive to me. According to the box, it was a combination of Belgian chocolate, caramel, pumpkin and spices, and Hawaiian red sea salt. The spices were supposed to be clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger, but none of those were listed separately in the ingredients so I guess, with the pumpkin, they're all just considered "natural flavor" (the penultimate ingredient). It's not really clear what part of that or what combination there just didn't taste very good. It was a little too salty, but that couldn't be the only thing that caused the unpleasantness. A also remembers it having a little bit of a Mexican spice taste instead of a pumpkin spice taste, but again, that shouldn't be enough to make it taste so bad to me. Although A didn't hate it like I did, he didn't really care for it either. Some people do seem to like it, but I don't really get it.

Buy? Not a chance (for me), probably not (for A).

Boma

One of our favorite restaurants at Disney World is Boma, which is located at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We made it to Boma for the first time a couple of visits ago and we loved how different it was from everything else offered at Disney. We decided to take advantage of having a rental car for the first part of our trip by driving out to Boma for our first dinner on our vacation!

Boma is a buffet serving African dishes from a variety of countries, and from the dishes we saw, it looked like they tried to cover all different parts of the continent. Since there wasn't really a set menu for the night and buffets generally make it hard to write about each individual dish, here's a list of the types of dishes that they serve at Boma, some of which we had.

We have pretty limited notes from our buffet dinner and can only really guess at what some of the other items on the plates were. But one thing we both got at the beginning of our meal was mulligatawny soup. We've only really had this before in Indian restaurants, but the internet tells me this might be on the menu to represent cuisine from Mauritius.

Since we don't really remember exactly what we ate on each plate (and there were some other partial plates from the end of the meal that aren't even here), it probably doesn't make sense to go plate by plate, and talk about the flavor of every single item. We doubt we could, 3 years later, even remember which items were our favorites. We just tried so many different things. So here are A's two plates, with curry and meat and salads and other dishes.

M managed to find a list she kept of some of the stuff from her plates, several of which were also things that A got. As a sampling of what was available on the night we went, the dishes included: tabouleh, chickpea and edamame salad, fufu, couscous with raisins, bobotie, Durban spiced chicken, lamb curry, nut-crusted salmon, lavosh, sundried tomato hummus, black olive hummus, white bean hummus, kokonut rice, zaalouk vegetables, chakalaka stewed tomatoes and onions, shrimp couscous, kool slaai (cole slaw), and Ghana tomato salad.

Some of the dishes we got were obviously African to us (like fufu and bobotie), but we can't really vouch for the authenticity of everything since we're not experts in all different African cuisines. Our goal at Boma was to get a tasty buffet meal with interesting dishes, and we did. What was also a nice surprise is that they brought out a special plate for us with some desserts to celebrate our anniversary. Don't remember now what was on that plate, but we were happy to get it.

We've tried to get out to Boma on every Disney trip since we first discovered it, since it's a nice change-up from eating at the parks. After stuffing ourselves with food, we relaxed a bit in the lobby of the lodge, which is quite beautiful. Worth the drive over from our resort!

Week 42 - Native American

I wasn't sure what to make for the Native American week of the challenge. There aren't a ton of resources on what Native Americans ate in my geographic region and none of the recipes I was finding clicked with me. But the theme for the week wasn't only about what Native Americans ate where you live. It was about honoring Native Americans in all of the Americas. Because of that, I decided to go with the natives of Mesoamerica and make pozole (history on Wikipedia here). 

Although a lot of pozole these days is made with pork, I wanted to use chicken. After all, if the history is correct, the meat used in traditional pre-Columbian pozole was human meat, so any meat variation being made today isn't quite the same as what was used in the old days anyway. I decided to go with this recipe on Allrecipes for easy chicken posole and make some adaptations for the ingredients we had and time (e.g., I really didn't want to take even more time during a long recipe to poach or otherwise cook the chicken just to shred it, so I went with canned for convenience and speed).

The ingredient list for this pozole seems long, but it's actually not a very complicated recipe at all. I used:

- 2 tbsp olive oil ($0.40)

- 1 large onion, chopped ($0.70)

- cloves from 1/3 head of garlic, minced ($0.08)

- 2 12.5oz cans of chicken breast, shredded ($4)

- 1 7oz can of chopped green chiles ($0.78)

- 2 quarts of chicken broth (8 cups of water and 3 large spoonfuls of bouillon) ($0.90)

- 1 bay leaf ($0.10)

- 2 15oz cans of white hominy ($2.78)

spices to taste (and/or to preference):

- dried oregano ($0.10)

- salt ($0.05)

- chili powder ($0.10)

- chipotle chili powder ($0.15)

- cumin ($0.08)

- cayenne pepper ($0.03)

- ground coriander ($0.10)

garnishes:

- 1 small white onion, finely chopped ($0.28)

- handful of cilantro leaves, finely chopped ($0.40)

- handful of radishes, thinly sliced ($0.25)

- splash of lime juice ($0.05)

The original recipe had measurements for the spices, but I didn't really measure them out, just used about how much I thought it would need to be well-seasoned and then added some more to taste later on when I added the hominy. The primary spices to use are the chili powders, as those will add a lot of flavor and heat.

The total for the dish came out to approximately $11.33. It would probably have been less if I had just poached the chicken breasts instead of using the cans, but that would have added more time on to the already 2 hour long process. Also, I think I could have gotten cans of hominy cheaper when on sale or in other stores, but I went to our neighborhood market instead of shopping around since we just needed to get it that afternoon. In the end, $11 for dinner for 2 plus leftovers really isn't that bad.

The simple steps for making the pozole were:

1. Heat olive oil in deep skillet over medium high heat. Add onion and later garlic, cooking until softened.

2. Add chicken to skillet and once cooked through, the green chiles.

3. Add chicken broth (water and bouillon), the bay leaf, and all the spices in the ingredient list. Cover, bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to low and cook for 90 minutes. Stir occasionally.

4. Add hominy and additional spices (if needed, to taste) and cook until hominy is tender, about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.

That's it. Very, very simple to make. Just takes a lot of time since it simmers for almost 2 hours in total. But during some of that cooking time, you can prepare the garnishes. There was no way I could get a ripe avocado since I only decided to make the pozole the night before, so I just went with some thinly sliced radishes and a combination of finely chopped onion and cilantro (with a splash of lime juice). I made these as soon as I started the soup on its simmering journey, so they got to chill in the fridge for nearly an hour while we waited for everything to finish.

I was a little worried about this dish since I don't have the best track record with flavorful soup (see: Cuban black bean soup and pumpkin chili), but I added a ton of seasonings during the cooking process this time which kept it from being too bland. This was a very healthy soup and also filling due to all of the soft and starchy hominy. I may need to stock up on more hominy because I really liked it in this soup and now want to use it more. Everything actually came together really well, and the only improvement to make would probably be in the garnishes. Next time I'll buy a lime so we can squeeze on some fresh lime juice before eating, and also try to get an avocado in advance so we can have some sliced avocado too. Overall, this was just a really great combination of ingredients, and I would definitely make this again.

Classic Smash

We've mentioned Smashburger here before, our favorite place to grab a quick bite to eat at Terminal C in Newark Airport (a big reason we like that terminal at the moment). We finally have a branch of Smashburger in Manhattan now, which opened earlier this year, but that wasn't going to stop us from visiting them at the airport to get something to eat to kick off our Chicago trip. (Ridiculous mismanagement of security line lengths almost did, but we would prefer not to relive that frustrating experience here.)

Somehow, despite previous visits to Smashburger, we've never actually tried their "Classic Smash." So we decided to remedy that on this visit and also tacked on an order of smashfries. The smashfries are thinly cut regular fries that are seasoned with rosemary, olive oil, and garlic. They're soft and crisp, and the rosemary adds an extra dimension that most fast food fries don't have. We love the flavor of these skinny fries.

As I mentioned, we both got a Classic Smash, which is their standard burger, containing a beef patty on an egg bun with American cheese, smash sauce, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onion.

The Classic Smash is the burger we've had that's come the closest to tasting like Shake Shack's Shack Burger, one of our favorites. The onion is different (white vs red) and the sauce is a little different, but otherwise they were so similar that even the salting of the beef patty seemed to be around the same amount. The Shack Burger is only a smidgen better in our opinion. When you add in the line factor at Shake Shack and the fact that when we've gone to (the non-airport) Smashburger there hasn't been a line, they're pretty much equal options for us.

We were so happy with our Classic Smash burgers that we couldn't stop raving about them the entire way over to Chicago and stopped by our local Smashburger for more burgers only a couple of weeks later (more on those burgers another time). So happy to find another excellent burger to add to our rotation (that doesn't have an hour long line)!

Spicy Chickpea and Lemon

The weather today was gloomy and cold. I also feel like I'm starting to come down with something so guess where I went to lunch today. If you didn't guess Hale and Hearty then you probably don't read much of what I write. The soup I chose today was something that sounded like it was a great remedy for my cold, spicy chickpea and lemon. It is described as "We pair lemon and tomatoes in this spicy vegetable soup, combined with tender chickpeas and orzo for a perfect match."

The base of this soup is a vegetable broth full of celery, onion, kale, scallions, and tomatoes. The chickpeas and orzo add thickness and starch to the soup to make it hearty, and the lemon definitely adds a good citrus note and freshness to the soup. The "spicy" aspect was subtle, but you could certainly feel the heat as you drank more and more.

This soup was everything I was looking for. Overall it was a very warming and comforting soup, perfect for how the weather was outside and how I felt inside.

365 Onion Rings

We finally made it to the Whole Foods in Gowanus this weekend and we wish we had one of these in our neighborhood. The store is huge (over 56,000 square feet), has a gigantic parking lot with solar and wind energy, and made us feel like we were anywhere but a borough of New York City. It felt more like LA than NYC. We spent a long time wandering around the spacious store, looking at all the local products and trying to figure out which ones we didn't have at our closer stores.

I've been feeling snacky a lot these days and everything we had in the apartment was sweet (mostly chocolate), which just isn't what I was craving. So when I saw these onion rings, I had to have them. They're pretty similar to the Trader Joe's Baked Snack-O's, although I think the texture of these was a little bit better and the flavor had a little more onion intensity. I don't recall if the bag sizes are the same, but the Whole Foods version is less than 50 cents more than the Trader Joe's one, so not very different.

Just like the Baked Snack-O's, we finished the entire bag over the course of one day, so we probably shouldn't keep these in the house. It's dangerous. I'm not sure if they even have these at the store I usually go to, but to be honest, I don't spend much time looking at the snacks there. It's probably better if they don't so that I don't get tempted. They're good though, if you're looking for an onion ring snack!

Pulled Pork Predicament

I ended up at Wendy's for lunch today, since the lines at Chipotle and Lenny's were way too long and I needed food really quickly after fasting all day for some medical tests. I debated what to get since they no longer had the smoked gouda chicken sandwich I liked last month. Normally in this situation I'd go with some combination of nuggets or chili or salad or chicken sandwiches (my go-to items), but I was really drawn in by the pulled pork sandwich. I'm always tempted by limited edition sandwiches.

I didn't remember much of the Wendy's ads about the sandwich other than the fact that they now offered pulled pork, but I figured it would be your standard pulled pork sandwich - pork, slaw, sauce, bun. A look at the website description confirmed that. According to their official description, this "hickory-smoked BBQ pulled pork" sandwich contains "tender slow-cooked pork, topped with crunchy slaw and your choice of three barbeque sauces - sweet, smoky or spicy. All served on a toasted brioche bun." Yup, sounded like your typical pulled pork sandwich.

A very non-threatening looking pulled pork sandwich

I pulled off the soft bun, excited to take a picture of what was beneath the bread, and then just froze, staring blankly at what lay before me. It was probably my empty stomach causing my brain to work slower, but I saw little pieces of broccoli florets mixed into the slaw. My heart sank because I can't eat broccoli. (Digestive issues, not saying more than that.) Why on earth would they put a broccoli slaw on the sandwich? And if they were going to do it, why would they not say something right up front about it? What part of "crunchy slaw" makes someone think that it's going to be broccoli and not cabbage? If you're going to use broccoli slaw, then just say broccoli slaw in the damn description! I felt so duped. (Let me be clear, this is not a criticism of the store I went to. I put this on the marketing people who wrote the stupid description in the first place.)

Is that broccoli slaw?!?!

In my slow processing, I pondered what parts of the slaw I could possibly eat, since the entire reason I got the pulled pork sandwich and not the pulled pork fries (which I didn't even know they had until I walked in the door - were they even in the ad?) was because I wanted vegetables to offset all the meat. Finally, it occurred to me that I couldn't eat any of it, since it was likely all made of broccoli stem and other broccoli matter. Unlike the promo photo, I didn't see much red cabbage or carrots in there at all. I had to scoop all of it off and pick through all the pork to find any pieces that got mixed in, which meant a fair amount of pork also went into the trash. What a waste of food and money.

I hate wasting food but what else was I going to do with all that slaw?

Thank goodness I had also ordered one of those value size chicken nuggets (a guilty pleasure I often tack on) so I had something to eat while laboring away at the sandwich. The nuggets were fine as always, but the sandwich was a complete disappointment. It wasn't just the slaw, although I can't evaluate the sandwich as a complete product because I couldn't eat the slaw. The pulled pork was fine, but I can't really muster up any excitement about it. Most of the flavor came from the BBQ sauce they added on to it (I went with smoky). The bread, even though it's supposed to be brioche like the smoked gouda chicken, was not very good (and I like brioche). Maybe this isn't as noticeable when you eat it with the slaw, but I got well-acquainted with the bun while eating my empty sandwich and it was kind of crumbly and flavorless and dry. 

Best part of my lunch

I had such buyer's remorse. I should have gone with my initial instinct which was the pulled pork fries, since they don't have any slaw (just onions), with nuggets and chili. (I didn't because that sounded incredibly unhealthy.) My entire walk to the bike station and my entire bike ride down to Chelsea, all I could think about were better uses for my $7 than this meal at Wendy's. A cemita, or a falafel wrap, or a bagel sandwich. Thankfully Trader Joe's (my next stop) was sampling their new quinoa cowboy veggie burgers (which are in the freezer) with cowboy caviar salsa, and it was so good that it (at least temporarily) lifted my spirits and made me forget all about the pulled pork debacle until I got home and had time to write about it. 

So, just a PSA for people who can't eat or don't like broccoli - "crunchy slaw" means broccoli slaw on the pulled pork sandwich and pulled pork cheeseburger at Wendy's. I will keep that in mind any time in the future that Wendy's puts a slaw on anything, and will probably now take a second look at every cole slaw because I can't trust anyone with all this broccoli slaw floating around and masquerading as plain cole slaw. Thanks for the life lesson, Wendy's.