food dump

wow, it's been awhile, so there's a lot of catch up on. i'm sorry that i'm too lazy to find a pretty picture of the 100 cupcakes i made. i have to say though, i love cream cheese frosting. but that's over and so is orgo, so here is a cornucopia of foods that were made in the midst of orgo studying. haha. study breaks= baking. zucchini tart up above. yum, as usual.
best muffin recipe everrrrr. it's so healthy also and so easy to substitute ingredients to make different varieties. we made carrot raisin, chocolate zucchini and banana walnut chocolate versions and each was yumminess. although i think the carrot raisin was my favorite. scroll to the bottom to get the full recipe.
strawberry icebox cake! so easy and delish and perfect for the heatwave we were having. some cool whip, nilla wafers and strawberry, refrigerate and presto- deliciousness! it's seriously like crack. i think i had a whole 3rd of it the first night i tried it...


Oatmeal Muffins general (i've starred the ingredients i added to make the carrot raisin version)
1 cup instant oats
* 1 cup raisins
1 cup milk
* 1 cup finely grated carrots
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup applesauce
1 egg
* 1 tsp grated orange peel
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbl baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp cinnamon (estimate, i kind of just sprinkled into the bowl)
* 1/4 tsp nutmeg (same as the cinnamon)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a muffin pan (or line with liners). Combine the oats, * raisins, and milk and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Combine the *carrots, brown sugar, applesauce, egg, and *grated orange peel in a bowl, mix in the oat mixture. Combine the dry ingredients, quickly mix into the wet ingredients. Spoon into muffin pan and bake for about 15 minutes.

Makes 12 large muffins

(If you want to make the chocolate zucchini muffins substitute zucchini for the carrots, or do half-half, put in chocolate chips instead of raisins and a dash of lemon juice instead of orange peel, cinnamon and nutmeg. for banana chocolate walnut, take out the grated vegetable and spices and throw in the banana, chocolate and walnut.)

100 cupcake mission, part 1

i'm not sure what i was thinking when i decided to take on baking 100 cupcakes that were 1) healthy; 2) during school; 3) required shredded carrots (i want to marry a box grater). but here i am on part 1 and i've successfully shredded and finely chopped 12 and something cups of carrots. while chopping these carrots all i could think of was making some oatmeal and walnut muffins dotted with finely shredded carrots. that will i suppose be my next experiment. but after i survive this first.

i take it back, thinking of muffins wasn't the only thing that popped in mind. i also amused myself with the idea of forgetting this dietitian thing and just entering culinary school. b/c clearly expert chopping skills=chef material:) it felt very julia child in julie & julia where child masters the onion chopping the fastest!

the enormous bag of shredded carrots are hanging out in the fridge. i'm thinking of baking 50 cupcakes before class tomorrow night and then 50 after class? the biggest hurdle will be trying to figure out where to put them in the fridge or even how to transport them. any suggestions?

1 mile!

i finally swam a mile!!! it's only week 4 of the 6 week program i was following but i was feeling good enough to chug through the 58 or whatever laps i did:D and to celebrate, here's some food:
stopped by the grocery store from the pool and picked up an avocado and tomato and wha-la, made a nice omelette (threw in some ricotta cheese and black beans too).and of course, potato chip cookies:) i don't know if i really notice the potato chips in the cookies, they cookies are good, crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, super buttery. i based the recipe off of a country living recipe. i decreased the sugar to 3/4 cup for both the granulated and brown since i figured the chocolate would make it sweet enough (half batch with chopped up hershey kisses and the other half w/ lavendar candy melts, both leftover chocolates hanging out in the fridge) i also didn't add the salt to the recipe since the potato chips are already so salty. all in all, not a bad way to use up stuff sitting around the house.

oh, and for those in md, did you feel the earthquake this morning?? i was in bed and it felt like everything kind of picked up and rolled. sort of cool and freaky at the same time.

studying for orgo means...baking like sandra lee

orgo exam on thursday. and that means i'm feeling stressed and would rather bake than study...but with work and classes, no-bake is as good as it's going to get. which is pretty darn good, if you ask me:) this is about as easy as dessert can ever get. store bought graham crust, half vanilla and half banana cream instant pudding (i never knew it only took 5 minutes for the stuff to mold! it's amazing i say!) and slices of banana. of course some whipped cream on top just to make it that much more fun:) the top right picture is a banana, blueberry, whipped cream and vanilla pudding parfait. that ended up being part of my dinner. which is terrible for me to admit since i want to be a nutritionist, but every once in awhile, whose to say pudding parfait can't be dinner? besides, i have to swim 1400 yards tomorrow.

the only thing that made me sad about the pie was i couldn't get a nice slice out. the crust just crumbled and the pudding was moving too much. maybe i needed to decrease the milk amount and fold in cool whip instead? oh, and i love picasa 3. i didn't realize i had the older version but this mosaic stuff is so fun! i'll have to learn more about editing pictures which is also a great way to procrastinate.

of course life isn't always about dessert (just always first!). there was a huge autumn squash in M's garden so i baked it with some olive oil, salt and pepper (delish!) and tasted like mashed potatoes. took that and scrambled it with egg and fresh green beans. very filling and nutritious and kept me full for a long time. too bad all the squash is gone now though...

happy tuesday almost sort wednesday! and happy no-baking (which is also good for hot, muggy summer days) i'm thinking about potato chip cookies after my exam this thursday:)

a little west coast love

just got back from seattle for s1's wedding and i'm missing it already. there's something about waking up and being able to run to water and breathe in fresh air and see the mountains in the distance. it doesn't hurt that the east coast is suffering from a heat wave and seattle was having an abnormally chilly summer.
traveling of course is all about the food, so it was a food filled frenzy. but hands down the best salmon ever was at crow's (they were from copper river). i'm ruined for all other salmon. and where else to eat and see food than pike place market. these hanging vegetables were so nice!the wedding was originally going to be outside but rain struck and it was moved indoors. playing at kerry park while we looked at mt. rainier.

success?

i think i may have a winner. that or the thrill of making a healthy cupcake has completely left me:) this is a carrot cupcake with a greek yogurt based frosting. i made slight changes to this carrot cupcake recipe and used this frosting recipe.
it was a whirlwind afternoon. i searched at work for a recipe and then raced home to get started on this thing. i divided the recipe in half so i would only have to figure out how to get rid of 6 cupcakes instead of 12 (thank gosh for google and it's online calculator). i took out the oil and put in greek yogurt instead (i think it took away a lot of the potential moist/fluff factor) but the cupcake is overall good. oh, and i also decreased the sugar amount b/c i'm using regular mott's applesauce and that has sugar added into it. i only had baby carrots in the house, let me tell you, trying to grate those little suckers on the shredder do-dad is dangerous business. and i have two band-aids on my fingers now to prove it. i think they came out pretty nice looking, but i think i will try to chop up the carrots some more so they aren't so noticeable.

as for the frosting, i didn't have any powdered sugar so i took some granulated sugar and pounded it w/ a wooden pestle (or is it the mortar part, whichever part you smash things with). so that was more interesting times. then threw in a spoonful of yogurt and a dash of vanilla extract (i was only trying to ice one since no one in my family digs the greek yogurt). the frosting is a bit runny and tart, not quite the "cream cheese" frosting that usually shows up on top of carrot cake/cupcakes. and just to make my picture look cuter i threw a blueberry on top. i will have to fiddle with the frosting, any suggestions?

when healthy is too healthy...and my love affair w/ greek yogurt

hello hello! it's not as humid today! 3 cheers for that. so i don't think i got to tell you but i'm giving a one hour little talk on healthier sweets to a group of kids at an at-risk summer camp. the goal is to give them a healthy cupcake and this is becoming a major difficulty! i figured the diet cola cupcakes just didn't have enough nutrients to make it worth it to give the kids so i took a regular chocolate cupcake recipe and substituted in some whole wheat flour, applesauce instead of oil and got this weird thing. they're pretty (it helps that i stuck some reese's cups in the middle, just to kill the "healthy" factor) but they just taste too...

healthy.

which i guess was the point, but if they don't taste almost as good as the real thing, personally, i would just go for the real thing. why have dessert (in moderation) if you can't enjoy it to it's full buttery, oily potential. phew. i just needed to get that off my chest. but yes, this is my sad attempt at a healthy cupcake. i'll try again tonight or tomorrow. i might just mess with a cake mix box since i like the fluffiness i usually get from those.

this lovely cup is a bowl of greek yogurt, a chopped peach, handful of raspberries and sunflower seeds. i've had this for dinner in some combination of this (bananas, blackberries, strawberries, walnuts, etc.) for at least the past month and i still haven't gotten tired of it. amazing how much i love this stuff. especially now that it's so hot outside, nothing like yogurt with a bunch of fresh fixings to make my day. yum yum

oh, and i swam my 900 yds this morning in less than 30 minutes (but i probably still look like a drowning rat, but that's a work in progress)