Diner de samedi

Disclaimer: Contrary to what it may seem (and what my momma claims), I don’t eat out ridiculously much. However, I’ve just been so busy recently that I completely fail to remember to take photos of my normal day-to-day meals. It’s only when I head out to a restaurant that I get excited and remember to bring my camera.

Anyway, so we threw a fat party on Friday, complete with chocolate body shots. Scandalous, right? I would post pictures but I’ve promised certain people *cough* Momma! *cough* that I would censor myself and keep this blog PG-rated.

Instead, teaser photos!

The Usual

New friends

Justin: Too cool to care

What gorgeous girls!

Group mentality

Possibly the most risque photo I'll post, but Preston looks ravishing here so whatevs.

The cool kids

I love how the only thing in focus is Michelle's face

Failed King's cup

Rule #2: Three hot guys to every girl

And Saturday inevitably was spent cleaning the apartment and revitalizing oneself. The best way to do that?

Dinner at La Med. Ah, indeed, it never fails to make me happy, especially when you dine with a cutie like this one:

The best thing about sitting outside was noticing that the pet store next door had a window display of the CUTEST baby bunnies ever. I wanted to take a picture but I had to elbow a few five year olds out of the way first. And then their parents got all mad at me.

Fruit and cheese plate

It’s utterly perfect that Alex is French, because he was able to name all of the cheeses right off the bat. And if I remember them correctly: feta, muenster, chevre, brie, and white cheddar.

Vegetarian Middle Eastern plate

And as always, my happy and stunning plate of salad, hummus, spinach and feta phyllo, levant sandwich, cheese karni, dolma, and more fruit and cheese!

Typically, when I have dinner at La Med, I always head next door to Ici for ice cream, but I was utterly stuffed and couldn’t possibly indulge in even another mini bite of anything. In any case, we managed to digest our food a bit quicker by trying to convince people that Alex was kidnapping me during our walk home.

Needless to say, have you ever heard of the Kitty Genovese case (a.k.a. bystander effect)? It could be accounted to me trying to sniffle laughter instead of enthusiastically crying/screaming, but almost everyone who walked by us and saw Alex holding me in a [fake] chokehold and me frantically fighting to get away quietly averted their gaze… ONE GUY EVEN CROSSED THE STREET!

Jerks. Now I’m scared of Berkeley.

Question: Do you think Bystander Effect exists?

 

Gado Gado

Everything must always start off with a glass of wine.

Once you have that baby in your hand, you’re good to go. And as I was being treated to dinner made by two of my favorite boys, Preston and Alexandre, wine was fully necessary to survive the evening intact.

The cute thing is that those two dug up a vegetarian cookbook, went through a bunch of the recipes to satisfy both my tastes and their insatiable appetites, did all the grocery shopping, and excitedly stumbled their way through an Indonesian recipe called Gado Gado.

The dish is a sort of Indonesian salad, with raw and/or blanched vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, and yellow rice covered in a peanut sauce.

Alex and Preston's first experience with turmeric! Plus some weird nipple-pinching action.

I had quite a lot of fun just sitting on the sidelines taking photos, and only had to do the occasional garlic mincing or onion dicing.

And of course, always doing the dishes. What else is new?

The recipe calls for a bed of raw spinach leaves, topped with yellow rice, then the veggies, followed by the hard-boiled egg, and finally coated in the peanut sauce.

The Before

The During

The After

What proud papas!

So I admit – I had my doubts that they could pull this dish off. It took about two hours for the boys to go from start to finish, with many endearingly sad/pathetic/cute questions such as how to hard-boil an egg, whether broccoli stalks are edible, what happens with turmeric, what is brown rice vinegar, etc. Surprisingly Still, the meal was incredibly good, with a wicked peanut sauce and plenty of vegetables, and was subjected to raving reviews by all their housemates.

I think the total list of ingredients that went into everything included:

• spinach
• yellow rice
• green beans
• red and yellow bell peppers
• hard-boiled egg
• broccoli
• shredded cabbage
• carrots
• onion
• garlic
• ginger
• turmeric
• peanut butter
• soy sauce
• brown rice vinegar
• brown sugar
• salt & pepper

Good work, boys.

Time-tested fact: making and sharing food with good company is quite possibly the best time spent.

Amuse bouche post

Okay, listen up.

I have a much cooler post coming up but I’m stretched for time… and so I present to you a quick and dirty (and HEALTHY!) recipe for cornbread muffins as an amuse bouche before the main meal.

Unfortunately, these DO taste healthy so you’ll have to feed them to yourself or people who like the taste of “healthy” goods. I happen to love it, so I stand by these recipes wholeheartedly. After all, not everyone has the ability to eat a crapload of junk and still rock a six-pack (here’s looking at you with those freakishly fast metabolisms…)!

So you have your dry ingredients: 1 cup of cornmeal, 1 cup of all-purpose, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp of salt, and 1/4 cup of some sugar substitute.

Mix those babies together.

Then your wet ingredients: 1 cup of nonfat yogurt, 1/4 cup of sugar-free maple syrup, 1/8 cup of canola oil, 1 egg, and 1/4 cup of water.

Mix it all in one bowl! Less cleanup, yay!

Oven it up at 400 degrees F for about 15 minutes in a muffin tin… et voila!

Healthy and delicious low-fat cornbread muffins!

Healthy cornbread muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar or sugar substitute
• 1 cup of nonfat yogurt
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup of sugar-free maple syrup
• 1/8 cup of canola oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and lightly oil a muffin pan.
2. Mix together all your dry ingredients together.
3. Add in and mix together all your wet ingredients.
4. Bake for 15 minutes.

Sloppy Jennys!

I confess.

I get a little sloppy sometimes. When my schoolwork starts piling up, or my stress levels start building up, I sometimes fail around in a college-style two-year-old temper tantrum. I roll around on the ground whining amidst all my chocolate wrappers and dirty laundry, or curl up in the fetal position cursing anyone and everyone. I call my momma incessantly and ask her to tell me she loves me and that I’m the bestest person around.

I also get a little sloppy when I go out and party. I know, no one wants to admit that. But when you have that liquid courage flowing through your veins and it’s a dark, beat-pulsing, bodies-dancing Saturday night, it’s easy to get sloppy. [***MOMMA: SHIELD YOUR EYES AND DO NOT READ ON.]

And booooy do I have stories about being sloppy! i.e. Peeing in the lobby of my freshman dormitory; walking out the door with no drinks and waking up with a handle of rum, a fifth of schnapps, and two beers in my purse; puking a happy puddle on myself and then sleeping in it the whole night.

True story to all of the above. I’m the classiest girl you’ll ever know.

So this weekend, when some of my friends and I decided to go out, I was a little nervous, you know? After all, I had two papers, a reading response, and a problem set due Tuesday, and a midterm on Thursday. Pair that potential time bomb of stress with good company and a couple of drinks, and well, you have a recipe for FUN!

Hannah always looks so lovely

Captain Good Looking

KAYLA!

And a cheerful toast

So good news for all, I survived Saturday night with minimal damage, though I did have a creeper hound me all night. He finally asked for my number and I was a little too woozy to be rational and tell him, “No you’re gross and annoying and 6 years older than little innocent me!” so he managed to ask me out on a date.

Does anyone know of some awesome ways to cancel on an unwanted date??

Naturally, because I managed to keep my sloppiness under control during the weekend, come Monday (the day before everything was due), I finally blew up and got my sloppy stress-induced temper tantrum in.

So here I present to you, Sloppy Joes or much more preferably, Sloppy Jennys.

Also, these are the world’s best oven-baked sweet potato fries. I know I have the recipe somewhere in my nasty black hole of an archive and I haven’t updated my recipe page yet, so I’ll just re-post it here.

Who says sloppy joes can’t have onions and bell peppers in them?

Or that they even have to contain meat? Oh yeah, these are vegetarian sloppy joes.

With a random addition of red kidney beans because I could and they were looking so sad and lonely in their leftovers container.

No buns, no problem!

Sloppy Joes Jennys are the classy, non-sloppy version of everything, don’t you agree?

Sweet potato fries

Ingredients:

• About 2 medium sweet potatoes
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp seasoning of choice (I used Italian)
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• olive oil to coat

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
2. Wash and chop sweet potatoes into “fries” or about 1/2″ thick wedges
3. In a large bowl, coat lightly with olive oil and seasonings
4. Lay in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake for about 35-45 minutes depending on how crispy you want the edges to get

Vegetarian snobby Jennys

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 3/4 cups uncooked lentils
• 1/4 cup of vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup of organic ketchup
• 1/8 cup of spicy mustard
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp maple syrup

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, cook the lentils in 2 cups of water. When the water boils, reduce heat to low and simmer covered for about 25 minutes.
2. Lightly sauté the onions and bell pepper in a separate pan over med-high heat until onions start to turn translucent and brown, about 5 minutes.
3. When the lentils are done cooking and all the water is absorbed, throw the onions and bell pepper into the saucepan.
4. Add the spices, and ketchup.
5. After about 4 minutes over med-low heat, add in the spicy mustard and maple syrup.
6. Serve on bread as a sandwich!

Question for you all: Please tell me I’m not the only one with mortifying “sloppy” stories! (And trust me, the ones I listed aren’t even the worst of them!)

Pancake week!

Happy belated Fat Tuesday, everyone! (Yeah yeah, I know it’s Wednesday.)

Did you all know that Pancake Week is an actual tradition, and one that started somewhere back into the Middle Ages? Pretty gnarly, right? Those people were smart, because they would munch on pancakes all week, especially on Fat Tuesday (or better known as Mardi Gras) as a last-ditch effort for indulgence before Ash Wednesday.

Anyway, this post and recipe is definitely coming way too late, but I hope you all got your pancake fix in.

I personally don’t like pancakes (or waffles for that matter). Sinful, I know. There’s something about them that just gives me ginormous migraines, though that could be attributed to the syrupy mushiness that can sometimes occur. In high school, whenever iHop had its free short-stack day, a brigade of my friends would all drive over to the nearest one and get pancakes… and I’d always be that loser who orders a stack, eats a bite, and then passes the plate onto someone else.

But there’s no way anyone is allowed to not eat pancakes during National Pancake Week, so I made a quick batch of easy peasy pancakes.

For those who have mastered the art of making fat, fluffy, perfect pancakes, I envy you. You have a skill that many covet.

And even though mine turned out to be a little bit thin, the chocolate chips in them definitely made up for any aesthetic downfall. Dare I say it? I actually liked these pancakes!

Chocolate chip pancakes (makes about 4 small ones)

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup flour (all-purpose or whole wheat)
• 1/3 cup quick oats
• 1 tsp baking powder
• sugar (optional)
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup of liquid (water or milk)
• chocolate chips (I only used about 1/4 cup)
• syrup
• toppings of choice

Directions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together
2. Pour in liquid until desired consistency. For thinner pancakes, you’ll need more liquid.
3. Lightly spray griddle with non-stick spray
4. Pour batter onto griddle in four circles
5. Cook over med-high heat until batter starts to bubble through (about 4-5 minutes)
6. Flip over and cook for another 1-2 minutes