I am home for the long weekend, so I have been stuffing my face with food before I head back to school. On Saturday, I saw my best friend and we went to my favorite Mexican restaurant in NYC – Blockheads. We both ordered a breakfast burrito which came with ham (at first, my friend’s did too even though she precisely said no ham), scrambled eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, avocado, and a side of potatoes (possibly home fries?)
The burrito was so delicious and filling at the same time. I loved how the tortilla was grilled on the outside, giving it a crisp and crunchy texture. It was definitely a worth-while meal!
Every Saturday morning, there is a farmers’ market in the town of Amherst. I’ve walked by the market a couple of times this semester never feeling the urge to stop and buy something. It might be because the apples are pretty good in the cafeteria these days, and I generally buy apples at farmers’ markets. But today was a new day – I really wanted to look around and possibly make a purchase.
My eyes hit the bread and pastries tent. Are you actually surprised? Can you guess what I got?
I bought a chocolate croissant. It was quite pricey, but so well worth it. The pastry dough was light and flakey, and the chocolate inside was delicious. I ate my croissant in my room with some green tea.
Today was such a beautiful day, so I decided to run to Atkins for the fourth time this semester. It only took me 29 minutes, which is 3 minutes faster than my old record. (It’s roughly 4 miles to Atkins from my college campus). I don’t know if it was the ice cream that I was going to eat after that motivated me or just that I am in better shape now. I want to say it’s the latter, but my probability class tells me it is the former.
I ordered a “kid” sized sundae which consisted of soft-serve maple nut ice cream with loads of hot fudge and walnuts. I put “kid” in quotation marks because the sundae size could easily pass for a medium. But trust me, I am not complaining.
And here is a picture of campus. Doesn’t it look so serene?
I am finally settled at school and enjoying all of my classes so far! The one thing I am not enjoying is the cafeteria food. I literally eat carbs as my main food group at every other meal – today it was rice, yesterday it was tortellini – you get the picture. I guess I can always fall back on good old reliable carbs.
My meals got me thinking of a particularly good carb dish I had back home – pappardelle pasta with a braised pork ragu.
Pappardelle is one of my favorite types of pasta, and the pork was tender and absolutely delicious. Once I finished my plate of pasta, I scraped the remaining bits of sauce off my plate with (you probably can guess) bread. Go carbs!
It’s a good thing that I started running again. More on my running adventures to come!
What can I say? I just love beans. Today for lunch, I prepared some cannellini beans with stewed tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend.
I was not motivated to cook tonight, so for dinner, I made this sandwich. I smeared nutella on one slice of whole wheat bread and peanut butter on another slice. I put slices of banana on my sandwich and grilled the sandwich in a pan for a couple of minutes on both sides, so that the banana softened and the nutella and peanut butter were nice and gooey.
My mom took me to the Atlantic Grill for a special goodbye lunch. I know it’s a little early as I leave on Sunday, but the weather was glorious and I’ve been wanting to try the Atlantic Grill for a long time. All of the food was delicious, so I was definitely not disappointed.
Our waiter brought us some delicious warm bread with butter. You can probably surmise that I was happy from the start. But bringing us three rolls? Come on, both my mom and I eat a lot of bread – no exaggeration. My mom said she didn’t want a second piece of bread, so I hopped on that very quickly.
My mom and I are very similar people (beside the fact that she is practically one foot shorter than I am), so it wasn’t surprising that we ordered the same dishes. We both started with maki rolls filled with salmon, avocado, pickled jicama and crunchy tempura pieces. These rolls were amazing and definitely the highlight of my meal. I loved the contrast of textures – the buttery avocado chunks and smooth salmon with the crunchy jicama and tempura pieces.
After the maki rolls, we had crusted yellow snapper with a cool yogurt sauce and tabouli salad. The snapper was grilled to perfection, and I loved the brightness and freshness of the salad which had slices of grapefruit, fennel, cucumber, almonds, and radishes.
Dessert was a chocolate torte with cherry compote and vanilla bean ice cream. Though generally dessert is my favorite part of a meal, in this instance, it was my least favorite. I am not saying that I didn’t like the dessert. In fact, I liked it very much, but it was a little to sweet for me with the dried cherries. Regardless, my meal was delicious!
Thanks again mom! I will miss you.
My third breakfast post in a row – staying strong obviously. A couple of days ago, I had a sunny-side up egg with a twist from Amy’s Bread. A twist is not quite a roll not quite a baguette, and it can be filled with many different things ranging from raisins and nuts to cranberries and chocolate chips. My twist had golden raisins and walnuts. For me, half of my twist functioned as a piece of toast. After warming my twist, I used it to wipe up the remaining yoke off my plate. Yum!
Another post about breakfast. What can I say? Breakfast is awesome. This morning, I was craving oatmeal which is odd for two reasons. First of all, it’s hot outside; oatmeal is definitely better suited for the winter. Second of all and more importantly, I don’t really like oatmeal. Let me clarify – I enjoy oatmeal in baked goods such as cookies or cakes, but I don’t like the gooey porridge people eat in the morning.
So despite my hesitation, I made porridge today with half a banana, a handful of golden raisins, a handful of almonds, some ground cinnamon, and honey. The porridge was delicious! I guess my taste buds have changed. I will definitely make my meal of oats again once the weather cools down.
Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and today, I wanted to have breakfast twice. Hence, the breakfast sandwich (click here to see an earlier post of my sweet breakfast sandwich). Since I have already posted about a sweet breakfast sandwich, here is the savory one I ate for lunch.
What You’ll Need
2 slices of bread
2 slices of honey maple ham
2 eggs
1/4 sprig of dill
4 pieces of comté or gruyere cheese (roughly the size of a sliced carrot for crudité)
1 tsp olive oil
Directions
1) Crack eggs and beat with a whisk. Add dill to eggs.
2) Put olive oil in a frying pan under low heat.
3) Put eggs in pan and stir often with a wooden spoon. The key to making good scrambled eggs is patience – you don’t want to cook them under high heat and burn them. Low and slow is the way to go. But honestly, when you are only cooking two eggs, they take a couple of minutes. You want the eggs a little runny because they will cook some more when they are in the sandwich.
4) Assemble the sandwich: On one slice of bread, first put eggs, then ham, and finally cheese. Close the sandwich with the other slice of bread.
5) Put the sandwich in the same pan you used to cook the eggs, and toast for roughly 1 minute on each side, so that the bread gets golden brown. I used a sauce pan as a weight on my sandwich, so that the bread would toast more.
Enjoy!
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