I have had Turkish food twice since I’ve been home. Kind of random I know, but I love it. Yesterday for dinner, my parents and I shared some really delicious mezes with warm bread, similar to pita but even better. (Mezes below: spinach with yogurt on top, cacik which is just yogurt with cucumber, baba ganoush, and beans in tomato sauce). Happy but filled with the appetizers, we split an entree: chicken breast with rice pilaf. Everything I ate yesterday evening was delightful.
For lunch a couple of days ago, my mom and I ate at another Turkish restaurant which was also very good. They served us really good bread (a common theme I noticed in both Turkish restaurants). To start, I had red lentil soup (it did not look red, but it sure tasted good). And for my main course, I had some sort of chicken sausage. I usually wouldn’t order sausage in a restaurant because it’s not one of my favorite foods to begin with. But this sausage was very good, and it came with rice pilaf and arugula salad. Now, all I need is some baklava.
So I decided to start this post in reverse chronological order because I love dessert, and I wanted to stress how good it was today. My friends and I went to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory and shared a large cup of ice cream with three unique and delicious flavors: almond cookie, ginger, and black sesame. The almond cookie tasted like marzipan (which is a confection made from almond meal and sugar. It’s so good!) The ginger, for lack of better words, tasted like ginger but in a good way. Meaning, the ginger flavor tasted fresh but not too overpowering. The black sesame was my favorite because the ice cream had such an interesting texture from the sesame seeds. (You can tell from the picture below that the black sesame was on the bottom).
Before we had ice cream, we enjoyed some Hong Kong cuisine in a nearby restaurant in Chinatown. I ordered beef satay with rice noodles and vegetables and a Hong Kong style iced tea. Everything was so good, and I didn’t even feel guilty after eating so much because I had walked all the way from my apartment to Chinatown (over 5 miles)!
These macarons tasted even better than they looked. (Flavors from left to right: blackberry [a little weird because the macaron was blue], espresso, dark chocolate, raspberry, apricot, and cassis rose).
I am loading up on fish before I head back to school. Yesterday for dinner, I started off with a smoked salmon open-faced sandwich which also had cucumber, dill, yogurt, and a splash of lemon juice.
I was in the grilling mood (maybe because I think it is summer already), so I grilled swordfish and asparagus. Maintaining my yogurt theme, I made a yogurt dipping sauce for the fish. In 1/4 cup of yogurt, I put a pinch of garlic powder, 1/4 of a diced cucumber, a teaspoon of lemon juice, a little dill, and some freshly ground pepper.
Tonight, I am eating Italian food, so I will probably eat pasta or some sort of chicken in lemon sauce. My double whammy of fish the other day will tide me over for the day. Fish tomorrow? Sounds like a plan!
For lunch today, I made a grilled cheese and one of my favorite salads: romaine with mango, avocado, and tomato. The colors from the mango and tomato remind me of a sunset, so I decided to call it the Sunset Salad. What makes this salad so special and perfect for the warm weather is my orange vinaigrette. I squeeze the juice from half a naval orange, and combine it with 2 teaspoons of cider vinegar, roughly 1/4 cup of olive oil, and a little salt and pepper.
Bon appétit everyone!
I have been confused lately due to the unusually warm weather we’ve been having here on the east coast. The plus side is going outside with few layers and not feeling cold. On a more negative note, my brain tells me that I don’t have work and that it is already summer. (This is not good since I still have 7 more weeks of school).
In any case, what better way to cool off than with fresh fruit ice pops? I decided to use strawberries and blueberries because that’s what was in my fridge. I put roughly 2 1/2 cups of blueberries and 8 strawberries in a blender with 1/4 cup of orange juice (I used enough orange juice so my blended fruit mixture would be easy enough to pour out of the blender). I did not add any sugar because I like things on the sour side, but I would definitely recommend sugar if you want your ice pops on the sweeter side.
I poured the blended fruit into an ice cube tray, covered the tray with plastic wrap, and put popsicle sticks in each ice cube slot. (I used the plastic wrap so that the popsicle sticks would stay in place. At first, I had trouble putting the popsicle sticks in the plastic wrap, so I used a toothpick to poke a hole in the plastic wrap. With much less effort than my first attempt, I successfully placed the popsicle sticks in each slot).
I put the ice cube tray in the freezer for a few hours, and voilà, homemade strawberry-bluerry ice pops. Perfect for a hot spring day. I dedicate this post to my source of inspiration, global warming.
For lunch, my mom and I went to one of my haunts, a Vietnamese restaurant called Vermicelli. I love the food, and their lunch is pretty cheap. For around $8, I order a huge bowl of barbecue chicken with vermicelli (which I always finish). It comes with some sort of chicken soup which today had cabbage, kale, and egg white.
Next, we headed over to Nespresso to buy some more coffee. After our purchase, they gave us a free espresso with a chocolate.
As if i didn’t have enough to eat, when I got home around 4PM, I made green tea in my new mug (isn’t the rooster adorable?) and had an apple with peanut butter and some of my leftover granola.
Tonight, I am seeing one of my friends, and we are going to a Mexican restaurant. If I am up for it, I will order a burrito, but right now, it seems like I will opt for a chopped salad.
Roaming the food blogosphere for many months now, I’ve noticed some patterns in posts, one of them being homemade granola. I figured since I was already on a yogurt rampage, why not try making some granola myself and putting it in my yogurt?
I didn’t follow an exact recipe. Rather, I just put together ingredients that I thought would taste good together. Here are the methods to my madness:
I measured roughly 3 cups of rolled oats and mixed in 1 handful of chopped walnuts and 1 handful of sliced almonds. Meanwhile, I heated 1/2 cup of honey in a pot with a teaspoon of Canola oil until the mixture came to a boil. I poured the honey and oil onto my oats and nuts mixture and tossed until well combined. Then I put my concoction on a sheet pan and into an oven that was preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. I baked my granola for roughly 40 minutes, checking up on it every 10 minutes.
I also wanted to put fruit in my yogurt, so I made a fruit salad with bananas, blueberries, strawberries, and orange. (I reserved two slices of orange which I squeezed into my fruit salad to prevent the bananas from turning brown).
Here is my delicious breakfast! I tried a new flavor of cappuccino today: chocolate. Though the undertones of chocolate tasted good, I will stick with my usual blend. (I use the Nespresso capsules because my mom has a Nespresso cappuccino maker).
And best yet, some leftover granola which I will snack on later in the day or save for breakfast tomorrow.
I have eaten yogurt for breakfast three days in a row now. I like buying the plain yogurt because I can control how sweet and fruity my yogurt turns out. Today, I heated some champagne grapes in a little water for 7 minutes. The grapes got nice and soft, and they were quite delicious in my yogurt. I wonder what I will try tomorrow!
Food Follower 