keepin' it simple

One of the best ways I've managed to "cope" with food allergies is to cook things I can eat in different ways. What better specimen to use as an example than chicken. I mean, there are so many ways you can cook chicken these days. One of my favorite ways -- yes, despite the hot, humid, summer weather we are going through lately, call me nutty -- is by simply roasting it. All I do is throw it on a baking sheet, drizzle some olive oil on top, sprinkle with salt and pepper, then put it in a 450 oven for an hour. Yummy every time.

I bought some gnocchi at the Salumeria Italiana a couple of weeks ago (keeps well in the freezer until you need it by the way). I also bought a beautiful potted basil plant from Andy's Flowers in Somerville a couple of weeks ago that keeps blooming and blooming despite how many leaves I pluck off it. I made an olive oil and basil paste in our little Magic Bullet blender device (<-- seriously one of the best buys out there if you like to cook) with some garlic, parmesan, and romano cheeses. Put it all together and you have yourself a delicious (and rather healthy?) dinner. Enjoy!

chobani greek yogurt

I've found a new snack, ya'll ...

Chobani vanilla non-fat Greek yogurt. Yummmmmm!

sushi class

Tony and I took a sushi making class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts on Friday night. I had taken two French cooking classes there and wanted him to see what it was like -- plus we LOVE sushi -- so I convinced him to take the class with me. It was a lot more stressful than he thought it would be, but we still managed to have a fun time learning various things.

Our instructor, Chef Hong, taught us about shopping for sushi grade fish, how to roll a couple of different ways, about the various filling options, and -- most importantly -- how to make sushi rice. We all did the prep work of cutting up vegetables, frying the tempura pieces, and prepping the dessert stuff in groups of two. Tony and I made the components for the dessert pieces -- mango with coconut rice and chocolate nigiri -- plus made the sushi rice. Then we cleaned up our boards and all learned how to make rolls at the same time. We could use any filling we wanted to which was really cool since I was a little bit worried that I wouldn't be able to eat much due to my food allergies. We will totally do this at home some time!

Here's a video of Chef Hong seasoning the rice that Tony and I [nervously] made:



And here's a video of Chef Hong assisting Tony-san with his rolling techniques (sorry for my little comments in the background - LOL):



Anyway, if you're in this area, I highly recommend taking a cooking class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts some time. It's a lot of fun and you learn a lot while making yummy food and meeting interesting people. :)

miracle of science

Despite the heat and humidity, Tony and I walked from Kendall Square T station to the Miracle of Science Bar + Grill before going to see "The Visitor". The restaurant is owned by the same people that own Cambridge 1 (our fave pizza place) so we thought that they'd have pretty good burgers. But boy, that was one long walk. In the heat. Yuck.

It's a very casual place near MIT off Mass Ave. where you seat yourself and there is no menu handed out. All they do are burgers, skewers, and quesadillas and it's a one-man-show at the small grill next to the bar. It was rather hot when we arrived but of course, we had to keep in mind that we had just walked almost a mile (it felt like that long!) to get there. Luckily we found a table (right under the menu if you go to their site) and eventually cooled off by guzzling a glass of iced water.

Tony had beer and I had wine but I could only choose either red or white (read: not a very expansive wine menu - ha!). He had the chicken sandwich which came with an habanero and mango mustard sauce, and I got the cheeseburger with blue cheese. We both really enjoyed them plus the large grilled potato chunks that they came with. Would definitely go back there when it's not so fricken humid outside. Sheesh.

new discoveries

I know it has been a while since my last post and I apologize, but things like planning a fricken wedding sort of take up your time, know what I mean?! LOL Anyway, trying to get back to "normal" and back to picky grocery shopping. Basically, I just wanted to share a couple of new discoveries I made at the grocery store (at Shaw's nonetheless -- imagine my shock!) ... a couple of new tasty discoveries I should say.

First, I have to give kudos to the people that make Joseph's pita bread. Thank you for not putting anything like stupid corn syrup in them! Woo-hoo! Of course, it means that I eat an awful lot of pita bread, but ... another story for another day. Anyway, I found these mini cans of tuna made by Pastene that don't contain soy oil or anything else I'm allergic to (oh and believe it or not, some brands put corn syrup in tuna). And then I found some tzatziki with garlic near the deli aisle. So I mixed some of the tzatziki in with the tuna and made a pita bread sandwich. Yum yum!!

And then tonight on my way home from work, I stopped at Savenor's to pick up a couple of things. I needed some cheese for our salads tonight so I decided to try a wedge of Vella Dry Jack. It's really nutty and dry so it crumbles up when you cut it. Really good.

Okay, gotta run but wanted to share these things and finally post something. ;-)