Noshtopia

Memorial Day Nosh Snackage

 

Just wanted to pop in and say a quick hello! Hope you're all enjoying the 3-day weekend.

I had to share this. Today, for a snack I noshed on some raw kale, cabbage, and raspberries. I know! It's such a weird combo, and not something I planned. It's just something I craved.

I'm telling ya, this going sugar little adventure surely has created some odd but wonderful side effects. Coming up, I'll share some of the other eats I enjoyed this weekend. I just downloaded over 300 pictures from my iPhone. Indeed, loads of noshy food!

Guilty Pleasures: Noshing On Sliders And Marzens

 

Fellow food lover friend @jwillensky and I went to go see Iron Man 2, and so naturally after all that adrenaline-inducing, macho tin man fighting and destruction, we had to go get beers. I am a beer girl. I especially dig micro-brewed beers.

Gordon Biersch was across the street from the theater and whenever I go there by default I must get the garlic fries and a cold Marzen, a smooth lager with a mildly sweet finish. Hmm, kinda sounds like me :)

If you have never been to a Gordon Biersch and you go, you must get the garlic fries. I will say must in italics a third time just because I really do mean it that much. Here's a close up picture of said garlic fries on a day I showed you can eat vegan at a beer place. I think after their beer, the Gordon Biersch garlic fries are their signature item...at least to me. And, if you're going to indulge in a guilty pleasure, these fries are to be had and savored.

 

We were lucky to still be in happy hour hours so we ordered a Slider appie combo plate of BBQ Pork Sliders, Kobe Sliders, and Garlic Fries. Let me just focus on the BBQ Pork sliders because they were awe-some! I don't eat pork that often but these puppies looked so good I had to have two not just one.

When it's that time to indulge on our free days, I do so enjoy Gordon Biersch! So what is your favorite guilty pleasure food?

Weaning Sugar Wednesday #15: Sugar At Night Is Still Challenging

 

We're almost at 4 months now since I started this going sugar little adventure. My goal was to go from consuming 80g of sugar/day down to about 25g/day. I'm happy to say that I'm solidly at about half way at about 40g/day. Of course, there are days where I will eat more sugar or less sugar, but consistently, I'm at about 40g average. *throwing confetti*

Cutting down the sugar in drinks

Where I have cut down significantly are in drinks with added sugar. I didn't realize that almost more than half of my daily sugar consumption was coming from drinks alone. I no longer buy many of the same drinks I used to simply because they have too much sugar in them.

Also, when I go to a cafe to work, my usual drink is now an unsweetened rice milk latte or a plain iced coffee. I'll add either one packet of raw sugar, a couple tsps of agave, or go without anything which is ideal but I'm honestly not there yet. 

Carrying snacks with me

 

I also bring some snacks with me to help avoid the temptation of getting a pasty, biscotti, or donut when I start getting hungry. Some snacks I'll bring include cucumber or avocado sushi rolls from the Whole Foods deli, wild jungle peanuts, or a raw food bar.

One day, if I were to open a cafe, I would have a section of the food menu that was non-sugary eats. When you go out, and try to find food without or with very little sugar, you quickly discover just how much we are bombarded with the sweet stuff. It's eye opening in a scary way.

Night time is still challenging

So, I'm very thrilled that I've cut down on the sugar in the drinks and that my palate has changed so that the taste buds can't tolerate as much sugar, and that I'm also craving greens for breakfast when I wake up in the morning.

The area that still needs work is noshing on sweets at night time. I am very conscious now that the emotional reasons driving my sweet cravings at night are tied to when I start feeling lonely...particularly missing having a relationship. I'd much rather have the sweetness of cuddling with my sweetie but in lieu of that I've been cuddling with a pint of coconut milk dark chocolate ice cream. I may not have a man but I can always rely on getting love from ice cream.

I've been reading Geneen Roth's Women Food and God , and honestly it's taking me a long time to read it because the book strikes many emotional chords with me, and admittedly, even as much as I've grown in awareness, I still have hard times dealing with how I use food to help me deal with my emotions. Reading Geneen's book tends to poke some of those tender spots, so I have to read the book in doses.

Sometimes, I do wonder if I can get to a point where I can deal with my feelings without food at all. I am very proud of myself though for the progress I have made over the years when food used to control me. Indeed, I have come a long way baby, so I'll focus on that success.

Since I'm a bit of lost place with this relationship thing, I'll ask you guys. What have you done or tried to not use food as a way to help ease the loneliness of not having a relationship? What did you find that worked? Thank you for your insight!

Fridge Creation: Cha Soba Noodles With Mango Apple Sausage and Garlic Shrimp

 

The other day I was feeling too lazy to leave the house, so it was one of those, "What can I make for dinner with whatever is in the fridge?"

Fortunately, when mom and dad were here last month we did a Costco run and in the freezer I had a bazillion shrimp and mango chicken sausages. Okay, well not a bazillion, but when you buy stuff at Costco for one, the amount of food you get can feel ginormous. I'll probably be eating that frozen shrimp until the end of the year.

A shrimp scampi was sounding pretty good, and when I looked in the pantry, I didn't have any pasta, but I had a package of organic Cha soba noodles infused with fresh green tea leaves. My friend @bmok likes to, what he calls, "bastardize" culinary traditions by combining things you'd not normally see but just might be good together.

As you know, I'm totally into experimenting with ingredients, so I thought, why not make a scampi using soba noodles instead of a fettuccine, and then using the mango chicken sausage instead of bacon? I like to use bacon in my scampi dishes. It's like East meets suburban Italian. Talk about melting pot ay!

I'm so glad I got creative because this dish was awesome, so this week it becomes my, "I tried something new" eats. Best yet, my concoction was easy to make!

I used olive oil in this recipe instead of butter because I have the cow milk allergy. If I didn't have the allergy, I'd totally be using slabs of creamy butter. I also use shaved manchego cheese because it's made from sheep milk which I can eat and have recently become addicted to as seen in this golden beets with shaved manchego and pecans dish I made last week. If I could have cow, I'd try shaved asiago or gouda.

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 2 cups cooked soba noodles 
• 12 large frozen pre-cooked shrimp (thawed)
• 1 mango chicken sausage sliced into thin pieces
• 4 cloves of diced garlic (use more if you want more garlicky taste)
• fresh manchego cheese to shave on top
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• garlic salt and black pepper

Let's get cooking:

• Cook the soba noodles according to the package, drain and set aside.

• In a sauce pan, pour in 1 tbsp of olive oil, heat to medium, and then fry the mango sausage until brown on both sides. I fried the sausage slightly not too much just to give it a bit of a crunchy bacon like experience.

• Add in the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil into the pan, along with the garlic. Saute the garlic with the sausage for about a minute. I like the amount of olive oil on the dry side to help reduce fat content, but if you want a bit more of a wet scampi, then add one more tbsp of olive oil.

• Toss in the shrimp and add in garlic salt and pepper to taste. I added just a tad bit more salt then I normally add because when you mix everything with the noodles the salt taste will calm down some. You can also wait until you mix the shrimp, sausage mixture with the noodles first, then taste, and determine if you need more salt or not. Better to start salt light than with too much.

• You won't need to cook the shrimp long because it's already cooked. You just want to heat it up like a couple minutes. Continue to stir the sausage, shrimp, and garlic while cooking the shrimp.

• Take the pan of the hot burner and put on a cool burner. Pour the soba noodles into the pan with the sausage, shrimp, and garlic. Mix everything well together.

Plate the scampi, and then shave fresh manchego cheese on top. Enjoy!

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5 Things You Can Eat With Beets

Beets for many people do not rank as a favorite vegetable and I get it because when I was younger I didn't care for beets that much because it tasted like grass to me.

But, as I've gotten older and tried beet dishes made by some really good cooks, I've come to love the beet in both red and yellow. Last week, I made this awesome and simple, "Soft Golden Beets With Shaved Manchego and Toasted Pecans."

Growing up, most of the beets I ate came from a can. When you have fresh beets, there is a huge difference in the flavor and texture...at least to me. I avoid eating canned and frozen veggies as much as possible simply because fresh tastes so much better to me.

So, with the help of some tasty food bloggers, here are some ideas for things you can eat with beets:

• Beet salad with Blood orange, Mineolas, Clementines, Kumquates, and mixed greens [Cheeky Chili]

• Asparagus and Pasta cooked with beets and red wine. The color of the pasta shells is amazing [Peas Love Carrots]

• Oven Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes with Beets in Garlic-Lemon-Thyme Dressing [Gourmeted]

• Snackage: Baked Chioggia Beet Chips [Lemon Basil]

• Warm citrus beet salad with goat cheese, grilled onions, and country ham [Zested]

There you have just a few ideas. What is one of your favorite beet dishes?

Choices: Yes, Yogurts Can Be Made Without Cow Milk

 

Before I was diagnosed with the cow milk allergy, it never dawned on me that yogurts can be made with milks other than from a cow. I mean, if you live in the U.S. and can eat whatever dairy you want, why would it even occur to you other than health reasons or a friend/family member told you about it, to think of non-cow milk yogurts?

What I'm getting at is how much the cow dominates our eating culture. Don't get me wrong, I love the cow, and miss its milk dearly, but for many of us, milk does not do our body good, so we need choices.

When it comes to yogurt, one of the things I love about Whole Foods is that they offer a plethora of non-cow milk yogurt choices. In this picture, here is the wall of yogurt at my local Whole Foods. Pretty amazing!

So, just to shed some light, here are some other milks that are used to make yogurt:

• Soy
• Rice
• Coconut
• Arrowroot
• Sheep
• Goat
• Nut (cashew, almond, hazelnut. macademia)

Basically, you can take any type of milk and turn it into a yogurt. Here's a simple recipe to make nut milk based yogurts at home. Arrowroot is a new non-cow milk yogurt I've seen through the brand Nogurt.

 

I will point out though that the taste and experience of non-cow milk yogurts is a whole other story. I've tried all of the above yogurts except nut and Arrowroot. Of the yogurts I've tried, the coconut milk based yogurts made by So Delicious brand are by far the best. In fact, the So Delicious yogurt is so important to me that I've listed it as one of, "10 Things in Steph's Healthy Kitchen."

I avoid soy as much as possible because it affects my metabolism. Rice milk yogurts tend to be on the watery side and not as flavorful. Goat and Sheep taste too barnyardy for me.

Your palate may be different, so I recommend you try any of the yogurts listed above. I highly encourage experimenting. If anything, trying out a new yogurt would be an interesting conversation topic.

So, what is your favorite non-cow milk yogurt?

Weaning Sugar Wednesday #14: I'm Now Eating Leafy Greens For Breakfast

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that a couple of the side affects I've been experiencing since starting this going sugar little journey in January is that 1. my taste for salt has changed and salty things that I normally used to eat are now tasting too salty to me so my sodium intake along with sugar has decreased, and 2. I wake up in the morning craving leafy greens like kale, arugula, spinach, and even baby bok choy.

See this wall of Kale at the grocery store. This is porn for me now :)

 

If you are going to have side effects, I would have to say that the ones I've been experiencing are the kind you want to have. I mean what doctor is going to be concerned over the fact that now you want less salt and are eating more greens. It actually sounds like a doctor's dream come true for their patient.

 

Yesterday on Noshtopia Phoenix, I posted a picture of my Sunday breakfast which was a green leafy salad with orange juice. Besides eating a green salad on Sunday morning, the other odd thing I did was get up at 7:30am which is basically unheard of for me as I am a night owl...especially on Sunday morning where it is my one day I feel absolutely no guilt staying in bed until noon.

I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so thank you body for these wildly unexpected but happily accepted changes in our palate. Sometime soon, I want to try this breakfast Quinoa dish Martha made for Sunday brunch.

Soft Golden Beets With Shaved Manchego And Toasted Pecans

 

Friend Lara @petitfromageAZ has gotten me addicted to Manchego cheese. This is very exciting to me because I can't have any cow milk cheeses because of an allergy but I can have sheep milk. What I love about Manchego is that it has an aged cheddar like experience which used to be one of my favorite cheeses.

Feeling kind of lazy this weekend, I got a bit creative and wanted to come up with a dish this week that was easy, flavorful, and different. In fact, this recipe was so easy, I didn't even have to cook anything because at my local Whole Foods, in the salad bar, they had these huge chunks of boiled Golden beets.You can use red beets too. I think the yellow color of the Golden beets goes well with the carmely white of the Manchego.

 

If you can find a local salad bar with boiled beets in hand, then you are most fortunate. If not, here is a very simple video like less than 60 seconds on how to boil beets.

Toasting pecans is really easy. Just cut some pecans into chunks, place on aluminum foil and bake in oven at 350 degrees for 2-3 minutes, or toast in a toaster oven for a minute.

Using toasted pecans in this recipe is best because the toasting brings out the flavorful nuttiness in the pecan, and that toasted nut flavor blends well with the Manchego to help jazz up boiled beets which are rather bland on their own.

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 1-1/2 cups boiled Golden beets cut in big chunks

• 1 tbsp toasted pecans

• 2 tbsps shaved Manchego

Let's get cooking:

• Start with chilled beets and place in a bowl.

• Toss in pecans and shaved Manchego. Mix well. Voilah! Ready to eat.

Don't you love two line recipes?!

5 Things You Can Eat With Cherries

 

I walked into the market yesterday, and a huge smile came across my face as I saw a huge stand of cherries. Yay! Cherries are back, which for me officially marks the beginning of summer.

I lived in Traverse City, Michigan for awhile when I was a kid when my Dad was stationed there, and to this day, one of my vivid memories of that time were all the cherries we would eat.

I have very happy memories associated with cherries. So, with the help of some tasty food bloggers and their mouth watering photos, here are 5 things you can eat with cherries:

• Simple breakfast: Oat Bran Cereal with Dried Cherries, Banana and Honey [Crumpets and Cakes]

• Caramelized Nectarines and cherries...serve with a side of yogurt, cottage cheese, or breakfast Quinoa [Cook Sister]
  

• Broccoli salad with pumpkin seeds, dried cherries, and Meyer lemon dressing [Healthy Green Kitchen] 

• Apple, cherries, and Spelt Berry Salad...you can make this vegan by replacing with non-dairy yogurt like coconut [Kathleen's Vegetarian Kitchen]
  

• Stuffed acorn squash with sausage and dried cherries...you can make this dish with vegetarian or meat sausage [Ask Georgie]

If you have any yummy cherry dishes or ideas, please share!