I need to get me some real internet...

I had lost my internet connection for the past few days and therefore, not being able to blog. Well, I hope you were aware that Tuesday was Mardi Gras! Whether you celebrate the holiday because of your religion or celebrate it just to celebrate a holiday (like me), Mardi Gras is a fun holiday to look into. People celebrate the holiday differently all across the world, but here in the states, it is very popular in the south east. Because of that, most foods commonly eaten on that holiday are southern foods. Also, the history of Mardi Gras/fat Tuesday is to eat all the fats and sugars around the house in preparation for lent. Pancakes are traditionally made on this day because of that.

This year I didn’t make pancakes because there were still a good amount of muffins lying around the house. Also, King Cake is a traditional dessert to be eaten on this day. I made it last year, but I wanted to try making something new for this year. So, we had a mini Mardi Gras dinner party. And I mean, it was pretty low key, like, two dishes, low key. We made a huge pan of Jambalaya (chicken, chorizo, and shrimp) and beignets. How could you possibly go wrong with some man-catching beignets?! Haha.. oh how I love the movie The Princess and The Frog.

Wednesday was the start of lent and I wanted to do it again this year. Last year I didn’t eat anything with processed sugars (not including cane juice, honey, or things of that sort). This year I’m doing the same, abstaining from processed sugars, and also going running every day. I’m trying to train for a half marathon that is in May. So this will help me decide whether or not I will be capable of signing up for the race.

Also, this year, I found out that people celebrate lent differently. Some people go the whole 40 days strait with their goal, others give there self a weekend break, and then there are some that end the weekend before Easter. Last year, I think I did it the last way I mentioned. This year, I think I’m going to give myself the weekends off. I just feel a bit guilty, like I am one of those Christians that only go to church on Easter Sunday. Well, what am I saying?! I’m not doing lent for religious reasons! Haha.

Thursday was international chili day and so I made myself a chili salad! I didn’t have all the right ingredients for chili so I had to improvise. Here, let me share with you how odd I am when it comes to improvising… In my chili I had added the following ingredients: extra lean ground beef, garlic, tomato sauce, mushrooms, black beans, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, red cayenne powder, fiesta lime seasoning blend, and salt. Interesting enough? I think I went a little overboard with the cayenne pepper because it was—spicy! I love spicy foods, but this was a bit much.

Friday, I made some sweet potato quinoa cakes and sweet potato dinner rolls with a friend. The quinoa cakes are vegan burgers full of healthy grains and savory seasonings! Quite colorful, don’t you think? The dinner rolls are so fluffy soft! If you really wanted, I guess you can make a very sweet potatoey sandwich! Yum!

Saturday, I went and gave myself a sugar high because it was the weekend! Lent break on weekends is looking pretty nice. So after my morning run (I guess I decided not to take a break on all of lent) I started prepping for my sugar endeavors. I took the left over beignet dough and made them into monkey bread in the evening! I didn’t realize there were several variations of the recipe and none of which seemed to be like the one I fell in love with. There was this one time that I had made monkey bread with a friend, and the way he made it was by melting sugar and butter and then pouring it on top of the individual balls of cinnamon sugar. I didn’t see any recipe like that so I kinda made it up. With my friend’s recipe, the monkey bread was super gooey soft on the inside and caramelized crisp perfection on the outsides. I have no idea how he did it.Okay, I do, I mean, I did. But I don’t remember! Mine turned out decent. People liked it a lot, but I wasn’t completely satisfied. It turned out with only the top (which is essentially the bottom –because you turn the cake upside down) and the only super gooey part was on the bottom(well, the top, when you flip it over).

Next time (when ever that will be) I’ll try using white sugar for the poured sauce. I think he doubled what I did for the sauce, but that’s a bit much for me, so I’ll just have to be content with the amount of gooeyness I have with my recipe. Needless to say, I just about devoured half of the pan of monkey bread…And I enjoyed ever single bite of it!

Sunday came around and I had left over strawberry puree that I had from my strawberry cake! Yeah, it’s been some time. So I happen to have a tab open on a recipe that could use this strawberry puree loven’. It’s this chocolate raspberry cheesecake. Of course, insteadofraspberries, I used strawberries. This recipe is not very cheesecake like, because of how few ingredients it uses. But it’s pretty simple and vegan (minus my crust… Oh yeah. And my cream cheese.). I changed it up a bit because, well, I decided to. I left out the coconut oil that was to go into the filling. Then I added this thin layer of Greek yogurt with more of my strawberry puree, on top of the filling. Then I added the chocolate swirl on the very top. It turned out ok. Not anything special really. Might not make it again.

Presidents Day

For breakfast I've been trying new things. Just the other day, I had made this super dense pancake with the last few tablespoons of pumpkin puree I had. I slathered some almond butter and sliced a banana between the two pancakes. Yum! As for today, I made some quinoa and topped it with some soy milk, dollop of almond butter, and this caramelized banana and walnut compote.

I've found this recipe a while back that would help me get rid of some ingredients that are taking up space. Ok, two recipes. So yesterday I made one of them. It was this vegan and gluten free cookie. It helped me use up this ground almond meal that I had made and left in the fridge! Yay!

Then today I made this blueberry coconut macadamia nut muffin. I substituted the blueberries with the leftover pineapple chunks I had in the fridge and used the chocolate covered macadamia nuts that I had in the cupboards. It's such a wonderful feeling to use up the little bits of things lying around that are taking up space! And it smells wonderful too!

Good bye pumpkin season. Oh how I will miss you

Baking the last bit of my pumpkin today! No more till the season comes around again. Today I made the pumpkin yeast bread and the pumpkin walnut biscotti.

The pumpkin yeast bread was super wet! I don't know if I did something wrong or what. The only thing I can think of that I did was sketch in making the dough was the flour. I don't have any bread flour and it asked for 3 cups of it and 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat (which I had). I have this bag of flour that just says it's artisan baking flour. So I used a cup and a half of that and used regular unbleached wheat flour for the rest, just to play it safe. Well, somehow I made the bread anyhow. It turned out looking decent (I pictured the results looking much worse!). When the bread came out of the oven, it had such a nice crispy crust with fluffy soft insides. I'm so excited to try this "pumpkin"!

The pumpkin biscotti was smooth going in making it. Thank goodness it didn't give me any problems. Every time I make biscotti, it never seems to be like the ones you buy from Costco. Do you know the ones I'm talking about? The ones with almonds and are chocolate dipped? Well, either I haven't had them in so long or I'm just making things up -- or both. But I feel that those biscotti are more dense and cookie like than mine. I think mine have this toasted bread texture/density. Hmm.. who knows. At least it was smooth sailing in the makings of them pumpkin biscotti!

Last Pumpkin Hoorah!

Before winter is COMPLETELY gone, I want to make a few more pumpkin stuffs! Can I just tell you how much I love pumpkins! They are quite happy. What pumpkin stuffs isn't delightfully yummy? Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin rolls, pumpkin cookies -the list can go on forever!

Well, yesterday I woke up at 6 to make these pumpkin cinnamon rolls, might I add, egg free! They were so soft, fluffy, and gooey!! So good and addictive that I ate 3 in the morning and 3 at night!!! I don't know if you know math, but that's 6 total! That's a heck of a lot of cinnamon rolls to devour, especially within 24 hours! I didn't make the ginger cream cheese glaze that went with the recipe because, well really, they were plenty good enough without.

My next mission: Pumpkin yeast bread and Pumpkin Walnut Biscotti

Strawberries

Who doesn't like strawberries?!? I don't know a single person who would say strawberries are disgustingly crisp and horrendously fragrant. Well, I've never heard of such things.

Morning run: 2.45

Time: ?

So, strawberries. I adore you and made a very strawbalicious cake outta you. The cake is just a strawberry layered cake, using really strawberries that were pureed! The filling/frosting was this whipped strawberry frosting that also used fresh strawberry puree. Man did that smell good. Too bad the smell wasn't helping my impatience problem. I always seem to want to get the cake out of the pan prematurely. Yes, that means I did it again. So for two of the three cake layers, their bottoms were, let's just say, not completely there. It always makes me so sad when I do that. As a result... Frosting! Do yoah thang!! I decided it was such a disaster that a brilliant idea had to be played out. My extra marshmallow that I had wanted to try making marshmallow fondant with would have to be made at this very moment.

Unfortunately I didn't have accurate measurements of the ingredients, so I think my fondant came out a bit dry.

All in all, not as happy as I had hoped for. We'll see how it tastes tomorrow. I guess that can be the ultimate test.

It's snowing-

The weather is telling me to bake!! How sweet. It knows of my dilemma I've been having! I've been wanting to bake a few things on my list really bad, but have found myself thinking it not such a good idea. There is too much food in the house! But you know what? I'm going to bake anyway.

So here I find myself on this snowy Sunday, baking two things. One is an orange pull-apart bread that I'm debating if I should make into a monkey bread. The other is this pumpkin garlic knot that I'm debating on if I should make them into pretzels. Too many ideas! Too many options! Hopefully someone will give me their opinion. In the mean time, both of the dough are made and rising.

...

In the end, I decided on just sticking with the recipes on these two. So I made them exactly how they were shown. All except for the orange pull-apart glaze. I used the orange's juice to make the glaze which made it more fragrant with the candy sweet California oranges that I had. Mmm they were so good! The pull-apart was perfectly crisp on the top and soft and chewy on the inside. As for the pumpkin garlic knots, they were so soft and with just the right amount of seasoning to make every bite a savory sensation! What a great way to spend a snowy Sunday :)

First Super Bowl Sunday!! ... ever

Today was the big day! Super Bowl Sunday!! Haha I'm embarrassed to say that today was the first time I have ever watched the Super Bowl. But it was so good! It was a tight game, 21 to 17! Go NY Giants! Not that I really have a favorite team. I just root for the teams my friends root for. Unfortunately I didn't have time to make any game food to bring to the party (I have always wanted to make game day food...).

So you might be wondering, what are you going to blog about then? This is a food blog, yes? You are right. This IS a food blog. So, after the game, my cousin had a surprise birthday party. It was a dessert party so I made these cake bites, no-bake cake batter truffles. They are pretty happy looking things that are gooy-sweet-blissful bites. There are other recipes that are similar that I want to try making as well, but I guess those would have to wait for another day.