Apple & Cheddar Quesadillas

Per my new Sunday ritual, I went to the Dupont Farmers Market and stocked up on some FLO vegetables and pumpkin butter - it's definitely going into my oatmeal tomorrow.

I planned dinner around the vegetables I purchased, which led to a menu of apple & cheddar quesadillas with roasted butternut squash. 

The apple and cheddar quesadillas are simply that, sliced apple and grated cheddar cheese on whole wheat tortillas. These were good but I would make them with Granny Smith instead of Fuji apples next time. I liked the roasted butternut squash but peeling the squash and dicing it up while it was raw was a little tricky. 

 After you cube the squash, you mix it with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and roast it in the oven at 375 for about 35 minutes. The onion you slice and mix with 1 tablespoon olive oil and roast on a separate pan for 20 minutes. When these are done, mix them together with dried cranberries and sage (the Whole Foods recipe says to use fresh but I used dried). This meal was uber Fall

Dessert was melted milk chocolate Hershey Nuggets and vanilla ice cream. Since we only had about 11 trick-or-treaters, someone had to eat the chocolate. 

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Halloween Dinner Party

This was probably my favorite Halloween. Not because of my costume, but because we got to go to one of my favorite things: a dinner party! To no ones surprise, Evan and I didn't have a costume yet. It took two trips to the Shops at Georgetown Halloween Boo-tique for one to stick.  

 Then a trip to Whole Foods to recharge on their nutritious and delicious salad bar...

Before I put this lovely lady's outfit together. Can you guess what I am? A Tea Party'er straight out of Hickville, Middle-America. The fake teeth were really great, but I completely forgot about them once we left the house. 

We went over to Jack and Molly's new, super-cute apartment for dinner. (I had major house-envy)

After a 3 cheese platter and avocado & pistachio crostini, we had Jack's Chicken Pesto Pasta. Loved this. Penne, grilled chicken, pesto, mozzarella & tomato slices :) 

This short-order cook has serious potential.

 I brought over an Apple Brown Betty for dessert. I got a little eager and started eating it before snapping a picture...I'm a fan of this recipe: 4 apples, lemon juice, oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and you're done! 

How cute are their bowls??

A Thought on Wine Glasses

Yesterday was just no fun at all. I woke up super sick to the point of not being able to speak, but managed to drop off my baked goods at work before turning right around to head home. After a day of personal-pity-partying and watching Sweet Home Alabama, I felt well enough to get dinner at a pan-Asian restaurant in the Palisades: Bambu Sushi Bar. 

This picture is not the best, but looking past the Miso Soup and the vegetable spring rolls, you can see this disappointing, thick, stubby wine glass. When are those wine glasses ever a good idea? In my opinion, they even make the wine taste bad. Tall, thin, with large round bowls is the only way to go - for me. That was my short piece on wine glasses. 

Have a Happy Halloween weekend!

Pumpkin Carving Party Muffins

Eating healthy is antisocial. Case in point, the industry luncheon I went to today at Maggianos. These mixers are awkward to start with, chatting with engineers and contractors, slipping each other business cards, coming up with excuses to get out of conversations - not to say they are all bad! Anyway, today's meal started off with baskets of bread, artichoke dip, fried zucchini, caprese salad and a slaw-iceberg-disaster of a salad. As I passed around the family-style plates without taking much, the man next to me had a few words to say about it. With the next course of cheesey ravioli, chicken parmesan, beef something or other, grilled chicken over steamed spinach (would've been my best option had I been eating meat) and lasagna. It looked something like this:

Comment Guy next to me goes "here's the chicken you've been waiting for Ms. Healthy". Then dessert came out (because doesn't everyone eat dessert at lunch?) with a huge piece of chocolate cake and two tiramisus. My friend, the witty Comment Guy, goes "I think you deserve first pick of dessert". Ah, loved him. Way to make me feel super awkward at a table full of strangers. As I said, eating healthy is antisocial. 


Luckily, Evan and his roommates, "the family", are more accepting :) So while they had pork loin from the grill, I had tuna and avocado sushi and a Green Machine Naked juice. 

I came home a little frantic remembering that I had muffins to bake and marshmallows to cut and it was already 8:30. The marshmallows turned out pretty well! 

I efficiently whipped up these White Chocolate & Pecan Pumpkin Muffins, which were amazing. It's all about not over-mixing the batter.

Phew! Now bed. Until I wake up, when I get to take a small bakery to work with me. 

Making Marshmallows

It has been a very inconsistent past 24 hours. It started at around 5 pm yesterday when I came down with a cold, which led to staying awake till almost 5 am with a fever. Dinner last night was a large mug of Peach Detox tea and a bowl of oatmeal - not exactly the garlic & parmesan Tilapia I had been planning on.

Per Mama's orders, I took 1000 mg's of Vitamin C...and wouldn't you know it, I felt so much better today! Not 100% but close enough feel up to making marshmallows. I have been planning on making these marshmallows for over a week. My emotions have ranged from anxiety, excitement, apprehension, back to anxiety, and resignation. I knew I had to at least try them, knowing full well they might be a disaster. On my sick, rainy day off I took the D2 bus down to Safeway and picked up the healthy and nutrient rich ingredients for making the mallows. 

This was a first for me using gelatin and corn syrup. I've decided gelatin freaks me out - but that's not what's important right now. The process of making marshmallows is pretty involved, but Pastry Pal's step-by-step instructions held my hand through it. 

The most sensitive point is getting the sugar-corn syrup mixture to exactly 250 before dumping in the gelatin mixture while having egg whites at soft peaks. 

Mix, mix, mix.

Pour it out.

And then you wait. I'll dust it in powdered sugar and cut it up into cute pumpkin shapes tomorrow to bring into work on Friday for our Final Friday Pumpkin Carving festivities. I, however, will not be eating those. I'm taking this Health Movement seriously. Today I watched Food Matters, the movie my mom's been pushing me to see. Now it's my turn to push everyone else. I'm a big a fan of the message (eat healthy to be healthy, essentially) and that educating people (making them face reality) will hopefully lead them to make better choices. It's on Netflix, go watch! 


After the movie and a snack of sliced bell pepper, celery and carrots, I went for a 45 minute walk/run around the neighborhood. How's that for juxtaposition? Super sick to making marshmallows to being Healthy Hannah. 
You never know with me.

Taco Salad de Veggies

Today I went to Trader Joe's on a mission. For vegetables. I think I accomplished said mission and turned them all into tonights dinner. Taco Salad. I added a homemade touch to it by making tortilla chips. 

I didn't realize how awesome these were going to be AND healthier than the average tortilla chip. You can use flour or corn tortillas (I used both) to make these chips. Spray tortillas with cooking spray - I used the kind with olive oil - on both sides then sprinkle them with salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic salt, etc. (I just used salt and cayenne) and bake at 400 for 6-8 minutes. 

These chips accompanied my taco salad with mashed potatoes and mango slices (random, yes but don't worry about that). Healthy and delicious :D I then proceeded to eat a baby Snickers and Milky Way because nobody's perfect.


Taco Salad de Veggies


Spinach
Corn
Black beans
Yellow bell pepper, chopped
Cucumber slices
Pepper jack cheese, chopped
Guacamole
Salsa

Probably the Perfect Day

Today was a beautiful day. Weatherwise, activitywise & foodwise. Started the morning with a pleasant walk to Starbucks to get my favorite fall drink: coffee with a shot of pumpkin spice. The wonderful flavor of their pumpkin spice latte sans all the fat/most of the sugar.

 I ended up at Evans making my typical-but always a crowd pleaser-egg sandwich. 

 This version had fresh French bread, a fried egg and pepper jack cheese. 

From there I cleaned my house, went to Target, then Best Buy, decided I needed a MacbBook Pro in my life (someday), yadda yadda yadda, ended up at Marvelous Market for an afternoon snack. 

We took that afternoon snack to "Bob's Bench" overlooking the Potomac, a little slice of heaven.

 I discovered a new favorite breakfast food: muesli cereal. This particular version had sliced apples, yellow raisins, candied walnuts, strawberries and blueberries in it. Couldn't have been happier with it.

 An impromptu hike led us over a bike path bridge and down to the C & O canal. Following that was a ride through the most gorgeous neighborhoods in DC, commenting on the amazing houses. So, it was pretty much the perfect day.

Dinner was kind of random since I hadn't planned it out before going to the grocery. I ended up with a spinach salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries, a sweet potato with butter and cinnamon, a hard boiled egg and pita chips with guacamole. Evan had ground turkey tacos in place of my hard boiled egg - as he is scared of hard boiled eggs. 

Earlier, Mom told me about the movie Food Matters and how our health is so tied into what we eat and America is generally failing at eating well & staying healthy...which clearly impacted my dinner choices tonight. But I'm happy about it! I'm going to stay MUCH more conscious of choosing healthy alternatives when I can - easier said than done when I love baking as much as I do! Eek!

Blood Velvet Cupcakes

Today was our friend Dave's birthday. To celebrate his 24th year of life I baked him red velvet cupcakes because...

I had never made red velvet cake before but have LOVED it ever since I moved to North Carolina. The first red velvet cake I had, which turned me into such a fanatic, was a strawberry red velvet cake made by my step dad's aunt, Mary Lou. It's an under-utilized spin on red velvet, for sure.

I was back and forth on which recipe to use for these cupcakes. Did I want more cocoa? Less food coloring? Butter over oil? I ended up opting for the more cocoa version because I trust Deb when it comes to making cakes/ when does adding more chocolate hurt something? I found special cupcake holders with sports images on them (we were planning on watching the UNC game for Dave's party after all). 

The recipe called for a full half a cup of cocoa, which left the flour mixture looking like this:

 As for the liquid mixture, it became a science project of my past when it asked you to combine baking soda with white vinegar in a bowl before adding to the mixture... or more commonly known as a VOLCANO! It was neat.

It was around this point in the process that I realized I had bought the wrong kind of food coloring gel and needed to make a run to the nearest grocery store. This, unfortunately, turned out to be the Giant up Wisconsin Avenue. This is the most ghetto urban grocery store I've ever been to. Literally, they had a cop car posted up outside the front door and caged surveillance cameras and don't get me started on the actual food they sell here. After explaining what I needed to three different employees, we found the food coloring. Food coloring. Why had no one in either of the two different grocery stores understood what I was talking about? At any rate, I bought two bottles of it and fled, not before nearly getting backed over by two cars in the parking lot. 

After the batter had been fully mixed and div-yd up into the little cups, I strongly resembled a murderer. I reminded myself of Dexter, which made me happy. I put the first batch into the oven but had enough batter left to make about 6 cupcakes. For these, I cut up strawberries which I mixed with a little cornstarch, and added it to the batter. Phenomenal outcome. Next time, they're all getting strawberries!

This batter was so good. I licked both beaters which I NEVER do, and I bake a lot. After indulging on red velvet batter, I was craving a salty snack so I went for balsamic vinegar and olive oil with freshly grated Parmesan and pepper to dip French bread into, along with a side of prosciutto and dates. Wowzers, that was a delicious snack. 

When it came time to frost these mini-cakes, I took the piping approach. I spooned the icing into a plastic bag and cut a hole in the corner to pipe a blob of icing onto each one. This made spreading and decorating the cupcakes super easy. I played around with a couple decorations but opted for a simple look.

I hopped in the car to head to Dave's house with cupcakes in tow.

When there are boys having a party, there is usually a keg to be found nearby. This keg had an original Keg Koozy borrowed straight from the manufacturer himself. This is where I make my pitch on how the Keg Koozy is awesome! and kept the beer so cold! everyone, go buy one!

The next essential at a boys party is the grill. This meant a run to the hardware store to buy a grill, then to the store for 'burgers and dogs' then home to assemble. Apparently, this is one of Harrison's favorite activities.

 Because I've been staying away from red meat, I opted for ground turkey and made my own patties to eat along with the guys.

While dinner was a success and the cupcakes were a hit, the game watching its self was not doing it for me. I left that one for the boys and called it a night!


Red Velvet Cupcakes


*I only added 2 ounces of food color because 3 felt a little overkill. 
**Also, throwing in chopped strawberries with cornstarch is a wonderful addition. 


Turkey Burgers


1/2 lb. ground turkey
1 tbsp. Worcestershire 
1 egg
Dash garlic salt, salt & pepper


Leave on the grill until inside is no longer pink. Top it with sliced tomato, pepper jack and guacamole on a bun.