My friend Annie and I are marathon runners, so it's only right for us to have a marathon cookie making day, right? Right.
Well, perhaps there is not a direct connection other than the more miles you run, the more cookies you get to eat, but we shared a wonderful Sunday afternoon into evening baking about 60 sugar cookies. We even made homemade icing and used our "artistic" abilities to decorate the cookies. And yes, the word artistic is used loosely...it's the taste that counts :)
Okay. This roasted chickpea stew is amazing and easily falls within the top three dishes I've ever made (it's closely ranked the beef bourguignon and a Moroccan stew). I stumbled upon the original recipe on the Whole Foods website while searching for a use for leftover ginger root.
According to the original recipe, the dish has Ethiopian roots which is a type of food I've never experimented with. It's heavy in spice and requires roasting the chickpeas prior to making the stew. This is an absolute necessary step as the roasting intensifies the otherwise bland chickpeas.
Last Saturday, I invited some of my closest friends over for dinner and pre-dancing drinks. My goal was to be creative and to stay away from the more traditional group foods like lasagna and pizza. I also wanted to give my friends the opportunity to personalize their dish as much as possible (it's probably important to note that I'm a big fan of food personalization...so, bring it on!). And so began my quest to offer a variety of flavors and options...
The focus of this post is the three dipping sauces that accompanied the beef and chicken kabobs, roasted peppers, and brown rice. And, of course, the fresh bread.
In the photo above, the dipping sauces from left to right is a tomato-ginger chutney, a feta/herb sauce, and a lime/cilantro creme. And below, a complete plate of food...
Well, time for round two of cooking for my parents. I chose minestrone soup because it's healthy but eats like a meal. Yikes, I sound like a Campbell's commercial but it's late and, well, I just can't think of another way to describe it. However, since my parents are a tough crowd (I kid, I kid), there was some skepticism in the room on whether it'd be enough food.
You know you've made it when your parents request home cooked meals from their only daughter over one of the biggest food holidays of the year - thanksgiving.
Just kidding.
In all seriousness, while visiting my parents over the holiday, I had the opportunity to cook not one, but two, meals in a real sized kitchen, with high quality cookware and endless utensils. It was a young cooks paradise, a la Big Girls Small Kitchen, so I took full advantage.
On the first night, I made spaghetti squash with roasted tomatoes and onion. I wasn't prepared to cook - still recovering from overeating the day before - but made due with what was on hand. For example, the roasted tomatoes were actually canned tomatoes. Not ideal, but blended with roasted onions, herbs, garlic, and a dash of balsamic vinegar, this dish was pretty good considering the limited resources.
This roasted pork with cranberry-apple glaze dish stemmed from a similar recipe in Sheryl Crow's cookbook, If It Makes You Healthy, which is one of my favorite cookbooks. Sheryl's recipe called for figs and plums, but after a frenzied search for both items at Whole Foods, neither were available. I decided to get creative and combine two of my favorite flavors for a glaze for roasted pork.
One of my best friends, Sharon Schiff, was kind enough to photograph this cooking session and provide feedback (thankfully, it was positive):
"This dish radiates the seasonal aura of autumn," Sharon stated.
"It's almost as if you could capture the wonderful scent of potpourri through your taste buds."
While I don't think she had much of a choice but to compliment the meal, I'd say Sharon legitimately enjoyed this dish... :)
Today in East Africa, in a region known as the Horn, more than 13.3
million people are in crisis – more than the populations of New York
City and Los Angeles combined. The worst drought the world has seen in
60 years is devastating farmlands, uprooting families and killing tens
of thousands in four countries: Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia.
Drought, conflict and famine are forcing people from their
homes in search of food and water. In fact, nearly 700,000 Somalis have
fled ---many walking over 100 miles to refugee camps---in search of food
and water. Nearly half of the children arriving at the camps in Kenya
and Ethiopia are acutely malnourished; all are in need of emergency
assistance.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has launched the Famine, War, and Drought (FWD) campaign to bring worldwide recognition of the ongoing crisis in the Horn. Last week, as part of the FWD campaign, USAID staff made public service announcements that are now available on YouTube. Here's mine:
For more information on the FWD campaign, visit USAID.
