Honey-Strawberry Sauce

Last weekend, my besties and I went to the Grog Shop, a local venue, to see some local indie bands battle it out (for our excitement that is.) All kinds of rock were represented and there was certainly something for everyone. Still, I did notice that besides a band member’s grandma (and apparently also BFF), we were probably the oldest people there. Also, it may have been a bit obvious that we were not regulars. Our outfits, and our faces, probably gave us away. It’s not like we were wearing fancy clothes. I had a long sleeve T shirt and jeans for Christ’s sake. Am I just not hip anymore? What's my age again?

Of course, the cool kids were wearing what can only be described as "self made" couture. I’ve never seen any of that at Banana, or anywhere else, for that matter. It's funny because less than a month ago my parents were saying how happy and relieved they were that my punk/trashy/anti-everything days were over. The self made T shirts (white Ts and red marker, baby), the super torn jeans, the extra wrinkled shirts, the child-molester glasses and the 50 shades of afro terrified them for years. I guess the old me would have fit quite well with the crowd at the concert. Except for the glasses thing… 

Thankfully some things are gone forever. Some remain the same. I still like the same music, I still don't care for the conventional, and I still (inexplicably) loathe royalty. I've also picked up some new things. As I've mentioned before, I recently fell in love with pancakes. I make all kinds of pancakes, and usually serve them with maple syrup. But really, why do I always have to do the same thing? 

This week I decided to change things a bit. I made a strawberry sauce for them that was crazy good. I have made Ellie Krieger's strawberry sauce before, and loved it. But the one I make (which is way too similar) has honey instead of maple syrup. Hers is more like a chunky dressing while mine is a simmered and slightly reduced sauce. Anyway, I think this sauce is perfect to celebrate the constant evolution of oneself and to nurture a body that can support it. 

On the road shortcut 

Nutritional info per serving (4 servings) 

89 calories, 23 g carbs, 1 g fat, 1 g protein 

2 pints strawberries (stemmed) 

1 teaspoon lemon juice 

2 tablespoons honey 

Puree the strawberries in a food processor. Transfer to a saucepan. Add lemon juice and honey. Bring to a gentle simmer, and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Flan de Mango

Omigod. This year’s weather has sucked. We’ve had -17F one day, then just 2 days later it was close to 60F, and now again the temps dipped into the single digits and windchills bellow 0F. That’s it people. The time has come for me to start writing a blog on cooking seals and decorating your igloos. It’s time I let my inner Eskimo-Martha Stewart loose! It’s too bad I don’t eat fish because I would totally try to make a mockumentary of “My life as an Eskimo in Cleveland”.  Maybe a network would see me and offer me my own TV series “Breaking Eskimo” or “The Real Eskimo guys of Cuyahoga County”. 

At least this year promises to be a bit more “social” for me. During the last 2 years I’ve barely had time to see my friends and to do fun stuff. Really, I’ve barely seen anyone. Obviously, it wasn’t on purpose, but it happened regardless. Well, it’s over now. Maybe it’s because I have finally achieved some kind of balance between work and my so-called social life. Seriously, you can only work so much before you are burned out, and totally exhausted. Or maybe it is because I’ve been watching way too many episodes of Super Fun Night. Let’s get real; there’s nothing that can happen to Kimmie that can’t happen, or hasn’t happened to me. Well, except for the girls-only issues. All I’m trying to say is that weird things happen to me when I’m in public places. Let’s leave it at that. But in a surprisingly incident-free season, we’ve been to cool bars and restaurants, to movies and to concerts. All fun!

Well, maybe I should add the disclaimer stating that not all things meant to be enjoyed were actually enjoyed. Some were not fun at all. Let’s say that I went on a 15 minute rant about how much I hated a particular piece of music (Yes, they had the nerve to call it music, I called it total CRAP) performed by the Cleveland Orchestra. Everything else was fine, but I really felt insulted by that garbage they played. Really insulted. Enough to make me go on a 15 minute rant-kind of insulted. But that’s in the past, and we just have to let it go. I did really enjoy the other 2/3 of the concert, though.

Anyway, it’s been fun, and it’s been cold. That’s the bottom line. Besides that, or maybe because of that, I’ve been craving desserts for a few days now. I’ve made ice cream recently (eggnog flavored) but it did not satisfy my cravings. I’ve been thinking on making a mango upside-down cake for a while now, but when I had the chance, I decided to teach myself how to make mug cakes instead. Oh, Angel. I did make a good “yellow cake” mug cake and served it with custard instead of frosting (or instead of crème anglaise). Still, I had enough of my cravings and I did what any other good Latino would: I made a flan to get it over with. 

Well, it wasn’t just a flan. I took the mangoes that had been waiting for the cake, and used it to make a Flan de Mango. I dropped the caramel part and used the mangoes and their “light syrup” as my substitute. I used their syrup only because they were organic mangoes and the syrup was made of only water and sugar, not a single ingredient more. The Flan de Mango turned out very, very good. However, even though I tried, the pictures I took did not make my flan justice (as we say); my bad. Just take my word for it: It was so good! 

The custard part of the flan was awesome. But the real happiness it brought came from the mangoes. I grew up with a big, badass Mango Tree in my backyard. Sometimes mangoes would literally fall from the tree and get into my bedroom by themselves. So by mid-February the tree starts its mango production and lasts about a month and a half. Some years my parents manage to send me some of those amazing mangoes, and they bring me a little bit of the tropics with them. In Puerto Rico, we don’t have groundhogs and by extension no Groundhog Day (or winter to be predicted, I should say). But to me, nothing says “spring will come” like eating mangoes. And this flan was like my own personal Groundhog Day, and it told me to hold on, Spring is near!

On the road shortcut

Nutritional info per serving (4 servings)

267 calories, 45 g carbs, 6 g fat, 8 g protein

Ingredients

1 can mangoes in light syrup

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon (plus more to sprinkle – optional)

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg (plus more to sprinkle – optional)

4 large eggs

1 cup 2% Milk

½ cup granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Place the mangoes with their syrup, the cinnamon and the nutmeg in a medium sauce pan and bring to a boil. Simmer until most of the syrup has evaporated. Pour into a large sized soufflé dish (1 ½ quart), set it aside and let it cool.

Mix the eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla extract. Strain the mix through a sieve over the cooled mangoes. They will float (I bet fresh ones wouldn’t). Bake in a water bath at 350F between 65 to 85 minutes. Insert a toothpick and if it comes clean, it’s done. Let it cool, and refrigerate for at least 4 hrs (I do overnight) before serving. 

(Optional- Dust some more cinnamon and nutmeg for decoration.)

Meatballs

I met with my thesis committee this week to get my project – and me- evaluated (and judged). To me, the whole process feels like being on a reality TV competition. You do your thing, then you leave the room so the committee members can deliberate, and then you come back to get your critique. It has all the elements needed for a good TV show, including the suspense, the crying and all the drama behind the scenes. So if you are a TV executive looking for your next hit TV show – Grad School Shark Tank - give me a call and I’ll give you some ideas.

Some fellow students claim that meeting with their thesis committee is not a big deal. Not to be disrespectful, but that’s a lot of bull… It is very, very stressful, and you need to prepare quite a lot to be ready. You have to prepare a power point presentation, write a progress report and be ready to answer all sorts of questions.  It can go well, but it can also go south pretty quickly. I’ve had some meetings that have gone so bad that I’ve thought of storming out in a song- Broadway style- to protest, but I’m not a good singer and I certainly don’t want to go viral on YouTube “singing” my heart out. I’ll leave that to the cast of Glee. So instead I’ve taken notes and I've worked harder and harder. This time the hard work finally paid off. Now I’m a step closer to that Ph.D. and more motivated to finish than ever.

The last part of getting ready for my meeting was to actually chill a bit during the last few days before my meeting.  We went to see (or to listen to) the Cleveland Orchestra performing Beethoven’s Piano Concertos 2 and 3, and we went to Playhouse Square to see Wicked. I’ve been listening to the original cast recording for years, but I’ve never seen the actual musical. I was so excited! Going to the show was meant to be the highlight of the weekend, but I’ve got to say it was harsh, man. The bad acoustics of the theater were nothing compared to the problems created by the people attending the show. The worst of it was this woman saying hi (yelling, actually) from the second floor of the theater to someone in the first floor DURING the second act. She is so lucky that I’m not a witch, because I would so be a wicked one. She would’ve been turned into a flying monkey in no time. Still, I did my best to enjoy, and I did. It was a good performance, but it wasn’t the stress-free evening I was going for.

I still needed another way to relax and to enjoy myself. Frankly, I don’t know a better way than to have a nice homemade meal to feel relaxed and happy. Cooking makes everything better. I wanted to cook, but I couldn’t make anything complicated (or that involved getting many dishes dirty) because of time constrains. Meatballs were the solution to all of my needs. They’re easy to make, they’re done quickly, and they can be low in calories. The ones I made were just 239 calories per serving. They were so good! They were also an inexpensive dish! In my last blog post I said I could cook nice meals regardless of the budget. Well, these meatballs are the perfect example; they were made with just about $5.00 for the whole dish, or just $1.00 per serving! These meatballs really gave me that “everything will be alright” feeling I was longing for!

On the road shortcut
Nutritional info per serving (serving size 2 meatballs):
239 calories, 4 g carbs, 14 g fat, 23 g protein

1lb 93% lean ground beef (calories calculated using 1.13lb)
1 teaspoon salt
½ ground pepper
½ dried oregano
½ dried thyme
1/3 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs
1 jumbo egg (beaten)
2 tablespoon olive oil

cooking spray

optional: fresh parsley (to garnish)


Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a mixing bowl, season the beef with salt, pepper, oregano and thyme, and add breadcrumbs. Add the egg and oil, and mix with your hands.

Using an ice cream scooper, scoop the meatballs (about 10) into a baking dish lightly sprayed with cooking spray.

(Optional: lightly spray the meatballs with cooking spray.)
Bake at 350F for 15 minutes. Turn the meatballs, and bake for 5 more minutes.

Oven-fried eggs

I’m going to resist the temptation of blogging about Thanksgiving Day menus and recipes today. It’s hard because TD (Turkey Day for me) is my favorite holiday of all and I usually go out of my way to make sure I get all the food I want, prepared just the way I like it. Come to think of it, there’s very little thanksgiving and a whole lot of “Me, Me, Me-ing” going on around the turkey and the almost obscene quantities of food I want it surrounded by. So for my sanity and especially yours, I’ll stop now and move on to other topics. Believe me, it’s for the best.

This past week we hosted a fairly big party during the weekend, which translates to “our time was consumed by party prepping”, which in turn is my very lame way of saying I didn’t make anything worth blogging about all week. Don’t get me wrong, there was really good food at the party. Some of the headliners included “liver-mouse with shallot confit and orange marmalade”, “onion pie”, and “pork loin stuffed with figs and apricots”; all these coming from one of our newest additions to our cookbook library (Talk with Your Mouth Full: The Hearty Boys Cookbook, by Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh). These dishes were accompanied by our “now classic”, and my favorite, Amish-style corn pudding. Every single one of these dishes was absolutely amazing. I didn’t cook a single one of them; my partner did. Feeling ashamed I wasn’t cooking anything, I made pecan-and-chocolate chip blondies by tweaking the recipe on a previous blog post. The blondies had very good company; our friends brought Oreo truffles and double chocolate coffee cookies with toffee bits. Not to mention the centerpiece of the dessert section, an awesome lemon-cream coconut cake that kicked some serious a**, courtesy of Calin’s mom. Yumm! It was a great party.

Going back a few days before, I got stuck in several conversations where people discussed why they felt like they couldn’t change their eating habits. I’m not going to lie; sometimes they were talking to me, and sometimes people were just talking amongst themselves and I overheard their conversations. To set the record straight I’m not into spying dieters, but there are just too many loud people with over-sharing tendencies, so I might as well count myself as a participant of their conversation. Either way, the cost of “healthy food” and lack of time, especially for breakfast, were the top two reasons I heard from most of these people. I can eat good food on any budget. It will be the topic of another post in the future, I promise. Lack of time though, seemed ironic to me since I could have had breakfast ready and eaten in the amount of time it took these guys to complain about not having time. IRONY!

So today I wanted to offer an example of an easy breakfast that takes very little of your precious time to both make and eat. Still, it will keep you satisfied, it’ll be good for you, and you will actually enjoy it. Before that though, I would like to argue that everyday breakfast doesn’t have to be big, or fancy. A toast with fat-free cottage cheese or with peanut butter and jelly would do the trick. There’s nothing wrong with just having a cup of non-fat yogurt with some fruit or having an English muffin with some reduced-fat cream cheese, both of which I find satisfying yet they are about 200 calories. Trust me, you can spare a good five minutes to eat something as simple as whole grain cereal with reduced-fat milk; come on, you're worth it. I personally don’t like having the same thing for breakfast every day. If you are like me, consider yourself lucky; I just gave you 5 different ideas for breakfasts that require no effort, so they won’t take time away from your morning.

I prefer eating hot breakfasts, such as hot cereals, pancakes, toasts and eggs. I feel like eggs make great, if not the best, breakfast. Not only they are nutritionally rich, but they are delicious, they are inexpensive and they can be prepared in several different ways, all of them delectable. Of course, if you are in a hurry you can skip the deviled eggs and the omelets, and try more time-effective ways of preparing them. Often times I boil eggs while prepping my lunch. The only additional time you’ll have to invest is the time they’ll take to peel. How about fried eggs? I love fried eggs, and I’ve gone through great lengths to cook them with as little oil as possible. I realized that I could get away with using almost no oil and while using my time effectively by “oven-frying” my eggs. I use cooking spray on an oven-save dish, pour the eggs and lightly spray them with cooking spray as well. Then I bake them for up to 18 minutes for perfectly cooked eggs. During that time I either prep my lunch, or I shower and get ready to go to work. The best part is that I can eat straight out of the dish, so I don’t have to deal with a dirty frying pan afterwards. I love it.

On the road shortcut

Nutritional info per serving (2 jumbo eggs): 218 calories, 0 g carbs, 16 g fat, 16 g protein

Cooking spray

2 jumbo eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350F. Oil an oven-save dish with cooking spray. Add the eggs without breaking the yolks. Lightly spray the eggs with cooking oil. Bake at 350F 15-18 minutes, depending on the desired consistency (softer yolk starting at 15 minutes, hard yolk 18 minutes).  

Note: Calories were calculated using “5 seconds" of total spraying).