Easy Spinach Soup

Quickly, I just made this after work in under 10 minutes. Healthy, delicious and affordable!

Easy Spinach Soup

I can Campbell's mushroom soup, prepared
1 package baby spinach

While the soup is heating and cooking, steam the spinach. Add about a quarter cup of water to a package of spinach, place in a saucepan with a lid and heat until all the spinach has wilted down.
Using a food processor or Magic Bullet, puree the spinach. Don't throw out the boiling liquid! Throw that into the food processor too to ease the blending process.
Whisk your spinach into the mushroom soup, stir thoroughly and enjoy!

Has great bright green colour and is also great with croutons!

Pumpkins and diamond rings

Before I share this awesome Martha Stewart recipe, can I please say something? Two of my favourite couples in the universe got engaged in the last two weeks! First Smitty and Sarah get engaged while on vacation in Italy, and we all knew they'd end up together, and then Rob pops the question to Michelle on their 1-year anniversary, a wonderful surprise! Sigh. It seems that everyone is either starting exciting new relationships, that older relationships are starting to grow roots, or that weddings are already in the works! I'm a bridesmaid for my friend Laura in August, and two Bands weddings are in the works now! My lovely beautiful friends, you're growing up so fast!

To do my part for the universe, I'm spending my super single Sunday night nursing a 4-day migraine and baking pumpkin cupcakes for my coworkers, staying true to Martha's recipe, circa 2004:

Pumpkin Cupcakes

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice; set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together, brown sugar, granulated sugar, butter, and eggs. Add dry ingredients, and whisk until smooth. Whisk in pumpkin puree.
Divide batter evenly among liners, filling each about halfway. Bake until tops spring back when touched, and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pans once if needed. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.
Decorate with candy and special Halloween frosting!

Enjoy and congratulations again to all my wonderful engaged friends!

But why "midnight"?

Hi all,

Here's a recipe I pulled from the Runner's World website. Enjoy!

Shrimp and Tofu Stir Fry

1/2 pound firm to extra-firm tofu, blotted dry
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 cup mushrooms, stemmed, cleaned, and sliced
1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 red pepper, sliced
1 head of broccoli, cut into florets
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, rinsed, and dried
1/4 cup white wine or sherry
1/2 cup vegetable stock or water
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Cut tofu into one-inch cubes. Put one tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat. When hot, add mushrooms and cook, stirring, until browned and almost crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon; set aside. Add remaining oil to pan, then the garlic and ginger; cook, stirring, for 10 seconds; add pepper and broccoli and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the broccoli turns bright green and softens, about 10 minutes. Add tofu and shrimp and cook, stirring occasionally, until shrimp turns pink, a few minutes. Add wine and stock; cook, stirring, until about half evaporates; return mushrooms to the pan and cook, stirring, for a minute to reheat. Add soy sauce; cook, stirring, until veggies becomes glossy, about 30 seconds.

You can also add rice as a carbohydrate base, which I've done in the past. Unfortunately I'm all out of rice, so this will be a nice low-carb alternative. I have a John Orr dress to fit into, yo.

Also, here is the recipe for the sexy chocolate cookies I mentioned a few days ago:

Midnight Chocolate Cookies

1/2 cup butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 cup flour, sifted
1/3 cup cocao powder, sifted
1/2 tsp baking soda, sifted

Preheat oven to 350degF. Prepare cookie sheets with parchment paper, and non-stick cooking spray.
Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla and egg together until light and fluffy. Sift dry ingredients together and mix thoroughly in a separate bowl. Slowly mix the dry ingredients in with the butter/sugar mixture until it is well-mixed.
With WET hands, make little dough balls no bigger than a walnut or large marble. Place them on the baking sheets, well apart from each other. Bake each batch for exactly 10 minutes. Cool on the baking pan for a few minutes and then until cool completely on baking racks.

Decorating options:
- Melt 1/2 cup chocolate chips or peanut butter chips (or both!) in strong Ziploc bags (seal and soak in warm water until the chips have melted. do NOT microwave Ziploc bags...). Cut a little corner off the bag and pipe chocolate patterns onto the cookies
- Add sprinkles to the chocolate while it's hot if you like.


Hope everyone is having a good week...the holiday Monday totally threw me off and I keep thinking it's Tuesday for some reason. I'm at home today all day for the first time in a while, since I am watching my sick cat and nursing a headache of my own. For those of you wondering, Ernie found an ibuprofen liquigel on the floor and proceeded to eat it, resulting in a $400 vet bill and 3 separate trips to see Dr. Hanna for blood work, charcoal and gastroprotectants. Silly animals.

Alive and full of turkey

I haven't been posting diligently at all. To all (four) of you following, sincere apologies. I know at least a few of you guys check this thing periodically and 25 Things must have gotten pretty boring about 1/4 of the way through the first read-through.

Anyhow, so a few weeks later here I am! I just got back from a vacation back home in the DR with my family. My brother and I drove up Friday and I packed us some sweet sandwiches and snacks for the trip. Let it be known that I never forced vegetarianism on my brother, deciding instead to pack his sandwich FULL of roast beef and gladly hand it over.

A few food discoveries from the last few weeks:

1. Mustard. Obviously I already knew about mustard and its awesomeness, but in a recent attempt to make a tzatziki sandwich with a not-so-perfect tzatziki and boring vegetables, I stood in front of the fridge at work wondering what I could use to zip up this sandwich and make it tasty. Answer = mustard. I had lettuce, tomato, avocado and peppers in there, and let me tell you: it was so good that I finished it up and brought my leftover peppers the next day to just dip in a huge vat of mustard. My love of mustard has been renewed.

2. Organic local free-range Thanksgiving turkey. Need I say more? My mom was awesome and found a farmer outside of Barry's Bay who raises turkeys and chickens and he was delivering some sheep to Pembroke last week (ahah! oh Ottawa valley) and dropped the bird off for my mom to pick up. It was all cleaned up inside, no fat, really juicy and lovely. It didn't taste any different from "regular" turkey but I felt way better knowing this bird had a full happy life clucking away at whatever it found in its nice big airy field (that's right: grass-fed). Also, I was half expecting my body to freak out over this mysterious "meat" entering the mix, but so far so good.

3. Harvey's veggie burger. Originally on the way back the plan for Simon and I was to stop at the Subway in Smiths Falls for some supper, but unfortunately it was closed. I didn't feel like a heavy and possibly sketchy egg salad at Timmie's and I was about to get a salad or fries when I spotted this thing on the menu and thought, why not? Turns out this burger is super yummy and juicy and doesn't have that gross fake tofu taste that some veggie burgers do. I loaded up on the lettuce, tomato, pickles, hot peppers, ketchup and obviously mustard, and on a whole wheat bun it wasn't bad. I'm not used to the fast food since the closest I've had in the last while is a Subway veggie sub, but despite being veggie the Harvey's burger is a burger nonetheless and sat like a brick in my stomach for the rest of the trip.

My mom sent me back with a ton of turkey leftovers, as well as the bones and neck so I can make soup. I might upload some recipes on this front, and someone kick me if I don't put up this awesome recipe for these sexy dark "midnight" chocolate cookies I made last week.

julie

PS. My hair is back to its natural colour for the first time in ... oh man ... 5 years? and it feels really nice. Eating well, being almost back to my old self, doing shittons of yoga and looking forward to a protein structure in my near future and a fancy dinner with my awesome sexy friends in November. Now if only I could replenish my supply of red pens...

25 Things

You all know this Facebook note that was popular a few years ago: write 25 things about yourself that nobody knows. I did this note on February 4, 2009. Many things have changed since then in my life. I'm inspired to do this after reading a friend's and learning things about her, and also after watching a few episodes of If You Really Knew Me. I agree that you may not care about these things, but one of my new years resolutions was to live honestly and openly. Read on if you want, and if not, that's ok.

If You Really Knew Me, You'd Know That...

1. I am single and have been for close to 18 months. I'm a relationship person for sure, but for 6 months now I think I've found my groove and am content on my own. However, I always think fondly of past relationships and wonder if anything as awesome will ever happen again. In short, I accept.

2. I'm recently vegetarian and despite how much I get made fun of for it by coworkers and some family members, I'm happy with my new lifestyle. I feel more balanced, healthier and more knowledgable about what I eat.

3. I don't own a TV, but instead shamelessly stream and download the following TV shows from the internet: Glee, ANTM, House, Top Chef, Next Food Network Star, HIMYM and Jersey Shore. When the season airs, I watch The Bachelorette with one of my girlfriends every week.

4. If I wasn't in grad school for biochemistry, I'd be in culinary school.

5. I've been practicing yoga for 8 months and it has changed my life. If under a year I can achieve what I've achieved, I can't imagine what I'll be able to do in the years to come. This challenge both intimidates and excites me.

6. Despite my best meditative efforts, the same thoughts run through my head on a regular basis: Do I look ok? What do people think of me? Did I eat all my vegetables today? Did I exercise today? Did I forget to do anything in the lab? Did I miss any appointments today? When I can I go yoga next and am I improving? Am I really happy with what I've learned over the last few years?

7. I am slowly coming to terms with the way my body was made and will always be, but I have two sore points that I am constantly checking in the mirror. My stomach is flat for the top "4-pack" but bulges out funny at the bottom, such that shirts look funny on me and pants don't quite fit me right. My breasts are too big for my figure, and I get stared at a lot and it makes me uncomfortable. I have seriously considered breast reduction surgery.

8. My favourite parts of my body are my eyes and smile, my calves, the top of my stomach and my shoulders. I get lots of compliments on my smile and it makes me happy.

9. I have no idea what I'm going to do after my grad studies are over, so much so that I'm staying in Kingston for a few more years to complete a PhD. Ideally, I'd like to find a job that will pay well enough to sustain a comfortable lifestyle, and I'd like to become a mother one day. If I can do this and produce happy children, then I'll be happy too.

10. I sometimes feel that my world moves more slowly than the world of others around me. Many friends of mine are out travelling, working abroad, starting "real" jobs and getting married. I believe it's "grad school syndrome" but I feel I have achieved none of those things in the same amount of time. I feel much less accomplished than I did in high school, which I realize now meant very little in the grand scheme of things.

11. I miss my violin. I used to play in concert halls...with orchestras...I used to teach...work on the grandest pieces. My violin is under my bed, and I have my memories.

12. I am proud that I've managed to remain friends with almost everyone I've had shortcomings with. Relationships, "relationships," fall-outs with friends, unfortunate misunderstandings with groups of friends... the common thread is that I initiated conversations in an attempt to apologize and heal the situation, I emailed and called, and I lost sleep over the potential loss of my friendships. I am grateful that 95% of misunderstandings have smoothed themselves out, and I am slowly realizing that the other 5% were never meant to. I am proud of myself for not giving up on my relationships and wanting their memories to endure in a positive way for everyone involved.

13. I wish I was a better dancer. If I had realized how much I love to dance earlier in life I would have taken lessons. I want to take a hip-hop class this semester, and I not-so-secretly love those silly Step Up-type movies.

14. I have dance parties alone at home all the time. I put on my favourite tunes and pretend I'm in a dance movie and or a Beyonce music video. I'm not embarrassed.

15. I know I will have cancer some day. I've started to mentally prepare myself for what is to come. This is part of the reason I have recently started taking good care of myself and my body. This body will not be healthy forever, so I'm nurturing it now.

16. I feel that my life would be rendered meaningless if I found out I was reproductively challenged and could not have children. I would lovingly adopt but I am in awe of the female body and what it can do, and I want to be able to make life in this way.

17. I would love to be able to complete one of those intense solo survival expeditions as part of a character-building outdoor camp. This would be a great accomplishment for me.

18. If I could play any instrument other than the violin, it would be the cello or the double-bass. Yo-Yo Ma is exceptional and his music makes me super emotional.

19. I am terrified to TA my first lab tomorrow. I love to teach and would adore for the students to want to learn from me and ask me exciting questions.

20. I'm a passionate foodie, but I'm not great at making a lot of recipes (especially gnocchi. I've failed twice at making it now). For Christmas I'd like a copy of The Joy of Cooking so I can learn basic skills. I want to be like one of those wonderful Italian mothers who cooks everything from scratch and derives the most joy from feeding her family.

21. I am a work in progress. I think I'm on the right path towards who I will become, but I am in a transition phase right now. There is no better word to describe how I feel about a lot of things these days than "limbo."

22. For lunch tomorrow I really want an avocado, roasted pepper, and tzatziki pita. I fear this may not be possible since my avocados are refusing to ripen. Dinner will likely be perogies and salad.

23. My sleep patterns have dramatically changed over the summer. It's 10pm and I will be asleep within the hour, and I have set my alarm for the comfortable hour of 6:30am. Most days I wake up by 6:00am. In undergrad and last year, I wasn't in bed until at least midnight and was up around 7:30am, sometimes 8:00am. Yesterday I got to sleep in comfortably until 8:30am, but only after I got up at 4:30am to feed my crying kitten.

24. If I could choose the colour of my bedroom walls, I would pain them light asparagus green. Accent colours would be white and black. There would be black and white photography on the walls and beautiful candles and vases everywhere. I would have a white duvet and 500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. The floors would be hardwood and I would have a nook near a bright window for reading.

25. My biggest dreams for the foreseeable and attainable future:
- complete my first unassisted free-standing headstand in hot practice. no walls. no help.
- properly write up and defend my mini-MSc and pass my PhD comp exam
- walk up on stage in 4 years wearing that beautiful red silk robe...ahhh that magical red PhD robe from the university that I love. It is prize upon which I've set my eyes on and its vision is what gets me up every morning.

Drowning in work but never forgetting you all

I'm alive! Yes it's true...I haven't posted in a long time, but alas, "school" has started back up. I'm TAing a lab, my supervisor is demanding perfect prompt yields and the students back in town exhaust me. For those of you who might understand, I share this gem:



That being said, on with the food! I've made a buttload of new things over the last little while, but unfortunately my camera is not always on hand and I'm not always able to write things down. On that note, here are a few recent successes I'd like to share!

Otsu

1 small piece of grated ginger (about a cubic inch)
1 tbsp honey
1/4 tsp cayenne
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 c. vinegar
1/3 c. soy sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp sesame oil

12 oz dried soba noodles or whole-wheat spaghetti
12 oz firm tofu
1/4 c. chopped cilantro
1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
1/4 c. sesame seeds

1. Cook the noodles until al dente. Drain. Set aside.
2. Drain and dry the tofu thoroughly, then slice into pieces about the size of a small post-it.
3. Cook the tofu in a tsp of oil for roughly 3 minutes on either side, until golden. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. In a small blender, combine and blend the ingredients for the dressing (from ginger to sesame oil).
5. Combine cooked pasta, cooked tofu, dressing, cucumber, cilantro and sesame seeds in a large bowl and toss.

Serve cold for a refreshing and filling snack or meal based on the traditional Japanese cold noodle dish..
















Yves Veggie Products - A Review

Recently I was invited to my first BBQ as a vegetarian and I opted for veggie dogs. I love hot dogs, didn't have enough time to make sweet grilled veggie sandwiches, etc., so I went on a search for yummy veggie options. I came across Yves, which I'd been told is a great brand with lots of tasty stuff.

For those of you out there (including my pre-veggie self) who think that the only alternative to meat is tofu, you are wrong! This company has a whole line of meat-less products, including cool stuff like meat-less lunch meat, meat-less stuffed chicken, meat-less italian sausages, and meat-less pizza pepperoni.

So far I'm rather impressed with these products! I've tried the tofu dogs and the pizza pepperoni...

The dogs are GREAT! I'm impressed that for a product with ingredients like tofu, wheat, etc. that Yves managed to retain the flavour and most of the texture. Yes, the texture is a bit unlike meat (aka. a tad chewier, and these dogs are oddly flexible...), but you'd never know by looking at it that it wasn't a regular hotdog. PLUS, these things have a fraction of the fat and garbage that regular hot dogs do, so you can feel decent about having a few. They're also great on their own dipped in mustard, but that's just me.

The pepperoni takes some adjusting to. While the taste and overall look of these little slices is pretty close, the texture of this pepperoni is WAY off. While regular pepperoni is chewy and oily, this stuff is gritty and falls apart pretty easily. I ripped a few pieces trying to get them apart and they look pretty dry compared to their meat counterparts. Clearly they are WAY healthier, but unlike the dogs, here you are definitely sacrificing taste for nutrition.

I used these on pizza and while the taste was great, I missed the ridiculous salty oil that normal pepperoni brings to a slice of cheesy pizza. As the photo hopefully shows, one immediately noticeable difference between meat and meat-less pepperoni is that this stuff really dries out in the oven (this isn't surprising since cooked tofu is slightly crumbly and dry). So while my pizza tastes absolutely delicious, the texture just isn't right, leaving Yves pizza "pepperoni" a bit lacklustre, literally.




A few other random things:

- Work is picking up hardcore so please be patient with me on updates. I'll be posting as often as I can but with the little time I have left to myself after work I always find things to do (I chose to write this instead of cleaning my bathroom)
- Happy Birthday Michelle, the most amazing yoga instructor ever <3
- I'm taking a really healthy veggie approach to solving the issue of an ensuing cold. I don't usually believe in herbal supplements and things of the like (it's like they published studies on their efficacy in important scientific journals or something!) but I'm all about ginger tea and echinacea, plus antioxidants like strawberries, raspberries and cranberries. Regular vitamin C and unfathomable quantities of water and veggies never hurt anyone either. Updates on whether this works or not later...

Christmas in September

I'm feeling very homey and warm and cozy today. I had a wonderful quiet peaceful yoga practice later in the evening, enjoyed some mint chocolate chip frozen yogurt watching a bit of House, and I'm about to sit down and make the veggie lasagna for a special dinner guest tomorrow night. You can find the recipe for this lasagna in "I Can't Believe It's Not Beef" on August 12th's post.

I am also feeling Christmasy all of a sudden. It's been cooler out, very windy and dark, and I felt the rush of special dinner preparations today while I was buying lasagna supplies. The switch to almond spice body wash didn't help (I ran out of papaya whatever-it-was-called and this was the only one left...purchased on a whim last winter during a huge sale). I decided to bust out my extra special Christmas-only lotion and rub a little bit on. The Body Shop makes this wonderful vanilla spice body butter that I am utterly in love with. I got a tub of it a few years ago and have been rationing it out carefully ever since. I'm going to last until this year, but thought I'd indulge a bit tonight as I unwind on this one day to myself this week.

Listening to Frank Sinatra's Christmas carols pushed tonight's baking into the holiday cookies realm. I got some beautiful juicy pears at Metro earlier and thought I'd try using this fruit in a baked concoction. I make a killer cobbler with pear and/or peach, but I'd never attempted a delicate fruit cookie. I therefore propose the following:

Spicy Pear Cookies


1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 pear - peeled, cored and diced
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice


1. Preheat oven to 350degF.
2. In large bowl, beat butter and sugar untill smooth. Beat in egg and vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and ginger; mix into batter. Stir in chopped pears, chopped nuts and raisins.
3. Drop about two inches apart by rounded tablespoonfuls onto baking sheets and bake 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown and center springs back when lightly touched. Remove to wire racks to cool.
4. Combine confectioners' sugar and lemon juice and mix until smooth. Spoon icing over cookies.


Love these cookies! They're super soft and tender, and they have the right combination of sweetness and spice. The pears make them moist and lightly flavoured for that perfect sweet-but-not-sickening bite. I really recommend these as an alternate to your traditional chocolate chip or fudge cookie.

I forgot to take a picture and after bringing these to work, I'm certain there won't be any leftover for the photo shoot...