Snow Day....Sort Of

Well, it was my normal day off, but with all the snow, I hibernated at home. I made some Channa Punjabi (which I hadn't made in awhile). It's a nice chickpea and zucchini stew with Indian spices. I like it, and it is easy to make.

My big baking project was Walnut Cookie sandwiches with "peanutella" spread. I started by making my own nutella -- with peanuts and walnuts. It was surprisingly easy to make. And it tasted great!



I used 2 cups of roasted peanuts (I bought them raw and roasted them myself -- with some walnuts thrown in) that I put in the food processor and blended until it started to look like peanut butter. Then I added a cup of powdered sugar, 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder and 3/4 tsp of vanilla. I blended it some more and streamed in some grapeseed oil (it's what I had, the original recipe called form vegetable oil or a nut oil) and continued blending it until it looked like nutella.

Then I made the cookies. New recipe -- instead of pecans I used walnuts because my Mom gave me a pound of walnuts. I think the only thing I would try differently is to cut down on the sugar -- the cookie was a little too sweet. The other thing I might try is chilling the dough for longer than 15 minutes. Still, I think all in all it came turned out well.



I'm going to bring them into work tomorrow and hopefully get some feedback on how I can improved the recipe.

The Farmer's Market in Winter

I like that the Farmer's Market is open during the winter, but I admit I don't get as much veg as I do in the summer. My staples are always there. Eggs, mushrooms, cheese and bacon (sometimes). Today, I picked up some spinach, clams and a spaghetti squash. I think I'm going to make a spinach, mushroom, and ricotta cheese frittata tonight. Tomorrow, I'll go for the squash.

For lunch today, I made did linguine with clams. It was the first time I've ever cooked clams. It was fun. I made a light a sauce with white wine, olive oil, garlic, and parsley and basil from my herb box. The clams were tasty. I think I'll have to buy more things from the fish guy at the farmer's market. The last time I picked up some perch. Despite having taken a class on how to cook fish, I didn't to a really good job with my perch. Something to work on.

Resolution 2011!

Well, my resolution for 2010 did not happen, but I've got a couple for 2011! One is a running/race related resolution. The other is to be more creative this year. Actually take a writing class or an art class. Basically do something fun like that. The other is to get moving on my NYC plan. Enough talk, this is the year for action!

Gardening On An Hour of Sleep

When I left work this morning, the sun was just beginning to come out. You know, when the sky gets this gray-blue color, clouds are dark, and if it's going to be a beautiful day streaks of pink and red stretch across the sky. Anyway, after a 12.5 hour shift, I wasn't thinking about going to sleep. I was thinking about how to stay up until I had to be back at work two and a half hours later. I was thinking of going on a run. Thinking is the key word. The humid weather and my 30 minute walk home pretty much killed any idea I had of running. Instead I indulged in the power nap. I woke up, put on my outdoor work outfit, and headed back to work, not to the office, but the garden on the grounds. I spent an hour and a half weeding, moving vines so that they'd be trained to spread inward (which I didn't think you could do) and not over the aisles, and picking ripe veg. It reminded me of my grandfather's garden. It was really my Dad and Grandfather's garden in our backyard. There is this picture of me and my next door neighbor KvZ when we were like 5 and 4 or 6 and 5 holding zucchini from the garden and it was literally half the size of us (well, KvZ). I miss that garden -- granted I didn't appreciate at the time, like so many other things, but I remember the squash, lettuce and peppers that grew there and that I did in fact eat. The garden at work had a lot of herbs and veg: squash, okra, onions (which actually sit right on top of the soil, which surprised me) and even corn! It was a fun reason to get only an hour of sleep. (I didn't go home and go to sleep after. I've been up all day, and plan to sleep very well!)