Pesto Tortellini Soup

So I'm getting sick. I've completely lost my voice and I really didn't have an appetite today. However, I know that its a good idea to eat something because bodies need energy to fight colds and I really want to get better. So I went into full sicky food mode. Firstly, I made some tea for my throat. Then I made some soup. My roommate made some homemade vegetable stock soup a couple of weeks ago so I heated some of that up. And then to make it a bit more unique I also cooked some of the pesto tortellini's that I had in the freezer. It was an awesome idea to make this soup really filling and flavorful. At least I think it was flavorful, my tastebuds aren't at their best right now. So I added salt, pepper, garlic powder, and parsley to the soup. I also put a bit of parmesan cheese on top. It was really yummy, and a cool idea for something that I threw together at last minute. I don't really have the ingredients to make a pesto sauce for the tortellini's but they went great with the soup. It also felt really good on my throat.

Thoughts on this Dish:

• This soup has a really italian feel to me and I love italian soup (minestrone is my favorite soup), so it was extra comforting 
• I cooked the tortellini's in boiling water for about 3-4 minutes, this was perfect.
• I heated the soup up for about 3 minutes.
• I think that it might have been nicer for the pasta to absorb the soup flavor a bit, but I didn't want it to get cold so I ate it right away.
• The parmesan cheese really added to the soup, but I think I would add a little less next time

I was so happy that there was soup in the apartment at a time when I really needed it, so thank you to my wonderful roommate!

Breakfast Burrito

This masterpiece was the result of me trying to get rid of as many ingredients in our fridge as possible with one meal. I'm going home to spend Thanksgiving with my family so my goal of the past couple of days has been to clear out the fridge. So I stuffed a ton of delicious ingredients into this yummy burrito. I love breakfast burritos but they are waaayy to filling for actual breakfast, so this was a dinner. First, I cooked up a zucchini and some red onion in a pan (see below). I cooked them for awhile because both of these veggies are better really well done, it makes them sweeter. Next I poured egg beaters over the veggies and basically made scrambled eggs. While I was doing this I was also grilling a applewood smoked chicken sausage on our Hello Kitty grill. When the eggs where done I placed them on a tortilla, added some sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and balsamic vinaigrette (see below). I then sliced the sausage and added it to the burrito. Finally I folded it up and grilled it on Hello Kitty (see below). It was a supremely yummy dinner and really filling. It also had lots of great veggies and lots of protein. 

Thoughts on this Dish:

• It was actually quite challenging to get everything cooked and hot at the same time, but I managed!
• I trick for defrosting the sausage is running it under warm water before grilling
• It was a bit challenging to get everything to stay in the burrito when I was grilling it. The balsamic kinda spilled out, not really sure how to fix this besides acquiring better folding skills…
• I microwaved the tortilla for 5 seconds before adding things, this helped soften it and also meant that the hot ingredients wouldn't cool down quickly from a tortilla that had been siting in the fridge.

I'm very proud of this last minute creation. It was a lot of work, but a really yummy and different dinner.

Venison Tenderloin with Mushrooms

So my boyfriend cooked dinner for me and his mom on Saturday. He's an awesome cook, and it was a wonderful evening. It was really fun to share a delicious and thoughtful meal with the two of them.

Now I know a lot of you are probably wondering what a venison dish is doing on a flexitarian's blog, so let me explain. I don't usually eat red meat due to the high environmental impact that it has, but since I'm a flexitarian and there are sometimes exceptions to this. In this case, sustainably hunted deer has a very low environmental impact, especially comparatively to factory farm raised beef and pork. This is because there is not the system of fossil fuels that goes into raising this type of meat. Also deer hunting in the midwest states is actually a necessity to keep the population down. Since humans have killed off all the other natural predators of deer in the area (mainly wolves) their population grows unchecked. This leads to disease, starvation, and environmental degradation. That means that regulated deer hunting is a good to thing, needed to maintain the forest ecosystems in the midwest. It was really nice to be able to have a meal with meat in it that was consistent with my values.

As I said my boyfriend made this. It was my first time tasting venison, so we were both a little nervous about whether or not I would like it. And I did! I very much enjoyed it. It tasted like a very good, very lean beef tenderloin. I only really like very lean meat, so I liked that a lot about the dish. My boyfriend grilled it so it had a nice smoky flavor, and he marinated it in a wonderful sauce. We ate it with delicious sautéed mushrooms and onions. The combination of flavors was very complex and wonderful, and I very much enjoyed this meal! We also had corn on the cob on the side (see above). A treat I usually associate with summer, so it was a nice surprise to have it in the fall. We also had a wonderful italian salad (see below) with the meal. It had artichoke hearts, peppers, tomatoes, and red onions in it. And it was yummy.

A wonderful meal with wonderful company. It was so nice of him to cook for me :)

Vegetarian Sushi at Blue Ocean Sushi

While I don't eat fish I love the concept of sushi. It's fresh, light, and healthful. Fortunately, my flexitarian diet does not totally prohibit me from the sushi experience because there are many vegetarian versions of sushi. Each sushi place has their own unique vegetarian roll, and they usually have a couple of other vegetarian rolls as well. This time around I got cucumber rolls and avocado cream cheese rolls. Some other common veggie rolls are carrot/avocado/cucumber, sweet potato, egg and green onion, tofu, and soy bean. This means I don't lack choices at sushi restaurants. Combine that with my love from soba, seaweed salad, mochi, teriyaki, and tempura, and Let's just say I really like going out for Japanese. 

Blue Ocean Sushi is located on the Delmar Loop. It's a fairly cheap, but good sushi joint. The inside is covered japanese pop culture decor and the menu is sizable. I like this place a lot but find that sometimes it gets forgotten with all of the other fantastic eateries on the loop. Fortunately, I was craving something light on Saturday, and Blue Ocean caught my eye. I was with my boyfriend and he'd already eaten so I wanted to get something light and quick, also he loves sushi so I had a feeling that if we went here and he realized he was hungry he could easily get something small (this is in fact, exactly what happened). We had a really nice meal, and I left feeling perfectly satisfied and not overfull. 

Thoughts on this restaurant:

• They have an all you can eat sushi special that is very reasonably priced, a good place to go when you're hungry.
• They have other classic japanese dishes on the menu if you don't feel like getting sushi
• This place holds a special place in my heart because the first time that I went here the waitress printed "Believe in Sherlock Holmes. Moritary was Real!" on the receipt. As a fan of the Sherlock TV show this was a total geek moment for me. The time this happened I wasn't with anyone who had seen the show so I got a lot of crazy looks, but I didn't care because it was so cool! Don't believe me? There's proof below. I think I still have the receipt somewhere...

I love this restaurant, and am sad that I don't get there more often. It seems I'm always writing that when I go out to eat. I guess it's a testament to how amazing STL food is. 

Guo Bin Chinese Restaurant

Guo Bin is a local Chinese restaurant that my and I frequent. The food's really yummy and the staff are so nice. They recognize us every time we come in. We hadn't been there for a really long time, but this weekend we finally had the chance to go. I brought my boyfriend along, so he could meet some of my friends, and we had a wonderful meal. I got the Cashew Chicken (above) this time, but I usually get sesame noodles and vegetable egg rolls. I really liked their version of the Cashew Chicken it was really flavorful and had yummy peppers in it. Other dishes that my friends got included the Orange Chicken (below left) and the Garlic Chicken (below right). We all shared a bit and got to taste each other's meals, which was really nice. I miss this place, gotta get back sometime soon :)

Thoughts on Guo Bin:

• They'd rather you pay in cash so try to have cash on you when you go
• They have a back room and will accommodate large parties if you call in early

I'm happy that we were able to get back here before I leave next semester, it's a Friday night favorite.

Rosemary Brown Sugar Latte from Kaldi's

Kaldi's Coffee is a St. Louis company that has shops all over the STL area. This particular Kaldi's is on De Mun Rd. It's a bit farther from campus, and a great deal smaller than Kayak's. This means that it has a much more low key atmosphere (they also don't have a sandwich menu). And they close at 11p, so it was the perfect place to stop with friends after Dewey's and before the Catching Fire Premiere. I decided to be adventurous and try the seasonal drink. A rosemary brown sugar latte. I was a little skeptical about it, but I like rosemary and I like brown sugar and my curiosity was peaked. My thoughts? It was weird, rosemary (which is a fairly strong flavor) is not something that I'm used to having with coffee, but after the first couple of sips I really enjoyed the drink. It's nice to try something different and I'm always eager to try new flavor profiles, because sometimes the strangest combinations are the best.

Thoughts on Kaldi's:

• I'm a big fan of the brand because they are a local place. They grind their beans locally and are pretty conscious about getting fair trade beans. 
• This place is nice and out of the way, it's in an area that more professors are living in than students so there are some really nice restaurants and bars on the same street and this shop. 
• It's really close to our local Shnucks (St. Louis' local grocery chain) and movie theater, so it's in a convenient location if you have a car. 

Overall, many positive feelings. It was fun to something completely different than my usual!

Dewey's Socrates' Revenge Pizza

I already posted about Dewey's so here's a brief follow up post. My roommate and I grabbed a quick dinner before the Catching Fire midnight premier :) Like last time it was wonderful, we went at about 9p on a Thursday night so it was pretty empty. However, the service was wonderful again. I got the Socrates' Revenge this time, which was a white pizza with spinach, tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, red onions, black olives, and feta. Lots of veggies and sooooo good. I've decided that this is my favorite STL pizza joint, so expect more Dewey's posts as I try out their entire vegetarian menu!

Peppermint Bark Popcorn

Earlier this week I had a movie screening for one of my classes and the professor brought this cinnamon peppermint white chocolate popcorn. It was amazing, and I thought that it seemed like a fairly easy thing to make. This Saturday I got a chance to try it out. One of my friends and I had a scary movie marathon so I thought it would be a perfect chance to try the recipe.

I wanted to use a flavor profile that I knew I liked so I choose the festive chocolate peppermint one. I used white chocolate and bittersweet chocolate for this recipe. I melted each and drizzled them on the popcorn, then added crushed up candy cane bits. Then we mixed the treat and stuck it in the fridge to harden. Besides a slight microwave malfunction when we were in the middle of heating the chocolate, it was a very easy recipe to do! It was a yummy way to spice up normal popcorn, and we had a ton of extra left over.  My friend pointed out as we were making it that it reminded her of William-Sanoma's Peppermint Bark. I completely agree with her, which is why I named it thus :)

 Thoughts on this recipe:

• I don't usually like white chocolate but I think it actually goes extremely well with popcorn, so I wanted to include it in this recipe.
• We used buttered popcorn for this, but it might also be nice to try with kettle corn. I liked the sweet/salty that the buttered added, but the kettle might be nice too.
• I added peppermint bits after adding the white chocolate and then also after adding the dark chocolate. This allowed the peppermint to stick to the popcorn when the chocolate was melted. 
• We melted the chocolate for about 2:30 minutes each.
• We stuck the popcorn in the fridge for 20 minutes. I think that in the future it actually could use at least an hour in the fridge. 

 This was such a fun thing to make and eat! It's really fun that I'm at the point where I can take inspiration for random places and actually make something out of it. Also this treat reminds me of winter, which makes me excited for the holiday cheerfulness that is on it's way!

Jilly's Pumpkin Pie Cupcake

I mentioned that this was one of my favorite Jilly's Cupcakes in my previous post. The Pumpkin Pie Cupcake. Pumpkin cake, pumpkin pie filling, vanilla buttercream with cinnamon sugar, and a piece of ACTUAL PUMPKIN PIE on top. It's a cupcake topped with a piece of pie. Two desserts in one! And PUMPKIN. You can see why I'm excited. Since the pie cupcakes are Jilly's November specialty and it's November, my roommate and I made our monthly Jilly's run to grab some of their awesomely creative November flavors. Besides the pumpkin pie cupcake they also have an apple pie a la mode, pecan pie, and french silk cupcake for November. It's the perfect theme for the month of Thanksgiving. For me, The food highlight of this holiday is not the turkey, it's the pie. Jilly's has it down.

 I love Jilly's and am so fortunate to live so close to an amazing cupcakery. Hopefully I'll be going there each month to sample the new flavors, so be on the look out for monthly Jilly's posts.

Pumpkin Muffins

These muffins were a last minute idea, but one that turned out very successfully. I'm in this multidisciplinary environmental sustainability program and every semester or so the professor who runs it has all of the students over to his house for dinner. He and his wife are absolutely wonderful! And they always work to have a yummy dinner and a fun evening for all of us, that I wanted to bring something for them this time. So when I woke up that morning my first thought was, what could I make? When my family visited last month they brought me a fall care package and it included a couple of boxes of Trader Joe's pumpkin bread mix. I decided to use one of those to make these muffins. It was really simple, and I had some left over batter so I made a mini loaf (see below) that I left at home for my roommate and I to enjoy. The muffins were a big hit at the dinner. I made 24. 

Thoughts on this Recipe:

• It's a fairly simple "follow the instructions on the box" recipe
• I sprayed the pans with Baker's Joy. This was a good choice because the muffins came out with no problem. Especially important if baking for others…
• I didn't have time to make/buy a frosting, but if I was to make these again I would frost them with some type of cream cheese frosting
• I'm so glad that I can keep extending pumpkin season by making and eating many pumpkin things! Sorry if you're getting tired of my pumpkin love :P

Since starting this blog I've discovered that I love to share the cooking experience with others, whether it's through sharing actual food or just pictures and stories. When I include others my food becomes something bigger than myself. It's a creative experience that I can use to brighten other people's days. It makes me happy to see the people that I care about happy!

Spinach Smoothie

Yes, it sounds weird. If you haven't heard of putting greens in smoothies before it seems rather out there. That's what I thought the first time I heard of it. I thought that the spinach would overpower the fruit, and it would taste like greens, that it would be gross. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. In a well made green machine smoothie you cannot taste the spinach. It just adds extra vitamins and color to a normal fruit smoothie. The ones that they serve at Cafe Bergson in the DUC are no exception. I like to get mine with peach-apricot-pear juice (its soooo good) and fresh banana. For me, the flavor profile is very sweet and comforting. These are soft baby fruits, but for some reason they are soooo yummy together. Today the flavors were matched particularly perfectly.

Thoughts on this Drink:

• One of the things that I don't like about how the school makes their smoothies is that they add a ton of ice. This makes the drink a watery mess when it melts, so I try and drink mine fast.
• Which leads to problem number two, these smoothies always make me really chilled.
• Also while fruit is healthy, and spinach is great, these smoothies have a ton of sugar in them, so I don't get them too often.

This is a super yummy treat, and is a fast way to get a meal between classes. 

Loaded Veggie Salad

One of the things I sorely miss about living on campus is the excellent salad bar at Paws and Go. They had an amazing variety of fresh veggies, grains, and other goodies that made every salad unique. Also I kind of took for granted not having to cut up vegetables myself until I started cooking. The good news is that there is a comparably good salad station in the DUC, and I eat lunch there once or twice a week. Today I got a spinach salad with carrots, cucumbers, zucchini and squash, green peppers, beans, and a pasta salad mix. All of it topped with the amazing red wine vinaigrette dressing. I love this dressing so much that I have taken to getting sides of it and taking it back to my apartment so that I can cook with it. Today it topped the perfect, well balanced salad. The seasoning on the pasta salad complimented the dressing and the veggies helped tie the whole thing together.

Overall a very yummy and healthful lunch.

Pumpkin Pie

Alright, we've established I have a pumpkin obsession. So what's better than pumpkin in it's purest dessert form pumpkin pie? The answer. Almost nothing. Pumpkin Pie is my second favorite kind of pie (the reason it's second is because my mother's blueberry pie cannot be beat). It's also a relatively easy pie to make (aka hard to screw up). For these reasons, I ended up making it for dessert for the date night meal I made for my boyfriend last weekend. It turned out wonderfully. We ate it hot, and we both loved it. Actually, it was so loved that myself, my roommate, and one of our friends finished it the next day… And my boyfriend and I are planning on making another one tomorrow night… Basically, yes it's that good and I have four people to vouch for the pie :)

Thoughts on this Dessert:

• For the filling I basically followed the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can. But instead of condensed milk I used 1 cup of skim. It turned out really well, and was healthier, so I think I will continue to do that from now on.
• I also used pumpkin pie spice instead of the separate spices.
• I used store bought graham cracker crust. This is easy and doesn't taste much different than home-made graham cracker crust. 
• As desserts go, this one is actually on the healthier side. The worst thing about it is the sugar that the recipe calls for… otherwise its just eggs, milk, and pumpkin.
• I served it with cool whip, this is how I ate it as a child so now cool whip and pumpkin pie are interconnected in my mind.

As I said, huge success! And its reassuring to know that I can easily make the most classic of pumpkin treats :)

Greek Grilled Chicken with Couscous and Green Beans

So usually I don't make full meals with sides, and just throw whatever I have in the fridge together. This meal is a bit different because I was cooking for two! I put my new cooking skills to use and made this meal for my wonderful boyfriend for date night on Saturday :) He's a meat eater so I compromised by cooking chicken. My mom makes a wonderful grilled marinaded chicken so I tweaked her recipe. I marinated it with greek dressing, a dash of red wine vinegar, and 1/2 a tablespoon of crushed garlic, to give it a Mediterranean flavor profile (see below). I prepared it in the morning and let it sit in the fridge all day so the flavors were absorbed into the chicken .Then we grilled it on Hello Kitty (My roommate has a mini grill with hello kitty on it). And when I say "we" grilled it, my boyfriend actually did that part. He's a cook as well, and he grilled the chicken to perfection!  

Because I was doing a greek marinate I made my Israeli Couscous as a side dish (see below). I've done a previous post on this recipe, so I won't go into details here. My boyfriend had never had couscous before and he liked it, so I considered it a success. I usually serve it cold and did so with this dinner, but he suggested serving it warm. I'll be trying that next time. The last element of the meal was green beans. I got a pre-washed bag at Trader Joe's and just cooked them in the microwave. To make the green beans special I mixed them with honey roasted almond slices. I love eating green beans with almonds, the sweetness of the almonds really makes the flavor of the beans pop. It ended up actually being a fairly easy to make meal. The most difficult part was making sure everything was ready and hot at the same time. We actually nailed that part, and everything was delicious. I think we both agreed that the meal was a success!

Thoughts on this Meal:

• When I decided to cook for him, I found myself constructing an entire meal instead of one dish, which was new for me. Thinking about each element of the meal was a new exercise. I tried to pick sides that would compliment the chicken and have a Mediterraneanesque flavor profile. I actually really liked trying to contract a meal that was well balanced. Both flavor wise and food group wise
• As I mentioned before the hardest part of this meal was trying finish at the same time. I think it's something that gets easier with experience. 
• Cooking with someone else is a completely different experience! I really liked being able to talk about what I was doing and have someone else contribute to the experience. Especially if it gets I mean to spend more time with my bf :)

We had such a wonderful night! I'm so happy that this turned out so well, and I'm eagerly looking forward to cooking with my boyfriend again.

Also I made pumpkin pie for dessert. Which I will post separately about next. 

Green Tea Cake for the GEC Potluck

Green Tea cake is one of my favorite recipes, and due to positive feedback it seems to be one of my friends' favorites as well :) This is basically a recipe for vanilla cake with added matcha (green tea extract that I blogged about in an earlier post). It's a fairly simple recipe if you have matcha. It's a really yummy cake, sweet with a little something extra, and the matcha turns the cake and frosting a pretty green color. It's a kinda unique and fun dessert, so it's one that I like to make and bring to events. 

This time around I made a cake for a Green Events Commission (GEC) potluck. The GEC is a student group I'm part of at Wash U. We provide free sustainable consulting services to other student groups on campus. This is my third year as a member, and I absolutely love being able to make a difference on campus this way! It's also a fun team to be apart of. This weekend we had a potluck dinner, to do some low stress bonding outside of meetings. It was such a success and so fun! Also since many GEC members are vegetarian (and vegetarianism has a smaller carbon footprint > see my super long flexitarian post if you want to learn more), the potluck was completely vegetarian fair! My contributions were Spinach Rolls (which also have their own post) and a special GEC Green Tea Cake. I decided to experiment with cake decorating by recreating the GEC logo on the cake in frosting. For a first attempt, it turned out well. My lettering was kinda messy, but I think that will get better with practice. The complete frosting process is pictured below.

This is what our actual logo looks like

 Thoughts on this Dessert:

• Firstly, I've had several requests for the recipe for this cake so here it is:
• 1 box of vanilla cake mix and what other ingredients the cake box recipe call for (I think its 2 eggs, half a cup of water and 1/4 a cup of vegetable oil)
• 5 packs of matcha
• 1 box of vanilla instant pudding
• 1 container of vanilla frosting
• You basically follow the directions on the cake mix box, and add the pudding. Then mix in 3 packs of matcha once the cake mix is stirred. The bake time for this recipe varies a lot. It tends to take longer than the bake time on the box, so check the cake at 5-7 minute intervals until the middle is completely done. Wait till cool to frost. The frosting is made by just stirring 2 packs of matcha into a tub of vanilla frosting. Make sure it is well mixed!!
• This time there was some extra batter so we made cupcakes as well. I left those at home.
• Matcha is the only ingredient of this recipe that is a bit hard to get ahold of. I suggest greenmax brand, which is sold on Amazon. For more details see my Matcha Tea post.
• This is one of my favorite recipes and I've made it enough times that I can consistently make a yummy and gorgeous cake.

Everyone really liked the cake, and had an awesome time at the potluck. It makes me so happy that I can make something that is new to so many people, and they really like it!

Hummus Wrap at Holmes

Mmmmm The Carvery. Last week I finally had time to sit down for lunch, so I took advantage of my time to go to this wondrous Wash U lunch spot. The Carvery in Holmes Lounge is a sandwich and wrap restaurant that makes mades all their items made to order. Now what is unique about it is that they have a meat of the day and will cut up fresh roasted ingredients for the wraps. Also they throw all their wraps onto a panini press until they are grilled just right. This time I specifically stopped in because the meat of the day was turkey, but they ran out by the time I got there :( It turned out okay because they have hummus so I was able to get something awesome and vegetarian instead. I got hummus, swiss, grilled zucchini and squash, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and pickles on a wheat wrap. Also I got the house sauce and honey mustard on it as well. The Carvery has an awesome selection of sauces, but their house (some type of yellow sauce which I have no clue is in) is the best one. It's fun to try different sauce combos on the wraps. Anyway, my creation last week was very yummy. It got a bit messy (see below), but it was a very satisfying lunch!

Thoughts on the Carvery:

• The wait for this place is super long, the longest wait on campus at the busiest lunch hours. So be sure to get there at off times or the wait is easily half an hour to forty minutes. It can be worth it, but sometimes on busy days I don't have that kind of time.
• Holmes Lounge, which is the eating area for this restaurant, is gorgeous. It has an intricately painted ceiling and housed the Queen's Jewels during the 1914 world's fair. It's cool that something that important is a lunch and study spot on campus :)

I love this place and couldn't recommend it more if you have a longer than average lunch break here at Wash U.

Boneless BBQ Wings at Buffalo Wild Wings

So Bdubs is a chain restaurant. It's not unique to St. Louis, but I've never been before and I thought I'd blog about my first experience. One of my friends and I headed over to our local Buffalo Wild Wings for a quick lunch on Friday. I have to say, after my meal I was left with very positive feelings. I really like different seasonings and sauces, and bbq/ranch is a combo I love, so I really enjoyed having some classic bar food for a change :) They have a spectrum of sauces to choose from, which makes ordering really fun. My friend was kind enough to help me decipher their heat spectrum, since I don't like super spicy food. I ended up getting an order of half sweet bbq and half honey bbq. Consensus? I liked the honey bbq a lot better than the sweet bbq one! It was actually the sweeter of the two despite the name. I will definitely be getting it again, but I would probably pass on the mild to taste other flavors.

Thoughts on this restaurant:

• I love all of the options! There are so many flavor combos to try, I'm leaning towards trying the parmesan garlic or teriyaki flavors next time.
• I like that they have boneless wings. I don't like wings with the bone in, probably because I'm not a huge fan of dark meat.

bdubs is exactly what I expected, a laid back sports bar atmosphere where you can get some damn good wings. I'm glad I finally got around to trying it!

Festive Fall Trail Mix

I love trail mix. It's the perfect food to eat if you need to keep your energy up but you don't have time for a meal. Lots of things I do fall into this category. Studying, working in lab, hiking, field work, kayaking... I could go on. In all of these cases, I can't leave what I'm doing or take an extended break to eat a meal. This is where trail mix comes in. I can pop a handful of it when I'm getting tried or hungry without really taking away from what I'm doing (except lab where I have to step out to take a handful, but basically the same concept). This morning as I was leaving my apartment I realized that today was going to be one of those days where I wouldn't have time to eat a meal until I came home at around 7p or so. I've gotten better at realizing that not eating for 9 hours is not a good idea. Lately I've been making sure that I have something with me, usually an apple or a luna bar. But today I decided to be creative and make some trail mix. And because its still fall, I made a very comforting fall flavor profile trail mix. Today's creation was made out of a generous handful of Trader Joe's Trek Mix, which has cranberries, almonds, and cashews in it. About half a handful of my pumpkin seeds (see last weeks post), and a smattering of candy corn. The Trek Mix reminds me of thanksgiving flavors, and combined with the pumpkin seeds and the halloween candies it was a very fall mix. I wasn't 100% sure how all of the flavors would taste together, but I ended up being super impressed. The pumpkin seeds have a savory/sweet flavor profile that went really well with the nuts and cranberries. But the real star of this snack was the candy corn. Now since these are basically just sugar I was a afraid they would overwhelm the rest of the flavors, but since I only put a couple in that wasn't the case! They actually went super well with the seeds and the nutty flavor of the almonds. All and all, successful snackage! Kept me full day long, which was good because I had non-stop class and labs today.

Thoughts on this Snack:

• Trail mix is something that can be unhealthy if you eat a ton of it or if it's only made of candy. That's why balancing the ingredients, and only taking as much as you want to eat throughout your day with you is important. 
• Some other great things to put in trail mix are peanuts, hazelnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, granola, reese's pieces, dark chocolate m&ms, raisins, banana chips, dried apricots, dried mango, dried pineapple, dried papaya, and dried blueberries. Mix and match as pleases you.
• The whole point of trail mix is something quick, nonperishable, with lots of types of energy. Thats why nuts are good, lots of protein, nutrients, and energy. The dried fruit is good for replenishing vitamins. Also it's okay to add some candy to the mix, like m&m's chocolate covered raisins or blueberries, as long as it is the smallest fraction of the mix. Some simple sugars are good for getting an energy boost, and dark chocolate has a lot of antioxidants in it. 
• Also be aware that things like chocolate melt if you're going to be in the sun or somewhere hot. That will turn the mix into a disgusting mess, so be conscientious when picking your ingredients. 
• Basically follow these 3 trail mix rules: 1. Moderation is key, 2. Choose ingredients that taste good together, 3. Tailor your mix for your activity.

I'm so happy that even after Halloween the fall time spirit is still going strong!!

Dewey's Green Lantern Pizza

 Okay, so I've been trying to get to Dewey's all semester and finally it happened. One of my professors always brings Dewey's pizza in for department events and info sessions and I really really like it. The pizzas are loaded with good quality toppings and the crust is wonderful. Unfortunately, they don't deliver, it's only a sit-down or take-out place. So it's harder for me to get there. My roommate and I finally did get to try it out, in restaurant, last night. It was a bit of a wait, but well worth it! One of the coolest things about this place is that they have really interesting, and funny pizza names. For example, my pizza was called the Green Lantern. I want to point out that any pizza that is geeky enough to be named after a superhero wins major points in my book :) But the pie itself is also an amazing combo of flavors. Its's a mozzarella and red sauce pizza with pesto, goat cheese, and artichokes. It also comes with mushrooms, which I don't love so I substituted them with roasted red peppers. Basically, think spinach artichoke dip meets pesto on top of an amazing crunchy on the outside-soft on the inside-crust. It was pizza heaven. The flavor profiles were sophisticated, but the quality of the crust and sauce were those classic thick crust pizza. This was the perfect melding of gourmet and comfort, and made for a really yummy (and geeky) meal.

Thoughts on this Restaurant:

• As I mentioned before this is a crowded place on a Saturday night at 7. We waited about 30 minutes for a table. But a full place usually means good food, and this was no exception. Also the service was great. We got our food quickly. This is even more impressive when you consider that they were filling twice as many take-out orders as eat-in ones, but still managed to be timely. 
• Dewey's is a block south of Momo's on North & South Blvd. It started in Cincinnati Ohio, but now they have a couple of Missouri locations, in addition to the Ohio ones.
• I also happen to really, really like many of their suggested combos, which is usually not the case at pizza places. 
• One of the things I really like about the suggestions is that out of the 15 specialties on the menu 8 of them are vegetarian!!! Usually at a pizza place there is one vegetarian specialty, the veggie supreme. Looking at the shear amount of combination options, it really speaks to the variety of vegetarian toppings that they have at their disposal. This makes this place truly a wonderful option of veggie diners. 
• Besides the Green Lantern (:D). I would really like to try the Billy Goat (sundried tomatoes/goat cheese/peppers/tomatoes on a sauceless pizza), The Socrates' Revenge (spinach/black olives/green olives/feta/red onions/tomatoes on a sauceless pizza), and the Killer Veggie (red sauce/mozzarella/mushrooms/onions/black olives/green peppers/fresh tomatoes). 

I really like this place!!! It's such a nice change, and the quality cannot be beat. I actually like Dewey's more than Pi pizza (shhhh), partly because I'm from Chicago and the Pi deep dish that everyone raves about doesn't actually compare the pizza I can get in Chi-town. Anyway, Dewey's is a must for anyone craving pizza in STL.

Teriyaki Fried Quinoa Take 2

I made my Teriyaki Fried Quinoa again this weekend for lunch on Saturday! And it was once again delicious! The only changes I made was that I cooked the quinoa first to give it more time to sit. Also I used more veggies, including zucchini, that were cut a little larger. I liked the result of the first change. I wasn't as pleased with the second. I think the veggies need to be cut finer, though the addition of more was nice. Once again I made enough for several meals. This recipe is a bit of a potchky, because it takes 3 pans, but the clean up is relatively painless.

Otherwise, nothing about this recipe has changed. It's interesting to see that some parts of repeatability of a recipe are easier than others. I guess that's why it's important to take notes so I remember what works and what doesn't.