Australian Pies

When I think pie, I think blueberry, apple or pumpkin. America is famous for it's large sweet pies. Apple pie and cherry pie are American traditions for the Fourth of July, and pumpkin pie and pecan pie are Thanksgiving staples. America loves it's pies. But in the States pie is a dessert.

In Australia, a pie is a small savory pastry stuffed with meat, cheese, potatoes, and/or vegetables. And here beef pies are as uniquely Australian as apple pies are american. They are something you grab for lunch, or a light dinner. And boy are they fantastic!! I've been in Australia for a week and I've already had two pies. the first was a veggie pie (above right), and the second was a pumpkin lentil feta pie (top left). Because of my flexitarianism I really liked that most pie places have at least one vegetarian pie!

The veggie pie had carrots, celery, broccoli, and potatoes in it. It had a crunchy crust and melted cheese on top. I was so yummy. I tasted like a hand held chicken pot pie, minus the chicken. We ate them in Manley while waiting for the ferry to take us back to Sydney.

The second pie was my favorite of the two. The pastry was soft and flaky and it covered the top of the pie. This pie had to be eaten with a fork. It was so savory and oh so good. The lentils made it taste really homey and I loved it. I should note that pumpkin in Australia is a bit different than what we have in the states (see below). They're like a cross between a squash and a pumpkin. To me they tasted like a cross between them as well. I really liked it actually. It's nice to try something different from what we have at home and still like it.

Pies are so big here that they have a pie chain restaurant called Pie Face. They are here as frequently as McDonalds are in the states. I have yet to try a Pie Face pie but I can't wait because I can't wait to eat more of these!

Very Fruity Trail Plane Mix

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Australia! I'll be there for 6 months, studying and having a blast abroad. But before I get there I have a 22 hour trip ahead of me. That's a lot of travel time, and even more if you account for the time change (I'll have skipped an entire day), so I have lot's of opportunities to get hungry. So I made sure that I'm prepared for the long flight by packing snacks. I made this wonderful dried fruit mix with a bunch of my favorites. Dried mangos, apricots, cantaloupe, strawberries, bananas, dark chocolate raisins and yogurt raisins. I have enough to last me for a couple days so if the plane food is horrible, I'll be prepared. I love dried fruit. It's sweet and chewy, so it satisfies candy cravings, and even though its sugary it's better for you than candy. Another thing I love about dried fruit is that the taste and textures of the fruit are very different than the fresh fruit. It's fun to try different fruits dried, and see what they mix well with. I'm happy that I'll have this to take a couple of handfuls of when I'm peckish on my long journey.

Thoughts on Dried Fruit:

• I can't really eat fresh mango, I get numb mouth (aka I'm middy allergic) but I can stomach dried mango just fine. In fact I love the stringy texture of dried mango, its the perfect trail food. 
• Dried cantaloupe is unique in that it is super juicy dried! This makes it one of my favorite dried fruits, I always go for it if its available 
• Dried strawberries are candy. At least they taste like it! They are the perfect size and also perfectly poppable as a yummy snack. My mom tried them for the first time today and she couldn't get enough. She thought they tasted like strawberry licorice.
• Dried bananas are wonderful because you can use them as an alternate to crackers. They are crunchy, so I like to dip they I'm peanut butter or Nutella.

Love dried fruit, so it's the perfect snack for me on my long journey Down Under! I won't be blogging for awhile, but when I do get a chance to look for posts about eating and cooking in Australia.

Superbowl "Mini" Pizzas

 I'm not a big football fan, but my Dad is. So every year when I was home (which is basically every year except for the past two when I was in STL), my Mom would make a ton of fun snacks and we would watch the game together. This year was nice because all four of us were home so we got to spend the time together, even if the game wasn't very exciting. What was exciting was my Dad's suggestion of what we do for snacks. He suggested making some homemade mini pizzas. It was a great idea! We ended up making 6 different kinds of pizza with various toppings and then we all got to taste them. It was also really cool because we all helped cook them together. My Dad worked in a pizza parlor when he was in college so he was spinning the dough to flatten it out, after a couple of tries he remembered how to do it! The pizzas we made were mostly NOT vegetarian, but since my Mom made her baked Salami (see below) which is one of my two meat exceptions (the other being Chicago hot dogs from my favorite hot dog joint), I was eating meat that day anyway so I was able to taste the meat ones as well. From left to right in the first picture above then the second we made chicken sausage, gouda and roasted pepper pizza, tomato and fresh mozzarella pizza, Bacon, Colby Jack and Mushroom pizza, prosuttio and parmesan pizza, pepperoni and mozzarella pizza, and pear, balsamic, and goat cheese pizza. A creative and diverse bunch of pizzas! My favorite was the bacon one, I don't know if that was because it was the best of the bunch or just because I haven't have bacon in soooo long that I missed it so much ;) My runner up was the chicken sausage one. I loved the gouda and peppers. it had a really nice smoky flavor to it. Ultimately we had about half of the pizza left over after we all had at it. So that meant some leftover pizza for the next week. I love cold pizza so I was quite happy about that.

Thoughts on these pizzas:

• The crust of the bacon one was the best because it was thin and crispy instead of doughy. Ironically, this was the one dough that I worked on and I had done such a "crappy" job (see above its not circular) that I was taken off dough duty. But it turned out that it wasn't too thin after all and even though it looked the ugliest it tasted the best. Haha goes to show presentation and taste don't always match!
• The parm prosuttio was really salty so it was probably my least favorite, it needed something to cut the salt. I think my mom wanted to put fresh greens on top (which would have done it) but the rest of us didn't want that so we ended up without it. 
• My sister brushed all of the crusts with garlic olive oil which crisped the crust nicely when baked, and also gave it a good flavor. This step is critical in order to get crust that tastes like something!
• If I was making this for me only, and not my meat eating family, I would probably made a veggie supreme kinda pizza with a ton of different veggies on it, but alas it was not to be this time around. 

I would love to do this again using what we learned from this time. Such a fun thing to do!

Mediterranean Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

So I love stuffing peppers with various things, I've written about it many times before, so I'll keep this short and sweet. We had an impromptu make your own dinner a couple weeks ago because my sister was sick. My mom made some quinoa for her, so I took some and spiced it up to stuff in this pepper. I added feta, pesto, cucumbers, and sundried tomatoes to the quinoa and mixed it up. I then stuffed it in this pepper that I had taken the top off of and taken the seeds out. It was really really yummy. And was also super filling, I couldn't finish the entire thing and ended up saving part of it for lunch the next day. Still love stuffing peppers, its such a good way to make a vegetarian meal or app, and you can make it as healthy or unhealthy as you want!

Mango Salsa and Gouda Quesadilla

These were a treat! I decided to use the Mango Peach Salsa that we have at my house to make a sweet/salty quesadilla. I had a quesadilla with mango relish at a restaurant in Boston once and surprisingly liked it so I tried to recreate it a bit here. I sliced up a roasted pepper, used some shredded gouda and then added as much salsa as desired. I then cooked it using my Mom's stovetop panini press. It came out well, but I have to say I miss Hello Kitty. I ate it with some guacamole. We bought these awesome 100 cal guac packs at Costco that help moderate servings of guacamole, they're my new favorite thing. Also the tortilla I used is a special kind called Tumaro's that is only 60 calories! Tortillas are usually really high cal so this is really nice for me because I love using them as wraps. This quesadilla turned out great, I did a good job balancing the flavors and cooked it all the way through so the cheese was melty. It was nice to know that I could repeat a similar (if not easy) recipe in another kitchen with different cooking conditions.

Pumpkin Smoothie

Since I opened a can of pumpkin for the pasta sauce I decided to use it for a healthy smoothie. I combined a banana, a bit of skim milk and some nutmeg and pumpkin spice with a hefty scoop of pumpkin. I then mixed it all together in my Mom's super fancy blender. I was really good and creamy! Some critiques are that I should have used frozen bananas to make it colder and also give it more of an ice creamy constancy. We didn't have any at my house so it wasn't an option, but if I made this again I would try and have some frozen bananas. Overall, it was a nice way to use the pumpkin and made a perfect serving size!

Pumpkin Ravioli with Pumpkin Rosemary Sauce

It's been awhile, but I have been doing a little bit of cooking at home in Chicago. The reason that I haven't been cooking as much is because my Mom tends to make dinner for our family (she's an amazing cook) so there haven't been many days where I make my own meals. I'm totally spoiled. But occasionally I've had a chance to cook in the huge well stocked kitchen at out house. My first creation was Pumpkin Ravioli which my Mom bought specifically for me. The ravs were easy to cook, but finding a sauce was not. I wanted to create a fun (not horribly unhealthy) sauce to spice up the dish a bit. I raided the pantry and decided that I would make a sauce using sautéed shallots, pumpkin, Trader Joe's Apple Cider, Balsamic vinegar and rosemary. It was a bit of an experiment, but turned out pretty well. The texture was probably my least favorite thing about the sauce, but the sweet/tangy flavor was really good and unique.

Thoughts on this Recipe:

• Firstly, here's the instructions for anyone who wants to try the sauce. a bit over 1/2 cup of pumpkin, 1/3 cup of apple cider, 1 chopped and sautéed shallot, 1 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (and as needed), rosemary as needed. Basically chop and sauté the shallots. add them to the pumpkin and cider on medium heat. Then add the balsamic and rosemary until you reach the desired balance of tart/sweet/rosemary.
• I started the pasta right when I finished sautéing the shallots, and then made the sauce as the pasta was cooking. The timing worked out pretty well. 
• Like I said I didn't love the texture of the sauce, I think it needed some milk or cream to make it a little more regular, but I didn't want to make a fattening cram sauce. I've got to brainstorm something that would fit here.
• I would probably add more rosemary next time

A good attempt, not my favorite but I was proud of the creativity.