Clever Salad Bar Concoctions

It's that night. The night you can't figure out what dinner is. Sure, they've said on the menu, but your nose and your eyes can't quite discern the brownish, warmish, foodish item eyeing you from the tray. In these moments I turn to the salad bar. And you may be mistaken, dear reader, in thinking that the salad bar is only for salad. Oh, no. It is a shining beacon, an oasis in a desert, if you will. There you can find a garden of leafy greens, crunchy cucumbers, perfect peppers--a plethora of ripe, raw ingredients for magical food wonders. With just a little elbow grease and ingenuity, you can whip up a healthy and tasty meal that isn't just foodish, it's food!

Now, I'm a maverick of lunchtime grilled sandwiches, but dinner perplexes me. So the other night I turned to my roommate, a fantastic cook, to make me something delicious. Boy did she deliver! In no time she had me melting over perfectly flavored deviled eggs.

The yolks are mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, tabasco, salt, and pepper. A simple combination, but in just the right amounts. The mayo creates the smooth texture, mingling with the firm, smooth white bowl of the egg. The mustard and tabasco work in tandem, dancing across the tongue in alternating sweet and sour. The salt and pepper add just that little bit of familiar flavor after the bang of the tabasco.

So next time you find your food staring back in your local dining hall, take a look around and experiment...or as Ms. Frizzle would say "Take chances, make mistakes!" And, to add a little of my own flavor: Invent, play!

Almost Easter!

It's almost Easter! The shelves of stores are stocked with Easter candy like peeps, chocolate covered marshmallows and jelly beans. Like valentine's day, it's a holiday that allows you to stuff your face without judgment. But sometimes after eating so much candy your stomach starts to hurt, and your teeth feel like they are going to fall out. I found this really good recipe for a sweet, healthier treat: fresh fruit salad with honey vanilla yogurt.

Ingredients

nocoupons

• 2 cups plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons good honey
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Seeds scraped from 1/2 vanilla bean, optional
• 1/2 orange, juiced
• 1 banana, sliced
• 1/2 pint fresh blueberries
• 1/2 pint fresh raspberries
• 1 pint fresh strawberries, hulled and cut in half
• 1 bunch seedless green grapes, halved
  

Directions

Combine the yogurt, honey, vanilla, and vanilla bean seeds in a bowl and set aside. Combine the orange juice and banana slices in a separate bowl. Add the berries and grapes and gently mix the fruit mixture together. Spoon the fruit into serving bowls and top with the yogurt.

In addition, I would add granola to the fruit salad.

Karma's raw vegan banana cream pie

Last weekend, two of my friends and I indulged in an extravagant luncheon at Karma, the new vegan and raw foods restaurant on Main Street in Northampton. (A full-length restaurant review is soon to come.) We ended with two desserts, one of which was a slice of perhaps the most successful vegan banana cream pie in the area (although, I’ll admit, I don’t have much exposure to its competitors, so I can’t guarantee an accurate ranking). We asked our waitress if the pastry chef was around, and she modestly revealed that she was, in fact, the baker. She happily shared the recipe.

Crust:

3.5 cups walnuts

2 tbsp. agave nectar

2 tsp. vanilla

2 tbsp. salt

Pulverize these ingredients and press them into a pie tin.

Filling: (This actually makes enough for 3 pies, so adjust accordingly.)

3 cups mashed banana

2 cups soaked cashew

1 cup agave nectar

2 tbsp. lemon juice

2 tbsp. vanilla

1.5 cup coconut oil

Mix together and pour into piecrust. Sprinkle a layer of coconut flakes on top and refrigerate until set.

(My dining companion and friend, a raw foods enthusiast, informed me that professional kitchens like that at Karma probably use a tool called a Vita-Mix, an extremely high-powered blender that sells for $500. Worth it for an amateur? No. And a regular food processor would probably be fine. But I do strongly recommend Karma’s pie.)

Britain's Big Three Team Up

Sometimes I forget that sustainable production of food extends beyond plants and livestock. Moreover, it includes the creatures of the sea. Personally, seafood is certainly incorporated into my diet, and only sometimes do I have the presence of mind to remember that salmon, for example, is extraordinarily overfished, and that it would be reckless and irresponsible to buy it.

As it turns out, the top three most famous chefs in Britain -- Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, and Heston Blumenthal -- have decided not to forget the reality of unsustainable fishing. In fact, there are taking a strong stance on awareness of seafood practices. The power of their combined celebrity could turn out to be a powerful force for swaying public opinion toward responsible consumption.

To read more about their mission, click HERE

Mound o' Cheese

Saturday night was Senior Ball, and I had a blast. It was so much fun to get all dressed up, and see everyone in their finest. I couldn't get over how beautiful we all looked! It was a wonderful way to celebrate our time at Smith together.

There was a cash bar at the event, as well as passed appetizers and desserts. The food was actually quite tasty, I was especially partial to the spinach artichoke dip. Then again, anything fatty or cheesy would taste good after a few glasses of champagne. However, there was one aspect of the catering which I thought was absolutely hysterical: the mound o' cheese.

Right in the middle of the campus center, there was this huge round table completely covered with different types of cheese. I don't even think there were any platters under it, it was just literally piles of dairy product. I had never seen that much cut up cheese before in my entire life. It was quite the sight to see!

So for those of you who are not Seniors, now you know that not only do you have great outfits and dancing to look forward to, but also enough cheese to feed tipsy students 100 times over.

Food Experiments

Have you ever kept a piece of bread in your mouth for a very long time? If you have, you know that the bread gets sweeter the longer it is in your mouth. The reason this happens is because your body is digesting the bread even before you swallow it. The starch molecules in bread are actually made up of long chains of glucose, a simple sugar. An enzyme in your saliva called amylase is able to break apart the starch molecules into glucose. Unlike with the starch, your tongue perceives glucose as sweet. Cool, huh?

For those of you who like to look at cool pictures of enzymes, this is what amylase looks like.

If you'd like to learn more about this experiment: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/white-bread-and-the-wonder-of-enzymes/

Food and Stress

At a stressful time in the semester it is important to remember that food choices make a difference in your stress levels. I don't know about everyone, but I personally notice a difference in my ability to take on my to-do list depending on what I have been eating. There is tons of information about this on the web, but most the articles on "stress busting foods" seemed to just list foods that would be good to eat all the time. Oranges, broccoli, nuts, salmon, and turkey were all specifically mentioned as boosting energy and curbing stress. Also, relatively obviously, foods to avoid were things with caffeine, too much sugar, and alcohol. Unfortunately, I find that things with caffine and sugar are often times what people think will make them feel the best when they are stressed and tired. So next time you need to pull an all-nighter should you go for broccoli instead of coffee? I think that the coffee might be more immediately successful, but perhaps in the long run the broccoli will make you feel better and give you more energy the next day.