Archives for January 2013

Chai Spiced Hot Chocolate

January 11, 2013 by Erica

Have you ever had a “dirty” chai latte?

Well, this is not that.

But a dirty chai latte, I learned the day after Christmas, is a chai latte with a shot of espresso, and is an “off-the-menu” item at Starbucks. I tried a friend’s recently and it was delicious. Not sure I’ll be ordering it any time soon, though, because how awkward would it be to include the word “dirty” in your Starbucks order? What if the cashier didn’t know what you were talking about? Or… misinterpreted it? I feel like Utah is a place where that would happen.

Anyway, chai spiced hot chocolate is kind of the inverse of a dirty chai latte, and for chocolate lovers, but just as brilliant. Also, it contains no potentially confusing adjectives, which is key when you’re ordering it/telling other people about it.

This is inspired by the Williams-Sonoma chai-spiced hot chocolate that my aunt and uncle (hi Aunt Kathy!) got me for Christmas. It was just the perfect thing to warm up with after skiing! It had never occurred to me that two seemingly distinct hot beverages, tea and hot chocolate, could be combined. Two of your favorite things, right?

But I suspect that not everyone will run out to Williams-Sonoma to buy this “premium” (quoting from the website now), “mellow-bodied,” “perfectly balanced” hot chocolate. So I came up with a semi-homemade version (Sandra Lee-style) to share with you.

And despite my pictures here with fancy spices, none of those are necessary. A chai tea bag and some Hershey’s cocoa powder, people. Semi-homemade. I was just so proud that I had so many whole spices sitting around that I had to include them.

I feel obliged here to link to something hysterical, if you haven’t seen it already: The Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog. It had me hunched over my desk squeaking I was laughing so hard. This “world-class” hot chocolate is not even in the same category as the absurd Williams-Sonoma products and descriptions featured there. If you’ve ever looked at their catalog and shouted at your roommate “who the hell BUYS this stuff?!” you should check it out. Although if you are intrigued by and end up purchasing the “reclaimed rustic chicken coop” for $759.95, I’m sure your roommate will understand.

Chai Spiced Hot Chocolate

Makes 2 1-cup servings

Inspired by Williams-Sonoma

Ingredients:

2 cups plain unsweetened almond milk

1 chai tea bag (I used Tazo)

1/4 cup Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder

2 Tbsp sugar

1/8 tsp vanilla

Instructions:

In a heat-proof dish (such as a Pyrex glass measuring cup), microwave almond milk until hot, about 4 minutes, stopping and stirring every minute or so.

Remove from microwave and steep the chai tea bag in the almond milk for about 2 minutes. Discard tea bag.

Stir in cocoa powder, sugar, and vanilla. If necessary, microwave for an additional minute to dissolve sugar.

Whisk or blend to get it nice and frothy, being careful not to spill. (You may have to transfer to a different dish/bowl for this.) Pour into two small mugs to serve.

Enjoy!

Time:

6 minutes

Resolute

January 10, 2013 by Erica

Is it too late to do a new year’s resolutions post?

It will be short and sweet.

I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions. You see, will power is not really my strong suit.

But there is one thing that I”m determined to do this year, so I’ll call that a resolution: No injuries in 2013.

No injuries in 2012 was a failed mission. I hurt my hip in June and then an old knee injury flared up in September. And that’s why I’m so determined not to injure myself this year.

2012 was the year that I got back into running after an 8-year hiatus. (Jeez, how old am I?!) I was delighted to discover that I still loved running and was still pretty good at it… so I overdid it a bit. I set my sights on races, probably trained a little too hard for them, and injured myself along the way.

So as odd as it sounds, my new year’s resolution is to run less. But get more out of it.

I would still like to run all the same races I did in 2012 (a 5K and 10K in Park City, UT and a half marathon in Moab, UT). I’d even like to add another 10K in there somewhere. But I am determined not to run more than 4 days a week.

This summer, before each of my injuries, I was running 5x/week and doing yoga twice a week. Yoga is good, and I will continue to do that twice a week in 2013. But I don’t know if my body can handle so much running after being away from it for so long. So unfortunately, my plan is to cross-train on the elliptical once a week, even when it’s nice out… wahhhhh.

Right now, while it’s cold and dark and the air quality is bad, I am running 1-2x/week (and the elliptical is actually a savior). When spring comes (with daylight savings time!) and I can run when it’s light out, I’ll increase this to 3x/week. And then to 4 when I’m training for a race.

Between that, yoga, and cross-training on the elliptical, I hope to stay healthy throughout 2013! Oh yeah, and run all those races faster than I did last year.

Knock on wood, but this is one resolution I’m pretty confident in!

Asian Noodle Soup To Cure a Cold (Vegan)

January 9, 2013 by Erica

I guess I forgot to knock on wood last week when I said that I had a cold, but wasn’t going to stay home from work.

On Friday morning, I woke up coughing and sneezing all over everything. Gross.

I thought I was done with colds this winter, after fighting one off just before the holidays, but it turns out that was wroooong. And based on my recollection of getting sick right around the Bachelor premier 2 years ago, apparently I get sick at this time every year.

It doesn’t help that it’s been absolutely freezing in Salt Lake for the past week – highs in the teens. Who wouldn’t get sick?

So on Friday morning, instead of going into work, I cuddled up on the couch with my laptop, a box of tissues and a cup of tea.

Tea is good… but soup is better.

Luckily, I also had the ingredients to make this soup.

Soup fixes everything. So I made it and proceeded to eat it for lunch and dinner all weekend.

What is it about soup that makes me feel so much better – nature or nurture? It must be both… warm fragrant broth to warm you up from the inside out and clear the sinuses, plus the recollection of exactly the same sensation every time you’ve been sick since childhood.

Mmmmm… yep, nothing better to cheer you up when you’re sick than hot, noodley soup.

So can I recommend that you make this immediately? If it’s cold where you live, if you’re coming down the the sniffles, if your boyfriend or roommate or co-worker just sneezed… take action and cook up a big pot of (vegan!) soup. And don’t forget the sriracha… or tissues!

4.8 from 4 reviews

Asian Noodle Soup To Cure a Cold (Vegan)

Hands-on time

5 mins

Cook time

25 mins

Total time

30 mins

This fragrant vegan soup will warm you to your toes. Recommended for times when you're sick and feeling sorry for yourself.

Author: Erica

Yields: 3-4 bowls of soup

Ingredients

1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 heaping Tbsp chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, diced
1/2 a jalapeno, seeds removed and thinly sliced
6 cups low-sodium vegetable broth (preferably one without tomatoes, such as Whole Foods 365 Organic)
3 green onions plus extra for serving, sliced
3 Tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
3 baby bok choy, chopped
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
1 carrot, peeled and sliced into very thin coins
7 oz extra-firm tofu, cubed
5 oz soba noodles
chopped cilantro, for serving
sriracha sauce, for serving

Instructions

In a large pot, heat sesame oil over medium high heat. Once hot, add ginger and garlic and saute until fragrant, 2-3 minutes. Add jalapeno, vegetable broth, and green onions. Cover and simmer 10-15 minutes.
While broth is simmering, cook soba noodles according to package directions. Drain and set aside. (These are cooked separately to keep your nice broth from getting murky!)
Strain broth into a large bowl. (This step is optional, but I prefer to remove the solids.) Once strained, pour broth back into pot. Add soy sauce, rice vinegar, vegetables, and tofu, and simmer until veggies are heated through, 1-2 minutes. Add soba noodles and heat for 1 more minute, until both noodles and broth are hot.
Remove soup from heat and ladle into bowls. Serve alongside sliced green onions, chopped cilantro, and sriracha.
Note: This soup is best eaten immediately, as it won't reheat well once the vegetables and noodles have been added. If you're planning to have leftovers, I recommend saving half the broth just after straining and before adding anything else. For leftovers, you can assemble the bowl of soup just before reheating, which will prevent mushy veggies and noodles.

Photography So Far

January 8, 2013 by Erica

I’ve mentioned a few times that I got a fancy new camera for Christmas – a beautiful new Nikon D5100 SLR. I’ve started playing around with it the past few weeks, so I wanted to post a quick update on my progress. Hopefully this is informative for any other newbie bloggers out there who have just purchased a nice camera or are thinking about upgrading!

Let’s start with what I was using before: my iPhone 4S. The iPhone was actually nowhere near as bad for food photography as you might think. As far as phone cameras go, it can take pretty amazing pictures. Sure, it limited things a lot, but I was still proud of photos like this:

(My first shot accepted to TasteSpotting and Healthy Aperture, and also featured on the homepage of Tasty Kitchen!)

After a few months taking lots of food photos with my iPhone, I felt I was actually starting to take much better pictures than at first, and that they could be improved even more with the added control that comes with an actual camera. The features I most wanted were:

– Ability to adjust white balance

– Ability to adjust amount of light (my iPhone photos were consistently underexposed)

– A better lens that wouldn’t distort subjects shot at an angle

– Larger aperture to get that nice blurred background

A.K.A. pretty much EVERYTHING.

So how is it going now that I’ve had a few weeks to play around?

Well, first of all, the learning curve to shoot in manual mode is pretty steep, as you might expect. I had thought that shutter speed and aperture were the two main things to adjust to get enough light into the picture. Boy was I wrong. ISO, exposure compensation, metering… there are way more levers to pull than I expected! Luckily I am pretty motivated to learn… just a little bit of playing around with the help of my Dad showed me that my Nikon can capture this shot of my parents’ kitchen after breakfast:

While it looks like this on the iPhone:

Holy cow! I mean, I didn’t compose anything for this shot and was just shooting whatever was in front of me, but in the first photo, your eye is definitely drawn to the pepper grinder, cream pitcher, and books in the foreground. In the iPhone picture, everything is in focus, and so overwhelmingly you just see how messy the kitchen is. That is a definite issue in my apartment, which is quite small and doesn’t have a good space for me to take pictures. To be honest, I usually have to move furniture before I photograph food for this blog! So no matter what, there’s bound to be something unappetizing in the background. Just having the medium aperture on the starter lens on my Nikon helps a TON.

You can also notice above how distorted the pepper grinder looks in the iPhone photo. I mentioned the funhouse mirror effect before… see what I’m talking about?!

And then there’s the lighting, which is probably the most striking difference between these two photos. My parents’ kitchen has 2 huge walls of windows, yet look how dark and yellow the iPhone photo came out! This is also an issue at home in my apartment. The more I take photos, the more I realize how little light my apartment gets. We have 1 south-facing window in each bedroom, and west-facing windows in the kitchen and living room. But the lot sizes in my neighborhood are super small, and the light is blocked on all sides by other buildings. This is really what causes the aforementioned moving of furniture before taking photos. It’s something I’m going to be super aware of when we search for our next apartment. Ideally I would like space for a large table and big windows to let in lots of light!

Anyway, with my new camera I’ve been able to adjust the exposure compensation and ISO to account for the low levels of light. I’m still learning, and sometimes still have to brighten photos up afterwards using editing software … I think I’ve developed an unfortunate taste for underexposed photos while shooting with my iPhone! But little by little I’ve been learning about all the different cool ways that my camera can help me take beautiful pictures, even in my tiny dark apartment.

Oops… that recipe is coming soon!

OK, this post is getting quite long, but one more thing to mention: I have a loooong way to go in terms of all the technical aspects of photography, not to mention photo composition and lighting. And that really has more to do with me as a (super amateur) photographer than with the camera I’m holding. I am just now learning the basics, and that process is going to take a while! Luckily, my new camera is so much fun to play with, and makes this a very rewarding process. I think I’m hooked!

Chipotle Black Bean Dip

January 7, 2013 by Erica

Last week, as I was writing Friday’s Bachelor cupcake post, I realized something terrible.

Tonight = Bachelor season premier.

Tonight also = National championship bowl game.

Uhhhhh ohhhhh.

Let’s just say that this is Nate’s and my first “bowl season” living together. (Did not know that was a phrase until last week.) Sure, we’ve been together for many football seasons, but shit got real once my TV was also his TV.

There is football on ALL THE TIME.

I actually forced him to watch multiple episodes of Honey Boo Boo on New Year’s Day, just so we could take a break from football. Believe it or not, Honey Boo Boo was a compromise. What we were not doing was watching The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which sat on our coffee table for 5 whole nights before I gave up and returned it to Redbox, unwatched.

The Bachelor doesn’t even stand a chance.

Yay football.

OK, I don’t really hate football; it’s just the crazy frequency of games recently. (And don’t even remind me about that March Madness thing coming up…)

One thing that all these bowl games are good for, though, is experimenting with new recipes on unsuspecting taste testers. Enter: a new bean dip!

There have been many bean dips on here lately, and I’m basically just hoping that you love bean dip and all his hummus cousins as much as I do. This one, made with black beans, is much different than my hummus recipes, and much more appropriate to serve to a living room full of hungry football fans. It tastes like classic football food without having any cheese, has a little kick to it, and is unbelievably quick and easy to make.

Making this bean dip tonight: Mandatory. Making your boyfriend watch The Bachelor instead of the bowl game: Optional.

Chipotle Black Bean Dip

Serves 6

Ingredients:

2 cans low-sodium black beans, rinsed and drained (or 3 cups cooked black beans)

2 Tbsp olive oil

juice of 1 lime

1 vine-ripened tomato, roughly chopped

1 large clove garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1/4 onion, roughly chopped (I used white, but yellow or red onion would also be good)

2 chipotle chilies from a can of chilies in adobo

1 tsp adobo sauce

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp kosher salt

chopped cilantro for sprinkling

tortilla chips or veggies for serving

Instructions:

Add all ingredients to a food processor and process until smooth. Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle with chopped cilantro. Easy peasy!

This dip keeps in the refrigerator for several days, and will become firmer when cooled.

Enjoy!

Archives for January 2013

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