Macaroons

I basically figured out this recipe on my own after looking at many different recipes for inspiration. I wanted to make macaroons with the least amount of ingredients as possible and cut down on the sugar.

Ultimately I used this recipe:

2/3 cup of sugar

5 Egg whites

6-8 oz of shredded coconut

1/2 tsp almond extract

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

That’s it! Pretty simple!

I started by combining the egg whites, sugar and coconut, stirring periodically until the coconut was completely covered. Then I put the coconut into the bowl added the almond extract and vanilla extract. I stirred the coconut together and then put the bowl into the fridge. It is important to put it into the fridge so it’s easier to work with when making the macaroons.

I came back a couple of hours later and preheated the oven to 325 degrees. Then I prepared the baking sheet with parchment paper. Then I put small balls of the mixture onto a baking sheet and baked them for about 25 minutes. My recipe yielded 24 macaroons.

I am very happy with how they came out. They were my most successful dish this week and tasted delicious. Next time I would probably use even less sugar. When they were warm, they were divine.

Grades:

Health: B. Compared to regular, store bought macaroons these are healthier. But still, they are a dessert and contain a lot of sugar.

Taste: A. Not much to say except I absolutely love these. I tried them side-by-side with store bought macaroons. The difference is huge!

Price: A. So much cheaper than buying store bought ones. The bag of shredded coconut I purchased was 2 dollars. The other ingredients are pretty inexpensive as well.

Overal: A-. I not only would make these again, but I definitely will!

Matzo Ball Soup

In order to prepare for Passover week, I decided I would start by making matzo ball soup. I found a great recipe online that I tweeked a bit for my liking.

The recipe from Skinny Kitchen:

¼ cup club soda

1 tablespoon canola oil

2 large eggs, I used Eggland’s Best eggs

⅔ cup matzo meal

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

I only used this recipe for the matzo balls and used my own recipe for the soup. I like a simple soup, so I just used chicken broth, carrots, celery, and pepper.

Matzo ball mixture

I started making the matzo balls by combining club soda, oil and eggs. I used a little bit more club soda than stated in the recipe and used organic sunflower oil instead of canola oil. I used some fresh pasture eggs from the farmer’s market. Then I added the matzo meal, dill, salt and pepper. I went heavier on the dill because matzo balls tend to be a bit bland.

I kept the mix in the fridge for a couple of hours while I went out. When I returned, I immediately began to boil a large pot of water. I waited for a rolling boil and then added the balls. Because I was making my own soup, I cooked the balls in a slightly different manner than in the recipe I was originally following. I read through a few of my mom’s Jewish cookbooks and found out that it is best to cook them for 20 minutes covered. So I

Cooking matzo balls

went ahead and cooked them on low heat for about 20 minutes.

While I was cooking the matzo balls, I heated up my own soup in another pot. I also cut up some carrots and celery and added salt. I let it boil and then poured it into two bowls. One for my mother and one for me. I added two to three matzo balls to each bowl and started to eat. The matzo balls were pretty good. I would make this recipe again, but next time I would cook the matzo balls for at least half an hour. They seemed dense and I don’t know if that is because of the cooking time or not enough club soda. Still, I am happy with the way these came out.

Yum!

Grades:

Heath: A-. Pretty good. Soup has vegetables and is filling, but doesn’t have many calories. The only problem is the extreme amounts of salt in the broth. Next time I may try a lower sodium broth.

Taste: A-. Good, but I wish the matzo balls were just a bit more fluffy.

Cost: A. All of the ingredients, in both the matzo balls and the broth, are very inexpensive.

Overall: A-.  I would definitely make this again.

Week 3

This week is going to be a little different. I am going to be focusing on more of a variety of dishes. Because this week is passover, I am going to try to make some of my favorite Passover foods. I am interested in matzo balls and a kugel. I have found some recipes already that I think are possibilities. This recipe for  matzo balls seems great, and I liked that the author wrote that the matzo balls were “light and fluffy.” In my opinion, that is the most important part of matzo balls, and I want to make sure if I am making a recipe of matzo balls they will also be light and fluffy.

I am also interested in making the classic macaroons. I have been looking at many different recipes, and have found many that are not only healthy, but some only use 2 or 3 ingredients!

Lastly, I have been having a bit of a chocolate craving, and therefore found a recipe for a flourless chocolate cake that looks interesting.

Now that I have my recipes ready, I am off to the farmers’ market and store again.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwiches

Oops, I forgot to post this after the oatmeal cookie disaster. It was in my drafts! Anyway…

After my oatmeal cookie disaster, I wanted to make something that I could share with my classmates. I decided to try something a bit easier and looked up recipes for healthy cookies. Healthy and cookies generally don’t go together, but I did find some recipes. Many of them used complicated ingredients as substitutes, but I did find one recipe that intrigued me. This recipe was for chocolate chip cookies. It only used 1 cup of sugar total, 1 cup of flour total, and used

Chocolate chip cookies

egg whites instead of whole eggs. I began by combining the baking soda, flour, and salt. I used two kinds of flour: whole wheat pastry flour and all purpose flour. From my past experience, whole wheat pastry flour is pretty heavy and dense, so to offset it, I used all purpose flour as well. Then I added sugar, butter, applesauce, an egg white, and vanilla. I just mixed those ingredients together and I got a thick, cookie-like batter. I was so happy after my previous cookie disaster!

I put tablespoon sized balls onto my greased cookie sheet. I let them bake for about 8 minutes and I could tell they were done because of the wonderful smell that was permeating from my oven!

Filling

To make these into a “sandwich,” I found a recipe for Oreo-like filling. Oreo filling has shortening in it, and I didn’t have that in my house, so I had to use an alternative. I simply used butter, confectioners sugar and a bit of vanilla. It came out well and I was able to make these chocolate chip cookies into sandwiches.

Cookie sandwiches

 

I handed these out in school and I had a couple comments. For starters, everyone said they were delicious, but I really wanted to hear about how I could improve them. A couple of my friends noted they were too sweet. I think this is because of the filling, which had the majority of the sugar content. Next time I will definitely use less sugar. Another comment I had was that the cookies should be a bit flatter. I completely agree, and next time I may use a different recipe for the cookie. I was going for a whoopie-pie type sandwich, but I could not find a healthy recipe, so I used this one instead. Thanks to all my friends who gave me feedback!

Grades:

Health: B-. What can I say, they’re cookies. Still, they are healthier than alternative cookies.

Taste: A. Great, but as noted they were a bit sweet.

Cost: A-. I had all of these ingredients in my home already, but some of them such as whole wheat pastry flour can be a bit costly.

Overall: B+. They’re cookies, so how healthy can I really make them? I think this is a great dessert to make if you want to try to eat healthier, but still want something sweet!

 

Cooking for My Local Shelter

Once a month, my family volunteers to cook for the local church’s shelter. Usually, I help by cutting up a store-bought baguette or making a simple package of pre-made, pre-cut cookies. Because I was inspired by all the cooking I have been doing, I decided this time was definitely going to be different!

I thought about what I could make on a large scale that would be healthy. My mom and I looked through her many cookbooks, and we decided to make a home-made chicken pot pie. The recipe was very simple. It only required vegetables, including carrots, onion and celery. It also needed potatoes. The sauce consisted of butter, flour, chicken broth and a bit of white wine. Lastly, it needed a puff pastry.

Squaring chicken

I made this dish all on my own and I am very proud of the way it came out. I began by poaching the chicken in a broth. My mom taught me how to do this, because my other experiences with chicken have all been by grilling or in an oven. I was surprised how much moisture the chicken retained. This is definitely a way I will cook chicken in the future!

After cooking the chicken, I squared them into smaller cubes. This was a pretty easy and relaxing task.

After that, I cut up the many different kinds of vegetables needed for chicken pot pie. Like cutting up the chicken, I found this very relaxing as well.

Cutting up veggies

Then I made the sauce by combining the buttery, flour, chicken broth and white wine. This is where I think the dish went a bit awry. The sauce needed more flavor, because the dish was ultimately a bit dry. After reading this article, I realized there were some really easy ways to make dishes more flavorful. If I were to make this dish again, I would maybe add just some leeks or chives.

While this chicken pot pie was a bit bland, I was happy with the way it came out. I made a smaller version for my mother and I and we both enjoyed it. We added some pepper to our portions and it helped flavor it a bit.

One of the biggest things I want to express is the cost. Cooking for 10 to 12 people is much more costly than cooking for a family of 4. Because of this, not all of my ingredients were local or organic. Still, the ingredients used were all pretty healthy and I think this is a great meal that can served to a large group of people.

Chicken Pot Pie

Grades:

Health: A-. Besides the butter, everything is healthy. Chicken is a great source of protein and vegetables are filling, but don’t have many calories.

Taste: B+. Good, but as noted in the full rundown, it was bland.

Price: B+. I used mostly conventionally grown ingredients, so the price was okay. If I were to use organic and/or local ingredients, I don’t think I would have been able to afford to cook this meal for 10-12 people, and the grade would probably be much lower.

Overall: B+. This was a good meal that I would definitely have again.

 

 

Oatmeal Cookie Sandwich Disaster

I wanted to make something to bring into school that my friends could try. I wanted to hear their opinions not only about how I was doing as an aspiring chef, but also the details about how the food tastes. When I think of cookies, my mind does not immediately dart to healthy. I searched high and low for recipes that were at least semi-healthy and came across a recipe for oatmeal cookies. I am not going to lie; I am in love with Betty Crocker oatmeal cookies, but now it was time to try to make a homemade version.

I started by mixing the wet ingredients together, which included brown sugar, butter, honey, egg, and vanilla. Then I mixed in my oats, salt, baking soda and

Batter. Look at how thin it is 😦

cinnamon. Everything seemed to be going great, until I realized the batter was not very cookie-like. It was pretty watery and could probably be confused for a cake batter if I didn’t know any better. Even once I continued to blend everything together using my electronic-beater, it still stayed in this strange consistency. I did try to bake some, even though as soon as I put the “cookie” onto the baking sheet, it basically covered the entire sheet. When I pulled them out of the oven 8 minutes later, it was a complete disaster!

I was extremely disappointed, because the cookies in the picture of the recipe looked delicious, while mine looked…erm…well, barely edible. It does go to show that not all online recipes are reputable, and next time I am definitely going to pay more attention to the reviews on a recipe. I can’t really rate this recipe or this food because it was, as I said, barely edible. Still, I believe that this was definitely a learning experience and I am going to keep this experience in my head whenever I am cooking in the future.

Epic fail

Review: Food, Inc.

 

Food, Inc. is an eyeopening movie that really shows the horrors of the food industry. The film started with an introduction by Michael Pollan, the author of Food Rules as he tells about the supermarket and how many of the products we believe are healthy are actually just chemicals.

One of the biggest things I learned from the movie is that 4 companies own the vast majority of the meat market. Because they own so much of this market, they are able to treat their animals however they wish. Therefore, they usually treat them in extremely inhumane ways and they do whatever they can to produce meat for the cheapest price possible. The problem is consumers do not have other options because these monopolies own so many of the animals. Most of these chickens, never see sunlight and they are injected with hormones that make their organs grow too big for their bodies to handle. The scenes where chickens are trying to walk, but can only take a few steps at a time is devastating.

It was a difficult movie to watch because of how graphic it was. Far too often when I am eating chicken, I don’t even think about where it came from or how it was treated. Seeing the overcrowded slaughterhouses in this movie was disturbing and the images will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.

I definitely think everyone should watch this movie. While I feel like I am an educated consumer, there are definitely even more things that I should be thinking about while shopping. Unfortunately, not much is going to change until the “carrots are a better deal than the chips.” At the end of the movie, I was left with a disappointment that not much had been done. Kevin’s law, which would have been a bill to close down factories with contaminated meat, did not pass. Many people were still eating chips rather than carrots and Monsanto still owned (and contaminated) at least 90% of all soybeans. I hope in the future more people will understand that what we eat now can effect not only how we feel and act today, but in the future too.

Chicken Pesto Panini

 

Dicing garlic

I started by making homemade pesto sauce. I used my organic basil, parmesan cheese, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil.

While it seems like it would be an easy task, I had to learn how to even peel garlic. Thankfully, my mom helped mentor me, because she has made pesto many times before. She taught me the technique. First I separated the heads of garlic, then I pressed the flat side of the knife into the head. This made is much easier to peel the garlic. Then I diced them, but because I was going to be using a blender, I didn’t feel like they needed to be finely diced.

Then I washed the basil and picked the leaves off the stem. I added the basil and the garlic to the blender. The blender that I use is the magic bullet. After pulsing a couple of times, my magic bullet stopped working. I had to switch to a normal blender, but it was already so thick that it was quite a headache.

Once my pesto was finally done, I started grilling the chicken. I used a grilling pan to get the line effect on the chicken. While the pieces of chicken seemed thin at first, they actually took a much longer time to cook. As I was cooking the chicken, I heated up the panini grill and took two pieces of my organic, local bread out. I spread some pesto on both sides of the bread. Once the chicken was done, I sliced it to make it into thinner slices and put the chicken slices on top. Then I sliced some mozzarella cheese and some tomatoes and added them both to the sandwich. I carefully put the twice slices together and put them into the panini grill. I put the grill on a medium heat, but looking back, I probably should have put it on a medium-high heat, because it took a long time to melt the cheese. But it was so worth it!

Homemade pesto

The panini was delicious with the cheese melted and gooey. The pesto was very tasty and I could obviously taste the nuttiness of the pine nuts as well as the parmesan cheese. This is something that I would definitely make on a regular basis and just one sandwich was more than enough for my dinner.

Yum!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grades:

Health: B+. Almost all of the ingredients in this recipe is local or organic (chicken, basil, bread, tomatoes) and the others are Trader Joe’s brand, which they claim is completely GMO-free. All of the ingredients are non-processed.

Taste: A. Great.

Price: B+. While some of the items, especially the pine nuts, are expensive, other items were very cheap, such at the parmesan and mozzarella cheese. The amount of pesto that I made can be used in at least two or three more servings.

Overall: A-. This is definitely something I would make again.

 

 

Croque Monsieur

After returning home from the farmers’ market, it was time for lunch. Instead of choosing to throw a frozen burger into the microwave, I decided I would make my first sandwich. Today I decided to go French with the croque monsieur. When I was younger, my mom would sometimes make me a croque monsieur for breakfast, but I never knew how to make one for myself. Strangely enough there were lots of unhelpful recipes that overcomplicated the process. I went through many YouTube videos, as well as written recipes to find the one that seemed to be targeted at my skill level.

One of the things that I never knew about a croque monsieur sandwich is that it usually has a bechamel sauce placed on at least one side of the bread. My mom had never made me a croque monsieur with this sauce. I wanted to try to make this sauce, so I took a small detour and started researching recipes for the bechamel sauce. It ended up that bechamel sauce is actually rather easy to make. I followed this recipe, which was very clear. I was glad that I had all of those ingredients readily available, even tough I hadn’t originally planned to be making this sauce.

Sandwiches

I spent this morning researching different kinds of sandwiches. There are so many varieties of sandwiches because there is an unlimited amount of add-ins. When I think of sandwiches I usually think of myself pulling out 2 pieces of white bread and put a couple slices of turkey and maybe some cheese on it. This week I am going to focus on more complex sandwiches that actually require planning and using a stove or oven. I hope to focus on sandwiches in different cultures. This is interesting because it portrays not only what kind of food they eat in those cultures, but how they raise their animals and seeds.

To begin my research, I read this article about the many sandwiches from around the world. It is interesting to examine the different kinds of sandwiches to see what the country or culture values. For example, in Australia one of the kinds of sandwiches is a vegemite sandwich. While this is similar to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it is something that is not widely known about in the United States.

Some of the sandwiches I plan to make this week include a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich (BLT), a panini, croque-monsier and banh mi. I may also try to include a dessert sandwich.

This week is going to be more focused on shopping local and organic than being low calorie. Sandwiches are not very low calorie because of the fix-ins and the bread, but I am still going to try my best to find healthier alternatives when shopping. I have a list of needed ingredients and I am now back off to the farmers’ market to get as many local items as possible. The items that are not in season or not available at the farmers’ market, I will be going to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s to purchase. I will be writing a a review on the items that I purchase.