Emphasis on Wannabe...

There’s a reason I’m a wannabe foodie. Because legitimate foodies do not go on no-carb diets!!

No sir-ee. A legitimate foodie knows enough to eat everything in moderation so they can continue to enjoy and appreciate all kinds of delectable foods while still fitting into their jeans. Legitimate foodies don’t have to resort to such drastic measures because they succumbed to the temptation of Chex Mix and a bag of Cadbury bars brought back from Ireland.

After a week’s vacation, where I hate to destroy the illusion but calories really do count, and another week of trading in air popped popcorn for Cadbury bars and Chex Mix every night (see last week’s Great Buffalo Experiment), this wannabe foodie is finding her skirts a little too tight. I was hoping the extra vacation pounds would just melt away when I got back to my normal eating habits, but I can’t seem to get back to my normal eating habits. The only way it seems to do that is to give up carbs for a week (or two, if necessary). After that, my normal diet will feel luxurious and I’ll forget about all that glorious Chex Mix. (I finished off the Cadbury bars before I came to this inevitable conclusion.)

The first step of Operation No Carbs was to rid my kitchen of any and all carbs. Bread worth saving was relegated to the freezer, anything else was tossed out. The fridge was cleaned, and the cabinets that were once stocked full of various types of pasta are now empty. Seriously, go see for yourself – all that is left is a can of chick peas, a jar of peanut butter and an envelope of onion soup mix. Don’t worry, I hate to waste food so none of those lovely carbs were thrown away – they have been packed away for future consumption. I didn’t have to get them out of my house, just out of my kitchen.

The next step was a visit to my local farmer’s market. I bought some beautiful lettuce varieties from one farmer (a lovely Korean family, and for the life of me I cannot remember the name of their farm), and then hit my favorite – Freitas Farm. Their produce is simply the best. I’ve bought from the other farms, and Freitas goods are by far the freshest. I filled up my bag with tomatoes, green beans, summer and winter squash. Seeing that I was giving up carbs, I had to turn my back on the cantaloupe, corn and potatoes (at least for this week… we’ll see how it goes and re-visit this decision next week).

Once I got my fill at the farmer’s market, I hit the grocery store for the rest of the items on my shopping list – lowfat cottage cheese, fat free/sugar free yogurt, fish, reduced fat turkey and cheese from the deli, a rainbow of bell peppers, turkey bacon, and a dozen eggs. I ignored the crackers, shunned the chips, and turned my nose up at the cookies. The only thing resembling a carb in my basket was the latest issue of Gourmet magazine.

When I arrived home, I started right in on the prep work. I sliced all the bell peppers into strips and made a white bean dip from a recipe I found to eat with the peppers for snacks. The dip is pretty good – it contains cannellini beans, fresh parsley, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. The parsley makes it an odd shade of green and the garlic is a tad overwhelming, but at least it’ll keep people from bothering me unnecessarily at work. I steamed up some asparagus that I had on hand. I’ll spread a little bit of low fat mayonnaise on a slice of the deli turkey and wrap that around the asparagus with a slice of cheese for another snack (surprisingly tasty). I cooked the entire package of turkey bacon, and hard boiled the dozen eggs (breakfast is served). When I’m craving something sweet, I’ll mix some Splenda and vanilla in with the fat free/sugar free yogurt.

My “at work” dining was now taken care of, but how do I get through the rest of the weekend? Well, my first decision was to wait until Sunday to start the no carb eating plan. That was an easy way to deal with Saturday! (If only I had made that decision a little earlier, I could have grabbed a donut for breakfast instead of limiting myself to plain ol’ yogurt.)

One of my favorite things about fall is watching Sunday afternoon football with the aroma of a roast in the oven – not to mention the anticipation of enjoying the roast for dinner. A Sunday roast is easy enough to pull off without carbs, so to work I went. I had picked up a boneless pork rib roast last week, and decided to open it up and stuff it with fresh herbs, garlic, spinach and mushrooms. I then rolled the roast and tied it, browned it on all four sides before transferring it to the oven, where it joined an acorn squash that had been seasoned with olive oil, Splenda and pumpkin pie spice. Fresh green beans were steamed to add a little color and increase the green veggie intake.

I succeeded in having a carb-free meal, but it wasn’t all that good. It wasn’t bad per se, but it was not nearly as good as I hoped. The roast was cooked perfectly, but the stuffing did not add much to the dish. I like pork, but find that it always needs something else to go along with it. Other than apple sauce (which wouldn’t be allowed this week), I have not been able to figure out a good accompaniment to make it a dish I crave. In any event, the squash and green beans were delicious, and I was able to eat around the stuffing and appreciate the pork on its own.

So, I’ll see how this first carb-free week goes, and hopefully it’s all I need to feel comfortable in my skirts again. Then I can take back my wannabe foodie claim, and re-start my quest to be a bona fide foodie.

For those of you interested in my pork recipe, here it is. I would love to hear your ideas on stuffing (carb free or carb full), or any other improvements I can make to this recipe.

1/4 cup chopped fresh rosemary
1/3 cup each chopped fresh basil, parsley and oregano
1 teaspoon each dried marjoram and dried thyme
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 ½ teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup chopped white mushrooms
2 cup chopped fresh spinach
1-2 lb boneless pork rib roast
Salt and pepper to season meat
Extra virgin olive oil for browning

Preheat oven to 325. Mix together the herbs, garlic, kosher salt, ground pepper and olive oil. Set aside. Saute the mushrooms and spinach, add to the herb mixture and mix well. Trim any chunks of fat from the pork. Cut the top third of the roast almost all the way across, open the roast, and repeat the slice from the opposite side halfway down the remaining thickness. Open the roast flat. Season both sides with salt and pepper, and rub with olive oil. Spread the herb/veggie mixture evenly across the length of the meat. Roll the meat up, doing your best to keep the filling inside but don’t worry if you lose some. Cut 4 pieces of kitchen twine, each about a foot long. Tie the roast snuggly at even intervals. Heat olive oil on the stove in a dutch oven. Brown each side of the roast for two minutes. Transfer to the oven, and roast for approx. 30 minutes per pound. When the roast reaches 160 degrees, remove from the oven, and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice the roast, removing the twine as you get to it. Serve!

The Great Buffalo Experiment

I have long been a believer that almost everything tastes better with buffalo sauce on it. It started simply with the wing – we all know what I’m talking about, I don’t need to explain it. It was probably the allure of the 10¢ wing in college that first drew me in. I might not have cared for the taste at first, but when it was all you could afford you quickly grew to love it.

I don’t think I considered that buffalo sauce had more applications beyond chicken until my friend Laurie uttered the now unforgettable words “let’s order the buffalo onion rings.” Yes, onion rings tossed in buffalo sauce and served with blue cheese dressing. Let your imagination go wild, they are as good as you will dream them to be. If the wing drew me in, the ring made me a believer.

EVERYTHING tastes better with buffalo sauce on it.

Legal Seafood once featured a special buffalo fried shrimp appetizer. Fantastic. The Popcorn Factory sells buffalo-ranch flavored popcorn. Addictive. You know that company that makes the honey-mustard-onion flavored pretzels? They also make a buffalo flavored pretzel. Unbelievable. I cannot even talk about the buffalo flavored fried buffalo mozzarella that Grill 23 offered on their short lived bar menu. (I can’t talk about it, because it hurts too much that they were eliminated with the bar menu. Phenomenal.)

Buffalo sauce is the new bacon.

Now that I’ve confirmed this theory, I decided to launch the Great Buffalo Experiment – re-creating two classic snacks with a buffalo twist.

The first is not original, but it had to be tried at home. Buffalo seasoned popcorn. As much as I love the one offered by The Popcorn Factory, I have better things to spend $10 on every week than a small tub of popcorn. The process was simple. I used my air popper to pop a bowl of popcorn. I then added one tablespoon of Frank’s Hot Sauce to one tablespoon of melted butter to make the buffalo sauce, and tossed it with the popcorn. The end result? Not bad. Some of the pieces of popcorn got a little too drenched with the sauce and sort of disintegrated. But most of the popcorn was pretty good. The downside was it was really messy – much more so than regular melted butter. I needed a lot of napkins, and my hands were pretty orange when I was done (nothing a little soap and water couldn’t handle, though).

The second part of the experiment was a little more creative (in my opinion), and a lot less messy. I’m a big fan of Chex Mix – not the kind you buy pre-made in the store for a few bucks, but the kind you spend $20 on ingredients to make yourself. It may cost ten times as much, but the homemade Chex Mix is waaaaay better than the packaged kind. If you don’t know this firsthand, please go out and try it. It’s worth it. But I digress…

Yes, I made buffalo Chex Mix. I basically took the standard recipe, but instead of Worcestershire sauce, I used eight tablespoons of Frank’s Hot Sauce. I basically added one tablespoon at a time until the sauce had more of a buffalo taste and less of a butter taste. This happened after eight tablespoons, which resulted in far more sauce than the standard recipe (it typically calls for two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce). So, I had to bake it for an extra 15 minutes to make sure it was crisp enough. At the end of the day, buffalo Chex Mix may be the exception to the “everything tastes better with buffalo sauce” rule. The snack mix was pretty good, don’t get me wrong, but it couldn’t stand up to the original. To be completely sure, I also made a batch of the original and conducted a comprehensive taste test. 100% of the tasters agreed that the original was better, but the buffalo version wasn’t bad. Okay, I was the only taster. Give me a break.

I am standing by my original statement with only a slight modification. Pretty much everything tastes better with buffalo sauce. After all, every rule needs its exception.

A Long Weekend of Eating

There’s something about the weekend that makes me feel like I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want. And I usually do. Unfortunately, I never find myself saying “I think I’ll eat a bowlful of carrot sticks.” No, it’s always crap – potato chips, nachos, and stuff with lots and lots of butter. This past weekend was no different.

The weekend started out innocently enough. I met my friend Jen for dinner in Burlington, MA. The last time I was in Burlington (let me count the years…), the dining choices were limited to your standard chain fare – Rainforest Café, Macaroni Grill, Uno’s, and if you wanted to dig a little deeper, Legal Seafood. But Jen suggested a restaurant I had never heard of – L’Andana, right off of 95 on route 3A (www.landanagrill.com). L’Andana is a very elegant, yet not overly pretentious, Tuscan-style Italian restaurant (with free valet parking!). We grabbed two seats at the bar, and enjoyed a couple of cocktails before digging into some calamari and wood grilled pizzas. Jen ordered the margherita and I got the sopressata pizza. Both pizzas were perfectly sized for one person. The margherita was perfect – it’s the classic pizza in my opinion. Perfectly sauced, and deliciously cheesy with the unmistakable aroma of fresh basil. Yum. The sopressata was great too – in addition to the classic Italian cold cut, it included pepperoncini. Normally, I wouldn’t be drawn to a sopressata pizza, but I was sold on the pepperoncini. I have loved pepperoncini since I was a young kid and my parents told me not to eat one because I wouldn’t like it. (Incidentally, 30-some odd years later, they still haven’t figured out that I will always be driven to do the opposite of what they tell me.) The pizza was delicious! And, the service we received at the bar also needs to be recognized. If you read my post on bar service from a couple of weeks ago, you’ll know how happy I am for this to be redeemed. I wish I caught the bartender’s name, because she was great. She was attentive when we needed her to be, and left us alone to chat and catch up the rest of the time.

It’s a good thing that L’Andana was so great, because the rest of the weekend was not so inspired.

After a strong start at the farmer’s market on Saturday morning (in the pouring rain, nonetheless), armed with loads of fresh vegetables, I stocked up on snacks at the grocery store for an evening snack-a-palooza. The vegetables would have to wait (as well as my skinny jeans). Potato chips & clam dip, pretzels, pepperoncini (see?), and cheese & crackers. It was at the same time a very good and a very bad decision. Hey, what’s one day, right?

Snack-a-palooza part two was held on Sunday. Well, not quite that bad. There was some clam dip left over from snack-a-palooza one, and rather than waste it by pouring it down the garbage disposal (the smart thing to do), I chose to finish it off (the wrong thing to do). Let’s just call it lunch, and be done with it.

Sunday wasn’t a total wash, though. I did make – from scratch – a tarte tatin. That’s French for upside down apple tart. The biggest success of this dish was the pastry dough. It came together perfectly; unfortunately it didn’t roll out with the same success. Actually, it rolled out fine – a perfect 14” circle to top the apples and what was supposed to eventually turn into caramel but never did. It was the transfer from the counter to the pan that proved to be difficult. I did my best to patch the tears and re-attach the pieces that just fell off. I was thankful that the crust ends up on the bottom where my “handi-work” could be concealed. When the tart finally came out of the oven, and was turned over onto a serving dish, it looked ridiculous. The caramel didn’t caramelize, and the apples, while tasty, looked awfully unappetizing. I’m trying really hard to describe how it looked, but every sentence I type is not capturing the visual. Fortunately, my sister assured me it tasted good. So, I’ll call it a semi-successful effort. At least I know I can make pastry dough – it’s the utilizing it that I have to work on.

The best part was the vanilla bean mascarpone ice cream I made to serve with the tarte tatin. I don’t know why it’s called ice cream, since it’s neither frozen nor does it contain cream. It’s basically mascarpone cheese, confectioners sugar, vanilla extract, and the seeds from one half of a vanilla bean – mixed together and refrigerated for a half hour before serving. Truly my proudest moment was splitting the vanilla bean and scraping out the seeds with a paring knife… without cutting myself!!! I know I sound overly proud, but I am not so good with the knife. Accidents have been known to happen.

My time this weekend was split between being a wannabe foodie and being a binge eater, and therefore I’m spending the week eating all those vegetables I bought at the farmer’s market. With any luck, I’ll be back in my skinny jeans by Friday and I can start the cycle all over again.

There's more to Ireland than Guinness

I’m back from Dublin, and I do have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of food I ate while there. There were definitely some misses, but all in all it wasn’t a disaster. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I will touch upon the highlights…

Breakfast

Day one, we stopped at Keough’s Café for a quick bite while we waited for Dublin to awaken (we landed at Dublin airport at 4:45 am). Penelope and I each ordered a pear and vanilla scone with a white coffee. (White coffee is basically just coffee with milk, or some other “whitener.”) While the cup of coffee was very welcome after the long trip to Ireland, and the long day ahead, the scone was to die for. It was absolutely the best scone I’ve ever tasted. No description can do this scone justice – moist yet crumbly, flavorful yet delicate. In a word, perfection. We would have gone back there every morning for breakfast if we could have figured out how to find the place again.

We couldn’t leave Ireland without having a traditional Irish breakfast, and we found one on a Sunday morning at Foley’s Bar. An Irish breakfast consists of bacon and a fried egg, accompanied by toast, sausage, a grilled tomato, baked beans, mushrooms and black & white pudding. Okay, “traditional” is up for grabs, but this is what I was served. I know soda bread stands in for toast in a more traditional Irish breakfast, but that wasn’t a point I was going to argue with for various reasons (the primary one being that I don’t particularly care for soda bread). I ate the toast, egg, tomato, baked beans and mushrooms. I sampled the black & white pudding. While I naively hoped for one of those chocolate and vanilla Jell-O pudding cups, I fully expected something that was nothing like its name. The white pudding wasn’t that bad – it tasted of grains and reminded me of haggis. The black pudding was just too unsightly for me to try more than the tiniest of bites. For those of you who don’t know what black and white pudding is, I invite you to look it up on Wikipedia. I can’t bring myself to give you the details…. It’s that bad. Oh, and the bacon, where do I start? I don’t know what they do to bacon in Ireland and the UK, but it sucks. It’s very hard to ruin bacon, since it’s one of those foods that makes everything taste better. But these people ruin bacon. They just do. I don’t know what bacon did to deserve this harsh treatment.

Lunch

On our first day, we waited too long to eat lunch, so we were starving by the time we sat down to eat. I’m telling you this to explain why we ate lunch at the restaurant of a tourist site, the Old Jamesons Distillery – it was pretty much the first place we saw when we reached the point of no return. They have a café called The Third Still. We each ordered the Shepherd’s Pie. It was fine – not great, but not bad either. The most interesting thing to note is that it was served with a side of French fries. So, a mashed potato topped casserole was served with a side of fried potatoes. Yes, they do love their potatoes in Ireland. I can’t fault them for that, I love potatoes too. But it was definitely the work of an amateur chef to choose to serve that many potatoes on one dish.

After watching several travel shows on Dublin, we knew we had to have a meal at Gallagher’s Boxty House. A boxty is a potato pancake filled with some type of meat or fish covered with sauce. (Think a traditional pancake made with potatoes versus a latke.) I got the Gaelic boxty, which featured prime Irish filet steak medallions, marinated in whiskey and finished in a creamy mushroom and pepper sauce. I can’t stop thinking about it, it was that good. It’s up there with the pear and vanilla scone. I’m not typically a fan of cream sauces, but I love mushrooms and steak, and I wanted to try one of the specialties of the house, so I went for it. I devoured it. I may even be a cream sauce convert. We also ordered dessert, the bread and butter pudding. It sounds delicious, right? Guess again. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t good. It was definitely a dessert that would get the chef kicked off of Top Chef. It was a tough way to end an otherwise delicious meal, but I’m left with the memory of the boxty and the yummy waiter who served us (soooo hot…), therefore I can try to forget about the bread and butter pudding. (For the record, this wasn’t a scary blood sausage type of pudding, either. Oops, did I give something away about my breakfast?)

Afternoon Tea

After having afternoon tea in London, Edinburgh and Boston, Penny and I knew we could not leave Dublin without partaking in this tradition. So on Sunday afternoon, we had tea at the Westbury Hotel. It was not the best experience… the waitress screwed up our order, and in her attempt to correct her error, she screwed it up again. There was a hair on one of the finger sandwiches (which were a little too big, by the way… they should have been called hand sandwiches), and the smoked salmon tasted a tad bit off in my opinion. And once the food was on our table, we never saw this chick again. Seriously, we sat there for at least 30 minutes waiting for our bill. We finally had to chase down another server to get our bill. We were prepared to not leave a tip because the service was just that bad (and tipping is not as customary in Ireland as it is here), but they included the service charge in the bill and I just wasn’t comfortable complaining about it. Besides, we wanted to get out of there and the thought of facing another 30 minute wait was worth the €7.50. I felt a little queasy later that day, but had a ginger ale and was good to go that night. Penny, on the other hand, woke up in the middle of the night and was sick for the next 24 hours – she spent the entire last day of our trip in bed (or in the bathroom, as the case may be). I attribute her sickness to the smoked salmon. While I had a bite and felt queasy, she ate the whole thing and could have been the MVP in the all Ireland hurling championship that was played that day, if you know what I mean. (There really was a championship hurling match played that day – congratulations Kilkenny – but it’s a legitimate and super cool sport that has nothing to do with being sick all day. Just want to set the record straight on that one.)

Dinner

Not a lot of highlights to speak of for dinner. Pizzas at Bewley’s Café v (eh), steak and chips at The Restaurant at Marks & Spencers (actually, really good), and McDonald’s. Penny pointed out that I have to eat at McDonald’s in every country we visit. I hadn’t thought about it… I don’t think it’s so much a mission of mine but a convenience, and I do love me my McDonald’s. Okay, it was a mission in Paris. I had to order the royale with cheese. (Believe it or not, they were all out. I had to settle for a frommage burger.)

All in all, the food was pretty good. It was my first trip overseas where I didn’t start to feel sick after two days, nor did I need to resort to eating strictly pasta with marinara sauce as I typically do (I lived on Italian food during my 12 day trip to Greece last year). That is definitely something for me! I’ll add pear and vanilla scones, as well as Gaelic boxties to my “to cook” list. I may even throw on a shepherd’s pie (hold the fries).

And while I did say in my title that there is more to Ireland than Guinness, I can’t neglect to mention how unbelievably excellent the Guinness is in its homeland. So smooth and rich, it’s significantly better than the Guinness you can get around here. Maybe it’s the perfect pour, or maybe it’s the water from the River Liffey. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter how bad the food may be in Ireland, the Guinness alone is worth the trip every time. Now, when can I go back? Slainte!

Off to Ireland!

I'm heading off to Ireland tomorrow, so the blog will be quiet for about a week. I know my many readers will be disappointed. But fret not! When I'm back, you'll hear all about my culinary adventures in Dublin.

Until then, dream of pints of Guinness, boxties, fish & chips, and corned beef & cabbage. Slainte!