Hooray! Yet another article about the end-all, be-all method to finally, yes finally (!) lose weight!
Ugh.
Strangely enough, the tips in an article by Sally Squires of the Washington Post are absolutely normal, and if I'm going to poke fun at anything at all, it's the fact that the logic behind the Energy Density method is absolutely sound.
Basically, you replace food with a high energy density with foods that have low energy-density. It sounds fancy. It sounds scientific and complicated. Energy density? Do we need to carry around little notebooks with an entire database of foods and their energy densities?!?!
No. Energy density is just a fancy way of saying "caloric bang for your buck." You want to eat foods that give you less caloric bang for your buck, and remove foods that have a higher number of calories for the volume of food you eat. For example, an apple is low density. Mashed potatoes with butter that's the same size as that apple is high density.
It's not rocket science, but if you need more concrete to-dos, here's a list from the article:
Add fruits and vegetables to cut calories
Get more fiber
Add a course to your meal like salad to cut down on a higher density main course
Sip on soup
Cut out fat where you won't be sacrificing too much flavor
I eat a lot of tofu, not because I'm vegan/vegetarian and have to eat some sort of protein, but because tofu tastes good to me. (My being Asian and eating tofu all my life might have something to do with this, too.)
Now, it is just way too easy to pick up several blocks of tofu from the market for ninety-nine cents each, sometimes less when it's on sale, but if you have some time on your hands, you can make tofu at home, per the above video above from Cool Hunting. All you need is 150 g of dried soybeans, calcium sulfate, and the foresight to start soaking the dried soybeans the night before.
At the start of every summer, I do this. I tell myself I am going to make all kinds of new foods with the summer's produce bounty, particularly vegetables that I have never cooked myself before. Like a high school girl on summer vacation between sophomore and junior year, I want to flirt with all different kinds of vegetables that I find randomly at the farmers' markets!
Um, never mind about that "high school girl on summer vacation" part. I took college prep classes during the summers...
Anyway, at the start, I always tell myself I want to expand my cooking horizons by challenging myself with something new in the kitchen every day, or even every week, and I always end up having one long torrid affair with one vegetable every summer. One summer I was enamored of zucchini. The summer before that, I was having a hot fling with every kind of tomato I could get my hands on. This year, I've been seeing eggplant. A lot. In fact, you might call us "an item."
Wondering What Kim Ate? Wondering why Kim ate something so wintry? I'll tell you. Food blogger Kim writes the food blog What Kim Ate from New Zealand, so while we may be eating salad and cold soups here in the northern hemisphere, Kim and her partner Thomas are savoring the flavors of the opposite season. This is a simple soup made from pumpkin, potatoes and vegetable stock. As cooked, it's vegan, but with the garnish of what looks like either sour cream or creme fraiche, it's vegetarian. There are some cheese and corn scones to make the soup a meal.
Not that I would ever turn down a real mojito, but if for some reason I had to eat a dessert instead of drinking a cocktail, I'd love this Mojito Cupcake, from food blog Vegan Yum Yum. The recipe in on the blog post, but as a summary, the cake is a modified version of the golden vanilla cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Soymilk was infused with traditional mojito flavors, mint and lime juice, rum and lime zest were added to the batter, and the frosting wass flavored with dark rum. The natural garnish is, of course, a wedge of lime (though a sprig of mint would be pretty, too!)
Well this just gives new meaning to the idea of "dairy" in chocolate.
Britain's most popular lines of candy and chocolate have admitted that their choclate bars like Mars, Snickers, Maltesers, and Milky Way now contain whey that is derived from a cow's stomach. The enzyme rennet, which is extracted from the stomach-lining of slaughtered newborn calves and is used in traditional cheese production, is being used by the candy makers.
It now appears that vegetarians in the UK face the ethical dilemma of eating chocolate because it comes from animals.
Have you ever eaten an olive straight from the tree? Doesn't sound like it would be so fabulously fresh and delicious, like a fresh-picked apple?
Wrong. Olives taste like (excuse the language) crap when they're fresh from the olive tree.
Olives have to brined, or cured. Sean Timberlake, one of my favorite Bay Area food bloggers, went home with a bin of fresh olives and went to the trouble of doing this at home. Basically, the fresh olives sit in water for seven days, then in a salt solution for the next 10-15 days, then store them in olive oil or whatever other flavoring agents you want. Read Sean's details of how he cured these black pearls on his blog.
If there's one food I couldn't live without, it's kimchee. It makes sense, since I'm Korean and all. And you would think that 1) being Korean and 2) it being my favorite food, I would know how to make the spicy, pickled cabbage, but I don't. I'm sure I could read a "recipe" and do it, but unlike other "packaged" foods, kimchee from the store tastes pretty damned good. You see y'all, making kimchee is a major to-do, and it's so much easier to just run out to a local Asian market and buy the stuff already made.
That is why I just about fell over when I read that Barbara of food blog Tigers & Strawberries made kimchi at home. Her post has written and photographic detail of the whole stinky, spicy process, from raw Napa cabbage to the final full bottle of kimchee that's fermented for three days.
Yesterday was a big day for fans. Which fans? Basically, any and all fans who wanted to celebrate anything, whether you were celebrating Cinco de Mayo, holding your breath during the De La Hoya vs. Mayweather fight, swirling your twirl for Tom Jones in Vegas, or cheering for the horses at the Kentucy Derby.
If it was the Kentucky Derby, then no doubt you were sipping on mint juleps all day long. If you happen to have some of the mint-infused simple syrup left, you might want to follow in the recipe steps of Ceres' Secrets and throw together a Mint-Juleped Fruit Salad. All you have to do is toss fresh fruit with the simple syrup, a splash (or more, depending on how you feel) of Bourbon, and garnish with fresh mint. I can't think of a better way to get over your post-Derby Day hangover!
I recently went to The Penthouse, the new restaurant at the top of The Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica. While the food was a little less than spectacular, the view of the Pacific from that high up was pretty stunning. However, there was one thing I ate that got my attention, which was their Green Crunch Salad.
The mix of crunchy greens tossed with a spicy vinaigrette was awesome, so I decided to re-create it at home, with my personal preferences, of course. The Penthouse's salad was composed of fresh sugar snap peas, cooked regular peas, and steamed edamame, which I did as well. However, instead of lightly steamed asparagus tips, I used raw snow peas cut on a bias. I dressed my vegetables with a spicy balsamic vinaigrette (3:1 olive oil: balsamic vinegar + finely minced garlic + salt/pepper + crushed red pepper) and the result was good. In fact, I might say that I liked my version with the balsamic vinaigrette a little more than The Penthouse's Asian-inspired sesame dressing.
A few months ago, I did a quick little "guide" to Asian greens as the beginning of my re-acquaintance with my Asian self. Part One covered bamboo shoots, bok choy, Chinese broccoli, lemongrass, and mizuna. This is Part Two, with the potential for Part Three, if I can find more Asian greens and vegetables that inspire me.
Napa Cabbage - Napa cabbage is a Japanese cousin of the green cabbage with which most of us are familiar. Though it has the same mildness of flavor, it is sweeter, much more watery, and looks different. The leaves are white, broad, flat, and extend to a pale green on the ends. Napa cabbage can be prepared, cooked, and used in the same way as other cabbages, and we often see it sliced or chopped, part of "Chinese Chicken Salads." I happen to love Napa cabbage, as part of stir-fries, in shabu shabu, and of course, my favorite preparation of Napa cabbage, Korean kimchee.
Pak Boong - Pak boong goes by a number of names, though "swamp cabbage" certainly doesn't sound all that appetizing. The vegetable is common in south and southeast Asia and is a semi-aquatic plant, meaning it grows in water or in very moist soil. It is prepared and cooked in the same way as other leafy vegetables - in stir-fries, as Chez Pim did as part of a homemade Thai meal.
Today while pimping Slashfood for the Blogger's Choice Awards, I came across what seems like a whole sub-blogosphere of vegan food blogs. I knew there were some, but who knew there were enough to fill an entire page of nominations!
Now I ate vegan for about six months for no good reason other than "just to try it." It was hard. I had to cook all the time, and after a while, because I'm not very innovative in the kitchen, I was eating the same things all the time. However, had I had access to something as gorgeously delicious as this Eggplant Napoleon as prepared by food blog Vegan Yum Yum, I might have eaten vegan out a little bit longer (but not forever - I do need to taste a rare steak every once in a while).
When I think of shortbread, I think of nothing else but butter. Butter is what gives shortbread that rich, crumbly, crisp-in-some-places texture, so I couldn't imagine how someone could make vegan shortbread -- without butter.
But vegan food blog Vegan Yum Yum has done it, and has gone the extra step of making it a Lavender Shortbread! The simple recipe has but five ingredients, one of which is Earth Balance, a butter substitute that seems to work quite well for this shortbread. The recipe is on the post.
A few years ago, I got over my fear of the artichoke. I absolutely love eating artichoke hearts, but I had never before tackled a fresh one myself. That giant bulb, all those spiky leaves, and the warning about the "choke" -- I just resigned myself to ordering them in restaurants. Then I finally did it, and got over myself.
Then I discovered baby artichokes, which are even easier to handle, and in my book, tastier for their tenderness. Jaden of food blog Steamy Kitchen has done a simple, yet beautiful thing, of frying baby artichokes. Their fair green color and of course, the browned edges from frying, are gorgeous! If you want to try them, too, you only have a few months -- artichokes are in season until the end of May, and baby artichokes? Well they're growing up fast!
With it being Spring and all, perhaps you're feeling a little...garden-ish? If that's the case and your feelings are manifesting themselves in the way you eat, then maybe you should eat a Gardenburger!
The folks who make Gardenburger (the brand of vegetarian and other dietary-preference foods) are sponsoring a contest once a month in which the prize is a Gardenburger t-shirt (not that we're all that excited about a t-shirt), and free food! The contest is a photo contest -- not a recipe contest, so you don't even have to be all that creative in the kitchen. Contestants just have to dress up their Gardenburgers within the theme of that particular month, take a snapshot, and upload the picture to the Gardenburger Flickr pool. Gardenburger will pick the winners from there.
Eating healthy, and a chance to win! We like the sound of that!
Hooray! Yet another article about the end-all, be-all method to finally, yes finally (!) lose weight!
With it being Spring and all, perhaps you're feeling a little...garden-ish? If that's the case and your feelings are manifesting themselves in the way you eat, then maybe you should eat a Gardenburger! 
New York Times Magazine's food issue
Chicken McNuggets frolic at New York City pet store
Eat your broccoli orbs! 
