Ideas in Food Dinner

Tonight I go to the Ideas in food dinner armed with my camera and my appetite

More Lunch

It's been a rough week. I feel overloaded with school assignments. My week was improved today however, when I made a curious discovery in the cafeteria. Today, nudged up next to the choco tacos and chipwiches were little styrofoam containers of pumpkin ice cream. I got one and it was actually delicious! I'll just pray there's more tomorrow. Here are some more shots from the caf. I think I'll do posts like this every once in a while throughout the year. It's interesting no?




This is sarah with her lunch of peanut butter and fluff on soft white, a brownie, goldfish, gushers, and that coveted honeycrisp apple. Her "favorite." One of her close friends once told me that she subsists largely on a cheese and ice cream: an enviable diet if you ask me. Sarah also reads my blog, so she will probably ask me who said that in the near future.

This is Jake, one of the pickiest eaters I know. I'm actually really surprised that his peanut butter and nutella is on wheat bread. He's such the person to only eat white. His mom makes him his lunch every day, and every day it's the same thing. His lunch may be the most widely stolen in the cafeteria. People are constantly trying to get his peeled and sliced apples every day.

Here's Matt. The picture makes him look like a big tough guy but he's actually a softie. He's a soccer player and his lunch almost always consists of 2 Uncrustables. Today however, he went to Wawa and got this spicy chicken sandwich with lettuce, peppers, honey mustard, and oregano and some barbecue potato chips and some sour patch kids: a "guy" lunch.

This is Jesse. He's a goofball, all the girls think he's good looking and if they saw his lunch, they'd probably think it was cute too. I mean look at it. Peanut butter and grape jelly (his preference), an apple and some carrots. No he's not a vegan, but he is my boy.

This is Justin. He's just an overall real friendly kid who everyone gets along with. He also often has awesome sandwiches that he lets me taste. Today he's just got some turkey-- I caught him on a bad day.

And that's all for now. More from around the cafeteria in the future.

Can't update today-- loaded with homework and meeting with an SAT tutor and all.

Instead, check out this cool post on sous vide today from serious eats

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Nutmeg, at least for this part of the year, is my favorite spice. I mean seriously, just look at it. It looks like it's got cave paintings inside it.

Appearance aside, nutmeg's aroma is tantalizing. I even prefer it to cinnamon which I believe too often overpowers fall foods. When nutmeg and cinnamon work together with the correct amounts, the results can be masterful.

Such is the case with these pumpkin whoopie pies. While nutmeg is my favorite fall spice, pumpkin is my favorite ingredient. This recipe is from Martha Stewart's website who got it from Matt Lewis of Baked Bakery.

• FOR THE PUMPKIN WHOOPIE COOKIES
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon ground cloves
• 2 cups firmly packed dark-brown sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 3 cups pumpkin puree, chilled
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• FOR THE CREAM-CHEESE FILLING
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350, and line 2 (recipe says 2, but I halved the recipe and I needed 2 so see what works for you).

2. Whisk together all the dry ingredients except the sugar.

3. Whisk together all wet ingredients.

4. Fold dry into wet.

5. Using a small ice cream scoop, or just two spoons, drop the cookies onto the parchment paper and bake for about 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean (I actually left mine slightly underbaked, and they were delicious.

For Icing

1. Beat butter and cream cheese in a stand mixer.

2. Add vanilla and sugar.

3. When the cookies are cooled, spread a dollop on the flat side of 1/2 of the cookies, then cover with another cookie. Enjoy

Keep for 3 days in the fridge.

My Comments

Cookies tasted good--I could eat them on their own no problem-- but I'm not sure they were the correct texture for a whoopie pie. I like my whoopie cookies dense and kind of chewy, to contrast the soft cream.

These were really soft and delicate and therefore made eating them with the icing a "uni-textural" experience.

That not to say these weren't absolutely delicious- they were- but there's some room for improvement.

A Look at Lunch

Here are a few photos from round the lunchroom. This is really just a preliminary post, a preview. I plan to post additional pictures and more matter about my mate's meals in the future. And yes, to get these pictures I kinda walked around the cafeteria, asking people if I could photograph their lunches--might've been slightly weird, but for the sake of the blog...

First pic is my lunch of sweet potatoes that I roasted in bacon fat with sage and garlic, and a sous vide chicken breast that I crisped up in a hot pan the previous night.

My Day in Food 10/18

Bananas are perfect with a little green at the top and bottom and I don't much like them otherwise. True, they are sweeter when spotted, yet with this sweetness comes a flavor I find unpleasant. Kind of ironic no? Here I am, foodie at fifteen, praising complex, developed flavors over their banal, bland counterparts, yet I won't eat bananas unless they are more the latter. That's just the way it is.

I started my day off with a perfect banana and a cup of black coffee- a light breakfast, I try not to eat a lot before I go to Lacroix. At Lacroix I tasted a little salmon tartare (I consider it a privilege to be able to eat raw fish at 9 in the morning) and ate some scraps of grilled cheese with brie, Parmesan and prosciutto.

I tasted this awesome new salad of cauliflower, shitakes (I believe), and golden raisins with a garlic mayo dressing. I also had some panzanella salad with toasted bread, corn, and pepperoni. It's really amazing; you can really see that corn is trailing off. It's not as bright, crunchy, moist as it was. It's the end of something old and the start of something new I guess, and the pumpkin-toffee ice cream that pastry had made was delicious.

I ate some haricot vert salad with fried onions, and a saffron vinaigrette and a duck croissant with apricot mustard. When they switched out the old Malaysian BBQ pork shoulder glazed with char siu, I ate some of that.

I made sure to have some of my favorite dish on the menu- duck confit with yellow corn polenta, pearl onions confited in bacon fat, and cherries. The polenta kinda forms a skin on the outside, creating a kind of contrast in textures. It's really quite wonderful.

At this point, I was really quite full, but I needed a cloying culmination. I nabbed a berry cheesecake off the dessert cart and was satisfied. I didn't eat dinner.

I eat well at Lacroix. I let my day at Lacroix be a day when I eat what I want and don't feel bad for it. So far at least, it seems to work out.

Trader Joe's Bread

Trader Joe's makes this whole-wheat Sourdough bread that is just hearty and delicious. I love it as toast, and pairing it with scrambled eggs makes one of my favorite meals. It likewise makes great grilled cheese and an awesome panzanella salad.

Here I've used it for a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I buttered both sides and am toasting it as if it were grilled cheese (am I the only one who does that with peanut butter sandwiches?).