The Blurry Kitchen

December was a blur. Matt, who usually cooks for us, was working from 10pm-10am Monday through Friday and on Sunday mornings. We were two ships passing in the night and he barely had enough energy to stop at Whole Foods to pick up a bunch of frozen dinners, let alone make anything fresh. Our freezer was stocked with assortments of Amy’s, (enchiladas, burritos, and Indian meals were my personal favorites) and Ethnic Gourmet meals. Anabel got hooked on Earth’s Best Kidz fish sticks.

I wanted the holidays to be special but with a toddler it is so hard to find time to do anything meaningful in the kitchen.  I opted to bake two types of cookies that had very few ingredients.

The first were pumpkin chocolate chip, using a can of pumpkin, a box of yellow cake mix, and some chocolate chips.  The final product was interesting–more of a sponge cake consistency but tasty.  For a decadent experience, I covered mine in cream cheese icing.

I also made some gingerbread cookies from a recipe I found on Pinterest. The final product looked nothing like the picture online, but I fixed that by adding some cream cheese icing.  I decided that anything you bake tastes better with cream cheese icing.

On Christmas morning I made my own cinnamon buns using this recipe from Pinterest. These were yummy and even yummier with, you guessed it, cream cheese icing.

Most of the cookies are now in the freezer, as we just didn’t have a chance to eat all of them around the holidays.  Our freezer is still stocked, but luckily things have calmed down enough so that we can have some healthy, home cooked meals every so often.

Yum Town

Yum Town is a new food truck on the north end of Temple’s campus.  The enticing appeal of Yum Town for me is its local ingredients.  This makes for a menu that is much more limited than other trucks on campus, but who really wants to eat from a truck that serves hamburgers, pizza, cheese steaks, grilled cheese, french fries, and salads?  The thought of all that food coming out of such a small space really worries me.

The sandwiches on Yum Town’s menu are innovative and fun:

I chose the Edgar Allan Potato (roasted sweet potato, crispy tempeh, black bean hummus, red onion, sriracha, baby spinach, on baguette for $6) and substituted the tempeh for bacon for an extra $1.

My first bite was all potato and bacon.  In my second bite I got more of the onion and some sweet heat from the sriracha.  By the third bite everything came together: the sweet and spicy, the crunchy and smooth.  By then I couldn’t eat it fast enough, although half way through it was getting a bit dry and I could have had a bit more of something like a marinade or dressing.  I did finish the whole sandwich because it tasted healthy and fresh and I’m a sucker for sweet potato and bacon!

I plan on trying the rest of Yum Town’s menu but I don’t know if I will get this particular sandwich again.  We’ll see.

Chocolate

We (well, Matt) splurged on some chocolate last weekend:

I can’t get enough of the Bacon Bar.  The bacon bits are crispy and probably a little burned, just the way I like it.  And it’s really not gross.  I swear.  Do you like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups?  Peanut butter is saltiness in chocolate and this is pretty much the same idea.

The TAZA chocolate series is hit-or-miss so far.  Last week we tried the cinnamon flavor, which was phenomenal.  I loved the chili–I thought it was a subtle, sweet heat.  Matt’s more sensitive taste buds didn’t like the heat as much as mine.  Matt’s also tasted much more vanilla than I did in the third flavor we tried.  This chocolate is a tad grainy, but I enjoy that about it.  I learned from Gourmet Sleuth that “Mexican chocolate is made from dark, bitter chocolate mixed with sugar, cinnamon, and sometimes nuts. The end result is a ‘grainy’ less smooth product.” So there you have it.

I’m still trying to decide if the Spanish dark chocolate is too smooth and creamy for a dark chocolate.   It really wasn’t that bitter at all, but it is only 68% cacao.

There are a few other kinds of Taza we need to try and the Vosges website is just overwhelming, so you know what that means.  I’ll be forced to taste more chocolate and let you know what I think.