Soft Almond Butter Oatmeal Cookies

When I'm procrastinating on schoolwork, I bake.

I was craving cookies...but I didn't have many ingredients in my apartment! (read as: no eggs, flour, or butter) I threw some stuff together, hoping it would turn out somewhat edible.

And they were!



I actually decided to leave them in the oven for only 6 minutes because it was pretty warm outside and I didn't want to heat up the apartment too much. But the result was pretty cool.....

....half-way baked chewy cookies! The bottom was cooked and firm enough to hold the cookie together, but the top half was still soft and chewy. Yum! It was almost like oatmeal-raisin cookie dough, but without any risk of salmonella from raw eggs - all the ingredients are okay to eat plain! 

It was definitely a pleasant surprise. 

This was seriously the easiest, simplest, and quickest way to satisfy my cookie craving. Plus, they're healthy enough to eat for breakfast! (And I did eat them for breakfast the next day) ;) Enjoy!

Soft Almond Butter Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup oats

1/2 cup almond butter (or any butter of your preference)

1 banana, mashed

4 tablespoons ground flaxseed

2 tablespoons sugar / sugar substitute

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

handful of raisins

Mix all the ingredients together in a medium bowl. Spoon into 1.5-inch mounds on a cookie sheet and place in the oven. I baked them for 6 minutes at 350 degrees; depending on your oven I would say to bake them anywhere from 5-10 minutes. Cool, then eat - they're good warm! Makes about 10-12 little cookies :)

Fried Quinoa

I'm Chinese. Fried rice is pretty typical fare. I actually didn't grow up eating too much of it, although my mom would make it once in a while. Us kids would love it and would finish off an entire pot for dinner.

I was hungry when I got back from lab meeting today. Super hungry, and was craving comfort food! I didn't want to heat up the apartment and turn on the oven to bake something or leave the stove on for a long time to make a stew. So then I remembered my childhood love of fried rice...and a brilliant thought came into my head: why not make fried quinoa?? I actually don't have soy sauce in my apartment yet (yes I know, a disgrace to my Chinese heritage!!) so I modified the flavors of the dish.

The process was pretty simple; I first stir-fried the veggies and made the quinoa in a rice cooker, then tossed it all together in the pan with some oil to crisp it up! 

Fried Quinoa

1/2 cup broccoli florettes (I get the bagged kind from Trader Joe's and break them into smaller pieces)

handful of shredded carrots

stalk of chopped celery
1/4 cup mushrooms, sliced
(you can use any veggies you want; these were just the ones in my fridge that I threw together! It would taste really good with some bell peppers or even peas and carrots...be creative and resourceful!)
1/2 cup quinoa
chicken broth or water
olive oil
cumin
salt & pepper


1. Cook the quinoa! I put 1/2 cup (about 1 serving size) into the rice cooker and poured in chicken broth (or you can use water) up to the 1 cup line. Quinoa absorbs a lot of liquid so you want to use twice as much as you would use for the same amount of rice!

2. Chop the veggies up into similar-sized pieces. I made mine small enough so that I could use a spoon to eat this dish.

3. Stir-fry away! A tip that I learned from my mom: don't add all the veggies in at once. After the oil is hot, put the slower-cooking veggies in first, then add the others slowly. This is common sense but it's essential to cooking the veggies correctly! I actually steamed the broccoli before adding it to the pan so that it softened up a bit. This is the order I added the ingredients I used: celery, carrots, mushrooms, then steamed broccoli. Season with salt and pepper. I actually covered the pan for a few minutes after seasoning to let the veggies cook a bit more intensely and for the flavors to come out.

4. After the quinoa is done (the magic of a rice cooker: you just leave it in there until it beeps!!) open the lid and let the steam out of the rice cooker. Add the cumin (as much as you desire) directly into the rice bowl and mix well.

5. Add the quinoa directly into the pan with the stir-fried veggies. Turn the heat on high and mix it all up. This will get rid of any soggy-ness of the quinoa and crisp it up nicely. It also helps distribute the flavors!

6. Serve and eat up :) I sprinkled black sesame seeds on top for an extra crunch!

(instagraming it up)

Enjoy!

R.S.V.P - P.S.

An interesting article from the NY Times:
"The Picky Eater who came to Dinner" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/fashion/rsvp-ps-no-gluten-fat-or-soy-please.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=fashion

It basically addresses the growing number of people who choose to omit certain foods from their diet and how it's often difficult for hosts to accommodate all these special "needs." People identify themselves as "gluten free," "vegan," or "paleo," which is different than past diet fads. It's interesting, though, to think of their motivations behind their lifestyle changes - not everybody is actually allergic or even sensitive to these foods. These specialized eating habits started out on a smaller scale; I remember when I became gluten-free during middle school (I have gluten intolerance) people thought it was the weirdest thing ever when I didn't eat pizza or bread! But now we can find gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, egg-free, almost anything-free foods at mainstream supermarkets. Is this a trend? Or are these lifestyle changes going to be permanent? 

How do you feel about the issues this article raises?



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on a slightly less serious note, I found this on my sister's tumblr:

hah. so true.

Odds and Ends

Well...I've survived my first week of living, cooking, and eating on my own! Here are a couple snapshots of what I've been eating this week:

hearty: rice and lentils mixed with bok choy, carrots, and onions

fresh: pasta and olive oil with steamed broccoli, cherry tomatoes, lentils, kale, and cilantro

Overall I've just been steaming all my veggies because it's just so much easier and quicker than stir frying or roasting. It's easy to clean up too -- I just have to wash the bowl I used to steam rather than pots or pans! Steaming is one of the healthiest ways to cook anyways; the fact that it's quick and the veggies don't come in direct contact with the water results in them retaining most of their minerals and nutrients.

for fun: oatmeal-raisin "cookies" inspired by katie. I added more oats than usual and probably kept them in the oven for too long...thus the granola-like texture. They weren't very sweet but definitely a good snack to much on!

My internship hasn't started yet so I have lots of free time to catch up with friends, so I ate out a lot this past week:

Korean bbq in K-town, Sushi on Sawtelle, and cooking with a friend! (made honey-maple chicken with grilled onions, and salsa-and-onion-seasoned shrimp...delicious :) )

until next time,

Leanna

Warm Black Bean and Sweet Potato Salad;

This afternoon I decided to make my (at least for now!) favorite lunch dish: a warm black bean & sweet potato salad courtesy of OhSheGlows. I discovered this recipe last summer and since then, have made it every single time I've gone home. Now that I have a kitchen....I can make it all the time if I want to! It's a combination of some of my favorite foods...now how can that not taste good?!

The recipe is on Angela's website. I used the same ingredients as her version, but tweaked the preparation a bit to make it easier:

Ingredients:

• 3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
• 1 large onion, preferably red, chopped  (1.5 cups chopped)
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• 3-4 tbsp fresh lime juice (Juice of 2 limes), to TASTE!
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 2 cups cooked black beans, drained (14-15oz can)
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, minced (made about 3 tablespoons minced)

     - Instead of roasting the onions and sweet potatoes, I cube the sweet potatoes and steam them until they're soft. This is way faster and cleaner than turning on the oven and roasting! I leave the onions raw; in this case I poured some boiling water over them to get rid of the pungent smell but overall the raw onions give it a crunchy texture. If you don't like raw onions, go ahead and roast or caramelize them.

     - To cook the black beans I drain the can then put them in boiling water for a minute or so. This warms them up a bit too!

     - I mix the oil, spices, and cilantro in a big bowl before adding anything else; I then add in the beans and onions and mix that together before adding the sweet potatoes. I've found that this helps the flavors spread more evenly.

If you like these ingredients, please try this recipe. It's good, I promise :)

Here are some variations; using a red onion, with and without garlic, different amounts of cilantro...all delicious!

Summer: A Start to Apartment Life

First off, I apologize for not posting for a whole quarter! Spring quarter was extremely busy and I didn't find time to update this blog. I'll do a quick recap of Spring break/last quarter's food adventures sometime soon!

Anyways, I'm staying in the city of angels this summer, and am living in an apartment. One of the things I'm most excited about is having a kitchen and being able to cook for myself! Hopefully that means I'll be able to experiment much more than I am able to in the dorms :)

Yesterday was my first day here. I spent the morning shopping at Trader Joe's. The result:

A cornucopia of food!

Little did I anticipate how heavy this was going to be; I just about broke my back carrying all this back from the store to my apartment!

There are so many simple things that I needed to buy to start off, like salt and pepper, olive oil, and rice...the staples that are oh-so-essential for anything I'll be making! I tried to buy things conducive to quick cooking, because I know that weekdays will be very busy with my internship and classes. Hence the canned foods and pre-cut veggies.

A closer look:

veggies, canned beans, salt/pepper/cumin, canned fish (convenient!)

fruit and grains

I'm not fully stocked yet, but this is a start!

My first meal: lunch

I cooked up some rice pasta and threw it together with olive oil & salt, sliced grape tomatoes, chopped carrots, celery, and onion (bought as a pre-cut stock starter from TJ's....it was so quick and easy!), and chopped turkey breast atop of a bed of mixed greens. This should have been really quick to make, but it took some time figuring out where everything was in the kitchen! 

dinner

I didn't get back from the gym till around 5:15, and by the time I was done showering I was starving! I had planned to make rice or something, but I forgot that it takes about 40 minutes to cook rice. I couldn't wait, so scrapped that idea!

 enter: TJ's steamed lentils:

In the dorms I threw these on top of my salads to make them more substantial. I never ate them hot though, so I decided to try. These are pre-cooked so all I had to do was warm them up by putting the entire package in a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes. I figure that these would serve as my carbs, protein, and fiber for the day!

Of course, I couldn't eat just plain lentils for dinner, (oh, that would be the epitome of a starving college student!!) so I steamed up some baby bok choy and the same carrots, celery, and tomatoes I had for lunch, and mixed it in with the hot lentils

The final dinner turned out pretty good!

Not a bad start for my first day of cooking for myself!

Quinoa and the Word

Youtube: the great self-promoting, get-famous, share with friends, waste-time-before-finals site! At the end of last quarter, the "Sh** Girls Say" video became viral. If you havn't seen it yet, please go watch it. It's freaky how accurate it is! Once this video became viral, people started to make spoofs about smaller demographics of girls ("Sh** Asian Girls Say", "Sh** Yogis say", etc) that are, although stereotypical and ridiculous, quite funny. There is one video in particular that my friends and I kept watching again and again, laughing at the comical references: "Sh*tuff Christian Girls Say". There are so many one-liners in this video, but one that stuck out was:
"Coffee coffee coffee...I just love coffee and the Word"

Why is it that so many Christian girls love coffee so much? We always meet up to coffee dates, always have coffee at church....it seems to just go along with who we are!

Anyways...I take yoga at 8AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. (at least, I'm trying to make it to as many classes as I can!) I don't like to eat a full breakfast before class--I usually just have a banana or an apple. However, a piece of fruit doesn't cut it for a meal and I can't last till lunch on just that. I've been packing my own breakfasts-on-the-go for those mornings. My quickie microwave oat cakes are always a delicious option, and many times I just grab a quick pack of oatmeal to make on campus after yoga class. However, I do like to vary up my diet and don't want to OD on the oats!

Enter, quinoa flakes. My mom first introduced them to me because I missed my good ol' quinoa since I've been at college. This is the brand that's available at my local Whole Foods.

You use quinoa flakes just like you would quick cook oatmeal: add hot water, or microwave with normal water!

However, quinoa flakes are pretty dense, and I've found that the best method of packing them to go in the morning involves spooning out a 1/4 inch layer of flakes into a tupperware, then adding boiling water to just cover the flakes, then pouring another layer of flakes, then adding more hot water, repeating until you've made enough for a breakfast serving! You can add fresh fruit (in this case, I added chopped apples), cinnamon, raisins, or flax seeds between each layer too. Without these extras, the flakes are a bit too plain for my taste. After I've made enough, I pour another 1/4 inch of hot water over the entire thing (because the flakes will absorb much of the water and you don't want to end up with a solid, dense rock of quinoa!), cover up the tupperware, and pack it in my backpack!

These pictures were taken about 1.5 hours after I made the flakes; the flakes absorbed all the water and I was left with a hearty, multi-layered breakfast. Easy, portable, and combined with a mug of tea (or coffee) + the Word, this makes for a great post-yoga breakfast and awesome start to my morning!

Quinoa & the Word.