Sometimes...

...you just can't get inspired. You've spent all night making tomorrow's celebratory mac and cheese feast, grated about a billion carrots for a homemade carrot cake, toasted pecans for a beet-and-greens-and-goat cheese salad...but you can't think of anything to make for yourself.

So you forage in the freezer for something edible. Trader Joe's frozen Indian food? Check.

More importantly, you find this baby in the fridge.

I know. Watermelon beer? Sounds like an ill-conceived analogue to pink Andre. But it's actually the perfect summer beer, and after a night spent making bechamel sauce and running back and forth from the grocery store for forgotten ingredients, it, some palak paneer, and a full Hulu queue are the perfect way to unwind.

Cake Ballz

Apparently the cake ball is the new cupcake.

"What is a cake ball?" I asked a friend this question a couple of months ago after she suggested getting an after-lunch dessert. She just about had a headsplosion. She then took me to Creme de la Cookie for a quick introduction. I had a headsplosion. This little treat was UH-mazing! It looked pretty simple in its design, so I decided to try my hand at it.

I surveyed home-made recipes online and this is what I put together:

I baked a 13x9 yellow buttercream cake via cake box instructions. Let the cake cool for 30 minutes, then crumbled the cake into a large bowl. I then added about 10oz of buttercream icing to the cake and mixed until I had a play-doh like consistency. I didn't have a 25mm ice cream scoop on hand, so I used a coffee scoop to scoop out balls. I leveled each coffee scoop and 2 leveled scoops made 1 ball about 1.5in in diameter. Chilled the balls in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

I then coated them in chocolate ganache [semi-sweet chocolate chips melted with heavy cream over a double boiler] and chilled them in a closed contained for another 2 hours.

For the stringy design on top, I tempered chocolate in the microwave, dipped a chopstick in the chocolate and waved it back and forth quickly over the balls. I chilled the balls one last time for 30 minutes.

Here's what a dissected finished cake ball looks like:

A couple of things I would have done differently:

The recipes called for simply melted chocolate to coat the balls. I wanted a shiny coating, hence the ganache, but I should have anticipated it being too soft. Ganache doesn't harden, so I used a fork to eat the ball to avoid a melty mess.

I would also opt to submerge the ball completely in the chocolate coating rather than using a toothpick to dip. The coating made the ball so heavy that it slipped off the toothpick anyway.

Voila, the cake ball.

The Sandwich Method (TM)

I know what you're thinking. "That's a sandwich. What is this, amateur hour? Come on, people are making zucchini cutlets around here."

Friends, I post today because I care. Because I love. And because I am the recent beneficiary of a special secret we'll refer to as the Sandwich Method (TM). (That's right. It's trademarked.)

The Sandwich Method was imparted to me by someone very special, who--despite thinking that avocados and marinara sauce go together--makes the meanest grilled cheese north of the Mason-Dixon line.

It goes something like this. You are stressed out because of all the veggies in your fridge. (#firstworldproblems). Why did you think you'd eat salad every day for a week? And alfalfa sprouts? Really? Those things have a shelf life of about ten minutes.

Enter The Sandwich. This baby is a vehicle for any veggie wilting judgmentally in your fridge as you reach past it for the leftover coffee cake. All you really, really need are:

(1) Two slices of good bread.

I should note here that I am very partial to something Whole Foods sells called Early Bird Multi-Seed Bread. I'm definitely the sucker who falls for anything including the words "multi" or "whole" before the word "grain." Multi-seed seemed like an improvement on the usual, and boy, is it delicious. It's hearty and crunchy and toasts up beautifully. (I recently perused the calorie count and realized exactly why I find it so delicious. But!--this has not stopped me.)

(2) A slice and a half of cheese.

There's just something about that extra half. Provolone, cheddar, havarti, muenster...it's all legit.

(3) Hummus.

You guys, hummus is, in the words of a friend, "super-croosh" here. It's NOT optional. The hummus and cheese operate in the kind of synergy management consultants aspire to. You want lots of it, and you want it on both pieces of bread.

(4) Aforementioned veggies

Think in threes: spinach, shredded carrots, thinly-sliced red onions; kale, tomatoes, sprouts; avocado, avocado, avocado (I love avocados).

Now: the Method.

The key is getting your skillet warm, but not hot. It's got to be just right. Coat that puppy with olive oil spray (no judgment here--I love olive oil spray. Dare I say it's the best thing since sliced bread?). Next--and this is key--place the bottom slice of bread (loaded up with hummus, the cheese, and the veggies, in that order) on the pan. Let it sit. Let it think. Let it reflect on what it was, and what it will become. But don't put the top slice on just yet. You want the heat to radiate upward, a slow burn, as it were. (Minus the burning.) You let the bottom and middle of your sandwich hang out on the pan until the cheese stops being square and starts melting--reluctantly at first--then clinging to the crust of the bread. Then you slap the top slice of bread (spread with hummus) on top, spray it up nice and good with the olive oil spray, flip the whole thing on its head, and cook until both sides are equally brown (or if you're me, practically black and crunchy).

I don't know what it is about making sandwiches like this, but I've found it really elevates what would otherwise be a soulless, personality-devoid cheese and hummus and reject-produce sandwich into a sexy grilled (veggie and) cheese.

Ben & Jerry's

Cure for the Monday night blues, 'nuff said.

Black Bean and Zucchini Cutlets

I've never made my own vegetarian burgers before. As a former meat eater, veggie burgers seemed like something outside the realm of home-cooking. Reproducing something similar in texture and flavor to real meat seemed to belong more to a lab than to a kitchen. As time has gone by, however, recreating meat exactly has become less of a priority. And once again, necessity led me to try something new as I scrounged my cabinets for dinner tonight.
These are vegan. They wouldn't have been, but I used the last of my eggs in the Apple-Rum Cake. The main ingredient here is canned black beans. The recipe called for dry rolled oats and an egg, but instead I cooked some steal cut oats, which acted as a binder along with some bread crumbs, in place of the egg. The remainder of the burger mixture was just chopped onion, shredded zucchini, and spices.Instead of serving these up as patties on a bun, I formed the mixture into cutlets, pan-fried them, and served them with angel hair pasta. But there was far too much for a single meal, so I formed the remainder into patties and froze them. The resulting patties were surprisingly meaty, the steel cut oats giving them a pleasant chew and the pan-frying lending a nice crunch to the outside. Overall, the homemade veggie burger is a party that I'm glad I came to late, rather than not at all.

Apple-Rum Cake

Self-proclaimed sweet tooth of the group, I often find myself craving an after dinner treat. Or as it happened today, after lunch. And as a poor grad student, I don't often have the opportunity to go out and buy 70% Belgian chocolate or a quart of fresh raspberries for some decadent creation. I, therefore, will find myself searching my brain, recipe books and cupboards to find the recipe and ingredients that will satisfy my fondness for dessert with whatever is on hand (otherwise know as "now"). This is one of those creations. Apple-Rum Cake.


A slight modification of the original recipe means that this cake was make solely with pantry staples (including the grad student staple, rum). Even my realization that I was out of both milk and vanilla did not stop me from having my just desserts.

Lupe Tortilla Plus Salad

I should probably start by mentioning that as a rule I’m not really partial to Mexican food, and usually only have it when other people invite me. So it was this time as well, with the added bonus that the restaurant they picked had only one vegetarian main course that I could find. But, then again, a fifty-five minute wait on a Friday night hopefully bodes of good things to come, and since that wait started at 8 pm, I may or may not have been ravenous by the time the chips, salsa, and queso were brought out. Considering my hunger, I’ll just skip to (my) main dish, called “Ensalada Verde.” Ok, so having a salad at a Mexican restaurant may be blasphemy, but ignoring that fact, it was a rather marvelous salad: green leaf lettuce and pico de gallo, tossed with roasted pablano pepper (had to look that one up, I’ll admit), and Monterrey Jack cheese, plus what must have been two whole avocados. Oh, and of course, the most important ingredient, jalapeno lime vinaigrette dressing, which was possibly the best salad dressing I’ve ever tasted: ever-so-slightly spicy, a little sour, and very smooth. Vegetarian-approved, for sure.

I would be remiss not to mention what the omnivores at the table had, which was basically a giant platter of sizzling fajita meat containing beef, chicken, and shrimp, with giant flour and corn tortillas. Protein galore!

In any case, Lupe Tortilla is known for its fajitas, and according to my non-scientific poll of the three other people at the table, it gets an A+. Or five stars. Or a dozen cows. Whatever.

Welcome, foodies.

The idea for this blog originated after we spent an idle afternoon going into transports discussing (over Gchat, no less) homemade bread recipes and cake balls. On a post-college graduation California roadtrip last summer, probably the most frequently asked question the four of us posed to each other was..."Where/when/what are we eating??!?!" (All right, that's three questions.) From brothy Thai soups to fragrant California cheeses to sumptuous desserts involving lots of chocolate and very little flour, "Oh, the Things We Ate" could very well have been the title of our West Coast vacation.

All this is to say is that we are four friends, and we love food. Three of us are vegetarians, but that doesn't stop us. One of us makes a mean Bailey's cupcake and has secret dreams of being the next Barefoot Contessa. One of us is known to use the phrase, "I whipped up this pumpkin tart this afternoon" completely unironically. One of us is such a good photographer he can make Spaghetti O's look like a Roman delicacy. And one of us has (unofficially) been crowned the victor of a three-way mac 'n' cheese cook-off (granted, one of the options was vegan, which sort of made the whole thing a cakewalk) using a recipe that would make Paula Deen blush.

We love food so much that we have decided to dedicate this blog to the delicious things we eat. And we hope you enjoy browsing as much as we enjoy chowing.