Cherry Kuchen Bars

I make a lot of desserts.  I go through pounds of sugar every month.  I love to bake, but I also love to fit into my jeans.  So here are the ways that I stay healthy and still make all these tasty treats.  Maybe my tips will help you keep off the pounds but let you enjoy time in the kitchen!

- For most of my recipes, I will make half batches.  Having fewer cookies around means fewer to eat.

- I make things that Boyfriend likes to eat.  As long as I leave fruit out of my dessert recipes, he'll happily chow down cookies, brownies and blondies.  He's six foot three inches and burns calories like a hummingbird.

- My coworkers often enjoy treats on Monday morning.  I once put an entire bundt cake in the lunchroom and left for an hour.  When I returned, I found an empty cake plate.

- Boyfriends coworkers also get to have sweets.  Things like cakes, cupcakes and pies stay in New Jersey because they are awkward to carry on the commuter train.  The most positive thing about sending them to work with BF is that I don't eat any extras.  The downside?  I've lost a few containers because someone forgets to bring them home.

- The freezer is full of dessert.  They are there if I really want something sweet.  At the end of the month I go through the freezer and clean out all the excess food.

Of course I also hit the gym several times a week and I'm on my feet a lot during the work day.  I generally eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch during the week (oatmeal for breakfast & a salad for lunch) and I make lean protein and veggies for dinner.  Repetition helps me maintain my healthy weight.

Or you could think about it this way.  The more cupcakes you feed your coworkers, the thinner you look in comparison!  It's a win-win.

Wilde Week #5

1. I think I have a problem - I'm addicted to Fairway markets.  If you aren't from the Tri-state area, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about.  If you live near one of these beautiful grocery stores, you totally understand.  If you live in Brooklyn, I feel for you and your Sandy-ravaged store.  (Worry not, it's opening back up on March 1st!).  If I ever need any strange, foreign or fancy ingredient, I know that I can go to Fairway and they will have exactly what I need.

On my most recent trip there I bought the following strange variety of items...
- Blueberry extract
- Biscoff Spread
- Adobo sauce
- Gummy bears
- Meyer lemons
- Tiny, fancy pears
- Dried Kiwi

2. The book of the week - "Matched" by Ally Condie.  Yeah, so I'm a total sucker for teen lit.  Matched is another girl living in a post-apocalyptic world.  Something changes her perspective and all of a sudden the rebellion is on.  Needless to say, I loved it and it only took three days to read.  I'm on to the second book.
3. Sometimes chemistry is super cool.  Take this compound that I made earlier this week.  I walked away from it for twenty minutes and when I came back it had transformed!  It turned from a yellow oil to a sparkly crystal!  Too neat.

4. What color are my nails this week?  They're teal of course!  ("Skinny Jeans" - Sephora by OPI)


I've had this on for a few days, so please ignore the chipped tips!



5. I love this and this and I'm totally doing it later this week.  The question is, weekday hourly photo or weekend hourly photo?  If I do it during the week, you'll get four different views of the commuter trains of NYC!  If I do it on the weekend you'll realize I'm totally boring and like to hang out at home, with a short side trip to Fairway...

6. My mom is super talented and crafty.  Three weeks ago I sent her a pinterest link with a quilt that I thought was pretty.  Within the hour she had asked what size quilt I wanted and had made her way to the quilting store.  Yesterday I received  a giant package in the mail from my mom and it was filled with this amazing quilt!  She's so good to me.

7. Have an iPhone?  Go grocery shopping?  You have to get this app.  Grocery IQ (see it down there, green icon, orange in the Q).  You can use it on all your iDevices and it will sync to each of them!  I like to make my grocery list on the couch with my iPad.  Then I bring my phone with me to the grocery store and shop!  Check check check and I'm done.  I like it that I can add things to my list whenever I think of them.

8. Crossfit continues!  Yesterday they kicked my butt with a power clean warm-up drill.  We went into the core workout in teams of three and performed a round of three exercises.  Pull-ups, power cleans and 200m runs.  As many rounds as your team could do in twenty minutes!  It helped that everyone cheers each other on during the workout, I felt so good after the workout.  Loving it.  Getting buff.

Pear-Raspberry Soda

I'm not quite sure if I still have legs right now.  I mean, I see them and they did carry me home from the gym last night, but they don't really seem to be attached to my body.  I blame Crossfit.

Yep, that's right, I joined the Crossfit cult.  Although I'm not really sure if I'm ready to drink the Kool-aid.  I spent four years participating in and teaching BodyPump  - a totally different type of weight lifting class.  BodyPump is all about repetition until you reach muscle failure.  Crossfit is an Olympic style lifting class that seems to try and make your legs fall off with excessive rowing.

So much rowing!  My poor shins are tired!

There are a few reasons I decided to give Crossfit a try...

1. I have been doing BodyPump for five years and was looking for something a little different.
2. Many of my friends have been going to Crossfit and RAVE about, constantly.
3. The Crossfit gym is literally a block away from my apartment and they have 8pm classes.

Sold.  I'm signed up to go twice a week and I'm ready to burn!  First, I had to spend two weeks taking a Fundamentals class - learning the bar moves so I won't hurt myself during class.  I've been to three classes in the past week and I'm enjoying it, though my legs are wishing we'd cut it with the rowing.

You're wondering what an average Crossfit workout looks like?  Here's what we did yesterday...

Strength work
Bench Press - warm-up & 2x5reps at max weight, 3rd set - go until muscle failure

Conditioning Work
225 jump ropes (or 75 double-unders... which I haven't mastered yet)
50 Ball squats (you first do a squat, then you toss a heavy ball in the air)
25 Knees to elbows (hanging from a pull-up bar, you lift your knees as high as you can!)
Row 1500 meters (So much rowing)

I came home and ate a whole bunch of Girl Scout cookies.  Yum.

I'll keep you posted with the workouts and whether I see myself getting stronger and leaner.  Leaner probably won't happen if I continue finishing my workouts with a row of Peanut Butter patties...

Cereal Milk Panna Cotta

You may have read last week that Boyfriend and I spent Valentine's Day at a baking class in Brooklyn.  Not just any baking class, we spent two hours with the baking team at Momofuku Milk bar, learning the secrets of Crack pie and cereal milk from Christina Tosi.

A few weeks ago, BF sent me a link to the baking class.  How he found it, I have no idea.  He thinks it may have been on Twitter, not sure.  Even though BF isn't really a baker, or even likes to be in the kitchen, he agreed to come with me and bake.  I signed us up and we all of a sudden had Valentine's day plans!  (I later tried to sign up for a second class only to find that they had all sold out!)

If you haven't been to Momofuku Milk bar before, you should put it on your places to visit on your next trip to New York City.  Christina Tosi is the owner/head baker and evil baking genius at Milk bar.  The treats you will find on the menu are creative, mind-boggling and delicious.  Cereal milk ice cream, cornflake marshmallow cookies, kimchi & blue cheese croissants.  Everything I've had there is crazy delicious.

BF and I arrived in Brooklyn Thursday night, ready to bake!  Well, I was ready to bake, BF was ready to help me.  Just outside the door to the Milk bar storefront in Williamsburg was a huge sign, welcoming us to the "Bake the Book Series."  We were ushered inside of the commissary - the Milk bars main baking facility.  The walls are lined with ingredients that you might not traditionally find in a bakery - cases of Ovaltine and tons of cereal.  As well as the usual stuff - giant stand mixers, a wall of ovens and bakers decked out in their kitchen whites.

Our Valentine's day class was the inaugural Momofuku class and the Milk bar team was so welcoming and excited to have us in their kitchen.  I was so excited to hear that we were the first group to be joining the team at the mixers.  Christina Tosi hollered over the crowd, climbed onto a wheeled cart piled high with baking sheets, and gave us a brief history of Milk bar.  The entire baking staff was on hand to help us in the kitchen and answer any questions we had.  They were amazing.

The class was thirty students, fifteen Beville stand mixers and lots of sugar, butter, milk and cereal.  We started out with making the Milk bar classic - Crack pie.  It's super sweet, dense pie, with a mild cereal flavor.  The recipe is in the cookbook, but the secrets are straight from the bakers.  I'll re-run this recipe in a few weeks (after BF and I finish these two pies that we still have!) and see if I remember all the little tips.  The take home tip for making crack pie - don't overmix the filling!

While our pies were baking, we made our second recipe of the night - Cereal milk.  It's a Milk bar classic and it's so crazy simple tasty.  Soak corn flakes in milk for twenty minutes.  Strain off the corn flakes then season with brown sugar and salt.  It's the "milk at the bottom of the cereal bowl."  We bottled it up and tasted a few cereal milk products, including their amazing cereal milk soft serve with corn flake crunch.  The other thing we tried out was a panna cotta made with the milk and that's what I made with my cereal milk at home!

The class finished off with a totally informal question and answer session with the whole Milk bar team.  They were an amazing bunch of people who really seemed to take pride and joy in their work.  I packed up our Crack pies and cereal milk in a carrier bag, picked up a few items before we left (glucose, dehydrated corn powder & a cookie making kit) and got my Milk Bar cookbook signed by the pastry queen herself.  It was a great Valentine's day (topped off with a stop at Crif dogs for some hot dogs) spent with my favorite guy, doing something that I love.

Thanks Milk Bar!  I can't wait to come back!

Wilde Week #4

1. Has anyone seen this necklace on sale anywhere??? It's adorable and I totally want the solar system around my neck.

2. Apparently I've been such a good Verizon fios customer that I get free HBO for three months. Now I can see what the bit deal is with Girls, Game of Thrones and whatever else is on HBO these days. Don't be concerned if you don't hear from me for a while, I'll be in front of my DVR.

3. If you missed watching the Bachelor this week, here is the best recap I've ever read.  Sums the show up perfectly.

4. I have spent nearly the entire week at work trying to separate to identical seeming chemical compound.  Along the way I have had to explain the difference between enantiomers, diastereomers and cis and trans isomers.  I've also had to remember how to decipher proton NMR spectra of six membered rings and spent hours looking at things like this...

My brain is really enjoying this weekend.

5. I'm totally enjoying the Restaurant Wars challenge this year, because it means BF and I have a scheduled dinner date every other week.  We don't even have to think about where to go!  Though I don't know if I can call our trip to Chipotle a date.  It was delicious at least!

6. Can you say Taxicab colored nails?  It's called "Need Sunglasses" which seems appropriate, they're really bright.

7. I have a newly found obsession with cheap jewelry.  (See #1 above)  Keep me away from Baublebar and Charming Charlies or I'll spend my all my money on sparkly plastic necklaces.  My eyes glaze over and I get all crazed and I run around the store filling my basket with every color of the rainbow. 

 

8. And finally, this weeks book - Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  I'm not really a runner, but this book has been totally fascinating.  Did you know there are races out there that are over 100 miles long?  These ultramarathons truely test the participants endurance as they race through the day and night to just get to the finish line.  This book also touts barefoot running as a valid method for changing the way you run and solving certain health issues.  While I don't want to go out an run 50 miles anytime soon, this book has made me want to lace up my shoes and hit the hills!

Restaurant Wars - Chipotle

I first stepped foot into a Chipotle restaurant over ten years ago in the city of Madison, Wisconsin. I was a first year grad student and had enough of my friend Bhavesh tell me how many burritos he'd eaten that week. I had to try it out for myself. There was only one problem, I'd never had a burrito quite like this before.

In Western New York we grew up eating Mighty taco. There were few other options when it came to quick tacos. Their menu consisted of soft and hard tacos, filled with beef, cheese, sour cream and "Mighty sauce." Whatever that was.

During my college years, at UB in WNY, a burrito place opened up boasting burritos the size of your head. Being of the female persuasion, that didn't really appeal to me. My guy friends were happy to go there and eat six pounds of runny beans, poorly cooked meat and scorched cheese but I begged off and stayed home those nights.

With grad school came a broadening of my palate and the introduction of healthy burrito options. Bhavesh dragged us all to Chipotle, where he really did eat five burritos a week, and introduced us to what would become a weekly treat. Sometimes twice weekly when we had late exams and only time for one meal.

Chipotle has really spread across the country since my first visit back in 2003. Even Amherst, NY now boasts a location and they're always the last to get anything good! I have gone from solely eating soft tacos, to only getting the spiciest fajita burrito. After the advent of the online calorie counter my order swiftly switched to the chicken salad and these days I'll go back and forth between a salad and a bowl. I'm sure your own ordering process has changed through the years too.

I was more than happy to have Chipotle as the first restaurant on my war list. bf and I go there a few times a month and my coworkers regularly visit for lunch. I could definitely go for a burrito bowl or salad without the long drive! I decided to try and recreate my two go-to dishes for this challenge. Here's the verdict.

First, it took forever to prepare everything that I needed to make these two dishes. I made three salsas, salad dressing, chicken marinade. I prepped and chopped lettuce, tomatoes, untold numbers of jalapeño pepper and squeezed more limes than I can count. I actually ran out of limes and had to go back to the store for more. I really could have used a staff to help me prep everything. I planned on making this meal for dinner Monday, so I spent two hours on sunday afternoon doing all the prep work.

Next, dinner came together really quickly Monday night, though I nearly drove us out of our apartment. The marinade for the chicken smelled wonderful, but when the chicken came in contact with the grill pan - it was like I set off a pepper bomb. BF and I were both coughing because of the spiciness in air. Maybe grill your chicken outside, or you'll this the police have sent the seat team to your house.

Lastly, adobo seasoning is not the same as adobo sauce. I looked everywhere for a jar of adobo seasoning. I knew it existed because my grocery list app had it programmed into its memory. However, after six different grocery stores I had to give up. Maybe I need to locate a well stocked Hispanic grocery in my area? I wound up buying a jar or chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and fishing out he sauce I needed.

You can totally cheat on the prep work and buy your favorite mild salsa or salsa verde. I even shredded my own cheese mixture, which you could skip and buy a pre-shredded Mexican-style cheese blend. For the Chipotle flavor though, you can't skip marinating your chicken, making your own fresh corn salsa, tossing your rice with lime juice and blending up a batch of their salad dressing. At least make the salad dressing, after a bit of tweaking of some other recipes I found - it's almost like being there.

One year ago: Chocolate-Peppermint Marshmallows
Two years ago: Homemade Butterfinger Bars

Chipotle recipes - These have all been adapted from so many different "Copy-cat" recipes online. I changed them all a little to try and get as close as possible to the real thing. Be sure to go out and get yourself a bottle of green Tabasco sauce too, because it isn't complete without a dash of heat!

Salsa verde

4 tomatillos, husks removed
1 small white onion, peeled and quartered
3 cloves garlic
2 Cubanelle peppers
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
Juice from 1/2 lime

Turn on your oven broiler.  Place tomatillos, onion quarters, garlic cloves and peppers 4-5 inches below the broiler.  Broil for 5 minutes, turn the vegetable over and broil for another 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes.

Peel the charred skin from the peppers, chop in half and remove the seeds.  Combine all of the ingredients except the salt in a food processor or blender.  Pulse to combine, leave the salsa a little chunky.  Give the salsa a taste, season with salt if you desire.  Transfer to an air-tight jar and keep in the fridge.


Mild tomato salsa

4 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/4 red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice from 1/2 lime

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine.  Transfer to an air-tight jar and store in the fridge.
Cheese blend

8 ounces Monterey Jack cheese
8 ounces Mild white cheddar cheese
Place cheese blocks in the freezer for 10-20 minutes.  This will make it easier to shred.  Shred and combine both cheeses.  So simple!

Chipotle brown rice

1 cup brown rice
2 cups water
Juice from 1 lime
Juice for 1/2 lime
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Pour 1 cup brown rice into 2 cups water.  Bring to a boil then lower heat to low.  Let simmer for 40 minutes.  Once the rice is tender and the water is absorbed, add citrus juice and cilantro.  Toss to combine.
Fresh Corn salsa

2 cups corn kernals (fresh or frozen)
1 jalapeno pepper, diced small
1/4 red onion, chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice from 1/2 lime

Combine all ingredients and transfer to an air-tight container.  Store in the fridge for 1-2 hours before serving.

Chipotle Chicken marinade

1 ounce dried ancho chilies
3 ounces chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons cumin powder
2 tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped
6 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
1 red onion, quartered
1/4 cup oil (canola/vegetable/olive)
4 chicken breasts

Add boiling water to dried ancho chilies and let hydrate for 2 hours or up to overnight.

Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender and transfer to a large bowl.  Poke chicken breasts with a fork and pierce all over.  Add chicken to the marinade and toss to coat.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge overnight.

When ready to cook.  Remove chicken from the marinade and shake off excess bits of pepper.  Grill in a well-ventilated area!

Honey-Chipotle salad dressing

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/3 cup honey

1 tablespoon adobo sauce

1 tablespoon Kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh oregano

1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil

Combine first six ingredients in a blender.  Pulse to combine.  With blender running, slowly stream in olive oil.  Serve over any salad for a tangy and sweet take on your usual salad.

Yum, delicious.

Peanut Butter Taffy

Happy Orthoversary to me! Oh, you've never heard of an Orthoversary? It's quite simple. Today is the one year anniversary of getting my braces on! (Actually it was this weekend, but I was busy playing in the snow). It has been one full year with my fancy ceramic braces, metals wires and rubber bands.

When I first had the braces put on, I was very nervous. So many of my friends had ortho as teens and they all had varying horror stories of how terrible their time in braces had been. There was the initial attaching, the tightening and the monthly adjustments. This all sounded terrible.

Fast forward one year. Let me tell you, this has not been a bad experience. Granted, most of my major tooth adjustments took place in the first few months. The past few months have shown minor changes in my bite and the way my teeth align. I hardly notice the brackets anymore and have learned to speak and smile with them. I can't imagine what it will be like when I no longer have them on!

At my last orthodontist appointment, I was told I was making excellent progress and should have them off by the end of summer! So while I haven't really had any problems with the braces, I'm looking forward to them being gone. Why? I miss popcorn! Biting into an apple! Chewy caramels! I haven't had a piece of gum for a year!

I've been trying to be really good and follow the list of dos and don'ts that I was given all those months ago. I feel like it will help my progress I I follow directions meticulously. Only six to eight months to go and that's when we'll really celebrate!

Wilde Week #3

1. It may be my inner Buffalonian, but I'm not seeing this most recent winter storm as the "Storm of the Century!"  I remember brushing eight inches of snow off my car before heading to school many a morning. And this stuff will be melted by the end of the week, in Buffalo - snow sticks around until May.

2. Success!  Wednesday night, Boyfriend and I hit the Willowbrook mall.  I was a woman on a mission to find my kelly green jeans.  After trying on at least seven pairs in five different stores, I settled on one pair and bought them.  Then while walking out of Bloomingdales, BF spotted a pair of even better ones - on sale!  I returned the pair I had just bought and got myself some kelly green Michael Kors skinny jeans.  I wore them to work on Thursday.

3. I've been totally obsessed with nail polish these days.  As a grad student and Postdoc, I spent so much time in the lab, elbow deep in acetone, there was no way to keep my finger nails pretty.  This week I'm wearing "Black Taxi" by Nails Inc - London, topped off with "A Cut Above" by Essie.  So SPARKLY! 

4. This weeks book - The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom.  Though this book is called an "adult fairy tale" I still feel like the age demographic for this book is much younger.  A story about the man who became Father Time, this book could easily have a book report written about it with the last sentance being - The moral of this story was..."  Luckily I got this book through the digital library and didn't spend money on a book that took only two days to read.

5. I began Crossfit this week!  Apparently you can't just start at a Crossfit gym, you have to go through a four-class fundamentals training.  This training has been really tough for me, not because I've never been to the gym before, but because I've been too much!  I'm a trained and certified BodyPump instructor and every move in Crossfit is contradictory to what I learned in BodyPump training.  I keep getting yelled at by the trainers because my brain is hardwired for Pump and I'm totally doing a squat "wrong." 

6. Everyone out there buried in snow, maybe you should set some time aside and make a snowman - Maybe like one of these!  It's heavy, packing snow out there.  Get to it!  Shoveling can wait!  Long Island, you probably have enough snow to make #11 happen!

7. I discovered one down side to moving to Brookyln.  No Sephora!  Can you believe that there is not a single Sephora in all of Brooklyn!  At least I'll save money, which I can spend on deep fried Mars bars at Chipshop.

Homemade Granola

I love commuting on the train, but it's days like these that make me really wish I drove to work.  Or that I owned a car.  My imaginary car would have a fancy remote starter so that I could warm up the car (and of course its heated seats) while I finished primping for work. 

Instead, I pile on layer after layer of sweater, jacket, scarf, earmuffs, hats, gloves and mittens.  Yes, it takes me at least five minutes to get ready to go outside.  This is funny actually, because I spend as little time outside as possible.  NJTransit has this fancy "departurevision" section on their website.  It tells me how much longer I can stay in my warm apartment before the train rolls into the station.  Love it.

So what has this winter brought me?  A smaller pants size!  Seriously.  I spent two months out of this winter completely ill.  Bronchitis, sinusitis, cold after cold.  I spent two months eating soup and orange juice, or nothing at all because "eating takes too much energy."

The cold weather has helped me keep those ten pounds off.  How you might ask?  It's too cold to go out for lunch!  Why leave my cozy office and go outside to pick up a (fill in your favorite unhealthy lunch here) when I could stay in front of my (illegal) space heater eating a salad I threw together at home.  I'm thinking I'll put back on those pounds I lost during the summer, when it's warm enough to go and get piles of Thai food for lunch.

A girl does not stay full on salad alone though.  Around four o'clock, after running around the lab for a few hours, I indulge in... yogurt!  I know, I'm so bad.  But you should totally get yourself some yogurt and make this granola. 

Can you believe that in my year of homemade everything challenges, I'm only now making my own granola!  I feel like you can throw anything in with a whole ton of oats and you've got granola.  You could be all - "Hey, I made this macadamia nut, coconut and dried jalapeno pepper granola, it's so good for you!"  Or "What?  You haven't tried the new beef jerky and fried plantain granola?"  Just put some oats with anything and BAM - granola.