Who knew mixing 4 eggs and 2 bananas into a batter makes pretty decent little pancakes? Scott did, apparently. He made a big batch on Sunday for breakfast. We didn’t have any maple syrup, so he served it with raw honey and butter he melted in a saucepan over low heat.
And, of course, bacon. We like the Hannaford Nature’s Place uncured bacon.
It’s been one heck of a long week. Why do they seem to slow down even more as the weekend approaches??
Not much exciting on the Vorwald food scene to report. Here are some hilights:
I picked up a container of this yogurt at The Fresh Market, where I stopped on Friday for lunch. I didn’t end up eating it until Monday. It was pretty good! And the milk they use come from pastured cows. Thumbs up.
It doesn’t have any added sugar other than what is found in the honey and pear, so it isn’t as sweet as most yogurts. I like that.
I finally got around to harvesting the rest of the basil from our plant. It’s been getting pretty cool at night (around 55*) and the leaves were slightly curling and browning in some spots. I should’ve picked it all earlier, but we’ve been overloaded with basil from the CSA and we’ve been picking this plant a bit, too. It’s supposed to be in the 90s today and really nice this weekend so maybe we’ll get an encore performance from the plant. I’ve only got maybe 10 jars of pesto in the freezer, what’s a few more? 
The hilight meal of the week was corn pancakes. Apologies for the awful picture, but sometimes we eat as late as 9pm and the lights in my kitchen are not very bright. This recipe comes from Mark Bittman’s How to Eat Everything Vegetarian except we subbed the regular flour for almond meal and fried them in coconut oil. Delicious, fluffy, and they re-heat well. This is the first time we’ve made them with fresh sweet corn and the flavor is incredible.
Last, but certainly not least, bacon wrapped dates! This picture was taken about 2/3 of the way through the cooking process, right before they go under the broiler. I fell asleep shortly after I made them and they were devoured too quickly to snap a photo. Imagine them plated nicely, golden brown, and super delicious!
Bacon Wrapped Dates with Goat Cheese
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 45-50 minutes
Ingredients (as many as you want!)
Instructions
Prepare the dates by slicing them gently down the middle the long way, and remove the pit. Insert the almond into the date. (note: tell people there’s an almond inside so they don’t think it’s the pit!
Using a butter knife, slather some goat cheese into the sliced open date.
Wrap the bacon around the date. The bacon should stay securely around the date, but if you think it’s going to fall off, use a toothpick to keep everything together.
When all the dates you want to stuff and wrap are done, place them in a 9×13 baking pan with reasonably high sides. They will leak out fat and juice and whatever.
Bake at 350* for about 40 minutes, then broil (high) for about 5 minutes or until golden brown. Let them cool before you eat them! Hot cheese in your mouth isn’t pleasant, promise.
I made these for the Collar Cit Crossfit / Crossfit Beyond End of Summer Throwdown.. I can’t really imagine a more perfect recovery food than bacon and dates. If you don’t eat dairy, feel free to leave out the goat cheese. They come out just fine!
Earlier in the week, the ProFUSSor talked about his disdain for poor food photography and why he doesn’t post pictures to his blog. I think his position is totally legit. I thought about it when I took the above picture of the home made “Larabar” that Scott made before heading down to camp MMW and have been laughing about it ever since. I mean, that’s just bad. I guess I don’t have the time or patience to a) cook, b) figure out how to take attractive photos of things that look unattractive and c) actually execute a quality picture.
But I promise I’ll try. That’s all you’re going to get. dealwithit.gif
Anyway, Scott did indeed make the above home made Larabar knockoff. If you don’t know what a Larabar is, it’s a paleo-friendly granolaesque bar replacement made out of dates, nuts, and fruit. This one in particular was a complete sugar bomb, made with bananas and dark chocolate chips. A delicious sugar bomb. I don’t know where he got this particular recipe, but there are hundreds around the internet. I do remember he spent the better part of 4 hours trying to dehydrate banana chips. They dried out somewhat, but mostly goopified and sweat out some kind of goo after he left them on the counter to cool. Not sure what was up with that. Anyway, they were delicious.
I planned a vegetarian meal for Monday night – Michael Pollan’s egg hash, which can be found in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian book. I forget why I didn’t go to the gym on Monday, but I decided to get in some kettlebell work while the potatoes were frying. Scott and I prefer our potatoes near-burnt, so this took a while.
I totally forgot to take a picture of last night’s meal. I meant to do it before I ate the leftovers for lunch today, but I forgot. It was yet another “use up all the veggies, because more are coming!” meal. The recipe initially started out as stuffed mushrooms, but we’ve completely modified it to end up like a goulash or something.Here’s what we put in it:
- 1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- 1 pound sausage, nothing too heavily seasoned
- 1 shallot, diced
- 2 ears corn, removed from cobs
- 2 portobello mushroom caps, cleaned and diced,
- 1 can coconut milk
- handful of fresh basil and parsley, chopped
- sriracha, chili oil
- butter or coconut oil
I started by browning the sausage in a cast iron pan. When it was cooked, I put it on a dutch oven on the stove. Then I browned the vegetables in turn, moving them over to the dutch oven when they were browned: sweet potatoes, mushrooms, peppers with shallot, corn covered in 2 tablespoons or so of hot chili oil, and portobello mushrooms (give them room to sweat!). I put the coconut milk and herbs in the dutch oven about half way through browning the veggies so it could absorb the flavors. When the veggies were done, I squirted a generous amount of sriracha in it, reduced the heat, covered it, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.
We didn’t know what was going to happen when we made this. The sausage we had was mild Italian, and I was worried the typical strong fennel flavor would clash. But it came out great. I’m a sucker for coconut milk and sweet potato anything, honestly.
In other news, I deadlifted 220×5 on Wednesday! I’m pretty excited. I want to break 300# for my one rep max. My back is paying for it today – I could feel my back rounding toward the end – but with stretching and mobility I’m doing much better than I was before I started PT. Today’s WOD at the gym is the Torture Jar! It’s pouring, so at least running is out, which is good. Happy Friday!
Finally, the Ancestral Health Symposium is happening this weekend at Harvard. You can follow along on twitter by following #AHS12. I heard that many of the lectures will be posted on Sunday night online. Looking forward to watching them. Interesting stuff!
Hi, I'm KT. I like to eat, cook, lift heavy things and take pictures. I live in the Upper Hudson Valley with my husband, two cats, and dog, and I love it here. This blog details my everyday minutae and adventures around the area and beyond.
© 2013 ktvorwald. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Designed by 
