Sproutin' Around

Thanksgiving is one of the most eagerly awaited holidays of the entire year. Although when you are vegetarian, it becomes a little harder to be as excited about this holiday when one of the largest aspects of it (Turkey) gets taken off the table. But of course, thanksgiving isn't about just the food - its about giving thanks, being with family friends and loved ones in general. Its about taking the time to be grateful, to be optimistic, and to be genuine. And as a college student, its about taking home your weight in laundry, and realizing that you are absolutely dumbfounded for where your entire fall semester has gone... and that you have a very small amount of time to get your grades up.

I am extremely lucky to grow up with a family that lets me cook (even when it isn't that good), and gives me constant feedback on how everything went. This thanksgiving was nothing short of that. One of my favorite vegetables is brussels sprouts, and I know many of you just questioned my sanity  but HEAR ME OUT! I promise you these little things are extremely versatile and you can honestly make them with so many different additions, that you will forget what they looked like when you started.

Ingredients
2 cups of brussels sprouts
3 table spoons olive oil
salt/peppers
figs (i used dried because fresh are not in season!)

Preheat your oven to 325F and start washing and cutting your sprouts. After cutting off the bottom, I choose to cut each one into four in hopes of upping my quantities. On a baking sheet, distribute your oil evenly and make sure you don't have any excess!! Extra oil when trying to roast vegetables is the absolute worst thing in the entire world!! Throw on your brussels sprouts and try to make sure they are layed out evenly. Set your timer for 10 minutes, and get a pot of boiling water going so you can rehydrate your dried figs. Once your water is boiled, throw in your dried figs so that way you can get them to not have as much of a chewy texture and can make more usage out of them. After, add them to your baking sheet with your sprouts hanging out in the oven - that way the figs can roast and become even more tender - let out some juice to add even more flavor to the brussels sprouts and just in general be amazing. After about 10 more minutes of roasting, everything should be ready to go. Add salt, pepper and chilli flakes and I promise you won't regret it.

Faux Cheesesteak

I guess its safe to say that senioritis doesn't apply to just my academics, but also applies to blogging. But here we are folks, back at it one more time!

Originally being from the NJ/NY area my entire life, things that remind me of home include bagels and crispy pizza. After having lived in Pennsylvania for four years, its safe to say that your eyes open up to what other cities are extremely well known for. Knowing several people (half of Penn State) who are from the Philadelphia area, and who would commit felonies for their cheesesteaks from home - I decided to give them a try. Obviously being a vegetarian that wasn't really an option, so here is my take on a cheesesteak.

Since everyone's specific taste profile to their cheesesteak, or any sandwich for that matter is pretty diverse - you really have a lot of wiggle room for the tastes that you want your sandwich to have. I guess this is a great time to show off my favorite faux meat brand.
Personally, I use this brand for almost any faux meat I cook!

Ingredients
a handful of vegetarian chicken
1 bell pepper
1/2 onion
1-2 hoagie (keeping with the phillyness) roll
American cheese or Mozzarella cheese
mayo/siracha
salt/pepper



















In a small pan, start cooking your vegetarian chicken. Assume that you are going to cook it 95% completely before chopping it up and throwing it in with your sauteeing vegetables. Dice up your onions and peppers and in a separate pan (sorry more dishes!),  throw them in and let them feel the heat. Keep your stove on low to medium, and make sure you are checking on your veggie chicken! Don't forget about it! In your vegetable pan, add in your salt and pepper and make sure you keep mixing things around - you want everything to get an equal amount of heat. Once your veggie chicken has cooked, on a cutting board - shred it, dice it, whatever you want - but try to get it to be the same size as what your vegetables are. Throw it into the same pan where you have been sweating down your vegetables. Throw in the siracha sauce and let everyone get to know one another. As this is happening, make sure you are toasting your bread!

I unfortunately only had shredded cheese on hand, so I decided to throw it into the same pan that the rest of my dinner was cooking in. Letting it melt, I made sure to keep mixing the chicken and vegetables around so nothing was sticking to the pan. Once the bread was toasted, I added a little bit of mayo to the bottom of the roll and layered on my cheesesteak and added a little extra cheese on top.

Dummy Donuts

Can I be more obvious as to what this post is going to be about from the title? I hope you guys aren't struggling to figure it out... so donuts are something where you just can't go wrong. You can get them sweet, spicy, savory - any type of way your taste is feeling. I spent some time researching a variety of different recipes that I thought would be perfect to make my own homemade donuts. Trust me, there are a lot of ways to make donuts - but this is MY way. Obviously, because its me - this recipe is eggless (WAHOO!). My goal for this recipe is to show you guys that even the hardest things can be done at home, without spending hours slaving away in the kitchen. Although donuts are a little more technically oriented, even if you mess up - you could basically just create your own type of donut and surprise all of your tasters.

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablesoons (1 packet) dry active yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Glaze:
confectioner sugar
milk
**any extra items you would like to flavor** 

Mix together all of your wet ingredients, slowly incorporating the flour about 1/2 cup at a time. Make sure you using your spoon to get everything off the sides of your bowl - no ingredients left behind! Once all of your ingredients are in the bowl, you have to start getting your hands involved. Remember, this is a dough - not a batter! Treat it that way! Push, pull, kneed - everything you can do to make sure this dough is soft and elastic. Once its reached the right consistency, keep it on the bowl, grease it up a little and cover it. Put it somewhere that is a little warmer than room temperature, perhaps the oven or the microwave.

Once your dough has rested and risen, you'll know - I promise. Poke the dough and if you're poke mark is still there - you are good to go! FLOUR your countertop, or whatever you are rolling your dough out on. FLOUR FLOUR FLOUR. The cutting board or the countertop doesn't want to eat your dough, but without flouring it - it will. Roll it out to about 2 inches thick, about the length of your fingernail is how thick the dough should be. Use whatever kind of a cutter you have, if you have any kind of pasta bottle top or an actual donut cutter - just start cutting. Make sure you cut out the centers too!

You can either fry or bake your donuts. THATS RIGHT. You don't have to fry them for them to be delicious!!!! If you choose to fry them, make sure you do them low and slow. About a low to medium flame, trying to get the frying temperature at 300 degrees F. If you are baking, grease your pan and crank up your oven to 375 F for about 15 minutes, but keep an eye on them because you don't want them to brown and burn.



















I did two different glazes, one was a plain old sugar glaze, and the other was a vanilla saffron glaze. A glaze is super simple to make, take about a cup of confectioner sugar and then 3 tablespoons milk and mix it together. Throw in about half a tablespoon to a tablespoon vanilla extract and that is your basic sugar glaze! I topped mine off with some sprinkles (celebrating the birthday week!!!!), and the other donuts are the same simple glaze with saffron mixed in with about a drop of yellow food coloring.

Stay Juicin': The Review

So as promised, I wanted to provide an honest review to the juice cleanse that I posted about earlier this week. First and foremost let me say that everything I say in this post is in my personal opinion and is not for any reason to be understood otherwise.

My goal for this cleanse was not to lose weight, it was meant to push me into wanting to eat better and generally be healthier, which for some reason - I forget to do in the summer. This cleanse was pretty difficult to be honest, it was definitely more difficult than I anticipated it being. My first recommendation would be to eat a little less a few days going into the cleanse. It was unnecessarily painful to get through my working day when I had a splitting headache around 330pm because my stomach thought this cleanse was some kind of punishment. But on the other hand, I also was not allowed to have my regular cup of coffee that day so that could also be a significant reason for this headache.

Some of the juices were definitely hard to take down, since I am not the biggest fan of kale or collard greens in in the first place. I think what I enjoyed most about this cleanse was the variety of ingredients that were used; In each juice, I could taste all of the flavors that were highlighted on the bottle. It reminded me how much I love vegetables and fruits and how stupid it is that I have been lacking in my intakes this summer (odd considering I am a vegetarian). My favorite one of the entire day was Fuel, which has the carrots pineapple and orange. Second favorite was definitely Vanilla Cloud, the nutmeg and cinnamon combination was absolutely fantastic and the drink was super light especially since it was meant to be dessert. The juice that was the hardest to go down was Fiji, that lemon-ginger hits you and hits you HARD. I am not a fan of ginger so the minute that taste hit my tongue, I had had enough of the juice.

Final recommendation: Try it. Take my notes into consideration, but don't assume you are going to love it and don't assume you are going to hate it. I have learned after this juice cleanse, that juicing just isn't for me. I could definitely do it on my own, but I wouldn't want to buy these bottles and risk having to plug and chug because of one or two tastes (cough ginger cough).
 So all in all...
1) do your research: pick the juice cleanse that you think fits you best. there are hundreds on hundreds of different brands you can try, so don't feel limited to the few that you've heard a lot about from social media!
 2) check your wallet: these juice cleanses can easily be $50 a DAY. You have to really be prepared to know that these juices are your meals, and the money you spend - if you decide to skip a bottle or not complete the cleanse - you can't be upset when your money is wasted.
3) take the chance: even if you don't like some ingredients in the cleanse, look at the broader picture. what is your goal? whats the point of not eating for an day and just consuming these liquids for you? Have a goal in mind. Set targets. Achieve them.

Happy Thursday

Stay Juicin'

One of the most recent eating trends that I have seen people blogging about has been juice cleanses. It took me a while to get an understanding of what exactly juicing was, and how it was different than previous trends of temporary weight loss / detox. To my understanding, most people don't do this to lose weight - its mostly considered to be a "feel better" kind of harmony where after a prolonged period of eating not as healthy as usual - this cleanse can kind of be your starting point to getting back into your healthy eating habits. Commonly used around the holiday time, I can see how this easily became a summer trend with hundreds of different cleanse recipes available online with multiple different styles, lengths and prices coming from different brands.

You can't judge a book by its cover so after a solid amount of research, I found a juice cleanse that I was interested in giving a try. For my first cleanse (hopefully not my last!) I am trying the Suja Original Fresh Start. It was one of the more convenient ones for me considering the price and the ability to pick it up at my local Whole Foods rather than getting it shipped to my apartment. The cost was definitely a huge factor for me as shipping was almost the same price as the juices themselves...
There are 6 juices per day that seem to be filled with different fruits, vegetables and other things such as nuts and coconut flakes. 

1-day cleanse

As nervous as I am, I am just as excited to give this cleanse a shot. I hope that cleansing lives up to all that I have heard from it, and I hope that I made the right decision with the brand that I went with. If all goes well, I hope to juice once a month just to remind my body that these things are the essentials.  After I complete the juice, I'll let you guys know how it went!

Are you hungry yet?

Well, this is awkward. Two months have gone by and I swear I have not forgotten about one of my favorite things in the entire world (blogging obviously) - I have just been caught up figuring out some of the other equally important things in my life. After finishing off junior year of  college, setting journey abroad for a 3 week getaway to India and then temporarily moving to Philadelphia for my internship - here we are. It gives me an excessive amount of uneasiness to think back how quickly the last two months have gone by... from being bitter about missing my cousins wedding due to final exams (still bitter btw), flying internationally alone for the first time (shout-out to the international drinking age), and moving into a brand new city for an internship I never thought I had (HR ladies and gentlemen) - I think these last few months have been the prime example of that thing that everyone talks about, growing up I believe they call it and how it affects everyone whether they like it or not.

Through this post, I want to walk you through the last few months of eating I have had. The memories that I have attached to all this food, and the endless amount of people I owe to being able to eat all this food.

 I now promise that the time I spend in Philadelphia, I will make sure to document everything (because as if I don't do that already) and make sure I post dishes that I eat that, and get your creative juices flowing as to how you can replicate that dish in your kitchen - anytime, anywhere.

Lotus Hut Cold Coffee (Indore)

Cream Stone Concepts (Hyderabad)

FYI Maggi: 23 types of Maggi (Indore)

Jalebi (Sarafa Bazaar - Indore)

Ghatiyaa Chaat (Sarafa Bazaar - Indore)

Mad Over Donuts (Bombay)

Paneer Tikka Pizza/Veggie Lovers Pizza (Dominos- Indore)

masala pav (Bombay)

Lemon Marscapone French Toast with Fresh berries

Vegetable Dumplings

Naan Pizza

I mean if you couldn't tell already from the title of this post, I recently made naan pizza and not gonna lie it was one of the most delicious dinners I have ever cooked myself! It was definitely one of the most simple recipes I have ever created and I definitely think its possible to recreate in any college kitchen! Its filling, a great way to clean your vegetable drawer and absolutely deeeeelicious!

Ingredients
Naan (or flatbread)
pasta sauce (any kind just not alfredo)
cheese
any veggies you like on pizza


So make sure you cut up all your vegetables and have them ready to go. Grease your baking sheet and place your naan on it and have them in the oven for 2 minutes on 350 degrees. Just to defrost it and to get it crispy before everything goes on. Then just make it like any other pizza... add the sauce, put your veggies and then add your cheese! I love biting into pizza and having vegetables come with the cheese and not all of the entire top coming off. Pop it back in the oven for about 6 minutes on 350 degrees and then make sure to check on it. If you like your cheese a little crispy then put your oven on broil for two minutes and then make sure to keep an eye on it! I love putting hot sauce on my pizza so definitely keep that on side ready to go for you once you put your pizza on the plate! Let me know how you make yours! The pictures I have are my pizza and my roommates pizza!

Chobani Pancakes

I guess it's safe to say that some things are worth waiting for. After a difficult spring semester of a lot of personal, social, and educational developments - we are back in business. A hungover Saturday morning, a necessity for breakfast and some random cravings brought this delicious recipe together. Its a very classic breakfast necessity but with a sophisticated twist. I guess you could consider my roommates and I some broke college students without the bare necessities in our fridge - milk, and eggs. Chobani pancakes are a great way to kick start your morning, not only can you make delicious fluffy pancakes but you can also add some protein to your breakfast where you might not have thought of it before.

Follow through with any other box mix but don't add the milk or the eggs - add water and a carton of whichever Chobani yogurt you think would be the most delicious. For my roommates,  I used blueberry and strawberry Chobani (in separate batches) and it worked out super well! They are a little less sweet so you might need to add on some syrup on top.

Ingredients
Pancake mix
any flavor of Chobani yogurt
water






In a bowl mix together the pancake mix, your flavor of chobani and water. Make sure the batter is a liquid consistency where you can still be able to pour it onto a hot pan but not liquid where its like running water. Make sure your pan is on medium heat, where you hear a sizzle when the batter hits the pan. Make sure you keep an eye on the pan so it doesn't burn the pancakes! When you start to see air bubbles form on the top of the pancakes, its time to flip! Make sure you are using a greased spatula so you can flip the pancakes properly without ripping them or breaking them in the middle. Enjoy your breakfast and I hope it was delicious as mine!