July Book Club

As you all know by now, our monthly book club get-togethers are just a thinly veiled excuse to eat!

This month we all read The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I highly recommend it! Not to give too much away, but it takes place primarily in North Africa, which is often culinarily lumped together with the Middle East . So we decided to have a North African/Middle-Eastern themed potluck.

Our lovely hostess did the amazing chicken/veggie kababs, as well as provided pita chips with hummus and baba ghanoush. I did couscous, and our friends brought mango key lime pie, the ingredients for fruit salad, and sfouf, which is a Lebanese cake.


All ready to eat! Except the sfouf, which was baking away.





Chicken and vegetable kababs





Couscous with herbs and spices -- olive oil, parsley, mint, turmeric, paprika, cumin, za'atar, and some other stuff I don't remember. Sorry for the crappy blurry picture, I must have been excited about the food!





The BEST fruit salad -- raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, nectarines, and plums, all mixed with honey, lime juice, fresh mint, and cinnamon.






Mango-Key Lime Pie -- soo good!







Sfouf - semolina turmeric cake. Fun to say, fun to eat!

Slight change in plans . . .

The wedding was absolutely beautiful and it was great to see all my family, even those who traveled all the way from Bangladesh to be there. Loved it all.

Mr. Spice and I drove up to Memphis from Atlanta on Friday and got there a few hours before that night's pre-wedding ceremony started. Saturday night was the wedding and we had the whole day to ourselves. We ran some errands and then set out to have some Memphis barbecue! One of Mr. Spice's friends had recommended a place, but it looked like a lot of driving, so we wanted to find somewhere else. I am a huge Food Network dork and love watching Down Home with the Neelys -- they are so cute! Just for kicks I looked up their restaurant and it turned out one of the locations wasn't that far from our hotel. Off we went. I didn't take pics because you know how Mr. Spice is about taking pics in restaurants. But I can tell you it was pretty dang good. Mr. Spice got the pulled pork and I got the smoked turkey. Both of our plates were piled high with food and we didn't make a dent in them.

Anyway, so the original plan was that we'd drive back to Atlanta on Sunday. However, I found out last week that my dad has to have some tests done on his heart later this week to test for blockage. I tend to worry about everything anyway, but I asked my mom if they wanted me to come out to help out and all that since I'm currently not working. They both said they would like that, so I ended up driving back home with my parents to Kansas yesterday. Not sure how long I will be here, at least a week though.

I was kinda hoping I'd get to do some cooking with my mom and learn some new stuff or even cook for them, but it looks like they're both on a health kick and aren't really cooking a lot. Pooey. But at least it'll help me stay on track food-wise! We stocked up on fresh fruit, veggies, soy milk, veggie burgers, etc. And I might as well post some of my daily eats while I'm here, so I'll start us off with today's lunch:


In the little bowl: fresh blueberries and strawberries

On my plate: sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, Boca Chik'n patty on 2 slices of Nature's Own Double Fiber bread, a slice of pepperjack, and some sriracha. The plate is from my poor grad school days, but my mom keeps it around for me to use when I visit. Gotta love that Corelle! :)

If I get a chance to cook anything yummy, you can be sure I'll post it!

A Boca-licious Lunch!

Boy was I happy when I saw a bunch of Boca products on sale at Publix for 5 for $10! I stocked up on the "chicken" patties, crumbles, and a couple others, such as the Savory Mushroom Mozzarella patty. So good, so easy, and so healthy!

Anyway, the most productive thing I've managed to do all morning is to exercise. I have had Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred dvd forever and have only done the level 1 workout a few times. I'm determined to graduate to levels 2 and 3. For only a 20 minute workout, it's pretty intense! So not surprisingly, I worked up quite an appetite for lunch.


I cooked up a lot of pasta the other night, so I had plenty of leftovers to work with. I know the bowl doesn't look so nice and pretty, but I was starving! So I have 1.5 cups of vermicelli pasta, 1 big handful of spinach, 1 Boca Savory Mushroom Mozzarella patty, 1/2 cup Classico Spicy Tomato & Basil sauce, some crushed red pepper, and some shredded Parmesan cheese.

So that's it for now. I need to find something else productive to do this afternoon -- snacks and dinner are undecided yet, but we're doing a movie night at home so definitely something quick.

Have a good afternoon!

Craving Chinese

I apologize in advance for the wacky photo formatting -- I sometimes have trouble getting a good pic of my food and I haven't really learned how to edit them. But I hope they at least show how yummy my food is!

I've been bento-ing sporadically the past month - it's tax season and my time and motivation are limited. I'll try to post as often as I can.

Tomorrow's lunch will be Trader Joe's frozen chicken fried rice in the top tier, and a Van's chicken eggroll, some edamame, and a little fishie sauce container filled with soy sauce.

The frozen fried rice is not too bad -- the serving size is 1 cup for about 200 calories. I usually supplement it with some broccoli slaw, soy sauce, and sambal oelek. The eggrolls are a tried and true repeat purchase. They're about 140 calorie per roll and don't taste low-fat at all. All in all this is a pretty easy and healthy way for me to assuage my frequent Chinese food cravings.

Everybody Bento!

Maybe I'm slow to the trends, but I have finally discovered the world of bento. Indeed, I've almost become obsessed, since I've spent the last week or so drooling over various bento blogs and trolling Ebay for cute bento boxes.

I've even made a few attempts at packing lunches this past week. They are nowhere near as creative and artistic as other posts, but to me they look colorful, healthy, and yummy. And in the end I guess that's what matters to me.

This first picture probably isn't the best, but I was
excited about making my first attempt that day. It's just
steamed gyoza on a bed of lettuce in the bottom tier, and then sliced carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes in the upper tier.


This one is my second attempt. Still haven't got the hang of packing the box right, but again, it looks very colorful and healthy.

Inside we have steamed broccoli and fresh carrot slices in the left compartment. To the right we have garlicky brown rice with green onion garnish and three spicy koftas. I was on a roll that Sunday -- I steamed a ton of broccoli, made the garlicky brown rice, and made kofta! Go me!

I was afraid this wouldn't be enough for me at lunch, but having a variety of tastes and colors really did satisfy me more than I thought. And to be honest, I did pack a 100-calorie pack of cookies for dessert, so that definitely helped. :D



This is bento #3. I actually got made fun of at lunch time for this one! One of the partners at my company looked at it and announced, "Now here's when you know you're an accountant! When your lunch is all compartmentalized and organized!" I took it all in good humor. Of course when I told the hubby about it, he did snicker a bit. Pfft. Anyway, the upper tier on the left contains sliced plum, blueberries, and carrot slices. The bottom tier on the right contains more steamed broccoli and spicy kofta. To round it out we have some pulao I'd made with beef broth, which accounts for the brown color of the rice. Should have made it with chicken broth.



This is bento #4 from last week. Can you tell how obsessed I was? Not only had I dragged the hubby to a huge Asian grocery store on the other side of Atlanta that weekend, but then I hit up Container Store for faux bento boxes AND I drove out to a little Korean gift shop during the week for the box on the right. It's cute though, it has these black and white pigs on the cover. Should have posted a pic of the lid.

Anyway, on the left we have steamed frozen gyoza with some steamed broccoli. On the right, I made some ramen, rinsed in cold water to get it to cool down, then added some seasoning mix, steamed broccoli, broccoli slaw mix, green onion, and sliced up some corned beef or pastrami lunch meat for some protein and color. Note to self: cold ramen is nasty, but it looked good!


And here is the final bento from last week. I wasn't even planning on packing lunch on Friday since we were planning to go "away" to a bed and breakfast in the Virginia Highlands area of Atlanta for the weekend to celebrate our 3rd anniversary.

So in all its glory in disposable Gladware we have steamed white rice, a cute diagonal border of steamed broccoli (will I ever finish this??), and some leftover Japanese curry made with potatoes and chicken. I used the S&B Golden Curry roux blocks to make it. Not too bad, I must admit. It's quite a bit thicker and sweeter than when I make traditional Indian-style curry, but this was very good hot over rice with some spicy mango pickle to round it out. I was scared to pack the curry in my cute containers in case they got stained, so I sacrificed the disposable container. This was probably one of the better tasting lunches I packed this week, no doubt because it had spices and stuff in it. Yum yum!

I'm chalking it up to being all gung-ho the first week, but I really am proud of myself for packing lunch most of last week. It does take planning ahead and having stuff ready to go, so it really depends on how organized I am on the weekend about making stuff ahead of time. I don't know how often I will make them or take pics and post them, but I've enjoyed myself. And I have a feeling once I get the boxes I ordered off Ebay there will be more pics to come!