The Happiness in Health

Fruits, Veggies, and Eggrolls

Ω March 16th, 2010 Ω Tagged Crofter's, eggrolls, fruits, grapes, oatmeal, peanut butter, raspberry, Saratoga Peanut Butter Company, vegetables, wattleseed Ω 15 Comments

Hi everyone! I’ve gotten so used to posting every day that the last week has felt very strange posting only every other day. Life gets so busy that I find it hard to take time out to do something that I really enjoy – but, it’s good to make time when I can!

Yesterday and today were very FULL days, so let’s run over the highlights. This morning, I tried out a new jam I picked up in Utah at the suggestion of these ladies a while back:

I was looking for a jam with minimal ingredients but rich, tart taste. This Crofter’s conserve definitely fits the bill! The ingredients are raspberries, sugar, pectin , vitamin C, and citric acid. The appearance and taste? Well, take a look:

Look at that gorgeous red. Trust me, it tastes as good as it looks.

I think I spent about 2.5 hours on my bottom in the car today. In the morning, I drove for an hour to set up a National Nutrition Month table with some of the other girls in the program at a DSS. Sadly, there were hardly any people around to talk with about healthy eating, easy recipes, and why the carrots and hummus we brought with us for them to sample are so darn tasty and good for you. No pics because, well, I forgot.

The afternoon was fun! We drove to another town about an hour away to teach a lesson on fruits and vegetables to a class of sixth graders. I was a little nervous about my first real teaching experience, but these kids were WONDERFUL! They were so nice and very sharp – when I was in sixth grade, I sure didn’t know the word “antioxidant”!

Teaching it up:

Yummy fruit & veggie cups for the kids:

Kaylan and I preparing the fruits and veggies:

Fun! I know that not all teaching experiences will be as easy or fulfilling, but this experience was a great introduction to the world of community teaching.

Since I’ve been so busy the past couple of days, Peter has been taking over the cooking. You know what he made today, master chef that he is? EGGROLLS. Yep.

Bowing to my need for veggies and my lack of need for anything deep-fried, he made a healthy version based on this recipe. The filling contains beef, chicken, ginger, scallions, and lots of cabbage.

Pressing the liquid out of the filling:

Filling the wrappers (Edited to add: 1/3 of the eggrolls had peanut butter in them, 1/3 had hoisin sauce, and 1/3 had extremely hot hot sauce in them.):

Ready to go in the oven:

The eggrolls came out of the oven crispy and flavorful (although they were not as crispy as deep-fried versions). The hot sauce eggrolls were a little much for me, but the PB and hoisin sauce eggrolls were delicious!

Served with a side of grapes (that may or may not be leftover from the teaching session today):

I’m so lucky to have a Peter to keep me awash in good food :)

Time to study for my Food Service midterm tomorrow … fun fact: did you know that the word “restaurant” originated in the 16th century to mean a food that “restores” and refers to a rich, highly-flavored meat-based soup thought capable of restoring lost strength? Me neither!

Have a nice evening!

Q: Here’s one we asked the kids today: what’s your favorite fruit and your favorite veggie?

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Predator in the Parking Lot

Ω January 26th, 2010 Ω Tagged chocolate, oatmeal, peanut butter, raspberry, Saratoga Peanut Butter Company Ω 2 Comments

By about 8:50 am, all of my school’s parking lots look like this:

[source]

Which turns me into this:

[source]

Because of the limited parking at school, I sometimes have to wait for a space to open up. As soon as I see someone walking toward his car, I pull out of my secret crevice and slowly follow the hapless student to his car.

Yes, I’m one of those people.

I was running out of time this morning, so I saved my breakfast to eat at school (in case of traffic, flooding from yesterday’s rain, lightning from the sky to punish my predatory parking behavior, etcetera, etcetera). After yesterday’s downpour, the earth and sky were scrubbed clean. So, what better to do than to take a picture of my breakfast in front of that miracle?

Whew! Look at that dirty windshield!

We had another fun day in food service. Just like last week, we split up into groups and made several dishes — this time with a Mediterranean/Mexican/Middle Eastern influence (I know, what a combination!). Here they be:

A group also made Chicken in Green Pumpkin Seed Sauce (unpictured). Kristen and I made the Green Chili with Pork. The dish contained white hominy, which is corn. Never had it before. It tasted a bit like corn tortillas.

After having lunch and then trying all these foods all afternoon, I was rolling out of the food lab! On the way home, the sunset was just calling to me to take a picture. I happily obliged:

Addendum: I woke up very early this morning with this song in my head:

Must have been those all those cookie “crumbs” I ate last night.

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