Super-Light Gameday Favorites

 The number one resolution made on January 1, 2014 was to lose weight.  Like most of America, I also made the resolution to get fit.  But unlike most people, I decided to approach the new year aiming to get healthy instead of just losing weight.  Interestingly enough, staying fit and healthy was number 5 on the list of the top ten resolutions (according to the University of Scranton).  I kinda caught the nutrition bug when I started taking a nutrition class at Grand Rapids Community College and I love it! Nutrition is a really interesting field to explore.  Since I'm in the Secchia Institute program, we are focusing on how we, as chefs, can create meals that are balanced and full of nutritious foods that customers will actually order off of a menu.

Photo courtesy of nationalharbor.com

 Many people only stick to their resolutions during the first couple weeks or so and most people don't even make it through January.  I wonder why people give up so easily? Maybe its because of all the fad diets that don't provide you with a balanced diet.  If you aren't consuming a diet consisting of protein, fats, and yes carbs, you are bound to begin to feel lethargic.  As I was flipping through the January/February 2014 issue of the Food Network Magazine, I came across the In the Know section which contained a very interesting fact.  The Food Network did a poll on Facebook and found that chocolate is the number one temptation for people to stop their resolutions.  That isn't that hard to believe though, I love chocolate!  But as long as we eat it in moderation, or with a balanced diet paired with physical activity its okay!

Keep checking the blog to see an upcoming post about this crowd pleasing favorite Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake!

 To help me stay on track, I downloaded this free app, myFitnessPal.  They have apps for both Apple and Android phones.  The set up is simple, just put in your height and weight and how much you either want to gain or lose (because everyone wants to gain weight).  It will then give you a recommended calorie count for each day in order for you to achieve your goal.  I simply plug in what I'm eating each day for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks and it calculates how many total calories I've eaten.  Also, if I made it to the gym that day, I can easily look up the elliptical exercise on the cardio tab and plug in the number of minutes I did.  I really like it because it subtracts the calories you exercised from what you've eaten, allowing you to eat more!  Then, at the end of each day, you click the "finish logging for today" button, and it will tell you that if everyday was like today, you would weigh this many pounds in 5 weeks.  I've been sticking to this for about 2 weeks and I've already lost 2 pounds!

 It's really important to me that I stick to this healthy regime because summer is coming soon and I'm ready for some warmer weather! With the Superbowl being today and all, it can be hard to say no to the hot wings and seven layer taco dips and piled-high nachos.  I scoured Pinterest and Google looking for healthier options that I could complete last-minute, since I started looking yesterday. After scrolling for hours, and many debates with my guy about what everyone will actually eat and like, we decided on a taco bar! I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner!  It was an especially good idea because Meijer has a lot of specials going on for the Superbowl.

Photo Courtesy of tireball.com

 Heres some tips to help you have an awesome taco bar at your party!

 -Get lean ground beef, preferably 90-10 ratio.  It's an easy way to cut down on calories without sacrificing taste because of the taco seasoning.
 -If you're like me (a college student with her very first apartment) you probably don't have all of the necessary individual spices for taco meat just laying around.  Thats why I got a taco seasoning package which has just enough for our taco meat today and only cost 54 cents!
 -Buy a head of lettuce instead of precut mixes.  It doesn't take much lettuce to complete a taco bar and a head of lettuce is usually at least half the price of the mixes.
 -We chose the smaller variety of taco shells because they are only 110 calories for 2 shells (and they were on sale!).
 -You can do a lot of prep work ahead of time.  For example, I diced the tomatoes, minced some onions, shredded some lettuce, and cutting up carrots, celery, and broccoli to add some healthier options instead of chips with our tacos, last night.

In terms of actually setting up the taco bar, there are many different ways to arrange your toppings.  I saw a really cute idea on Pinterest! They saved jars from items like pickles and salsa, washed them out, removed the stickers, and put their fresh ingredients, like tomatoes and onions, inside with a spoon.  For other ideas for taco bars as well as other themed parties, check out my Party Ideas board or my Game Day board on Pinterest!  Above is how our taco bar turned out.  I'm sure that if I planned a little more in advance, I could've made it a little prettier but its okay because it tasted great!  And most of all, be sure to enjoy the game with those you love.

Enjoy!

The Final Countdown

Hello fellow bloggers.  I'd like to apologize for my long absence from the blogosphere.  Believe it or not I did have a couple posts drafted up but I ran out of time to finish them before they became irrelevant.  However, I believe that with each new year, even a new school year, is a chance to start over.  So here we go!

This term is especially excitingly nerve-racking for me as my official graduation date is November 23, 2013.  That's this year!! In like 3 months!  The past year has gone by so fast and I can't believe that I'm about to earn a degree.  This wasn't always the plan though.  Originally, when I graduated high school in 2012, last year I guess......, I intended on completing the Bachelors program in Baking and Pastry.  As I moved rather quickly through the Associates program, which is required before the Bachelors program, I realized that college is very expensive and so is opening a bakery.  With that in mind, I started researching other colleges to find a managerial program at a cheaper price.  Don't get me wrong, I have loved every second at Johnson and Wales, minus the obvious distance from my loved ones.  I have gotten to know one of my best friends and learned valuable skills for the food industry.  I hope that my decision to continue my education closer to home will benefit me in the long run.

This term I've had the unique opportunity to become involved in a new cooperative housing option with Johnson and Wales.  It's called the Centennial House, which is fitting considering this year JWU is celebrating 100 years and this Fall is the first time the house is open and available to students.  I'm really excited to spend a couple months in this house.  Also, that means that I get to post more while I'm at school because we have this beautiful kitchen!

The first recipe I have for this school year is very simple and relatively cheap.  You only need three ingredients!  It's the perfect late night snack, or post workout meal.

Protein Sandwich
Yield: 1 sandwich

You will need:

2 slices of whole grain bread
Peanut butter
1 banana
Nutella

Directions:

Spread peanut butter on one slice of bread.  Slice the banana on top, covering as much as possible.  Spread Nutella on the other slice of bread.  Squish the two pieces of bread together and enjoy!!

Wrights Dairy Farm

Field trips in high school were always something to look forward too.  It meant not having to sit in a desk for 8 hours or turning in homework or even taking a test or quiz.  In college, field trips aren't really field trips, except for the fact that they are still exciting!

The Pastry Club here at JWU traveled the 16.2 miles from our Harborside Campus to the Wrights Dairy Farm in Smithfield, Rhode Island.  The bus ride was nice, and the whole group was in good spirits, the only damper on the day was that it was raining.  Not just like a little drizzle of precipitation, it was a torrential downpour.

Earlier that morning, my roommate Kristina and I were getting ready to head out and meet the group at the bus stop.  She was wearing jeans and a nice shirt because I had told her to look cute as I was going to be taking pictures for this post.  She hates getting her picture taken by the way.  So, when she asked me what shoes she should wear, I was only thinking of her outfit, not of the weather.  Plus tennis shoes wouldn't have looked very nice with her peacoat.  So I recommended that she wear her black flip flops instead.

As soon as we left the dorm, she shot me a glare.  The rain was not to the downpour stage yet, but she still had to step in several unavoidable puddles.  Even though her feet were wet, she was not alone.  I had been thinking of my outfit as well, so I wore my nice, fairly new Sperrys.  My toes were wet almost immediately.

When we arrived, we hurried off the bus and huddled under the overhang on the side of the bakery.  The rain had increased in intensity by then.  We then met our wonderful tour guide, the daughter of the owner of the Wrights farm.  She led us, with our umbrellas in tow, over to the open barn where they keep the dairy cattle.  On the way over, we stepped carefully around a suspiciously smelly pile of "mud" and in several puddles.  Needless to say, we were kicking ourselves over our poor shoe choice.

Inside the airy barn, cows were everywhere!  Imagine that.  The rain was coming in through the opening down the middle of the roof, making the center of the ground a muddy mess.

Some of the cows were pretty shy, backing away when we approached with an outstretched hand.

On the contrary, some of the cows were too friendly.  I was taking a picture of Kristina, and while she was smiling at me, the cow licked her lapel!

I can tell this cow was very excited to be taking a picture with me, she even turned her head!  They were smelly, but it was cool to go see the whole process of how we get our morning milk.

This is where the cows are feed.  They feed on hay that the farm produces in the fields behind the barn.

There were so many cows!

This is where they keep the baby cows, the calves if you will.  Aren't they cute??  Here, this is a closer look.

Each fenced in area held two calves, and the calves shared a pod and a water and food pail.  They are taken away from their mothers within the first 4 days of their lives because otherwise it would be extremely hard to separate them.

Right next to the pods of calves, we traveled into a large building that houses all of the milking equipment.

The cows back into the stalls and their heads are held in place by a little lock on their collar.  They are milked everyday at 3 AM and 3 PM.

This is the bottler machine.  The bottles go down the ramp and get filled with the milk and then a cap is pressed securely on the top, sealing the bottle.  

Next, we traveled into the bakery portion of the farm.  It was like we had died and gone to heaven.  The smell of fresh whipped dream and warm cookies was intoxicating.

Look at the size of these mixers! I want one so bad.  Perhaps someday...

Kristina was excited too.  Maybe a little too excited....

There was everything you could dream of in this tiny kitchen.  These raw almond horns looked delish.

And look at the perfect dome on these cupcakes!

                

These are just a couple pictures of the section of the bakery where they put the finishing touches on the products before they go out to the selling floor.

And this, this is heaven.  Or its behind the counter of the store front, but who's asking?

Here is a couple employees wrapping the wonderful homemade caramel apples.

This is the infamous chocolate milk from Wrights.  Now normally, I don't really enjoy chocolate milk.  It's something about the whole concept of drinking milk with chocolate in it rather than the taste.  However, I will admit that this chocolate milk is THE best chocolate milk I have ever had.  It was rich but not overbearing, creamy but not thick, a cloud of chocolate in every swig.

And it comes in a half gallon, or this cute personal size.

I also grabbed one of their fresh apple dumplings.  It was amazing!  The crust was flaky yet moist and as soon as you broke the skin, this rich cinnamon apple ooze poured from every hole, soaking the flaky crust in every bite.

The apple itself was tender and moist, housing a sort of cream cheese-almond-cinnamon-sugar filling in its core-less core.  I was in love!

It was gone within 3 minutes.
I also purchased a few items to send back home for my guy to enjoy as well as a couple sweet things for myself. We then traveled down the road a ways to the gift shop and resteraunt.

They had Vera Bradley!!! That automatically makes them a really good store.

This is what a typical meal looks like family style.  

This is the Pastry Club Crew trudging back to the bus after a long day.

This is the way an eclair should be filled, to the brim with homemade cream.

I had a wonderful time at Wright's Dairy Farm and I plan on returning very soon!

The State House at Night

This is the Rhode Island State house,

at night.

Isn't it so pretty???

Here, here's a closer look.

Trust me, it's heavier than it looks.

Last weekend, my roommates and I were bored so we decided to go exploring.  One of my roomies is from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which is about 15 minutes away from campus.  She goes to Providence all the time so she showed us around.  

We went to Thayer Street first which is the place to be on the weekends.  There are so many people everywhere on that 5 block street.  Theres everything you can think of; fro yo, chinese food, indie thrift stores, food trucks, and hookah bars.  (I've never heard of hookah bars before but a lot of college kids go to them all the time.  It's pretty much like smoking tobacco i guess...maybe...here's a reliable definition.)

My roommate that's from Pawtucket works in a food truck during the summer called Mijos.  We went there to get some yummy yummy tacos!! At first I was a little apprehensive because, well, it's food out of a truck!  But she ordered for me and I got two tacos pollo, which is tacos with chicken.  Let me tell you, these tacos were amazing!! They came on tortilla rounds that were probably 2 inches in radius and they were topped with fresh pico de gallo and fresh cilantro.  I was in heaven!! And then we got fro yo from FroWorld, and you can make your own dish which of course was delicious!! 

I can't wait to explore the cuisine here a little more.  You can't find food like this in St. Joe.  I wish I would've taken a picture of the truck, but I'll probably go back soon.  Maybe even this weekend!