Dark Chocolate Turtles

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

I hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday!

Here’s a little snack that I brought to my family Christmas party yesterday. These tasty turtle bites are just a little bit of an indulgence before gettin’ serious about healthy eating when the New Year comes.

Between prep and cooking, these babies only take a few minutes until you can shovel them into your mouth by the handful.

This recipe was adapted from SELF magazine.

INGREDIENTS:

16 mini whole wheat pretzels

16 dark chocolate-covered caramels (like Rolos)

16 pecan halves

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Place wax-paper on a baking sheet. Spread pretzels on the baking sheet.

Plop a chocolate caramel on the center of each pretzel.

Cook in the oven for 2 minutes – you want the chocolate caramels to be a little soft, but not too melty!

Remove tray from oven and add pecan halves on the top of each chocolate covered pretzel.

Put the tray in the freezer for 10 minutes to harden.

Super easy and delicious. Yum!

Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

19Dec2012

Miss Shirley’s Cafe

Posted in Food, Restaurants, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

When I made plans to go to brunch on Sunday with my dear old friend Nancy and some buddies in Baltimore, I secretly hoped we would go to my FAVORITE place in the entire city.

I knew I could count on Nancy to feel the exact same way that I do about Miss Shirley’s Cafe.

Sometimes there can be a long wait, but on Sunday we were in luck and snagged a table right away.

Please observe the best bread in the world:

Yes, that is bread. A.k.a. the most delicious giant cinnamon bun around.

Nancy kept warning me, “This is not clean eating…this is not clean eating!”

Sometimes you just gotta eat dirty.

Nancy went big and got the house special recognized by Food Network: Shirley’s Affair with Oscar.

The menu lists it as: 5 oz. Beef Tenderloin filet, topped with Asparagus, Jumbo Crab Meat & Hollandaise Sauce, on Fried Green Tomatoes & Savory Grits with Diced Bacon, dusted with Old Bay.

shirley'saffairwithoscar

Nance liked it, but kind of wished she had ordered her usual, chicken and waffles.

Thanks for letting me annoyingly take pictures of your food, guys. 🙂

I couldn’t decide what to get! There were so many dishes I wanted to order (and that’s sayin’ something, coming from me.)

I finally settled on the Chesapeake Club.

Jumbo Lump Crab Cake, Shrimp Salad, Bibb Lettuce, Applewood-Smoked Bacon, Red & Yellow Tomatoes, Avocado, Old Bay Remuloude on Sourdough Toast, dusted with Old Bay.

grits

Oh yeah, and grits with bacon on the side.

I am still dreaming about this sandwich. It was love at first sight.

2012-12-16 16.01.45

Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

P.S. Help! I need healthy holiday party recipes. Do you have any favorites?

12Dec2012

Le Pain Quotidien

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Restaurants by chicken nugget girl

Or as I still call it, “Le Puh puh qwah qwah,” since I cannot pronounce the name of this restaurant if you paid me.

The Saturday we got back from Brazil, I had to immediately brag about our trip to some of my fam.

We went to Le Pain Quotidien for brunch. I had never been there before – and it was good! Basically a fancy pants Panera that is more of a sit-down restaurant with communal tables.

The only downside was their small servings, but it’s all organic and moderately priced.

I started with some apple cider.

There weren’t any handles! Guess it’s a French thing.

My mom got a fancy turkey and avocado sandwich.

I stuck with some ~~hangover~~ comfort food, and ordered french toast.

My lil’ cuz ate half of it, so we ordered a second round! 🙂

Le Pain Quotidien looks a little bit like Beauty and the Beast on the inside with it’s provincial French decor (I need to start taking pictures of things other than my food!)

(original via)

Tuna got the Spanish omelet and I was jeal. I wish the omelets I make would look like that!

Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

What is your favorite brunch spot?

Best comfort food. Ready….go.

10Dec2012

Lessons Learned in Traveling

Posted in Adventure, Food, Travel by chicken nugget girl

Lately I’ve been turning to Tuna and pouting. He knows that means I’m missing our Miami/Brazil trip. Our trip was awesome.

In Miami, we went on a boat tour in the Everglades and saw real live alligators!

And in Brazil we did lots of site-seeing and climbed up Corcovado.

Tuna made me do it.

Orchids grow in the trees! Seriously?

Oh, I also stuffed my face with delicious salty breads, flavorful meat, and stiff drinks.

…and potato prepared in every way imaginable

When we got home, I reluctantly weighed myself with one eye closed. I was thinking it would be about +7or 8 lbs. I peeked at the scale, and frowned in disbelief! I only gained half a pound throughout our entire trip. We did walk a lot and – we did sweat a lot.

Lesson learned: you aren’t going to blow up and die if you indulge and eat everything in sight once in a while.

It was also nice to be reminded of certain foods I haven’t utilized in awhile by the restaurants we went to and the meals served by our hosts.

Tuna’s sister whipped up a fruit smoothie for us that I’ve already made a bunch of times since I’ve been home.

Tropical Smoothie

Ingredients:

1/2 cup strawberries
1/3 cup blueberries
1 banana
1/3 cup vanilla yogurt
1 cup apple juice
4 ice cubes

Another lesson learned: trying new foods doesn’t have to be scary. If you try something and don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it.

I tried a ~~shit~~ ton of new foods on the trip. And I actually liked…..some of them.

I genuinely liked, would make for myself, and enjoyed eating:

green curry
fried yucca
mango

chicken empanadas

white beans
guava paste
figs
pecan pie

farofa
päo de queijo
pipoca
churrascaria
cachaça

Ok, not my favorite, but edible:

feijoada
collard greens

full feijoada2

I did not like; no thanks:

goat cheese
kielbasa
creamed kale
airplane food
guaraná (soda)
mushrooms
papaya
ham
sweet potato soup
ground beef empanadas

25 new foods tried, only 1 million to go!

What’s a lesson you learned while traveling?

5Dec2012

Yes, I Ate That

Posted in Adventure, Food, Travel, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

We woke up Saturday with a cloud of doom over our heads because it was our last day in Brazil!

Our flight left Saturday night, so we had to cram in lots of fun stuff for the day.

Tuna’s parents took us to a local favorite for lunch called Academia de Cachaça. Let’s back up a hot sec and explain the importance of cachaça.

Cachaça (basically Brazilian rum) is the type of liquor in a caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil. As someone who only likes alcoholic drinks that you can’t taste the alcohol in, I wholeheartedly endorse caipirinhas.

Just add ice, sugar, and limes to cachaça and you’ll be good to go. Meaning – one caipirinha will have you tripping down the curb back from Plataforma.

Now you understand that the Academia de Cachaça would naturally have the best caipirinhas in Rio. Which was good because I needed a slight buzz in order to muster enough courage to try, “the one dish you have to try while you’re Brazil.”

When Tuna found out we were having feijoada, the national meal, he immediately turned to me in terror.

Feijoada is a stew of beans made of pork and beef.

His parents asked me, “do you like soup (stew)?” No.

Ok….“do you like beans?”

No.

Hmm…well…“do you like pork?”

Noo.

I do like bacon though. I prayed pork translated to a few bacon bits sprinkled on top of the feijoada.

Alas, that was not the case.

Yes, I ate that.

Luckily, you get to mix feijoada with cooked greens, orange slices, and farofa. I knew I liked farofa from the night before at the churrascaria. Farofa is manioc (yucca) flour cooked in butter and olive oil. It kind of tastes like nothing. Perfect.

Oh, and white rice. The item that my Chinese order for ten years of my life solely consisted of.

Tuna’s dad took pity on me and scooped me out a conservative portion of feijoada with just the beef tenderloin.

Guess what?

I ate it all.

I cleaned my plate. And it was even pretty good! It wasn’t my favorite meal I’ve ever eaten, but I did like it and I’d eat it again.

Even I was impressed with me.

After we rolled ourselves home from lunch, it was time to pack up and ~~cry~~ head out to our last vacation activity.

We had the national cocktail, the national dish, and now it was time for “the national passion,” according to our driver, Tomás.

A football game!

Er… as we Americans call it – soccer.

The game was the best rivalry in Rio: Flamengo vs. Vasco.

Flamengo has the largest fan base in Rio and their club is in Tuna’s parents’ neighborhood, so they had our allegiance!

The only time I was scared during our stay in Brazil was on our way into the stadium. The fans get really crazy and police with giant shotguns were running towards crowds of people. There was a lot of shouting and shoving going on.

But as soon as we got to our seats, the friendly rivalry resumed with the sound of Brazilian drumming in the Flamengo section.

Though we had to leave after the first half to catch our plane, it was a pretty great way to end our amazing Brazilian adventure.

Ciao, Rio!

Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

4Dec2012

Dancing Queen

Posted in Adventure, Food, Travel by chicken nugget girl

Can we just look at the view from our window in Brazil again? It makes me happy. Slash it will be the background of my phone/computer forever.

Friday – the day after Thanksgiving – was our last full day in Brazil. We started our packed day of sightseeing early with a boat tour of Rio on Guanabara Bay. Isn’t the boat cool looking?

We got there just in time to hop on the boat and elbow people out of the way to get good seats on the uncovered front part on the left. We had tons of cray tourists from different countries sitting near us. The Italians were especially booze-tastic, and sang lots of songs in Italian for us. Loudly.

The first part of the tour approached Sugarloaf. Can you see the cable car lines?

Here’s a sick view of the city and landmarks! Sugarloaf is on the left and Corcovado is the pointy mountain to the right of the middle of the picture. Hmmm..maybe I should change this picture to my phone/computer background forever…

Here you can see a little more of the city. FYI – Rio is massive, if you haven’t figured that out already! The current population is about 6.3 million people. Just to give you an idea – that’s twice as many people as L.A.

Hey, fisherman!

For some reason, I was obsessed with this quaint little church on the side of a mountain.

Let’s be honest, it’s probably because it looked exactly like the church on the mountain at the end of Mamma Mia.

original via

Don’t you think? I think.

After our boat tour and a yummy lunch at the French bistro, Guy, we forced Tuna to do some mandatory souvenir shopping.

Then it was time to get ready for dinner at a churrascaria (steakhouse) and Plataforma, a dance show featuring the famous Brazilian mulatas.

The churrascaria was right up my alley. We had fire grilled steak, potatoes, and my favorite, päo de queijo (cheese bread). I think I could win a päo de queijo eating contest.

We finished dinner and headed upstairs to the stage.

The mulatas were so good! Kind of weird that they were a little scantily clad, but you got used to it after a few dances.

I liked that they weren’t super skinny – they were curvy and healthy looking. Perhaps I shall add the stair climber to my cross training…

My favorite act might have been the guy dancers doing an ancient karate type number with lots of flips.

The Carnival act was pretty cool too.

Whyyy didn’t I get an ab workout from her before we left?!

If you won a eating contest, what food would it be?

30Nov2012

Thanksgiving in Rio

Posted in Food, Travel by chicken nugget girl

Though they obviously don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Brazil, it sure was fun for us to celebrate Thanksgiving in Rio!

We ate a small breakfast as not to spoil our late afternoon Thanksgiving feast. Isn’t Brazilian granola cool looking?

It tastes good too. But the milk – let’s just say I was happy to get back to American milk. 🙂

I think spending Thanksgiving on the beach should be a new tradition. Tuna, his dad, and I spend the day at the beach in Leblon while his awesome mom slaved away in the kitchen (with no air conditioning). Tuna’s mom had a serious task ahead of her – having to make a turkey, pie, etc all in a stove that heated to ranges of temperatures instead of a specific temperature. Oh yeah, and all of those temperatures were in Celsius. At least we helped set the table!

She did a fabulous job on the meal though, and dinner was not only gorgeous, but delish too.

The stuffing and mashed potatoes were my favorite, per usual. This year I tried gravy for the first time – and I liked it!

Here comes another first for me: eating pecan pie! I usually have pumpkin pie and have always been scared to try other kinds of pie for some reason. Tuna’s mom said she had the hardest time finding the pecans for the pecan pie – she actually had to buy them in a different Brazilian state!

After dinner, I promptly declared I was going to take a fifteen minute nap. Tuna woke me up three hours later.

What can I say? It was a good meal.

Have you ever been in another country while celebrating a holiday? Like Thanksgiving or 4th of July (for Americans)?

What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish?

28Nov2012

[Real] Coconut

Posted in Adventure, Clean Eating, Food, Travel, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

Now that I’m back in the U.S. of A. with my laptop, I finally feel that I can give my Brazil posts the credit they deserve! (It was getting tricky trying to blog from my iPhone.)

So travel back a week in time with me to last Monday night when Tuna and I boarded our plane to Rio.

I knew international flights were meant for me when I sat down in my seat and immediately saw this gem:

I shall take several glasses, por favor.

Tuna was jealous of my mad skills to sleep anytime, anywhere, so the plane ride wasn’t too bad (for me).

Once we got to Rio, Tuna’s parents immediately took us to their sweet beach three blocks away from their apartment in Leblon.

Please observe the below picture of Leblon Beach. This is where we got to spend the week. I seriously almost cried when I got home. How amazing is the landscape?

(source)

The two mountains right in the middle are called the “Two Brothers” and a favela (slum) is scattered along the rocks. The sociological side of me would love to study the social issues of Rio. Seeing everything the entire trip really made me realize how lucky I am and how lucky we are to have the opportunities we do here.

We walked down about half a mile to Tuna’s parents’ usual coconut stand to buy some coconuts to drink for 3 real each (pronounced reais) which is about $1.50. I was a little skeptical because I didn’t think I liked coconut. But after drinking these, I realized I love coconut!

What I don’t like is processed coconut – the shredded white stuff doused in sugar. Real, natural coconut is where it’s at.

I’m definitely ready to be on Survivor now.

After you drink your coconut water, they cut it open for you with a machete and you can peel off the white stuff to eat.

When I got home from Brazil, I immediately went to Whole Foods and bought ~~a shit ton of~~ coconut water.

More pictures and new foods I tried to come! We’ve got a whole week to cover with this view from our window.

Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

21Nov2012

Mojitos and Museums

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Travel, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

How cute is Tuna’s sis’ dog? By the end of our stay in Miami, Tom Selleck was snuggling with us and he finally let me do a photo shoot with him.

Our last day in Miami was a busy one! Tuna’s sis did a great job playing tour guide and taking us to the cool local spots.

Typ, another day of perfect weather in Miami.

We started out the day by tickling our toes in the ocean on Miami Beach.

Then it was time for lunch. We grabbed a bite to eat at a trendy Cuban place called Yucca on Lincoln Road.

Tuna and I got mojitos – they were actually pretty cheap: only 5 bucks each! In DC, a mojito would probably be the ridiculous price of approximately $12.50. Another reason I am now a fan of Miami.

We ordered the croquetas and the chicken empanadas for our appetizers. I loved the empanadas (especially the spicy guacamole sauce) but didn’t like the goat cheese filling inside the croquetas.

Luckily Tuna finished my croquetas for me.

Tuna’s sis and I both ordered the Mango Avocado Salad with Chicken. It had a sweet chili dressing that was really good.

Please observe one of the best side dishes in the world: fried Yucca.

After lunch we ventured over to Vizcaya.

Vizcaya is a famous old mansion in the Grove in downtown Miami Beach that they turned into a museum. The inside is amazing – it’s filled with ritzy antiques from the turn of the century. It felt like we were in The Great Gatsby or something!

A super rich dude built/owned it during the Titanic era and basically lived there by himself.

Um, I would like concrete ship for sunbathing in my backyard please.

The gardens were also extremely elaborate.

We had a great time walking around the grounds all afternoon.

Next up: our first day in Brazil!

Thanks as always to Jenn at Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

Have you ever tried Cuban food?

What’s your favorite happy hour drink?

14Nov2012

Cheat Day Chili

Posted in Food, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

I was worried about what recipe I would have to share with you guys this week since I am currently on the pre-payday cleanse of scrambled eggs, bananas, and peanut butter sandwiches. Bring on the vacation food, please.

Luckily, Tuna saved the day by creating his own delicious masterpiece and artfully photographing it for me. I better watch out – I think I may have some food blogging competition on my hands.

I would have called it Tuna’s Cheat Day Chili, but I didn’t want you to get confused and think there was tuna in it.

This chili is full of protein and is amateur chef friendly. Perfect for snugglin’ up on the couch and watching Monday Night Football. It may not be the lowest calorie option out there, but hell, we all need a cheat day, right? Right.

Thanks as always to Jenn at Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

Cheat Day Chili