Comunidad Health Foods

When you need to wake up a full 1 ½ - 2 hours earlier than you’d ideally like – especially if you need to do so for an extended period of time – breakfast better be something special. You just need something to look forward to when your alarm starts harassing you. This morning, I was so not into waking up that I didn’t even register that my alarm was going off until it was well into its “desperation mode.” I don’t know about your alarms, but mine starts with a nice calm audio of waves crashing against the sand. Then the seagulls start. And then, if you’re really stubborn and don’t turn it off, the fog horn  from the fishing ship starts. Well today, not only did I awake to fog horn extravaganza, but the frequency of the horn was speeding up, as if my phone was saying, “ALRIGHT JESS, NO MORE MR. NICE PHONE!” Probably revenge for all the times I bad-mouth my phone in its presence.

Anyway, all of this to say, some mornings, a plain cup of yogurt or a bowl of cereal just won’t cut it. Some mornings, you wake up, and you can tell – this day is going to be a doozy. You have to prepare yourself. And I can think of no better way to make having to wake up early bearable than knowing that you have ice cream to look forward to for breakfast.

Ok, sorbet really. Sorry, I’m a dietetic intern – only on rare occasions do I support cracking open a pint of Ben & Jerry’s as the sun is still rising. Still, this might as well be ice cream to your taste buds – it’s cold enough to give you brain freeze, yet creamier than a popsicle or Italian ice. And did I mention it’s healthy? Yup. Totally breakfast worthy. So you may be treating yourself to something that feels indulgent, something that will make you totally excited to hear that fog horn blaring from your phone, because it means it’s time for breakfast….without feeling like you’re sacrificing those awesome healthy habits you pride yourself in during less cranky times.

I call this Summer Sunrise Sorbet and I highly suggest that you make it for breakfast (and pretend you’re eating ice cream for breakfast), but it’s really wonderful any time of day. Plus it’s easy and doesn’t require any fancy ice cream maker. Did I mention that it’s awesome? Because it is.

One Year Ago: Feta-Stuffed Burgers with a Greek Side Salad

Two Years Ago: Strawberry-Mango Power Smoothie

Yield: 1 serving

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 0 minutes

(printable recipe)

1 heaping cup frozen cantaloupe chunks¹

1 heaping tablespoon plain, non-fat greek yogurt

2 strawberries, chopped

2-3 teaspoons slivered almonds

Add the cantaloupe to a food processor or blender and process until the mixture resembles shaved ice or a granita (it will be blended but not smooth). Add the yogurt and 1 ½ strawberries and blend further until smooth, pausing to scrape down the sides as necessary. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and top with the remaining ½ strawberry and a sprinkling of slivered almonds.

Source: Floptimism Original

Are you sick of jicama yet? I might be, a little, but only because I pretty much single-handedly went through that monster of a root on my own the other week. If people are what they eat, right now I’d  definitely be a big, dense brown root veggie about the size of a small child’s head. So then why am I telling you about more jicama, you ask? Well, mostly because I thought this Thai Jicama Slaw would be a nice segue way between the cilantro jicama recipe from last week and the Thai chicken recipe I have coming up. Plus, a lot of the recipes I’ve been trying lately need some more tweaking and aren’t really blog-ready yet, making it slim pickins around these parts for blogging.

This recipe really came out of my own head with the help of what (little) I know of Thai cuisine and a session of perusing the world wide web. Most jicama recipes you see will incorporate lime and cilantro, and while that’s fabulous (see Heck of a Jicama Salad for proof), I had just gotten through an entire Tupperware container full of that particular recipe. If I didn’t try something new and different, I was going to experience jicama burn out, fast. Thankfully, I also discovered during my research that jicama pairs well with Thai flavors. It just so happens that I had half of a red bell pepper, half of a cucumber, some carrots, sesame oil, and peanuts that I was trying to use up. Clearly, this was fate.

I’m just now realizing that I also had a Thai curry paste sitting in my fridge that I’m trying to use, that would have worked well in this, too. Can’t win ‘em all.

What came out of this abundance of jicama and odd other ingredients I wanted to use was pretty great! It’s not what I would call spicy food, but there is a kick that you get every couple of bites from the crushed red pepper. It’s just as crisp and fresh tasting as other wonderful jicama slaw recipes, yet it’s different from a lot of the flavors you tend to find in them. You could scale back the dressing if you want – it’s pretty heavily dressed, but even the fats used are healthy so don’t let it scare you too much. A lot of jicama recipes don’t call for oil at all. You could also use less jicama and more other ingredients – this would make the slaw a little more vibrant. I just used what I had on hand, and encourage you to do the same.

One Year Ago: Lazy Balsamic Chicken Skillet

Yield: 6 servings

Prep Time: 15 minutes plus approximately 30 minutes to cut jicama¹

Inactive Time: 1 hour

(printable recipe)

3 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons lime juice

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

375g sliced jicama (approximately half large jicama)

75g cucumber, julienned

40g shaved carrot (approximately 1 carrot)

65g red bell pepper slices

45g chopped snacking peanuts (approximately ¼ cup)

Whisk together the sesame oil, lime juice, red pepper flakes, and black pepper. Add the remaining ingredients and toss well to mix the vegetables and fully coat them with the dressing. Cover and place in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving. Slaw will keep, refrigerated, for up to 2 days.

¹For instructions on how to cut a jicama, see this how-to post

Today is National Caviar Day, the epitome of haute-cuisine and food snobbery, so naturally I planned to write about one of the least sophisticated recipes you could possibly imagine. French Toast is what happens when old food and stinginess come together in one kitchen. Sure, you can get fancied up versions at some of the most upscale brunch venues, but deep down, you know what French Toast is. It’s stale bread made edible with some cheaper still ingredients – eggs and milk. Who would have thought that stubbornness to not waste old food could lead to such a delicious meal? 

It all started last Friday night when we pulled half a loaf of homemade challah (yes, I am holding out on the recipe – I’m still trying to tweak it to get it just right) out of the freezer from 2 weeks before, since all of this internship prep work has left little time for experiments in the kitchen. After one bite, I wrinkled my nose and shook my head – the freezer had not been kind to these slices of once-delicious, eggy bread. There was only one solution: quickly swap out the old challah for a fresher (though not homemade) loaf of bread, and transform the stale bread into French Toast for a leisurely, frugal Saturday morning breakfast the next day.

I found a quick recipe on Eliza Domestica for overnight French toast casserole, which seemed the perfect way to ensure that the challah became fully saturated with the liquid in the recipe, and changed it slightly in the hopes of making a more exotic dish. Within about five minutes I had the casserole in the fridge, ready for the next day. I dirtied 1 liquid measuring cup and about 2 measuring spoons, plus the dish that I baked the casserole in the next morning. If I ever were to have a big group of people over to stay, or for a mid-morning brunch, this is the recipe I would turn to. No questions asked.

It was supposed to be tropical: coconut-almond milk, rum extract, you know. Fancy French Toast. My mom swears she tastes the coconut, but L and I are convinced that she’s just one of those super tasters. You can’t get anything past her. To us, it just tasted like French toast. Delicious French toast, but definitely not Fancy French Toast.  L says he prefers his mom’s, but I think the fact that it came in casserole form and didn’t look like regular French toast weirded him out a little bit; I got a little upset but didn’t let it stop me from enjoying several slices. It’s not overly sweet on its own – but a drizzle of syrup or a pile of fresh fruit (try pineapple chunks and shredded coconut to bring out the tropical flavors I was going for!) is all it needs to make it complete. And once you bite into it, I don’t think you’ll care that deep down, this French toast is more frugal than fancy. 

I made a vow to myself that I would stop blogging about unperfected recipes. Gone are the days of trying a recipe, getting it almost right, and telling you about it with little disclaimers here or there. That was ok when I was blown away by having 5 followers. Now that more people are sitting up and taking notice of Floptimism (it’s still a small following, but each and every one of you make my day by sticking around, seriously!), I feel as though I owe it to you to really only give you the recipes that I can say 100% work – ones that have already been tweaked and tested. I’ve started remaking things two or three times to get them right, and I can honestly say that I’ve even enjoyed the fine-tuning aspect of this whole process. It really seemed like the days of close-but-no-cigar recipes were over – no more “well the flavor was right, but the consistency…” or “I totally burned it but I think you can do better so here it is…”

That is, until I met this frozen yogurt. I debated this one for quite some time. I really shouldn’t tell you about it. This should not be happening right now. But it is, it has to, because after I took one bite, and then a second, and then a third, and then suddenly I looked back on the past 3 days in a row to discover that I ate a bowl of it for dessert each of those three nights…well, I can’t let National Frozen Yogurt Day go by and not tell you about this flavor and recipe. I don’t care if the consistency is borderline atrocious, one of the downright worst textures I’ve made to date you’ll feel the same.

This is frozen yogurt at its almost purest state, and it’s not for everyone. If you like that tang of plain yogurt, particularly Greek, you’ll enjoy this. The Nutella just barely sweetens it, giving it a deep chocolate flavor without masking the beautiful flavor of plain, unadulterated yogurt. You could add more Nutella – the original called for equal parts but warned that it was cloyingly sweet that way – to subdue the yogurt and bring out the Nutella a little bit more. This would also fix the problem I ran into with the consistency – Nutella is oily enough to supposedly prevent the ice cream from getting too solid in the freezer, when used in greater amounts. However, the amount that I used wasn’t nearly enough, and I wound up with a brick after freezing it, and a stubborn brick at that. It does not soften quickly on the counter. Last night it took me 2 hours of refrigerator time to get it to a point where I could scoop it, and even then it probably could have used a little bit more patience on my part. A few nights before that I microwaved it and wound up with more of a sauce (which I poured over a different flavor of frozen yogurt – so not a bad thing!) than froyo. Suffice it to say, this recipe has its kinks. But it’s sheer perfection when it comes straight out of the machine (so if you want to serve/eat it immediately, all of these textural issues go out the window), and the flavor is so heavenly enjoyable that you can look past the glitches. This is the kind of froyo that makes me never want to buy the processed, overly sweetened cartons at the grocery store. This is the queen of all Froyo, and true to her title, the queen can get away with any offense – including being hard and stubborn as a rock.

By the way, don’t feel boxed in by this recipe. My brain is already in overdrive thinking of the possibilities for this as the foundation of many other flavors: stir in thawed bananas or make a banana split, top with strawberries, add peanut butter and honey (it’s seriously one of the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever had – I can’t believe as a teenager I actually ate that calorie & sugar bomb for lunch on a regular basis), or reinvent my raspberry-banana Nutella sandwich in froyo form. Just think of all of the incredible ways that you like to eat Nutella, and find a way to make it work as a frozen yogurt flavor.

What’s your favorite way to eat Nutella? (Yes, “with a spoon” is a perfectly legitimate answer.)