Paleo Waffles

This morning, I felt energetic enough to make waffles (vs. my usual "reheat something Mom made"). This is a rather low bar, since "making waffles" in this case means "stirring one cup of mix with 3/4 c. water and pouring it into a waffle-maker," hardly a laborious process. But it's still a rare enough occurrence that I figured hey, let's take some subpar pictures and talk about the lunacy of "paleo" as a diet.

To recreate the experience, you will need one (1) bag of Birch Benders Paleo Pancake Waffle Mix from Costco.

source

You may be wondering whether "paleo pancake and waffle mix" isn't a bit of an oxymoron, to which I say yes, it sure is; no one in the paleo period was making waffles, dudes. Or chocolate, or cinnamon rolls, or basically any of the other popular "paleo" treats. "Paleo" as a philosophical ethos is deeply flawed, to the extent that I would argue it is largely nonsense. Nonetheless, I am still very grateful for its existence, as much as the background makes me cringe: It's a very straightforward shortcut for "hey Ames, this doesn't contain anything that will make your body angry," as paleo foods contain no refined sugar or grains, the latter excluding anything with gluten. Does a pancake/waffle mix without flour or sugar taste the same? Fuck no. Different flavor, different texture, whole different ballgame. BUT! As long as you don't go into it expecting a perfect dupe, it's fine. The Birch Benders mix contains cassava starch, almond flour, eggs, a couple of leaveners, salt, and monk fruit as the sweetener. Plus "spices," whatever that may entail.

For waffles, scoop a cup of the mix into a bowl and add 3/4 c. water. The instructions say to add 1.5 T oil, too, but I skip that and it's fine. We're going for bare minimum here, folks. Stir together and let sit for a couple of minutes while you let the waffle iron heat up. Pour it into said waffle maker. I usually don't pour enough so it ends up being a somewhat pathetically malnourished waffle, but it's fine, no one's here to judge. I recommend letting it cook longer than your waffle iron will think it needs, but don't expect it to get crispy, it's not gonna happen. (If you cook them and then reheat them in the toaster oven later, they do get crispier, but still not truly crispy. Such is the curse of paleo.)

Green light = go, but first wait for a few minutes (this would get you honked at in traffic)

Plorp it onto a plate.

Exhibit A: "somewhat pathetically malnourished waffle"

Spread some peanut butter. I used Costco's organic creamy peanut butter, which is made from valencia peanuts and, despite the lack of added sugar, is too sweet for my taste, but the grocery stores have been out of Adam's for weeks so we make do with what we've got.

Exhibit B: Costco's "too sweet" peanut butter, plus my very fuzzy bathrobe

Then pour on some maple syrup. Again, I used Costco's. In an ideal world, I would have put sliced bananas on top, too, but there's a pandemic on and we didn't have any, so again, we make do with what we've got.

Exhibit C: Costco's maple syrup. This post is not sponsored by Costco, we just shop there a lot.

I would say ta-da!, but I forgot to take a picture of just the finished waffle. I'm sure you can use your imagination.

One cup of mix makes enough for 2ish Belgian waffles; I made two somewhat pathetically malnourished and one tragically malnourished waffles, enough for two breakfasts and a snack.

Crispy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are more chewy than crispy, but that's how I like 'em. I splurged and bought Ghiradelli semisweet chips for these cookies--and I should have bought bittersweet, because I think the added bitterness would have stopped me from eating so many at a time. Irresistible!

Taken from one of my favorite cooking blogs (Smitten Kitchen), taken from one of my go-to recipe sites (allrecipes.com).

The brown sugar and vanilla in the cookie dough make it delightful paired with the sweet chocolate chips--that toffee flavor in chocolate chip cookies is enhanced quite a bit in this recipe. I love it!

Also, you can make face cookies with this recipe. That's right, cookies the size of your face will not burn in the oven when you use this recipe. Face cookies, as many of you might know, are my stress food of choice. I'm keeping this recipe for later.

Post-Grad Cooking in Alabama

My air conditioning wasn't working yesterday. This only lasted a day, but it was still about 90 degrees in my house. Ridiculously hot Alabama weather, ya'll. I wanted to eat something cold and light (and fast, so I could get back to sitting in front of a fan), so I made this simple salad, inspired by one that I saw on Tastespotting.



You can't really see the mango 'cause I should have added more, but the salad was yummy anyways. It could be even better with some avocado. Definitely good for hot weather.

Here's the recipe:
Ingredients
3-4 carrots
1 large cucumber
1 large (or 2 small) mangoes
chopped cilantro (as much as you want)
juice from 1/2 a large lemon (or 1 small lemon!)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
a pinch of salt

Directions
Julienne the carrots, cucumber, and mango and put in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix.
Makes about 4-5 servings.

Unfortunately, I had a BAKING DISASTER this morning. I painstakingly mixed and froze the dough last night for these spiced almond wafer cookies, and I burned them this morning when baking.



See they look fine here, right?



But they're totally ruined! Waaah :(

Doughnuts

Well, my lovely ladies, I am ashamed to admit that I have written a new post...and put it on my travel blog. BUT!  You should check it out, because it's about doughnuts, and my Sweet Life dry spell: http://thehungrylinguist.blogspot.com/2010/05/doughnuts.html
I'm going to try and post all homemade stuff here, and all restaurant/dining out stuff there.  There can never be too many posts about food...

Overdue Post 3: Cinnamon Buns

After this last post, I will be exonerated of guilt about overdue posts. Here's the last buttery creation that Zoe and I created over Thanksgiving.

When I say buttery, I mean that we chopped up a lot of butter and threw it into the chilled dough. We rolled it out and saw the chunks gleaming in the dough, screaming CHOLESTEROL in our faces. Then we melted some more butter and drizzled it on top with a spoon, watching the yellow fats disperse all over the dough. And we threw some sugar and cinnamon on top.

Our hands were gooey with butter and dough, so we didn't take any pictures of this process. Take note that this was the "light" recipe for cinnamon rolls! Zoe has the details of the recipe somewhere in her mom's records.

So now for the pictures.

Don't they look good unbaked?

Um, delicious! And Zoe's food porn picture will now follow. Shield your eyes if necessary.

Overdue Post 2: Cut-out Sugar Cookies

I confessed to Zoe one night that I had never made cut-out cookies. We simply had no cookie cutters in our house! She cooed and said, poor Vy! We'll make them when you come over to my house for Thanksgiving.

And that is what happened. I included Zoe action shots.

Zoe's friend Cordelia came over and joined in on the fun. She was a cut-out cookie virgin, too, so we both had wonderful first experiences that day!

I can't give you the recipe for these cookies because it came from one of her mother's cookbooks. (Was it the King Arthur flour one?) In any case, we whipped up some colored icing by eyeballing a mixture of powdered sugar and milk. (Zoe also worked out the details on this one. If you remember, leave a comment!)

But the important part was not that they were delicious and edible. The important part was that we made VERY CUTE BEE COOKIES. Marketable cookies.

Look at that meticulous HAND PIPING! We melted chocolate chips in the microwave and cut off a corner of a sandwich bag, I think. Very professional.

And here's the rest of the pic dump. The hand piping idea was great, because we could make designs on our huge sheep cookies and decorations on the other ones.

We also made some dinosaurs and a creepy moon with a single chocolate chip for an eye.

The day was a success.

Overdue Post 1: Max Brenner

Max Brenner thrives off of the creation of "chocolate culture" which holds chocolate to an elevated standard of purity and beauty. Check the website. And the decor. It's out of control.

There are also pipes running throughout the whole restaurant in Philly, purportedly carrying chocolate from the kitchen to mixing barrels on the restaurant floor. Zoe pointed out to Amy and me that the entire Max Brenner character is fake, despite the fact that his bald head was printed on every object in the restaurant.

Chocolate mania aside, the menu is incredible. Most of it consists of ultra-decadent desserts, though they also serve real food. To my surprise, the food was actually good. We shared a grilled chicken panini with goat cheese, spinach, tomato, and black olive pesto. The fries were tasty, too.

We may have consumed the other available panini as well (tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, aioli) but I don't have any photographic proof. Suffice to say it was pretty good, too.

But here comes the best part: DESSERT. We decided to go with the classics, and order fondue and a chocolate heart.

We ordered the warm trio chocolate and toffee caramel fondue, which came with banana bread, strawberries, bananas, and a little grill to roast marshmallows with. It was delectable! My picture of the entire fondue setup was overexposed, so content yourself with a picture of the grill.

The banana bread was moist and delicious on its own before being dipped in chocolate and caramel. And, while the strawberries were not in season, who could resist strawberries and dark chocolate?

We then ordered the red heart: a chocolate cake filled with molten chocolate and raspberry sauce. Oh, oh my.

Did you notice that it comes with creamy vanilla ice cream topped with a hard chocolate shell? That there's a dish of dipping raspberry sauce and yogurt?

They served us more sauce in the cutest, most scientific little food vessel I've ever seen.

I wanted to take it home with me.

We devoured these foods, and went home quite full, though with our pockets somewhat empty. I think it was about $70 for the three of us. We also decided that it was definitely worth doing again, with completely empty stomachs, with dessert only. After we had saved up some money.