tamale bake

The other day, while gazing blissfully into the abyss that is my pantry, I noticed the sad little bag of masa harina (MAH-sah ah-REE-na) sitting on my baking shelf. Masa harina is the powdered corn that is used in such delightful things as corn tortillas and my tamales. In fact, the last time I even used the masa was for my tamales!

I hate wasting food so I started thinking of things I could do with it. Eventually I came up with a tamale bake that is kind of like a version of Mexican lasagna (which I also haven’t made in a year! whoops!) but has delicious masa crust.

Masa harina is very readily available these days. Check near the flour in your “baking needs” aisle, and if you can’t find it there, see if your store has an “ethnic” or “Latino” section. Please don’t use corn meal or a corn bread mix, they aren’t the same thing.

My favorite thing about recipes like this is how variable they are — you can add chicken, pork, or tofu and you can pick your very favorite salsa, mild or hot! I like cilantro and I like spice, so I ended up getting a hot cilantro salsa that rocked my world. I also added additional spice on top of all that. What is up with me and spicy foods lately? I am my mother’s antithesis.

So give masa harina a chance and make this great vegetarian dish soon. But perhaps not for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day, as cheese + beans does not equal romance.

Tamale Bake (serves 4)
1 cup masa harina
1/2 cup water
1/2 T chili powder
2 cups cooked black beans (drained!)
2 T lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1 cup salsa of your choosing
1/2 cup Mexican blend shredded cheese
sour cream or Greek yogurt for topping (optional)
Heat your oven to 425*. In a small mixing bowl, combine the masa harina, water, and chili powder. Mix with your hands for best results. When you can incorporate all of the masa into a ball, place in the center of an 8×8 (square) baking dish. Press down and into the corners, creating an even, flat crust. Bake in the oven for 7 minutes to set it. Remove from the oven and turn the oven down to 350*. In another mixing bowl, combine the black beans, cayenne (optional), salt, and lime juice. Once mixed, spread on top of the tamale crust that has just come out of the oven. Top the black beans with a layer of salsa and finish with cheese. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is nice and melted. Serve with a dollop of sour cream or Greek yogurt!

The Color Run Austin recap

It was your typical Saturday morning in Austin that started like this…

And quickly turned into this…

3 of my friends and I decided a couple months ago to participate in the Austin Color Run. It basically takes the concept from the Hindu holiday, Holi (March 8th this year), and combines it with a 5k and fundraising for Habitat for Humanity. The concept of Holi, in the least amount of words possible, is to cover everyone in pigment so we all look the same and no one can see our differences.

So we came up with a great team name, The Violent Lovers (thanks to a Wu Tang Clan name generator…) and bought awesome tube socks from Target for $1.50. I ran with my friends Marcy, Mary, and Cliff and while it was a harrowing experience, I couldn’t have chosen better teammates.

Because of the random drought-busting storms we’ve been having lately, Austin is muddy. But we were prepared and everyone had a towel and some extra shoes and we figured we’d be fine. We were happy and hopeful. We’d gotten emails from The Color Run, who does a great job of communicating pre-race, about a change in location because of the overwhelming interest. Well, despite changing the location, it still caused a 5 mile back up on the road leading to the park. We were on track to get to the park by 8:15am for the 9am start when we hit the traffic. It was horrible. I went 1 mile in 40 minutes. We ended up pulling into a nearby neighborhood around 9am and walking over a mile to the race.

We finally got to the venue and even though we were a little chilly and bitter about the traffic situation, we found out that nothing was on time because of the traffic and other planning failures. I admit I am a little upset about the lack of organization at this point. If the logistics of the race caused them to move venues, perhaps they should have been more prepared for the huge amount of people they were expecting… But we got in line, about 3/4 of the way back, and waited for the staggered start of our “wave”.

We did not cross the start line until 10am (an hour after projected) but we tried to smile and jog to warm ourselves up. But the congestion was awful. People were stopping at every person who had a bucket of the color (an eco-friendly pigment powder) and we walked the first 5 minutes. There were spectators with color, but at every kilometer (of the 5-kilometer race) there was a “color zone” so we figured we’d get color there and dodged our way through the crowd, color-less. The course started to get muddy, but nothing a little washing wouldn’t fix later, so we stayed together and trekked on.

Unfortunately we got to the first color zone to find out they had run out of color. We were all cold, muddy, and not covered in yellow powder yet so the 4 of us started to get a little grouchy. At this point the mud had gotten so bad we could not even attempt to run. Our shoes got stuck and Cliff and Marcy had to physically pull my leg out several times. We started slipping and sliding (see above picture) and people left and right were cursing, losing shoes, and complaining about how there was no color left.

We found a quick cut-through and decided to knock off about .5 miles of the course. At this point I looked at my Garmin watch to find out we had only gone .75 miles total, in over 20 minutes. There was no way I was going 3.1 in those conditions. We start hearing from the chit-chat happening around us that none of the zones have any color left at this point, that it was all used up in the first few waves. People were getting angry. I was getting upset. At some point, Mary and Cliff got separated from us and Marcy and I grumbled and climbed our way through mud. We ended up taking another huge short cut and rounded the bend, seeing the finish line ahead of us. In 38 minutes, we traveled 1.48 miles and I think I used the phrase “They should have rescheduled” about 38 times.

We ended the race with no color on our bodies and found a tent where they were giving 1 bag of color to every participant in exchange for a wrist bracelet. This was the first color we’d seen all morning! We grabbed our bags, miraculously found Cliff and Mary, and we all covered each other in powder.

At the end of it, our shoes were ruined. We ended up throwing them in a box that subsequently went into the dumpster at my apartment (coincidentally, the same dumpster that had to be stepped into when we realized, hours later, that Cliff’s camera — where all these pictures are from — was also in that box.)

We were cold, in terrible moods about the lack of organization from the Color Run and full of complaints. With our shoes quite wet and heavy, we trekked back to my car, tried our best to rinse our hands and feet with water from water bottles, and sat on towels. Bloody Marys and mimosas followed and our moods lightened up a bit. We ended up having brunch at Austin Java and cleaning ourselves up a bit in their bathroom.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about the race. It was an adventure in many ways and it was great to spend my morning with friends, but because of the horrible mud situation and the poor organization at the race itself, I felt like I wasted a morning and $40. If the Color Run is coming to a city near you, I would recommend signing up because I think it could be a really great experience. I think they’re learning from their mistakes and hopefully there won’t be a giant rainstorm for the 10 days prior to your race. I honestly think I want to do the September event in DC, since I’ll be living there by then, so I can give it another chance. It has great potential, but Saturday stunk.

a sweet & spicy cookie

Anyone else love those fancy Lindt Chocolate & Chili bars??

Yeah, me too.

I’ll be honest, I really like anything spicy. I like to eat food that makes my nose run and my face sweat. I especially love things with cayenne pepper or red chili flakes. I once was stupid enough to try the “Thai hot” level of hot at a Thai restaurant. Horrible, awful, terrible mistake, people.

But I saw one of those delicious, dreamy chocolate bars at Tar-jay the other day and thought about how awesome it would be to make a chocolate and chili cookie.

And thus was born the Sweet & Spicy Cookie… just in time for a sweet and spicy Valentine’s Day (yes, I know it is in 2 weeks but a girl needs to prepare accordingly).

Sweet & Spicy Cookies (makes 15-18 cookies)
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 – 1/2 cayenne pepper (more or less to spice preference, I went with more!)
1/2 cup chocolate chips, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 T molasses
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cayenne pepper. Mix well. In a separate mixing bowl combine melted chocolate, vanilla, molasses, milk, and egg (be sure to make sure the chocolate has cooled a bit so the egg doesn’t cook!). Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until you have a smooth, loose batter (like a cake batter). Heat the oven to 350* and on a well greased/butter baking sheet, drop large spoonfuls of the batter 3 inches apart from each other. Bake for 13 minutes. Remove from baking sheet to cool. Enjoy with a glass of milk to help the spice!

obsessed

Hello my name is Meredith and I’m obsessed with my juicer.

For approximately 2 years I have been lusting after juicers. I’ve seen them all over the blog world and always treated myself to a healthy juice on my trips to Whole Foods (which are rare, considering I am a grad student). For Christmas 2010 I was all set to get one and had told my mom all about it, but then reality set in and I realized there were things I needed more in my life and an extra appliance in my kitchen wasn’t it. But since then, I’ve kept my eyes out for a deal, promising myself I’d jump on a deal if I found one.

And I did! This juicer was randomly being offered as a Groupon Goods deal and I happened to have a gift certificate to Groupon (thanks, Mom!) so I ended up paying 1/4 of the retail value plus $10 in shipping. Not too shabby! I got the Juiceman JM400 Jr., which for a newbie juicer like me works perfectly fine — here’s the link on Amazon if you want to see.

The reviews led me to believe that this would be a great juicer for someone who isn’t planning on making huge batches of juice every day, more for the casual juicer than the religious detoxer. Since I’ve gotten it, I’ve made a juice about every other day and it has held up just fine.

If you are thinking of investing in a juicer, here are my basic recommendations:

• Start small, you can always upgrade your model if you want something bigger and better, but you’ll always regret spending $200 on something you found out you never used.
• To keep a juicing habit affordable, buy produce that is on sale and in season. With the 3 for $1 small apples, $1 bunches of kale, 3 for $1 lemons, and a knob of ginger root, my favorite juice costs me less than $1!
• Only buy produce you would eat otherwise. You may get sick of your beet juice and regret having a surplus of beets in your produce drawer.
• Get bang for your buck: produce like cucumbers, apples, and citrus produce a high volume of juice.
• Clean the parts as soon as you finish juicing! It takes about 5 minutes, but I let my juice sit after I make it and force myself to rinse everything off. This way, the sticky fruit juice and pulp doesn’t get crusted on everything.
• If you have a dog or other small mammal, consider feeding it the juice pulp. I feel a little wasteful throwing mine down the garbage disposal. For my all-vegetable juices, I save the pulp and throw it in pasta sauce.

I love my juicer and I love making fresh juice. My skin is looking great and I feel good knowing I’m getting in my vitamins when I sometimes might not meet my daily fruit and vegetable goals. I even love my juicer so much that I keep it near me at all times and somehow spilled acetone nail polish remover on it and it damaged the plastic coating. Go me! 

taboule turkey burgers

I love taboule! Anyone else? If you don’t know what it is, it is basically a very herbacious (just made that up) mixture of parsley, garlic, lemon juice, bulgar wheat, tomato, and magic.

Do you spell it “tabouli” or “taboule”? Or even “tabouleh”? I don’t know which to use! I bought my mix in bulk so that is unhelpful as it has neither a name nor instructions on how to prepare it.

Instead of making it to eat as a dip, I opted to make just a little bit of it to mix into some ground turkey. Turkey breast is, let’s face it, kind of flavorless on its own. But something as flavorful as taboule really punched it up.

If you’ve never had taboule/i/eh, I recommend you go to your local Mediterranean restaurant which likely has it on the appetizer menu. It is great with crackers or pita, and I really like to mix a heaping spoonful into my salads to give them extra flavor. You can also buy it in its prepared form or in dried mixes where you simply add some amount of water, olive oil, lemon juice, and diced tomato and mix to make good things happen. The mixes are widely available, check the part of your grocery store with boxed rice dishes and couscous!

Unrelated side note: do not slice your finger open with an apple slicer while these burgers cook. No bueno. But the Dora the Explorer band-aid is a-okay.

Taboule Turkey Burgers (makes 4 or 5 patties)
2 T dried taboule mix
1 T olive oil
1 T water
1/2 cup diced tomato (remove the seeds if you prefer)
1 1/4 lb lean ground turkey breast
1 egg white
salt & pepper to taste
In a small mixing bowl, combine the dried taboule mix with water and olive oil. Allow to sit for a few minutes while the bulgar wheat soaks up the liquid. Dice your tomato and stir it into the taboule mix. It is important to taste this mixture and possibly add salt and pepper — my mix wasn’t very salty so I added a healthy pinch of both salt and pepper! In a large mixing bowl combine the ground turkey breast, egg white, taboule, and (optional) salt and pepper. Mix well but don’t over mix. Divide the mixture into 4 or 5 equal parts and gently form into patties. You can cook them in a pan or bake them (like I did) at 375* for 25 minutes. They will be juicy and perfectly cooked! Remove them from the baking sheet immediately so any excess fat doesn’t re-coagulate on them. Serve on a bun with plenty of ketchup

bbq chicken orzo salad

Hey y’all!

I’m back in Austin after a month on the East Coast, where I visited with family for the holidays and stayed with Rahul in DC for 2 weeks. It was so nice to relax and especially to be with Rahul for so long, but I had to return to Texas eventually. And now we’re in the home stretch of my Master’s degree and it will be May sooner than I know!

While hanging out in DC, I cooked for Rahul but nothing blogworthy. In fact, I made this, this, and this recipe because they’re easy and make for lots of leftovers! I know them by heart. And so should you.

However, now that I am back in my own kitchen and a need to have food on hand to pack lunches, I got to cooking a bit yesterday and made a really simple pasta salad. Have I ever told you how much I love pasta salad? I really, really love pasta salad. And this one is simple, healthy, and contains one of my favorite condiments: barbecue sauce.

Note: this dinner seemed a little beige so I added some broccoli on the side at the last minute. Next time, I’d probably add it to the actual pasta salad, but that is your judgement call.

BBQ Chicken & Orzo Salad (serves 4-5)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup barbecue sauce (of choice), divided
1/2 cup orzo, uncooked
1 1/2 cup corn
1/3 cup plain, non-fat yogurt
1 tsp garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
In a bowl, marinate chicken breasts in 3 T of barbecue sauce for 20-30 minutes. Bake chicken at 375* for 30 minutes or until fully cooked. Using two forks, shred the chicken breasts and set aside in a mixing bowl to cool. Boil and drain the orzo, adding it to the bowl with the shredded chicken. Drain the corn (if using canned corn) and add to mixing bowl. In a small bowl, combine 1 T barbecue sauce with yogurt and garlic powder. If you use Greek yogurt, your mixture will be too thick so you may want to thin it out with a touch of water. Pour the yogurt mixture over the chicken, orzo, and corn and mix thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate at least 2-3 hours and serve chilled.

some January motivation

Ahh January… the time of year when gyms are overcrowded and diet commercials abound! Some people take January seriously, and others are totally annoyed by the so-called “January joiners” who invade the gym and produce section. When people roll into the gym with jeans and water bottles full of Diet Coke (bless their hearts), I have to force myself to remember one thing: that was me 3 years ago. Lost, unhappy, 250 lbs, but trying to fix it.

Yep, 3 years ago today I started to change my life on my own terms. As I’ve written about before, my dad died in November of 2008. Here is a picture of me from my mom’s wedding, just a day after his funeral:

Shortly after this, I finished my semester and had about a month of winter break to process things. Slowly, the wheels of change started to spin in my brain and I found blogs about healthy living and weight loss. I investigated my choices. I invested in myself. I started Weight Watchers on January 12, 2009.

I learned about making smarter choices with my food. I liked the burn I felt in my muscles when I exercised. I knew that I had to do something proactive to become a happier person and turn things around for myself. It all started to click.

I started on the elliptical, moved to running (using the Couch to 5k program!), and ran my first 5k! I then ran a 10k and a handful of other 5k’s. I got back into swimming, my childhood sport and first love. I took spin classes. I was healthy.

Over the next year and a half, I lost 80 lbs. I was happy. I was a new person.

In the 1.5 years since I’ve moved to Texas, I gained 10-12 lbs back (depending on what day you asked me). I got a little disheartened after falling out of some new habits and back into some old habits. But since August I’ve been trying to pick myself back up by my bootstraps (because I actually have bootstraps now) and I’ve gotten back on the bandwagon and lost the “moving-weight”. Now, I’m looking forward to getting rid of the final 15 lbs I want to shed. Full disclosure: I’m using Weight Watchers again and have been since November.

So why am I sharing all this with you? I wanted to write it out for myself as some positive reinforcement and motivation for me, as well as anyone out there looking at the calendar and wondering if this year is the year. It is! I did it. And not to sound like one of those tv commercials but… if I can do it, so can you. It wasn’t always easy, and it certainly wasn’t always pretty, but I did it.

My advice: pick some small things you can change and go from there. One change will snowball into another. You’ll be amazed at what you continue to accomplish. Find yourself a mantra (the one I’m using these days was 100% stolen from the Minute Maid orange juice slogan, but it works): “Put good in, get good out.”

Are you using this January to change things up? Are you looking for ways to get healthier? Did you already find a better lifestyle? I want to hear everyone’s stories! I need the motivation and I know other people want it, too!