Hot Summer Cold Soup

If you are a soup person like me, you love the mid-winter coziness of creamy butternut squash soup or thick and hearty chili. And even in the summer (when there is sufficient high-power office building AC), I crave a warm bowl of corn & crab chowder (just had that today for lunch, so good!). But in the peak of summer heat when you face day after day of melting in your sunbaked car and you don't want to even blow dry your hair much less use your oven, a big bowl of chilled soup sounds pretty appealing. So does a salt-rimmed margarita on the rocks, but I digress....

So over the past few summers, I have tried several different varieties of gazpacho, a cold tomato-based soup (usually raw) created by the culinary geniuses in Spain. I've tried various interpretations and levels of chunkiness, and in my attempts I've found a lot of gazpacho recipes that I like, and a few that made me feel like I was eating cold baby food. But I've finally settled on my favorite gazpacho, one that has wandered a bit from it's Spanish roots but is simple, healthy and packed with bold flavors. Most importantly, it requires no cooking whatsoever, so its the perfect dinner after a day of losing layers of skin to a hot leather drivers seat.

Weirdest things I've ever eaten

My standard for weird food may not be the same as most people... I have friends that think eating tofu is just about the craziest thing they can think of to try. So I thought I would put together my list of the top five weirdest things I've eaten and see how I measure up.

1. Grasshopper (in tacos at a mexican restaurant in DC)
2. Beef marrow (Roast, Detroit, MI)
3. Snails (Valencia, Spain)
4. Sea urchin (Restaurant Eve, Alexandria, VA)
5. Shark (first time in Merida, Mexico next to two bottles of tequila, second time grilled at home!)

The grasshopper was the only one I didnt particularly like... the flavor was good, but you could feel their little legs and feet in your mouth, it just didn't pair well with my margarita. In case you hadn't guessed, the common thread of my list is that alcohol was involved in the consumption of all of these items.

What about you - what's on your list??

Adventures in Vegetables

In my continual quest to find new and interesting places to eat, my friend Laura and I recently tried Inn Season Cafe, a vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Royal Oak, Michigan. I had heard good things, but I knew we were in for a delicious dinner when we walked in and saw that there was a 30 minute wait - on a Wednesday night!

We went in with an adventurous spirit, reflected by the fact that we actually ordered the black bean quesadilla with *gasp* soy cheese (phenomenal, despite my sin against the dairy gods). I was a little thrown off by the lack of booze in this joint, but I suppose that's part of the whole "taking care of your body" thing. Fortunately, they had an extensive selection of natural sodas (made from real fruit juice and no added sugar), so we tried the black cherry and cranberry flavors, both excellent.

The adventure continued with an order of fajitas, made with seitan instead of beef. I had never tried seitan before and had no idea what to expect. My later research informed me that seitan is made from gluten, and is apparently a great low fat source of protein. Turns out it wasn't a bad substitute, although I think I'll be sticking with my all-beef version of fajitas.

My lesson learned: When eating vegetarian, eat vegetables. Meat substitutes just aren't the same as actual meat, and vegetarian chefs definately know what they are doing with their hearty entrees made without a "meat" centerpiece.

Oh, and soy cheese is not right. Period.

Breakfast Casserole Comparison

We have this great set up at work where we rotate who brings breakfast every Thursday morning. It used to be a consistent pattern of bagels each week, with the occasional donut to shake things up, but recently we have started taking breakfast to the next level. One person even brought in all the ingredients for everyone to make their own parfait. So when it came to my turn, I decided to bring in the tastiest, but least healthy breakfast... the breakfast casserole.

I love all casseroles, but the breakfast variety has a speacial place in my heart. Regardless of the specific variation, breakfast casseroles are always delicious, homey, and comforting. Kind of like the cozier version of a quiche. Unfortunately, all that wonderful usually comes at a cost: chlesterol, fat, excessive calories... etc. So I decided to do a comparison with my coworkers. First I brought in the original version of the breakfast casserole. It was wonderful, and most people took multiple servings. A few weeks later, I brought in the lightened version, replacing pork sausage with a leaner chicken and turkey sausage, reducing the amount of bread and whole eggs, and replacing whole milk with 2%. The lighter version got the same great reviews, and of course everyone felt a lot better about eating it! My next step is to start playing with this version... I already have an Italian twist to try, and then a Mexican one. I hope my coworkers are up to tasting a few more versions!