Comunidad Health Foods

Happy Mother's Day to all of those fantastic moms out there! I tend to not get into the whole Mother's/Father's Days because I find them to be more or less silly. Don't get me wrong - I love my parents and they absolutely deserve recognition for all of the incredible things they do, particularly for my sister and me. It's just that spending $4.00 on a piece of thickened, colored paper that has some generic well-wishes on it and showering my Mom with diamond necklaces or roses that will fade in a few days...I find it all to be very trite. I try my best to spend time with my Mom all year long, and even if I don't look her in the eyes every day and say, "Mom, you're awesome, thank you for being who you are and who you are to me," I try to show it in my actions. 

So when Mother's Day rolls around, I'm all about the homemade cards and the smaller gestures. I took my mom out to lunch today to this adorable little cafe that she had been to recently with a friend, and even if I hadn't paid or even offered to paid, I still would've considered it a Mother's Day well spent. Because to me, it's so not about the money or going somewhere or anything like that. It's just about having some nice Mother-Daughter time, while still getting my Mom back to her sunny back yard while it's still bright and nice enough out to get some gardening in. 

I understand that Mother's Day is a bigger deal in some families. I lucked out in that my mom also doesn't get wrapped up in the hoopla of Hallmark, so my less-than-traditional approach (though I think decidedly more sentimental) to the whole thing is entirely forgivable. Because I know my opinion is not the only one, and I'm sure once I have little rug rats of my own toddling around I'll be singing a different tune (slightly, anyway), I wanted to have a post dedicated to the day nonetheless. I'm sure no one is sitting here at 3:15pm scrambling for a last minute recipe, but if you are, or if you want to get a head start on Father's Day or Mother's Day next year, or even just a nice, spring/summer soiree, this balsamic syrup is the way to go.

I found this recipe on Healthy and Gourmet, and was intrigued enough to give it a shot. You give me two ingredients that sounds kind of funky together, and all I want to do is try it. I brought the syrup to L's Easter celebration along with a tray of kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and sliced banana, for a sort of "fruit salad bar," using the syrup as the dressing. It's strong so you only need a modest drizzle, and it's certainly an addition to fruit that would be welcomed more by some than others, but if you like the play of sweet and sour off each other, and you like the light-yet-complex tones of a balsamic vinaigrette, I would highly recommend this. Although mine was much less viscous than the pictures on Healthy and Gourmet led me to believe it would be, it still wound up being a pretty solid hit at the dinner. I can imagine it going well with just about any fruit, alongside French Toast, over sorbet or gelato, mixed in with just the tiniest bit of liquid chocolate...and the list goes on. It's the easiest way to dress up a dish - I mean, how easy is it to cut up some fruit while this is simmering on the stove top? 

I apologize for the lack of pictures - as is generally the case when I make food to take somewhere else, I forgot to snap a picture before I left and did not think to bring a camera with me for on-the-scene, last minute shots. Besides, Healthy and Gourmet's pictures look tantalizing enough. No need for my amateur point-and-shoot practices getting in the way of true beauty!

 

 

Today was an oatmeal morning - it was rainy, the temperatures have started to fall, my stress levels are through the roof, and I was all about the sweatpants today. Oatmeal, I have found, goes well with sweatpants - not in the way of a messy eater like me, who winds up with oatmeal quite literally in my lap if I'm not careful or fully conscious, but in the way that they are both comforting and good remedies for crummy, rainy, not-warm-enough days.

I did not eat this dish this morning - I did a simple strawberry-almond oatmeal - but I sure wouldn't have minded this one, either. This warm parfait is the child of a sexy parfait and a secure, reliable oatmeal. You don't get the contrasting creamy-crunchy textures that you get with a traditional parfait, but you do get a smoothness that I've found traditional oatmeal to be lacking in. At the same time, all of the flavors come through without the dish as a whole being overly sweet. Plus, the color of this parfait screams Springtime, but the warmth is so inviting for those in-between days. Enjoy it for breakfast or dessert, or even a sweeter but wholesome lunch or dinner.

I love breakfast food. I could (and often do) find myself craving something designated "for breakfast" throughout the entire day. I like to think that it's a twisted form of the Russian within me. I've heard that in Russia, there's no actual designated "breakfast foods" (this is where the twisted form of Russian comes in); rather, they just eat whatever they want, essentially. It's interesting to see how different breakfast can be cross-culturally, and I think it's refreshing to see a culture that acknowledges the arbitrary nature of time-specific recipes. Just as they might have, I don't know, beet salad and vodka for breakfast (I may be way off here, but you get the gist - they aren't eating cereal simply because it's morning and that's what you do), I find myself wanting to have pancakes for dinner and cereal for lunch. It's fun to turn food conventionality on its head sometimes. Kind of like eating dessert first, but that's a whole other topic...

Because of all of this, every so often I plan breakfast for dinner. A little while back, I did this with pancakes. Now, I don't know about you, but I was raised an Aunt Jemima girl. Those pancakes are tres bien, and as they are among the few processed, packaged mixes of any kind of food that I can still eat, it somewhat pains me to leave Aunt Jemima behind in search of my own, from-scratch version. But, being that I can't leave things well alone, search I do. This journey becomes increasingly disheartening each and every time I try a recipe and discover that it, well....sucks. I am becoming ever more frightened that I am incapable of making a from-scratch pancake as good as dear old Aunt Jemima.

These pancakes are not bad. They don't burn or have any kind of off flavors. They do taste like pancakes, and they turn a relatively acceptable color. The problem that I have with them is that they are quite literally, as flat as a pancake. And I like my pancakes very un-pancake like in that regard: fluff is key. I like restaurant pancakes that come out as big as your plate and as thick as, well, a thick and fluffy pancake. Maybe I did something incorrectly and this recipe isn't supposed to yield surprisingly thin pancakes, but I have too many pancake recipes to try to give any one of them a second chance. One strike, you're out, and I move on, determined to find my Aunt Jemima equivalent.

Because I didn't approve of the pancakes, and because I didn't change a darn thing about the recipe (to my knowledge), I'm just going to direct you to 2 Make Ends Meet, where you can find the original post. It's entirely possible that I did something careless, since her pictures look adequately fluffy, and it's also entirely possible that there are readers out there who would really enjoy a thinner pancake. They did have a nice flavor to them. So, don't be discouraged by what this jaded pancake critic has to say, at least not without checking it out yourself.

Still, the fruit and yogurt puree I threw together with it was pretty good, if not a little pungent from an accidental overload on the extracts I used. I will definitely use greek yogurt next time to thicken it a little, but overall, it was very nice.

I apologize right from the start, but those brownies that I mentioned last time are just going to have to wait. They have been shoved from the lime light by these little gems - these gorgeous, delicious, adorable little muffins filled with juicy pear and topped with sweet and crunchy oat streusel. This, my last minute procrastination recipe for New Year's Eve, could not have been a better decision. Although these pear muffins are far from traditional celebration fare, they worked beautifully with the early dinner I had with L's family (and as my light lunch to hold me over to said early dinner, ahem...).


It should come as no surprise that I found these over at the Smitten Kitchen, since these days I find almost all of my rave-worthy recipes there. I was planning last week to make a pear crisp for Christmas, but logistically couldn't figure out how to make it in advance so that it could travel to its destination. So I ditched that idea, replaced it with the fudge and some mysterious chocolatey caramel surprises (soon to be revealed, I promise), and have four pears sitting on my counter threatening to rot there before too long. So, I did what any frugal baker would do - I used it as an excuse to bake something! I delved into my pot of recipes and pulled out one for a pear bread, told myself it would be excellent in mini-muffin form, found an oat streusel topping to sprinkle over it, and got to work. What came out of my kitchen yesterday is nothing short of saintly (coming from the baker in me, not the nutritionist, mind you). No, I exaggerate. These are not the worst muffins, either - in fact, I would even file them away in the "muffin" category, while some of my so-called muffin recipes-to-make are kept very judiciously in the "cupcake" folder.


Yes, I really am that particular. But that is neither here nor there, as this recipe is too good to dilly-dally. I very barely changed it from Deb's recommendations, aside from to halve it (and I still got 4 dozen minis), adjust the baking time, add the topping and play with the amount of pear - again, minimally. One discovery I did make, however, was that if you zest a juicy pear, you get pear sauce. You know, like apple sauce, but from a pear. Therefore, I have every intention of swapping out some of the oil for some pear sauce next time. just for kicks. I might also tone down the brown sugar in the streusel and make a bit more of it for topping in general. If I really want to go crazy with the healthification of these muffins (and I'm not so sure I do, since they really are fantastic as they are), I might tinker with the sugar in the muffins, too. But for right now, this recipe is a knock out, and I don't know why you're still reading this instead of skipping to the good stuff and heading into your kitchen faster than the speed of light.