Battle of the soups

Coming back from Florida to wintry Reno was a long trip, although both of our flights were not full, both got delayed due to winter weather and when we arrived around midnight it was hard to convince our silly (I can think of other names but we will keep it clean here) cab driver to take us home. In the end we had to walk the last 100 ft in snow to the house. The next day icy conditions turned into over 100 car accidents. This cold weather really makes you crave hot drinks and warm food and what is better then a hot soup to cure that?
We started with a soup that I created with things that we had at the house - Yams. I know you're thinking of that orange sweet potato like vegetable - if so, you are confusing yams with sweet potatoes - a common mistake done all around the world and in North American supermarkets.

Sweet potato and Yam
 

My soup is a Creamy Nut and Yam soup is made with "cream" - Almond milk, cashews and walnuts all pureed together in a blender and combined with a broth based yam soup to create a rich creamy soup.


Nut and Yam Soup

A day later Bob created a soup using rutabaga and some other 20 ingredients (Well OK maybe not 20, but usually you can tell the difference between us buy the recipe - I'm more a simple 5 ingrediants type of girl warm and serve, while my talented husband is 20 some ingrediants cook three ways and use difficult words and tecniques) his soup is Roasted Pepper and Rutabaga soup. I can say that my soup won this friendly contest, but if you ask him, his won...

Roasted Pepper and Rutabaga Soup

 When making this soup you can roast extra peppers and save them for later - you can add them to salads, sandwiches, sauces, pastas and much more. Use as many types of peppers as you like - sweet or spicy- it turned out amazing

We are headed for a snowshoe hike and later today we will light up a fire and seat and try to warm up with a hot toddy or two (recipe next week).
We will also more likely to continue our detox discussion and research, as we are planing on doing one next week, Bob has a scholarly article as opposed to quackery sales pitches (say what?!). Here is the article and here is the summary:

·         It is difficult to measure toxic load

·         The body continually detoxifies itself through excretory functions

·         Toxins in fat are the most difficult to remove and may contribute to cancers

·         Ancient Indian and traditional Chinese medicine have procedures for removing toxins. It is also the focus of naturopathic medicine

·         Although there are currently many detox programs “it is not yet possible to base their use on rigorous scientific evidence”

The article has a an interesting note about a detox program used on workers at the World Trade Center disaster cleanup

Yifat & Bob.

Family Vacation Xmas in Florida

In Florida for Christmas with Bob's parents (Daytona!). Factoids learned on our Christmas trip so far: 1) Yahtzee was invented by a couple that played on their yatch; 2) You can save 25 miles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike if you "straighten" the curves while driving; 3) You get circles under your eyes if you stay up past midnight every night to drink.







Our vacation was a Florida culinary, sightseeing adventure and some good old fashion family fun. It started with a dinner stop at Dixie Crossroads, http://dixiecrossroads.com/, where you get deep fried corn fritters with powered sugar as soon as you sit down - should be outlawed in my opinion... Then a visit to St. Augustine the "old city", it was too windy to see anything other than the local shops and to refill our stock of fudge, chocolate covered oreos and other unmentionables.

Deep Fried Fritters from Dixie Crossroad - Should be outlawed

Another trip we took was to Blue Springs State Park to see the manatee's. It was cold and the manatee's were in the spring in big numbers. When the weather gets cold the manatees come into the shallow spring waters to stay warm. You can check them out on their webcam http://www.savethemanatee.org/cs_manatee_cams.html. It is always special to see wild animals in their natural habitat. We saw a great blue heron and a freshwater turtle. We got to see some action (the manatees moved) and a lot of slow close up activities.
We bought the same (?!) manatee Christmas tree ornament we bought last year... well there is some disagreement about this point, but we'll see when we get home.




More Factoids, if you snooze all day you can stay up late to drink and St. Augustine is the oldest city in North America.
 After corn fritters and burgers (I should have mentioned 5 Guys Burgers) we decided to have something a touch healthier so quinoa, kale salad and feta chicken was the chosen menu for dinner. Cooking together a beautiful meal was fun and successful as we cleaned every plate, pot and bowl.






That's all for now, from sunny Florida - have a happy and safe holidays!
Yifat and Bob

P.S
For all the Steelers fans out there: you win some, you lose some and life goes on.

Saturday Brunch

This Saturday we woke up late and our plans to go and workout went out the window. Sometimes it's important to listen to your body and get a good long sleep and charge up. We decided to start a tofu scramble and when Bob got in the kitchen I got an idea for spicy hash - 20min later we had a delicious breakfast.

 One of the spices we used here is Zhug from a Napa Vally based spice store called Whole Spice. We make a habit of shopping there for new spice mixes and rubs every time we are in the area. Another spice used is Zahtar which can be found in middle eastern shops, it is a combination of sumac, thyme and sesame seed.

Is it a game or is it an event?

 

Definitely an event! Win or Lose watching the Steelers play at Heinz Field is a BIG event in Pittsburgh. Big events are the ones where you start planning and get excited well before, you talk about it with everyone and you leave room and time to recover from it. The day before the game we were busy buying Steelers swag, anything in black and gold and greeting other steelers fans. (I said "There are lots of fans here", He said "We are in Pittsburgh, everyone is a Steelers fan"). On game day we walked to the stadium early to enjoy the atmosphere and grab some beers (Yes, I said it). They had live bands and all kind of crazy people doing crazy things in the name of love for their team. I loved it, It would have been better if they actualy won the game... but it was pretty cool to be there.

Now about Pittsburgh! Wow! Really cool city. I feel like we saw just a glimpse of it and we would come back in a heart beat. We got to see The Strip - it's couple of streets of restaurants, delis, bakeries, coffee shops, cool stores and Steelers stores, In the summer they have a farmer's market.  Being visitors we had to strole between the deferent delicatesis and drool knowing that we can't take home all that wonderful produce.

We did eat there twice - One at the famous Primanti Brothers and a breakfast at Pamela's both were excellent. We drank coffee at La Prima with some pastries from the next door bakery.







We had good advice and company during the trip from full time locals (who happened also to be good friends and relatives). They took us to the southside (which has to rank high in the most restaurants and bars per square mile standings) to eat German (we don't get it here in Reno) and then a drink on Mt. Washington after riding the incline to the top.

The city itself is a constant composition, scenes, people architecture, history everywhere you glance. We will be back, this time for a pirate game and maybe thanksgiving.

For the Steeler fans reading this the Steeler weekend finished on a high note when we recognized Rocky Bleier getting on the same plane with us............

KEEN-wah

We have been busy for the last week or so and a few recipes we tried sputtered out. While they were nicely done, certainly not WorthSharing. Yesterday we had an unplanned brunch, with stuff out of the fridge and it was WorthSharing! It started with a discussion about how to pronounce Quinoa. One of the conversation participants likes to pronounce hors d'oeuvre as or-derbies. I think that the conversationalist uses the word, or-derbies, to make people wonder about his intelligence. According to Wiki-Answers there are two alternative ways of pronouncing "quinoa": The first option is "kee-NO-wah" and the other is "KEEN-wah." So to all the wordies out there don't look at me funny when I pronounce it like it is spelled.




For our brunch we had one of our favorite soups - Spicy Sweet Potato, Napa cabbage salad and Quinoa. We experimented with kee-no-wah and cooked a cup of it with 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast along with a little red onion and pulverized mushrooms. It came out great with a earthy, salty flavor.

thats all for now, Bob and Yifat.

Thanksvegan

Thanksgiving Dinner 2012

 We decided to go vegan for thanksgiving, why? Well we have hot sausage sandwiches and all kinds of Pittsburgh food (have you heard of Primanti Brothers?) in a few weeks and a big turkey dinner coming up for Christmas, so what the heck.

 We did the Turkey Trot (10K Run) and then we went to Whole Foods and looked in the Well Eating Magazine (expensive) and the Whole Health (free) for recipes. We decided to stuff an acorn squash and found a recipe for wild rice pilaf that looked like it belonged in an acorn squash. A creamed Kale recipe looked good and we finished with a vegan recipe for key lime pie.

Game on!

The rice pilaf took a looong time but it was worth it. A link to the recipe is below. The acorn squash is a good addition to your repertoire. It is easy, quick, flavorful and stuffable with all kinds of things. It makes you look like a kitchen pro. The recipe for the acorn squash is simple: cut in half (without stabbing yourself) and scoop out the seeds, put open side down on a lightly oiled baking pan and cook at 350 for 20 or 30 minutes or until the flesh is to your liking. 

Wild Rice Pilaf Recipe

While the wild rice pilaf was cooking I (Bob) had plenty of time to do roasted veggies, the vegan key lime pie, and the acorn squash (Yifat was sampling the spiced wine and going over the news paper looking for black friday deals :0 ).

The Wild Rice Pilaf was worth the effort, the flavors had you wanting more. The key lime pie had to wait until the day after thanksgiving, but wow, you need to try this raw, vegan dessert slam dunk!

We will talk more about the raw, vegan Key lime "cheescake" in another post, for now enjoy the picture. Look for Spiced wine, Cranberry sauce and Key line "cheescake" recipes in Recipes pages.
Have a wonderful thanksgiving weekend y'all!

             

               

We are On the Air!

It's a cold fall day here in Nevada. We are sitting by the fire place, out side is pitch dark and it is not even 6 pm. We have a wonderful soup on the stove and we feel pretty lucky and happy - so much that it is worth sharing with others :)
This is our blog were we share things that are just too awesome to be left unmentioned.

Hope you find it worth sharing as well,

Yifat & Bob