Havin' It My Way

So apparently I'm not the only one realizing the awesomeness that is oatmeal. Burger King is the latest place to put it onto their breakfast menu. But I find it easier just to avoid fast food altogether, unless there's something really special that I crave. For example, a strawberry slushie from Sonic, or a chocolate Frostie from Wendy's (with fries for dipping!).

But oatmeal is something that I can rock out on my own, no drive-thru required. I've had it three times already this week for dinner. I use the term dinner loosely here, since one of those oatmeals was a Salted Caramel Cocoa Oatmeal:

Yum! It's adapted from Hungry Girl's recipe here. In this case, adapted mostly means no chips, more caramel. Didn't have the first one, had the second stashed in the fridge thanks to Super Target clearance. Because really, present me with something tasty, lower calorie, and on sale, and there is simply no way I can resist.

The second oatmeal was so good I made it twice: Barbecue Brisket Oatmeal. Again, I must confess the convenience factor which lead to this concoction. My uncle is in town visiting, and along with fajitas, barbecue is a required culinary part of his trip. We went to Rudy's on Monday, and while he and my dad ate their extra moist brisket and sausage, I carefully weighed out four ounces each of smoked turkey and extra lean brisket. And I ended up with leftovers to take home with me.

So that leftover beef was chopped/shredded into a savory oatmeal (cooked in half water, half chicken broth) along with some onions, which just happened to be leftover from the fajitas we made. Once that was bubbling and delicious, I drizzled on the elixir of life, otherwise known as Salt Lick sauce. Is it wrong to mix the meat and sauce from different Qs? Perhaps. Do I care? Nope. It's tasty!

(This would be where a picture would go if I hadn't been so hungry after my workout last night that I gobbled it up before remembering to document my dinner.)

And tonight it's back to the sweet oatmeal with an ooey-gooey S'Mores Oatmeal:

Again, inspired by scavenging. Someone at the office had extra marshmallows left over from their weekend, and they were so ridiculously huge I had to grab one and bring it home. What can I say? I can't resist free. Or marshmallows.

It's the same as the Salted Caramel Cocoa Oatmeal, except instead of caramel, I added the marshmallow, chopped up a bit, then sprinkled Fiber One Honey Squares as the graham cracker element. I also used a tablespoon of actual cocoa instead of hot cocoa mix for extra chocolate-y goodness.

There's almost nothing that can't be brought home in a doggy bag from a restaurant or found to be in overabundance in the fridge that I can't whip into an oatmeal. And aside from tasting awesome, you get that added sense of righteousness from not only frugally using every food source, but getting lots of fiber and other trendy health benefits at the same time.

Gum Geek Gets Moment of Glory

Sorry, I like my alliteration. Anyway, I was made disproportionately excited by the quickfire challenge on the latest Top Chef: Just Desserts because it involved Extra Dessert Delights.

Take a peak in my purse and you'll find a Ziploc full of sugar-free gum. I love the stuff. I chew it after practically every meal. I'm partially convinced this is the reason I got good remarks from my dentist at my last check-up, because my daily brushing and flossing didn't change. I have a snack bag of them because I never know what flavor I'm going to want. In my arsenal are all of the Dessert Delight flavors, so when the pastry chefs were challenged to create a tiny dessert to inspire a new edition to the line, I was kind of stoked.

I tried to jot down each entrant quickly, and here are my thoughts:

• Pina Colada: Two chefs did this. Sorry, guys, but Orbit already makes that one, so I'm not interested in a duplicate.
• Lemon Pancakes with Strawberries: They already have Strawberry Shortcake, so this bored me. It ended up winning, but it 'inspired' Lemon Square as the possible new flavor, so I'm okay with that.
• Dulce de Leche: Yes! I would love a caramel gum. Extra needs to make this happen.
• Oatmeal Raisin Cookie: I like that this was a recognizable, iconic dessert, but it's not one I'd be rushing to chew. I feel like Apple Pie already covers the creamy cinnamon category.
• Banana Latte: So I know it would be weird to chew coffee gum, especially since my morning gum is usually to get the coffee taste out, but it did sound kind of good to me. I think it could be done right. Also, banana is a good flavor. Which I guess is why Bananas Foster was one of the options Extra has going up against the challenge winner.
• Raspberry Panna Cotta with Linzer Crust: Um, what? Ah, yes, that beloved dessert recognized around dinner tables everywhere. Failure to 'get' the challenge in my view. But they mentioned a gingerbread flavor, which would be a great holiday edition gum.
• Passion Fruit Gelee with Coconut Tapioca: Yet again we have something which, while a dessert, isn't a standard. Blah.
• Chocolate Cream Cookie with Orange Cheesecake: I'm confused. Is this an orange-flavored Oreo, basically? No. Cheesecake, maybe that would be interesting. Oreo might be interesting, but tough to pull off. And having to call it something non-branded is just silly-sounding.
• Black Forest Cake: I'm totally on board with this one. It's a classic dessert that sounds good and doesn't overlap with the current catalogue of available flavors.

The third option you could vote for was Root Beer Float. I'm good with that too. It's a hard candy, so they should be able to recreate that flavor pretty well. It makes me want them to come up with a soda line of flavors, because Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and Coke all sound good to me now.

Also, I have one more suggestion not covered in any of these instances: Cherry Pie. Come on, it's the All-American classic! It doesn't cover the same ground as Apple Pie, and I would think cherry is within their range to make chewable.

And so ends the disturbing glimpse into how much I love gum. Good night!

Cupcake...Leftovers? Are Those Even Possible?

Well, my friends, it's true. Even I, with my great love of all things cup and cake, can find myself with too many on hand to feasibly eat fresh. It's those darned Groupons and their deals on a dozen. I'm too selfish to share them with others, but too calorically limited to just gobble them all up at once as I would like. So into the freezer they go.

Once they come out, depending on how good I was about putting them in something airtight, and how long they were lost in the black hole that is my freezer, they may or may not be best eaten as is once thawed. Often they'll have lost a little moistness, and while the frosting is still sweet and delicious, it's also not quite soft.

But waste not, want not, and that's a lot of goodness to want. And so, my culinary inventiveness was called upon to rescue deliciousness from the void. Would I respond to the call?

You know it.

Here's what I started with:

A Bavarian Cream cupcake from Lick It, Bite It, Or Both in Austin. Yum.

Here's what I did:

1. Unwrapped it. (duh)
2. Took off the frosting piped on top and set aside for later. It was still cold from a fridge thaw, so it mostly just chipped off.
3. Cut the cake into four flat slices.
4. In a small-ish Tupperware, I mixed: 1/8 cup egg substitute, 1/8 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk, a dash of cinnamon, and a splash of Torani sugar-free syrup, chocolate flavored.
   
5. I set the slices of cake into the eggy mixture and swirled it around, spooned it over the top of all the slices, just generally made sure that it was going to absorb it all as much as possible.
6. With a lid on the Tupperware, I put it back in the fridge to absorb for a few hours.
7. When it was time to feast, I sprayed a frying pan, turned the flame on medium-high, and carefully spatula-ed the slices into the pan.
   
   
8. After they seemed to be sizzling, I flipped them over. This is really a judgement call, and I'm sure I'll get my skills fine-tuned, but those experienced in french toast would know better than I what to look for.
   
   
9. And then it was just a little more waiting before I had cupcake french toast ready to enjoy.

And enjoy I did. That frosting that I set aside? Totally forgot about it, but I just ate it later when I saw it in the fridge.

So, yeah. I took a cupcake and made it into french toast. I didn't eat it for breakfast, if that makes it any less horrific for any of you. And I'm not really sorry if it doesn't, 'cause it was good.

Freestylin'

There are three stages of being a kid: actually being a kid, growing up just enough to hate being a kid, and growing up further to wish that you could be a kid again. When you enter the final phase, you return to some of those behaviors that were shunned for a few years as being something 'kids' do. What was childish becomes nostalgic, and what was 'so uncool' becomes a rose-tinted memory.

Having firmly entered that third phase, I dream of a channel which streams a direct feed of 90s Nickelodeon (including commercials), skirts that spin up when you twirl, and, of course, drinks that are made up of at least half a dozen different sodas.

You know you did it. You went up to the soda fountain with your plastic cup and you expertly mixed a cocktail of Coke. You brazenly added fruit punch to root beer and blended Pepsi and Dr. Pepper. Add a dash of Sprite for a refreshing citrus twist, and you had something which may or may not be considered drinkable by an adult, but which was a nectar of the soft drink gods.

Today, that childlike wonder is excited in me again whenever I go to an eatery which boasts a Freestyle soda machine. If you haven't heard about them, they are these soda fountains with touch screen interfaces that contain 100+ options. Drinks that don't exist anywhere else, like Orange Coke Zero and Raspberry Fanta. With such strange ingredients, it would be wrong to simply fill up on one and walk away.

So far I've relied heavily on the Fanta Zero options to bring out the subtle fruitiness of other sodas, like Dr. Pepper, root beer and Coke Zero. I hope eventually to stumble upon some bubbling cup of carbonated perfection. I haven't gotten there yet, but I've been lucky enough to avoid any concoctions that have to be completely abandoned.

Now if only I could get that 90s Nickelodeon stream set up...

Smelling salts, STAT!

Ahh, the human body. It really is quite expertly crafted. It has been fine-tuned over the years to the peak of performance, despite the crazy things we do to it. Let's take a moment to marvel.

...

Okay, moment over. The reason for this wonderment is that this week I gave blood for the first time. There was a drive at work, and it's one of those things that just seems like such a good thing to do that when it's that convenient, why wouldn't you? So I did. Passed the barrage of questions about where my blood and I have been, had an acceptable blood pressure and iron level, and began pumping away.

I was a little nervous, because there's the whole "Wait ten minutes to stand up, eat a cookie, etc." business. But I was fine. Had a Tootsie Pop, squirreled away a snack pack of Oreos and Nutter Butters and was on my way to an afternoon of productive documentation work. I felt a little drained maybe, but fine.

The trouble was when I got home. The sofa just felt so darned comfy I waited too long to start making dinner, a savory oatmeal with beef jerky and dried cherries. Yes, I'm weird, moving swiftly on. Anyway, I had the liquids warming up, was measuring out the oatmeal when my mom came home and asked me how I was feeling. "Fine," I said. "I can feel my lack of food a little..."

Right on cue, there it was. That knee-buckling sensation that you must put yourself closer to the ground. I knelt to the ground, and the next thing I know, I'm staring at the dust under the refrigerator and being spoon-fed cinnamon honey butter for a quick boost of sugar. Ahh, sweet elixir of life. Thank you, cute little teddy bear on the label, for bringing me back.

After walking my mother through the rest of the process of my strange oatmeal concoction, I spent the rest of the night delicately on the sofa, making sure I could stand up, and thinking of things to eat. The next day I paranoically ate a Starburst in the middle of the morning to bypass a feeling of faintness which may or may not have been real.

But now I'm fine, fully-nourished and feeling slightly better prepared for the next blood drive. You know what that means: I'm bringing my jar of honey butter.

Click-click-bloody-click PANCAKES!

When it comes to food, I have definite phases. I find something I like, which has a manageable number of calories, and become enthralled. It becomes a staple on my menu for a few weeks, until I get a little burnt out and find something new to salivate over. It maintains a slot on my roster, but it's no longer craving #1.

Some examples of food phases: Diana's Banana Babies (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate - so good!), Lean Pockets (you can't get anything that cheesy and bready for under 300 calories by making it yourself), Tootsie Pops (how many licks does it take? I still don't know...), sushi (just in general, fueled by my time in Tokyo)...you get the idea. Lots of different kinds of food are discovered, coveted, and then stored away.

Right now, I'm in a serious pancake phase. From a boxed mix, if you only use one nutritional serving size (which is sadistically a third of the smallest serving the back of the box gives directions for), you can get a healthy dose of pancakes for 150-200 calories. That's either two smaller cakes or one more hefty cake.

From that simple principle, my mind has conjured millions of varieties. There's the traditional fried egg on top, using the pancake to sop up the yolky goodness. Maybe a side of turkey bacon to complete breakfast's lighter side. Leftovers one night gave me a flash of inspiration: salmon pancakes! Taking the leftover filet baked the night before, I flaked it into the batter, spread Laughing Cow on top. Also works with shredded smoked salmon and also topped with a fried egg for ultimate decadence.

Tonight, I have just enjoyed a sweeter concoction. Into the batter went a little chopped banana, then onto the pancake went a tablespoon of locally made Pecan Pumpkin Honey Butter, and slices of the rest of the banana. Scrumptious. I'm thinking that maybe swirling the nut butter into the batter itself might be tempting. Also, the mind reels at the concept of perhaps white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, or other delights being added in. Ahh, the mental sugar rush!

I'm also planning another savory pancake utilizing a previous phase that never really went out of fashion with my taste buds: buffalo chicken. I'm thinking shredded chicken in the batter, with buffalo sauce replacing the maple syrup. Too much? I don't care, I'm going for it!

Because it works in so many different ways, pancakes have enjoyed a stronghold on my palate for almost a month now. Not every night, of course, but it wouldn't be going too far to say multiple times a week. It's relatively quick and simple, and actually pretty fun to come up with, so I'm thinking it's chances of maintaining this kitchen celebrity are pretty high.

So yes, pancakes might as well be street for crack, because they are addictive.

(Just so everyone knows, that last line is a continuation of the 'Family Guy' reference in the title, not a comment on actual recreational drug usage.)