Sesame Soba Noodles

I just want to start by giving a huge shout out to Charity for hosting an awesome yoga + wine event last night with cuyaYOGA and the Battery Park Wine Bar.

Yoga and wine are (obviously) two things I'm passionate about (p.s. who's with me on opening an wine bar/yoga studio in CLE?) and a great time was had by all. I've never been to the cuyaYOGA space at Battery Park, but it was a way cool way to practice. Definitely going back.

So anyway, onto the real purpose of this post. I want to introduce to you the one, the only, the soba noodle.

I guess this is a recipe week. I dunno, it's just that' I've actually been COOKING lately. It must be because it's getting colder and darker.

I absolutely LOVE soba noodles. They're higher in protein than regular pasta and they taste freaking awesome because they're made from mostly buckwheat flour. You can do a lot with them, but my favorite is to make any type of Asian dish with them...they can be pretty multi-talented.

Sesame Soba Noodle Salad adapted from Full Measure of Happiness
serves 2

ingredients:

• 12 oz dry soba noodles
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1/2 small onion, minced finely
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• 4 tsp soy sauce (we use Bragg’s Aminos)
• 1-2 tsp honey or agave
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• yellow squash, halved and sliced

directions:

1. Cook the soba noodles as instructed. Make sure to rinse the noodles off with cold tap water as soon as you drain them. This will keep them from sticking to each other.
2. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, until they are brown. Be careful not to burn them! They can burn pretty quickly.
3. Set aside the toasted sesame seeds, and add the onions, sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar and honey to the skillet over medium heat. After about 5 minutes add the yellow squash and let it cook through.
4. Pour the squash/sauce over the drained noodles (in a bowl, not the strainer!) and top with sesame seeds.

Do you use soba noodles? What is your favorite soba dish?

Year 26: The Bucket List

Happy Birthday to ME!!!!

Just in case you were wondering who else I share my birthday with, these are some famous October 7th babies (in no particular order)

• Rachel McAdams
• Taylor Hicks
• Thom Yorke
• Toni Braxton
• John Cougar Mellencamp
• Vladimir Putin
• Simon Cowell (iiiiinteresting)
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Evan Longoria
• Desmond Tutu
• Elijah Muhammed

Some of those are pretty awesome, and some are pretty not awesome.

Every year, I write a "bucket list" of sorts. Things that I want to practice/do/accomplish for the year to come. Each year, the list gets one item longer...last year there was 25 things on that list, this year - 26. Last year's went something like this (my comments are in blue italics):

Bucket List

Age 25

1. Spend time with my baby sister, face-to-face
2. Eat something new I've never had before
3. Full expression of Visvamitrasana (and maybe Hanumanasana?) MY full expression of these poses
4. See a game at Wrigley
5. Discover new wines
6. Run a great urban race/adventure race...OR another relay!
7. explore other types of hatha yoga and go to different studios
8. read more about yogic history/yogic texts
9. learn a new sport
10. Becca time, at least once a week...just rest debatable
11. reiki
12. massage school
13. run another marathon
14. compete in a sprint triathlon or longer bi/duathlon
15. plant a tree does it count if Brandon did it?
16. shovel snow
17. mow the lawn
18. ORGANIZE MY RECIPES!!!
19. make sure Brandon knows, everyday, how much I love and appreciate him
20. rock climbing (real or wall)
21. Run 2 "destination" races (races I've never run, or places I've never been!) gonna say I didn’t do this one, even though I ran several races in CLE that I’ve never run before
22. learn "where the boat leaves from" on my uke
23. make progress on our urban farm (not necessarily selling our own produce but do something that will help move us toward that goal)
24. blog more often (Becca, you have a LOT of recipes and thoughts to share with the world)
25. take more pictures

Not to shabby, right? I consider all but eight of those things achieved. What's up for me this year? Let's see...

Bucket List

Age 26

1. plan my wedding with the least amount of stress possible (by practicing santosha)
2. run a destination race
3. practice photography by taking pictures of EVERYTHING! and hopefully this will result in more blog posts
4. reconnect with a friend that I haven’t spoken to in a while, and keep that connection open
5. practice finding peace in uncomfortable situations, by staying in them instead of running away from them
6. take a day off of work for no reason in particular
7. play an instrument once a month
8. be a part of brandon’s music; whether it’s recording, promoting, album art, hanging out at the studio, whatever it may be
9. see a game at wrigley field (yep, still on the list)
10. go to pittsburgh
11. make these cookie sandwiches again
12. get together with someone I haven’t seen in a while
13. try out a few restaurants in Cleveland that I haven’t been to
14. make up my own beer recipe
15. watch all THREE Star Wars movies (the old ones - a new hope, the empire strikes back, return of the jedi - love me some Han Solo)
16. Keep running OUTSIDE through the winter, even though I may not be training
17. keep our lemon tree alive through the winter
18. make a recipe from one of my cookbooks (NOT a blog/website) once a month
19. get my next tattoo
20. do a big filtering of everything in the basement
21. for every item of clothing I buy, donate two items
23. purchase (or acquire, pilfer, whatever) a food processor
24. make my own pasta (gluten free, perhaps)
25. PR in any distance that I have already run
26. be confident in expressing my beliefs and values (not that I’m not confident in them. This is specifically about standing up for myself at work - “do you really stand all day?” “I thought you were a vegetarian, why are you eating meat?” “Becca’s recycling paper again, I’m going to go burn 5 tires when I get home” - instead of just shrugging it off.)

Today, I'm going to celebrate my birthday with a schweddy balls ice cream cake, a glass of wine and a half marathon on Sunday! And just for fun, I'll leave you with a completely uncharacteristically unhealthy PL&B recipe: funfetti cookies!! As long as they're not an everyday cookie, I'm totally okay with an uber processed food recipe once in a while. Plus, funetti is delicious. 'Nuff said.

Funfetti Cookies

makes about 30 cookies

ingredients:

• 1 package funfetti cake mix
• 1/3 cup oil
• 2 eggs

directions:

• preheat your oven to 375 deg(F) and cover cookie sheets with parchment
• mix all the ingredients in a medium sized mixing bowl until thoroughly mixed (you'll probably have one big ball of cookie dough)
• roll about 1 tbsp of dough into 1" balls (haha, balls) and place them about 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet
• place a small piece of parchment on top of a cookie dough ball and, using the bottom of a glass, press the cookie down until they are about a quarter inch thick (actually, I just pressed until the cookie was the same diameter of the glass...who can really tell if it's a quarter inch thick just by looking/feeling anyway?!)

• bake for 6-8 minutes, or until the cookies are browned around the edges. 
• let cool on a cooling rack and en-freaking-joy! 

happy birthday to all those other October birthdays out there!!

Lemon-a-licious Spaghetti

In my quest to tighten the belt a bit and eat well on a budget, I have started planning my weekly meals in advance so I can simply buy what I need at the store. One of those meals this week was this lemon pasta dish. 

I have been obsessed with citrus ever since my trip to California and seeing my uncle's garden. Lemon just sings SUMMER to me! Brandon and I are actually planning to make our upstairs "half room" into a lemon and fig growing room during the winter. We'll just have to see how that one goes...

Anyway, LEMONS! This dish is very very lemony, so if you are not one for the yellow, tangy, citrusy goodness then scale back some of the zest you use, or some of the lemon juice. If you start with less juice and then add to taste you'll be able to take the lemon down a notch or two. The original recipe called for the use of about a cup of pasta water to the lemon sauce, but I didn't need to use any (probably why mine was SO lemony and delicious). I think adding the pasta water would have watered it down too much, to be honest. The sauce is pretty thin. 

BUT SO GOOD!! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did. A perfect summery dinner. 

Lemon-a-licious Spaghetti
adapted from smitten kitchen
serves 2

ingredients

• ½ lb spaghetti (I used two servings of fresh made pasta from the farmer’s market)
• pinch of sea salt
• 2 lemons
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• ¼ cup almond milk
• ½ cup grated parmesan
• ground pepper
• small handful fresh picked basil leaves

directions

1. Cook the pasta al dente in salted water.
2. While the pasta cooks, zest the lemons until you have just about 1 tablespoon of zest then juice both lemons.
3. Drain the pasta, then dry out your pot to cook the sauce. Boil the oil, almond milk, and zest over high heat for a minute or so.
4. Return pasta to the pot and stir until well coated. Add the cheese and lemon juice and toss everything together.
5. Stir in the basil and season with salt and pepper
6. Serve immediately, topping with an extra drizzle of olive oil and some more parmesan.

What is your favorite summer dinner? Do you usually pair your dinners with red or white wine?

Uncle Joe's Pancakes

So, as you may know, I was on vacation in L.A. and Chicago all of last week. I had every intention of posting a couple of times while I was on vacation and I even brought my computer with me...

Yeah, I took the computer out ONCE. And that didn't even happen until Saturday. And it was only to listen to music while we were getting ready for the wedding.

Brandon and I went to L.A. went with my mom to visit my Uncle Joe.

He's pretty much all that and a bag of chips. He's got this wonderful garden with a few fig trees, an orange tree, a grapefruit tree, a kumquat tree, a pomegranate tree and grape vines.

He also makes the best pancakes in the whole world.

When I was a kid, my brother and I would eat the pancakes as fast as he could make them. He'd plop a few down on the table and before the next batch was up, they'd already be gone!

Naturally, I requested my favorite comfort food for breakfast one morning.

I was actually surprised to find out that his method was easy as pie (considering I SUCK at making pancakes, I should probably try to employ this):

• bisquick pancake mix
• whole wheat flour
• milk

Now, you have to make sure your griddle is nice and hot before cooking those cakes, mix up all the ingredients (sorry I don't have actual measurements, just try to find a ratio that results in pancake batter consistency) and don't flip them until the bubbles have popped on one side. 

Serve them up with some Ohio maple syrup and kumquats fresh off the tree. Pretty sure there's nothing better than Uncle Joe's pancakes for breakfast.

Garbanzo Bean Burgers

I heard a very interesting story on NPR about Cleveland this morning.

Basically, they said that Cleveland should be a perfect place for young, tax-paying professionals to flock to (and for many, to come home to). The cost of living is incredibly low, you get the arts, the night life, incredible parks, a [decent] public transit system, even though it may not seem like it, there are actually jobs here.

BUT

They said that Clevelanders are Cleveland's own worst enemy. It's not that we don't believe in a Cleveland revival, we're just very skeptical. So like, when someone actually does move to the area, people ask "why?" instead of welcoming them!

As a (semi) recent Cleveland transplant, I know this to be 100% true. When I first started meeting new people in Cleveland, and even now as I meet new Clevelanders, one of their very first questions is always "...so, why the hell did you move here?!" 


No lie.

Not to mention, the most popular tourism video(s) makes fun Cleveland, and points out all the reasons why someone would NOT want to move here. I hope, for Cleveland's sake, that we can all change our attitude about that. This place has so many good things going for it. I know we are [mostly] all 100% behind our city, and I know everyone is really just being sarcastic when they as me why I'm here.

BUT

A lot of truth is said in jest. If we're going to change everyone elses' less-than-positive view on life here in CLE, then we have to first change our own. We should be telling the world how wonderful it is here. It shouldn't be "why would you move here?!?" but "It's GREAT that you moved to Cleveland! It's such an awesome city! Welcome home."

Ok, I'm off my soap box.

The real topic of my post today was to show off some pictures and an awesome summer recipe...

These are a genius invention of Heidi Swanson's (yet again, I am swooning over her recipes!) It's a vegetarian bean burger but she had the brilliant idea to use it as the bun, instead of the burger.

You can find Heidi's recipe here. My only changes were green garlic and green onions instead of cilantro, because that's just what I had. 

I filled my garbanzo burgers with avocados, sprouts, tomatoes and cheese (oh! and hot sauce!)

(don't judge my brown-ish avocados! They are totally still good!)

Some other filling ideas:

• typical burger fillings; tomatoes, lettuce, onions
• fried eggs (mmm, or poached with a runny yolk!)
• if you're not anti-meat: chicken breast or sausage
• strawberries and peaches, topped with some honey (disclaimer: I have never tried this, so I can't attest to it's deliciousness. Though I don't know

So go on...get your garbanzo burger on!

Stinging Nettles!

One of the vendors at the farmer's market last Saturday was selling stinging nettle. I've heard about stinging nettles before, but I

a) wouldn't know what they looked like if I came across them and
b) wouldn't know what to do with them if I came into possession of some.

Problem solved, thanks to Irvin...the wonderful Amish man who sold us a bag of stinging nettles for $2.00 at the market. He said he liked to make tea with them and he gave us a whole paper on the things we could use it for.

{photo credit: wikipedia.com}

Irvin said he liked to make tea out of it. So we did! It was pretty awesome tea, if I may say so myself. I was headachin' all day Sunday and the nettle tea did a bit to relieve it. I even made it iced - a refreshing refreshment for a hot day!

Last night, we did something different with the nettles though. We made them into pesto! I love your run-of-the-mill basil pesto, but I have no fresh basil to make it at the moment. Stinging nettle pesto was a nice retreat from the norm. 

Be careful with this stuff though, the plant has microscopic hairs all over that sting when you touch them. They are essentially, little needles that inject the skin with histamines and various other chemicals that produce a stinging sensation that can last a couple of hours. {side note, I just read that some people have eating contests with stinging nettle, to see who can eat the most raw nettle...that sounds painful!} So you have to boil the plant before you can use it in any recipes, because boiling will remove the stinging chemicals. 

stinging nettle pesto
adapted from Fat of the Land
enough for 2 servings

prep time: 5 minutes
cook time: 5 minutes

ingredients

• 1 cup stinging nettles, blanched and chopped
• ¼ - ½ cup raw pine nuts
• 4-5 large garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
• ¼ - ½ cup olive oil
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• salt and pepper, to taste

directions

1. Blanch the stinging nettle in boiling water, until they become soft (a cooked spinach-like texure). Drain and chop.
2. Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until desired pesto consistency is reached.

stinging nettle pesto on homemade pasta

So that's the story, morning glory. Stinging nettles.

Definitely try them out if you get a chance to.

Campsite Breakfast Wraps

I was perusing my pictures from a camping trip in Ripley, NY last year and I came across a sweet picture of breakfast that we made one day:

To give credit where credit is due; all of the pictures in this post were taken by the one and only Mr. Alex Kocher (Brandon's little "twin" brother) and if you have a chance you should definitely, definitely check out his work! He is pretty amazing. 

Anyway, back to breakfast! We made deliciously nutritious breakfast wraps...and not just any deliciously nutritious breakfast wraps, we made classically overstuffed, open-fire toasted deliciously nutritious breakfast wraps! Along with some fire brewed peach tea, it's the perfect way to wake up in the middle of nature. Pure, unadulterated nature.

We spent most of our time basking in the sun, doing a bit of exploring and just taking in all the life that was around us. Oh, and eating...of course.

We eat like kings and queens when we go camping.

breakfast wrap

serves 1

prep time: 5 minutes

cook time: 10 minutes

ingredients: 

• 1 whole wheat wrap
• olive oil
• cinnamon
• 2 tbsp almond butter
• 1 tbsp mung bean sprouts
• 1/2 banana, sliced
• 3 strawberries, sliced
• 1/3 peace, cut into thin wedges
• 2 tbsp granola
• 1 tbsp raw honey

directions:

oil the outside of the wrap and sprinkle with cinnamon, then flip over to fill.

spread almond butter on open wrap.

lay all sliced fruit on top of almond butter.

sprinkle with mung bean sprouts, granola and honey.

close wrap and place in pre-heated oven or over a campfire (on top of a grate).

cook for about 10 minutes until brown and toasted on the outside and warmed through.

What is your favorite camping food?

Peace, Love & Bagels,

Balsamic Butternut Squash Pasta

So, here's another lazy Sunday recipe of mine. It's loosely based on a recipe that one of my colleagues was uber excited to share with me because his "old lady" made him this "killer pasta, with some kind of squash in it." They used a very specific kind of cheese, grana padano, which he said absolutely made the dish.

I obviously didn't use aforementioned cheese. That would have been way too much work. I just stuck to good ol' parmesan.

The kicker in this dish is the mix of maple syrup and balsamic. I love the way the tarty balsamic cooks down to a sweetness that is wholly complemented by the subtle undertone of maple. 

Love me some maple! I hope you like this as much as we did!

balsamic butternut squash pasta

adapted from Cuisine At Home Magazine


Serves 4

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

ingredients:

⅔ package of pasta - any type

1 butternut squash, cubed

½ cup broccoli, stalk included, chopped

2 cloves garlic, diced

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp olive oil

salt + pepper

parmesan cheese to garnish

directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees (F). Toss the squash with the vinegar, oil, salt and pepper and spread out on a baking sheet. Pop the sheet in the oven for 15-20 minutes (until the squash is tender) mixing it halfway through cooking. Remove and set aside when it’s finished cooking.

While the squash is cooking, boil water and cook the pasta according to the package directions. Drain and rinse, but reserve about ½ a cup of the pasta water.

In a  skillet on med-high heat, saute the garlic until browned, then add the broccoli and cook until tender. Add the squash and pasta as well as the pasta water and cook through. Turn off the heat and mix in the maple syrup and a splash more of balsamic vinegar.

Serve garnished with parmesan cheese.

What is the strangest mix of flavors you have ever used in a recipe that just blew you away?

Peace, Love & Bagels,