While REB and I are back on our health track, I have to admit I’ve had some cravings for bad, salty treats that I shouldn’t eat. You know, things like chips, chex mix…those kinds of bad things. So instead, I decided to make a snack that’s so easy to make and not terribly bad for you, and full of protein!

I’ve made roasted chickpeas before and last time I made them, I made them spicy with garam masala. This time around I wanted to try a more savory combination. So I thought rosemary and sea salt would be a nice!

Rosemary is a great herb, but it’s extremely bold in my opinion. I never use a lot because it’s so strong. But it has a woodsy smell, looks kind of like the woods – a pine tree or something – and is full of this flavor that I can only define as “savory”. When I think savory, I think of this herb paired with cheese, salt, or on potatoes or fish or something.

It did take some time to cook, but it was totally worth it. They were crunchy on the outside and a touch soft on the inside and it was bursting with delicious flavor.

It would be a perfect snack for Superbowl Sunday, or just pack it up, take it to work and munch on during the mid-afternoon cravings. I know that’s what I’ll be doing! I hope you all enjoy!

Here’s what you need:
•2 15-ounce cans garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
•2 tablespoons olive oil
•1 teaspoon rosemary leaves, minced
•1 teaspoon salt (plus a pinch sprinkled at the end)

Preheat your oven to 400°F
Start by draining and rinsing the beans under cold water. Place a couple sheets of paper towel on a rimmed baking sheet and pour the beans on it. Then take each end of the paper towel and put them over the beans and roll back and forth to help dry them off. This will also take the skin off some of the beans.
Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the beans. Then I took a teaspoon of the dried rosemary leaves and used my mortal and pestle to help smush it up. Sprinkle that over the beans along with a teaspoon of sea salt.
Use your hands or a spatula and toss the ingredients with the beans so it’s well coated. Arrange them in a single layer on the pan.
Bake for 45 minutes, checking them every 15 minutes to make sure they aren’t burning and to also stir/toss them.
When they come out, sprinkle a pinch of salt on top and enjoy!

Is there a healthy go-to snack you love and can get enough of?

So the highlights were basically from Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday. Please excuse the pictures. I took them all with my phone. I just didn’t feel like lugging my camera to all the places we were at this past week. I’ll try to do better in the future. Oh! If you want to participate in What I Ate Wednesday, head on over to Peas and Crayons blog and join in! :)

For dinner on Thursday night, REB and I met up with a friend from high school who also lives in Ann Arbor. The last time we had dinner with this fella was about 2 years ago! So it was long overdue. He had made reservations at a Thai place downtown called Marnee Thai, and we’ve been there before so I was pretty excited. REB and I were good. We each got soup and then split an entree so we wouldn’t over eat!

The soup I chose was the Tom yum hed, a super spicy soup with mushrooms, lemongrass and cilantro. It was incredibly good. They weren’t lying about spice. I don’t think I needed to order it medium, because it was soooo spicy, but I couldn’t stop eating it!

Then for the main dish REB and I split the Tofu pad meng mamuang (tofu with cashew nuts). We got it with the brown rice. It was sweet and nutty (of course) and also spicy since we asked for it a little spicier. We hadn’t gotten this before, so I’m glad we tried something new! There are more things to be tried there ;)

When we got home, I was craving some kind of dessert. Then I remembered that we had bought some Skinny Cow popsicles.

Mint truffle and white chocolate popsicles to be exact. At only 100 calories a piece, these were the perfect chocolate craving I needed to end the evening! I highly recommend almost anything Skinny Cow makes. They’re all low cal and help give you the fix you need.

Let’s move onto Friday.
Most every day for lunch at work, I eat soup. I buy the little cartons of Pacific Natural Foods soups, which have two servings in each carton, and eat that for lunch. So a cup of soup (one serving) every day for lunch. It’s low carb, full of protein and it fills me up! I usually pair it with string cheese, fruit or a half serving of whole grain goldfish crackers. However this past Thursday the soup I had was abysmal. I got a different brand thinking “Well it’s Minestrone! It can’t be bad!” I was ridiculously wrong. It was watery, thin and looked like tomato water with a few carrot bits. I ended up throwing it out.

Working in downtown Ann Arbor has a lot of perks. One of those perks happens to be working across the street from Jerusalem Garden. Hands down they have the best falafel in town. I got the small falafel plate with two sides. That includes two falafel pieces and two sampler sides of your choice. I chose the fattoush and hummus. It also came with one piece of pita, halved. What did it cost me? $5.05 – tax included! You really can’t beat that. It was filling without feeling like too much. Total win.

That night I met my friend Kelly for dinner before she and I went to the Ann Arbor Folk Festival. We saw a number of bands, but the main headliner was Ryan Adams! It was a great show. We’re already making plans to see some of the bands we saw that night, who will be back in Ann Arbor in a few weeks.

Anyway, I met her at a restaurant we both hadn’t been to before: Red Hawk Bar and Grille. We both had a pretty hard week at work so we decided to get some cocktails. We also ordered an appetizer of Halloumi cheese, which came with spiced walnuts, bread and some kind of cranberry chutney.

It was…meh. The cheese looked like chicken and was grilled up and sliced like it, but it was most definitely cheese. It was a little on the rubbery side though and didn’t exactly spread on the bread that well. The cranberry chutney was NOT good. We were both pretty disappointed with that. But the bread, spiced walnuts and our drinks were deeelicious!

For dinner, my friend Kelly got their mac and cheese with crumbled sausage on top. It looked delicious, and I don’t even eat meat. I was happy that this place had a few vegetarian options so I opted to try something unique that I didn’t think I’d find any where else in the city.

I got their potato, feta and poblano taquitos. They were unique and really, really good. I was a little disappointed that they were fried. I should have guessed they would be but it wasn’t stated on their menu that they would be, so I guess I just thought they weren’t going to be fried. The rice was good but I didn’t eat the pinto beans since I’m not the biggest fan of those. The flavors of the taquitos weren’t bad though! There was a smokey taste to them from the peppers and spices they used and then salty from the feta.

The rest of the weekend was pretty chill. We met up with some of our friends (the friends whose son I just took photos of :)) for brunch on Sunday morning. We went up to a place near their home called Zoe’s House of Pancakes. This place is so good!! They have a lot of sweet and savory crepes, egg specialties and too many options for pancakes. REB got the red velvet pancakes, which were…OH..MY..GOD..oh so good!

I got the Baja Benedict, which was their spin on eggs Benedict. But they were vegetarian! It was a poached egg served on tomato, guacamole, lettuce and English muffin and hash browns. It’s weird. I really hate runny eggs. I always order my eggs scrambled or overhard, but I liked poached eggs. I’ll never order them over medium or over easy and do the whole sop-the-yolk-up-with-bread thing, but poached eggs? Fugettaboutit! I love it. I wish I knew how to make a poached egg, but the idea of having to swirl water and crack an egg scares me too much.

For lunch on Monday I went back to my soup routine as usual. I tried another new brand (I know, I know…) but it wasn’t bad! It was the FIG brand and I got the split pea and potato. The carton said it was lightly salted, but it wasn’t really. Luckily I keep Franks Red Hot in my desk so I was set with the salt and spice factor. What I really need to do is get another bottle of Sriracha and chili flakes in my desk too ;)

This time I paired it with the Frigo-brand light swirled cheese stick (cheddar and mozzarella) and then some yogurt! I need to get my Fage or Chobani because Yoplait really doesn’t compare in terms of flavor, fruit and protein. But you make do with what you got, right? Right. The great thing was my lunch was super low-cal and totally filled me up!

So anyway, there’s a week of eats from my neck of the woods!

So what about you?
Is there is a favorite way you take your eggs?
Are there favorite Thai dishes you absolutely can’t go without when you go out for Thai food?
What is your go-to lunch each day at work or home?

A year ago Michigan experienced what we all called Snowmageddon. It was the worst storm we had all year and people were furiously scrambling to clean out grocery stores in case they would be stranded in their homes. A little extreme if you ask me. It was a bad storm, but we live in Michigan! Anyway during that ridiculous snow storm my friends had their son, Oliver Robert, and I took photos of him when he was a newborn. It was my very first newborn shoot and I remember I was incredibly nervous!

Hard to believe that it’s been a year and now Oliver is going to be one! His awesome parents asked me to do his one year pictures, which of course I agreed to do. This type of session was different than most, though. While I had all these props and ideas for poses, Oliver wanted nothing to do with it.

For the first time since starting this little photography venture, I got to do a photo shoot where I just took pictures of the family around their home. There were some posed pictures, but not many since Oliver wasn’t too thrilled with having to sit still ;) It was different, but it was also really fun!

Here’s a peek at some of the photos!

And just for fun:

I even managed to get a photo of mom and dad :)

Thanks to the K family for letting me take pictures of Ollie Bear! Can’t wait to help make more memories for your family!

I don’t always eat exciting things, but this past Saturday, I feel like we had a nice spread of good eats!

We started the morning off by heading up to Flint, MI to visit one of our really close friends, Amber. She was celebrating her birthday in true fashion: calling it the birthday freakend (celebrating from Thursday – Monday!). We couldn’t make it up for her actual birthday on Friday, so we went up early on Saturday to meet her and the rest of the gang at Flint Crepe Company in downtown Flint.

Now most people in Michigan know that Flint has really run down in the past years due to General Motors closing its plants and people losing their jobs. This place is a true gem and really brings the downtown back to life!

 The place is eclectic and has an industrial feel on the inside. They also feature posters and paintings of local things around town, cyclists, local artwork, etc. It’s awesome!

This is Crepe master Oakland. He was extremely friendly to all the customers, did custom orders and made sure everyone was happy. The entire staff was wonderful and friendly. The best part is that this place uses locally-grown ingredients and can make anything gluten-free or vegan. They also take the scraps of food leftover that people might otherwise throw away and they return it to the farmers for their compost piles.

The crepe company featured lots of savory and sweet crepes. I had my eye on one item I saw on the menu: Samosa crepe! It was like the place knew I was coming. The guy who took my order asked if I wanted it to be extra spicy. Duh! Of course.

This was a good choice in my opinion. It had a dollop of raita on top and came with three different chutneys. It wasn’t as spicy as I would have liked, but it can be hard to satisfy my spice level. It tasted like a soft masala dosa, it was so good! Accompanied by a non-fat vanilla latte, this meal was perfection and a great start to our Saturday.

On our way home, we stopped at a local cafe in downtown Ann Arbor that we found out sold macarons. We had been trying to find a bakery that sold them for a while (since returning from our honeymoon) and weren’t successful. We actually found a place in a nearby city, but we didn’t have time to drive all the way out there. So when I found out this cafe down the street from my work sold them, and the French lady who sells them at the Farmers Market every Saturday morning sold them to the cafe, we tried our luck and went there on our way home. We ended up buying some pumpkin macarons and also some white chocolate raspberry ones. They were also featuring heart-shaped eggnog flavored, but I’m not a big fan of eggnog, so we passed on those.

They were so light and fluffy and extremely flavorful! It was a good snack to have with an afternoon cup of tea. And as you can see from the photo, they were the star of my Project 52 weekly photo (along with Danbo of course). It sure beat trying to make these delicate cookies. The process seemed like a bit more than I wanted to handle for the weekend. One day I’m definitely going to try to make them – when I have time, which is apparently one of the two things you need in order to make these! Time and patience!

So then to continue our faux-Parisian lifestyle, we re-created the warm goat cheese salad we had in Paris. We’d made it once before, but decided to change a few things and try again. We blew it out of the park this time! It turned out even better and the re-vamped version of this recipe is officially the go-to. I’m pleased to see it has gotten some awesome reviews and general interest already!

So there we have it! My first ever What I Ate Wednesday! Hopefully I can keep up with this every week. I already track my food and calorie intake on my phone daily, but this sounds like a fun weekly thing to do to really showcase some good eats when they come along.

I’m actually looking forward to having some good eats this week and weekend too.

Are there any go-to recipes  you rely on? Share them below if I should try it too!

]]> http://notaleaf.com/2012/01/25/what-i-ate-wednesday/feed/ 4 http://notaleaf.com/2012/01/21/salade-chevre-chaud/ http://notaleaf.com/2012/01/21/salade-chevre-chaud/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:55:23 +0000 Aparna B. http://notaleaf.com/?p=3264 Warm goat cheese salad. It was our favorite thing to eat at the Café Bosquet in Paris during our honeymoon. We’ve made this before, but we revisited it tonight and OH. EM. GEE. I won’t lie, it turned out even better. And tasted even better. So I thought it might be nice to re-post the recipe with the changes we made!

I think we nailed it this time. The minute I tasted it, it was like I was back in the 7th district, as cheesy as that might sound (no pun intended).

So we changed up the recipe and here’s what you will need:
•2 whole rounds of goal cheese, cut in half length wise (you’ll end up with 4 pieces)
•4 pieces of French loaf, cut into squares
•Spring salad mix
•5 tablespoons honey (total)
•Light drizzle olive oil
For the salad dressing:
•1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
•1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
•1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
•2 tablespoons freshly squeeze lemon juice
•S&P to taste
•3 tablespoons olive oil
– this will make a lot of dressing. You won’t use all of it, but it’s better to have more than not enough ;) –

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Slice a French loaf and cut the long pieces into squares. You’ll need to use the goat cheese to know how big the bread should be. We used a French loaf, but you could probably use sourdough or something similar. I think sourdough might be too…well…sour with the goat cheese and dressing.

So I bought these two big rounds of goat cheese. You could use a smaller round, what ever works. These were big, so we cut them each in half, length-wise. Be careful and try not to crack it. We didn’t succeed as you can see, but it still worked out.

Toast the bread. Ours was able to fit into the toaster, which definitely helped. Don’t let it get too dark though since it will continue to brown and toast in the oven when it bakes with the goat cheese.

Next make your dressing!

In a Pyrex measuring cup, combine the mustard, apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Then whisk in the olive oil and mix until it’s smooth. Dress your salad mix lightly, toss and set aside.

Drizzle each piece of toast with a little olive oil and use 1 tablespoon of honey total to drizzle between all the pieces of bread. Then place one piece of goat cheese on each slice of bread. Once you’ve done that, top each piece of goat cheese with 1 tablespoon of honey and spread it out.

Bake in the oven, on the bottom rack. This is important because on the top rack, it’ll get to hot and just fall apart. This way, the heat is still there, but it’s not direct. Place on the bottom rack, close the oven and bake for 5 minutes. After that, turn the broiler on, and leave the oven door slightly open (most oven doors can do this) and let it broil for 2-3 minutes. Keep an eye on it so it won’t burn and/or melt too much! What you’ll see is pure magic: the honey starts to harden and turn golden and the goat cheese firms up but still melts. The toast gets a bit darker too.

The whole thing is done when the goat cheese is golden on top. Place the piece of toast and cheese on your salad and serve! We had ours with a dry, chilled Sauvignon Blanc with hints of citrus. It tasted really good with the salad! I’m a bit “wine-pairing” person, but I could tell the wine made the dish a little sweet which was delicious.

Oh and for fun, this shows what we made versus what we had in Paris:

Not bad, huh? You can tell the French clearly used a cook’s blowtorch, but I think we did what we were trying to achieve. I keep telling REB we need to buy a place on the Rue Cler and just move there. I’m sure he thinks I’m being silly, but I’m being totally serious :)

So what about you?
Have you ever re-visited a recipe you’ve made in the past?
Did it turn out better or worse than the first time you made it?
What things did you learn?