Low-fat or Bust!: 4 Weeks of Healthy(ish) Living

In less than two weeks I'll be heading to Wyoming for a one month writing residency at Jentel Artist Residency Program. One of the main things about my upcoming travels is that I will be secluded in Wyoming away from the rowdy life of NYC and in turn will be away from all those wonderful restaurants and bakeries that I frequent and love. The main point of this residency is being spirited away from all the distractions of the city and having time and space to write. Part of that is also looking after yourself.

While some residencies have chefs on-hand to cook for residents many don't. One of my main responsibilities besides writing will be to cook meals for myself of which I will be supplied a weekly stipend.

Now, cooking (as you may have noticed) is not something I'm a stranger to. But, being far away from stores and such in a whole new environment for a longer duration of time is something to get accustomed to. Wyoming is not another country, but I don't know how much they have in terms of options for those wanting to pursue healthy living or those who may be lactose intolerant or vegans. New York City has an array of options, restaurants, night life, 24 hour delis and so on. I highly doubt Banner, WY will have as many options as I am spoiled by here. And since I'll be without a car for the most part I'll be relying on the kindness of strangers to take me into the town of Sheridan (population 28, 662 as per the 2008 U.S. Census).

The goal while in Wyoming is to make and eat items that make me feel good and more productive. I've done my part to make meals "healthier": use ground turkey or chicken instead of beef, use olive oil and not any other oils or butter when frying, using the low-fat/reduced sodium version of whatever I could find instead of the full fat. And sometimes it's hit and miss with these things.

I've also purchased or obtained cookbooks with supposedly "good recipes that are good for you." One of which was Devin Alexander's Biggest Loser Family Cookbooks. Of the several recipes I made I only liked one, and then upon reheating didn't like it. This was the low-fat meatballs (made with quick oats instead of bread crumbs) and cutting corners on a lot of other less healthy items. All of these dishes were very low in fat, but the taste just didn't keep. In fact the taste was barely there if non-existent. I've also tried a few recipes from the Cooking Light 2009 recipe copulation cookbook that didn't pan out. A risotto that wasn't too tasty and pumpkin biscuits that tasted more like dough than biscuits.

So, let's consider this my next project for 2011. Going a month on a low-fat, health conscious cooking spree! A couple of books I have on-hand to help are the Cooking Light 2009 (yes I'll give it another try since there are hundreds of recipes available) and also My Italian Kitchen by Janet Zappala which includes healthier versions of classic favorites like baked ziti and key lime pie.

I'll also have in my arsenal many Food Network recipes, particular ones from favorites like Giada DeLaurentiis and even Jamie Oliver. I'll try to stay away from Paula Deen recipes (as good as they are) which are just loaded with needs for dairy (in particular butter). I'm doing my research and checking out food blogs I like to see their progress and welcome any suggestions.

So what will I be holding myself to while away? The following are just a few items I can think of off-hand:

-Very little red meat. At most 1-2 meals containing it for the 4 weeks I'm away.

-Very little if any baked goods. (I know, I know. Why not just shoot myself? But it must be done.) At most 1-3 desserts for the duration of my stay. And by that I mean 1-3 servings, not pan of brownies = 1 dessert.

-Eat at least 3 servings of fruit and veggies a day. I tend to meet this during the week at work, not so much on weekends at home though. Hopefully I'll be able to go above this while in Wyoming.

-Bake rather than fry items. Again, something else I do while at home, but when I travel my healthy eating tendencies tend to go AWOL.

-1 takeout meal a week or every other week. By this I mean pizza or Chinese or whatever may be available for me to pick up during our weekly outings.

-Snacks should be 100 cals or lower per serving. So basically try to stay away from high calorie/high cholesterol snacks. Meaning more organic, natural things and less fried, processed items.

-Eat more fiber! (Oatmeal! And not oatmeal cookies!)

-Incorporate seafood as much as possible. I tend to eat shrimp a lot, but should eat more fish and find the best types to eat that offer good vitamins and such to promote a healthier lifestyle. And preferably, make sure these items aren't fried. (Sigh, no fried calamari.)

-Exercise at least 40 minutes a day. (Since I won't have to go to work for the most part this shouldn't be an issue. I should be able to make time to write and exercise pretty much everyday and perhaps even go over this amount if not double it per day.)

I'll more than likely add to this list as time goes on. But for the most part I know this is doable because I already do it or won't have the distractions to keep me from being more proactive and healthy. I look forward to Wyoming and some fresh air and some healthy habits. Heck, they may even stick when I return!

2010 Wrap up! My year in baking. (Part 2)

The last half of 2010 proved incredibly hectic. While the first half of the year was quite mellow and slow going, the second half went full throttle! Driving lessons, writing conference, road test, moving, looking for apartments, moving, settling into new apartment, fellowship applications, writing groups galore, and baking. And now as this years comes to a close we get to do it all over again. Are you with me? And now for your baking pleasure... JULY

July tends to be one of the hottest months in summer, especially if you live in NYC. So you're probably thinking, Who the heck wants to bake? (thumbs pointed) This gal!

One day I was at home and had a bunch of left over ingredients and wanted to use my fantastic oven as much as possible before we moved so I started looking around for a simple recipe I could make on a Sunday afternoon. Low and behold I found oaty pecan cookies via Cakes and Bakes. Since I didn't have pecans I substituted with chocolate chips and bam I had a delicious and fiber-filled cookie! It stayed chewy for several days when properly contained and I was a happy camper. 'Nuff said.

For a friend's birthday, pre-wedding, I decided to make her one of my favorite cookies. This cookie is a copycat recipe for the Momofuku Milk Bar's cornflake marshmallow cookie. The reasoning for me adapting this was because when I had visited Milk Bar earlier in the month they didn't have my favorite cookie. Like any fan I was truly disheartened and kinda peeved. I wrote to Milk Bar and inquired why they replaced the awesome cornflake marshmallow cookie with the lame confetti cookie and if I could look forward to my fave cookie again. The enthusiastic message said the cookie would indeed be back, so all I had to do was be patient. Instead of patience I took to the net and found a copycat recipe. Yay cookie fans.

I accidentally messed up the recipe slightly by using regular salt rather than kosher which made the cookies a bit saltier than intended but not so much so that they killed the sugar taste and all those tasty accoutrement such as cornflakes, marshmallows, chocolate chips and such. It was good, but not great. I am happy to say that I visited Milk Bar in August and was pleasantly surprised and sated to find the cornflake marshmallow cookie back in it's rightful place. Take that confetti!

AUGUST

And with August brought some last minute baking before I went on vacation, took my road test, and moved. All in a month! Craziness I tell you.

Again, this was me using up items I had so I made a maple marshmallow blondie. Yes!

While the look of it wasn't what I wanted the taste was there. Maple was light from the maple sugar, but people loved it nonetheless. It had more a cake texture than a dense or chewy texture, but in my office taste is what matters not looks so it was gone by early afternoon. Success!

OCTOBER

September took a toll on my psyche, wallet, and back so I was happy to get back into my form of therapy: baking! And I had to try out our new oven in our new apartment. Brand spanking new digital oven, thank-you-very-much.

Anywho, first up was banoffee pie! On an episode of 5 Ingredient Fix I saw host Claire Robinson make a banoffee pie. I love toffee and bananas and it looked quite easy when she did it. (Five ingredients after all!) So I got my ingredients and set up a Friday night for boiling sweetened condensed milk and making pie!

The recipe was quite easy to make, but because I didn't let the boiled can of condensed milk fully cool it was more gooey (liquidy gooey) than stiff gooey. The taste was there, believe me. Sweetened condensed milk can do no wrong, but it made slicing the pie quite runny rather than stiff. The toffee is so strong you don't notice the lack of sugar in the whipped cream (beaten heavy cream and that's it). I'll try again when I have more time in the day or try Paula Deen's method of baking the liquid in a pan rather than boiling the can for several (read: four) hours.

The next goody is a repeat from last year, but I made it with real pumpkin that an editor from my job gave me from his farm. Real pumpkin! Real pumpkin is quite liquidy and light in color compared to the canned stuff. So you have to drain thoroughly. It also smells like tea, intriguing.

So I made these delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. They looked less pumpkin like, i.e. less orange, but the taste was there! Something to be said for natural.

NOVEMBER

Since it's officially fall and all we have more pumpkin! Yes, pumpkin. There were cans on sale at Whole Foods for 99 cents so how could I resist? That's right, I couldn't.

Sandra Lee had a recipe for pumpkin-maple bread pudding I'd been dying to try since I got her Semi-homemade cookbook numero tres. I love bread pudding. Whenever I see it on a menu I must try it and if done properly I can't get enough of the stuff.

This recipe called for cinnamon raisin bread but I just used Cinnabon cinnamon bread and adding maple sugar (1/4 cup) in addition to the maple syrup. This is not an overly sweet dish. I think the maple sugar helped and had I not added any it could have been too light or a bit bland. You use pumpkin spices and canned pumpkin and it tastes just like pumpkin pie filling. Yes, I'm serious. A large bowl of warm pumpkin pie filling. Delicious and best served warm, though, I had no complaints when it was eaten cold either.

DECEMBER

This is usually marathon baking month. Parties, gifts, and so forth are when baked goodies are in high demand. Expect several posts of sugary goodness.

First up was my first foray making donuts. Over the Thanksgiving holiday my husband and I saw a friend on Big Daddy's House make lemon donuts. Since I love lemon and I love donuts it was a no-brainer. We have a small deep fryer that my husband purchased years ago and it was going to come in handy.

Well, the dough took a bit of time to knead and get at the right texture so that took some time. My husband is more patient when it comes to this stuff so I had to find my happy place as I kneaded and added flour and kneaded and added flour and rolled and kneaded and so on. Finally, getting the right texture for frying I used our biscuit cutters to make donut holes rather than full on donuts.

Well, after the first few tries we got fried donuts with doughy centers. Since the recipe didn't specify how long to fry (mainly until they got golden brown) we had to hypothesize and figure it out since we weren't using the same shape as the show. The taste was good after we got them fully fried and we enjoyed them the next day with powdered sugar on top. Light lemony taste that is more emphasized eating them the next day rather than newly fried.

The plan was to take these to a friend's party, but I decided to keep these for myself and bake something else. Great for brunch!

On to some light and fluffy cookies! From Cookies to Die For I made melt in your mouth sugar cookies. True to their title these babies are light. This is because you use egg yolk and more sugar than flour. The texture of the dough is grainy from all the sugar and they bake up light and fall in the middle after being taken out of the oven. They bake really quick so you have to keep an eye on them and they have air pockets to show how light they are. When eating out of the oven they're a bit chewy but become more crunchy and will crumble in your mouth, so make sure to have a napkin ready.

Next up is my own creation. Something I am quite proud of and plan on making for cookie competitions next year. Behold, the maple butterscotch cookie!

Using my remaining maple sugar from Vermont and butterscotch chips I made a cookie that is buttery, mapley, and good-y. I got rave reviews from co-workers on this one. The maple is intense but not overpowering. When I opened the tupperware to present these babies the maple wafted at you. These are good and I'm not just saying that because I made them. I mean I pay people to flatter me on the regular. If you're in NYC next year look me up and I'll make sure to provide you some samples.

And just when I thought all my baking was done for the year I realized I wanted to use up some mascarpone cheese I had left over. And since I paid $5 for a tub you know I was aiming to use everything.

On Christmas eve I scanned recipes and found one from my trusty FoodNetwork buddy Giada DeLaurentiis: blueberry mascarpone cheese turnovers! Looked easy enough.

So, you mix lemon zest & juice, sugar, and blueberries into mascarpone cheese as a filling. Get some pie crust (or make it your choice) and cut out circles. Add filling inside of circles and pinch shut and you have yourself a dessert empanada! Again, we pulled out the trusty deep fryer and made these babies. The good thing is you just have to bake 'em long enough for the outer crust to get crispy which only takes a minute or so. Let cool for ten minutes and then enjoy. These were amazing! Light and tasty with my two favorite components lemon and blueberries! We indulged and forced ourselves to eat more the next day. Upon reheating these in the oven more grease was released (yay!) but much of the mascarpone filling seeped into the dough (no!). Luckily we had more filling and dipped the turnovers into this. But, apparently this is a treat best eaten the day of making. So I wouldn't advise making too far ahead of time if you plan on serving people. You may miss out on the best part!

In the midst of all my baking was enjoying a lot of other people's baking, bakeries, Dessert Day this past September (thanks Top Chef Just Desserts!), and eating lots of goods sent for the holidays from vendors and such. (Toffee popcorn became an addiction as did truffles.)

Here's to another year of baking and many more! Now let's look forward to entering 2011 with resolutions we may forget about come February and lots of other goodies to create and ingest. Heck, I'm making a list already.

How to have a successful cookie (and bar) competition!

Happy New Year Reader(s)! Now that we've been through the worst of the snowfall this winter let's look on to happier times. Late last year I got to thinking... what with the worsening recession and the rise of unemployment I was wondering how, in times of financial constraints, one can have a fun and successful party where no one will think about the dire straits of our country? Something that has united me and those around me has always been the effect of good food, particularly yummy baked goods. So, it only made sense to have a cookie (and bar) competition to celebrate my birthday, the beginning of a new year, hopefully the end of the recession, and above all sugar-infused treats!

I have to tip my hat to Jason Lam, the man behind MeSoHungry, who hosts an annual cookie competition before the Christmas holiday. And hearing how successful his parties had been I thought "Hot damn it's solidified!" I'd have a cookie (and bar) competition and hope my friends would be kind enough to participate. The bars came into play when a friend of mine mentioned a preference for making them. Plus, I didn't want to be prejudice against bars because they're so damn delicious.

Once the plan was set I got to thinking how this could all work out...

Step 1) The Contestants! Luckily I have many baking inclined friends or those who are just into trying new things. Some are into cooking/baking to wow the masses, like my husband, while others were happy to do me a solid and get some accolades in the process.  If you're throwing a competition and don't have enough entries then there may be trouble afoot and you may have  lie and say Paula Deen is going to be there and give out heaping amounts of deep-fried goods to all who attend. I won't say I didn't politely urge some people into baking, especially if I knew they could bring it and bring it hard.  There were about a dozen or so contestants resulting in a might fine spread. And all were more than happy to partake.

Step 2) Location, Location: I've had my birthday party at Stone Creek Bar & Lounge for the past few years because the service is phenomenal and the back room is spacey. I reserve ahead of time and usually get the room on the date I request. With no time constraints, a private room and bar the party can go all night long! You should look into where you can have said competition ahead of time and hope it can hold all the aspiring bakers and empty bellies. Also try to negotiate pricing or learn of fees beforehand.

Step 3) Advertise! I made sure to contact people ahead of time and let them know this was a "COOKIE PARTY." Of course this doesn't stop people from looking at you with raised eyebrows wondering how they'll get "real food." I couldn't help but stare at some people as I emphasized the words "Baking party!" as they headed out to try and find protein and vegetables or whatever leaving perfectly good sugary goods behind.

If you're really nice have some finger foods available for consumption before everyone digs into the sugary pile. (I'd also recommend asking or strongly urging people who don't enter the competition to make donations to help pay for healthy spreads like crudite, chicken fingers, or cheese and crackers for people to nosh on before the competition begins or even to help cover costs for the room/space if there's a set fee.)

Step 4) Prizes! What good is a competition if you just get glory "in name"? Yes, we compete for the accolades but dang it if I weren't also in it for prizes. The Olympians of yester-year used to get a simple olive branch wreath. Now they get medals that they can show off and pimp themselves regularly for endorsements of various foods and athletic apparel. Prizes are the way to go so try to find some that will make your guests happy or at least smile. In my case I offered different tiers of movie passes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, which really made people excited about entering. Even those that didn't rank for the top prizes got a cute lil' button proclaiming their badassness in the kitchen. Or as my friend BLee says "official cookie aficionado, JBH approved." Heck yeah!

Step 5) Democracy! This is America dammit (the U. S. of A.) and as such the competition was a democracy. Just because it was my birthday party doesn't mean I was fit to judge. My husband entered for crying out loud how am I expected to be impartial? So I made ballots AND labels so people could be voted on appropriately. We wouldn't want any Indecision 2000 stuff going on at a cookie party as things could get dangerous with a few dozen people on a sugar high.

And those are my steps to having an awesome and democratic cookie/bar competition. Follow said steps, allow the masses to enjoy the spread, stand back and watch the good times roll, then repeat as necessary.

As you can see from the pictures the entries were vast and awfully tasty. There were vegan options and none, many bar entries, and things I'd never think would taste good in a cookie like cardamom. Who knew?

The winners of my inaugural 2010 competition were as follows and you can get the recipes for these tasty treats online by clicking on their respective links:

1st place: Key Lime Coconut Bars made by the lovely mistress behind Dessert Landscape!

2nd place: Orange Citrus Bars made by my hubby!

3rd place: Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies made by my co-worker KP!

Other entries included Amaretto Bars, Good ole Chocolate Chip Cookies, Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal "amazingness" Cookies, Vegan Cardamom Pistachio Cookies, Lemon Bars, Sugar Lemon Cookies, Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies, Banana Tart, Cookie Concoction (a colored sugar cookie with a spice-laden surprise), and so on and so forth.  Some were family recipes others were open to the public but all and I mean all were good.

Thanks again to everyone who participated and came out for a successful birthday celebration and competition! See you next year!