So, blogging is much more of an undertaking than I thought it would be. And it turns out that I have much less to say about food than I thought I would. I’m eating and cooking all the time (three meals every day, you know), but it’s really hard to come up with interesting things to say about each meal without sounding repetitive. A lot of what I eat is variations on the same theme of: versatile, throw a bunch of stuff in a bowl/pan/pot, make sure it’s healthy, heat, and eat. And it’s really, really hard to not make every post sound repetitive.
All that is to say that I’m not going to quit this blog. I know at least a handful of you who pester me to update this so that you can get ideas for what to eat, and I’m quite flattered every time I hear that, and honestly, I want to keep this blog up because of that. It warms my heart to share my love of food and know that I inspired someone to ditch the Ramen and cook themselves something, even if only once. But, I need to branch out. I feel very trapped being food-centric, because as I said, there are only so many ways to say “this is a healthy, versatile, easy meal” before I start sounding like a broken record. And there are so many other things I see around the internet and in real life (Etsy shops! An awesome living room! A pretty shirt! A new store I found!) that I’d love to share, but have nowhere to do it.
So my idea is to branch this blog out. Buy the domain I’ve had my heart set on since day one. Do better with my branding. Fix the Archives page. Get the dropdown menu bar to work. Make everything more user friendly. Implement tags. Stir up some comments from you readers. All the things that I’ve been talking about doing for ages now, I’m actually going to do. I’ve got a few more days before my new (full-time) job starts, and in that spare time I’m going to work my ass off to fix this place up more than I have done in the past. I’m motivated now because I think I finally see where I want this blog to go and what purpose I want it to serve.
In the beginning I didn’t have a really clear plan, so it’s been hard to define myself — sort of like a teenager tries on different labels and scenes before deciding who they really are. My blog knows who it is and is coming of age now. Thanks to everyone who’s been a loyal reader/fangirl through my blog-angst years (months?), it really has made all the difference. I wanted a blog in the first place solely for the purpose of sharing stuff with people, and if I didn’t have readers, there would be no point in keeping it up. So thank you. Really.
This will be my last post on my little subdomain of Burpen.com. Next time you see me, I’ll be on my own site, with new content and new motivation all ready to go. See you soon!
This post doesn’t really have a point. I just wanted to share what I had for lunch today. Tomatoes, green and orange bell peppers, mushrooms, olives, and fresh mozzarella cheese — the leftovers from my pasta salad veggies — coated in some garlic powder, pepper, and olive oil, and topped with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Heaven! I ate some onion naan on the side and washed it all down with a big glass of ice water. Health nut? Me? Never.
As I made this, I was thinking: I spend very little time in parts of the grocery store other than the produce section. If I spend 20 minutes at the store, I can guarantee you that 15 of those minutes will be in produce, and the other 5 will be grabbing some peripherals — milk, waffles, pasta, rice, whatever other pantry staples I might need. It’s sort of like being a vegetarian: after a while, you just don’t even see the meat options at the store/restaurant/dinner table/whatever. I don’t even consider making a boxed dinner anymore. (Okay, once in a while I get lazy and I do it. Nobody’s perfect. And who can say no to Annie’s Mac n Cheese?) A meal doesn’t feel like a meal to me anymore unless there are fresh vegetables involved. But I’m pretty okay with that. (Health nut? Me? Never. No, really — during the span of my under-four-hour class last night, I ate four Pop Tarts. Four! Terrible. But it was so satisfying.)
If you know me, you know that as soon as summer hits, all I can talk about until I eat it is pasta salad. And with the weather being in the 80s all week, my appetite has been in summer mode. Craving gazpacho, peaches, and mint lemonade? No, stomach, this is April, not July. But when the hankering hit for pasta salad, I couldn’t resist.
I owe my obsession with pasta salad to Jason’s mom. She literally (and I’m not just trying to be a kiss-up girlfriend here) makes the most delicious pasta salad I have ever eaten, and trust me, I’ve eaten a lot. As soon as the weather gets warm, I crave her pasta salad at least once a day. And when she makes it…oh man. If I spend an evening at their house, except me to make 4-5 trips to the fridge to get just a little more of it.
I decided to try to recreate it with a few of my own additions (and leaving out some of the veggies in hers that I don’t really like), and, of course, I put a healthy spin on it. Substitute whole wheat rotini for the traditional tri-color, and add in a rainbow of veggies and fresh mozzarella, and top with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of crushed garlic? Yes please.
Continue reading Veggie-Filled Dinner: Pasta Salad →
Once again, I think I hit the proverbial nail on the head with this one. Zesty onions and spicy jalapeños, topped with tangy horseradish mustard, and balanced out with crunchy fresh kale and a grilled mushroom burger? I was in heaven.
And the whole wheat hamburger buns just improved these even more. When the mood struck to make these burgers, I had resigned myself to a trip to Rite Aid for, you guessed it, white hamburger buns. I figured that such a small store as our local Rite Aid wouldn’t have any foo-foo “hippie bread”, but imagine my surprise (and delight!) when I found the last package of whole wheat burger buns lurking amidst the stack of sickly-looking Wonderbread buns. I was a happy girl.
Because it was such a nice day out, I ended up eating these on the patio with a nice glass of chilled riesling. The riesling ended up being a not-so-good match, but the meal was too nice to be ruined by that. It was the first meal of the year that I ate on the patio, and it was great. The sunset was gorgeous and the air was perfect — I plan on using this patio a lot this summer. (In fact, I am writing this very post from the patio!)
True to form, these burgers are a) versatile, and b) healthy. Because I used veggie burger (pardon me, Gardenburger) patties instead of real beef, these were low fat and guilt-free. You can, of course, use real beef patties if you prefer. You can also substitute any burger-topping vegetables you like, but the burgers will lose their bite if you take away the jalapeños. And I think the Inglehoffer mustard really made this burger something special. (If you’ve never had Inglehoffer mustard, I highly recommend it — sweeter than classic yellow mustard, but still very tangy. And the seeds are so fun to try to crunch between your front teeth.)
Continue reading Food Nirvana: Spicy Mushroom Burgers →
My baked good this week was a big failure. I tried to make these Lemon Yogurt Anything Cakes from Smitten Kitchen, but they really didn’t turn out. The top got mushy when I glazed it, the bottoms were bland because the glaze didn’t reach them, the lemon flavor wasn’t anywhere near strong enough, and my blueberries dyed everything purple instead of creating a nice contrast with the yellow. It was just bad overall. It is still fairly edible, and I’ll still give Jason his loaf, but these are definitely not post worthy.
So, to end your week, I’ll post some recent food photos I’ve taken. Enjoy! (Be sure to click through the jump to see the full post.)
Continue reading I Got Nothin’. →
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