Do It Yourself: ARUGULA PESTO

May 30, 2010

Green, how I want you green.

Over Mother’s Day weekend I actually participated in making this snack, while assisting on Lauren’s photoshoot.

It was so easy: toss fresh arugula, pine nuts and olive oil into a Cuisinart and blend. Serve on sliced bread.

It was great to see how simple (and delicious!) it was to make this. I aspire to be the sort of person who will whip up little appetizers for visitors and say, “Oh, this wasn’t any trouble at all. I happened to have some arugula left over from my trip to the farmer’s market.” But not in a little-miss-perfect way. Just in an effortlessly cool kinda way.

But it’s going to take a lot of effort, to get to effortless. One skill down. About a zillion to go.

And I don’t even own a Cuisinart.

xoxo…

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And My New Favorite Grocery Store Hummus (For Now) Is…

May 28, 2010

Winner winner, shish kabob dinner.

My mom sent me that picture on her cell phone, you guys. So now you see that my… whatever this is… is genetic. She was showing me that she actually listens to my recommendations. Thanks, Ma.

I’m not going to pretend that Trader Joe’s Mediterranean Hummus is some big secret that I discovered via a series of dangerous adventures, Indiana Jones-style. There are a whole lot of varieties of hummus at Trader Joe’s, and I just picked up the one that said, “our best seller.”

And then I went to Vons and bought a container of Sabra for back-up. Unnecessarily.

Speaking of other dips I like, my roommate and I actually MADE guacamole yesterday. We just mashed up avocados and added some Pace salsa and garlic salt. It was good. I forgot to take a picture. Next time I might add a salsa with more substantial tomato chunks. More of a pico de gallo, if you will.

In TV news, “So You Think You Can Dance” is back. I fell off the band wagon during the fall season, because– let’s be real, it’s hard to keep up with a show like that when so many great scripted shows are competing with it. But summer is a more barren time in weeknight TV. I’m much more likely to devote two hours to the dancers.

Also, there are a bunch of new rules spicing up the competition this year. The new dancers are going to be paired with “All Stars,” in rotation.  So a shitty dancer can’t just keep getting ahead because his/her partner is awesome. Also, they banged out like four cities in Thursday night’s first audition show, and kept things moving. I approve.

Many of the shows that I wrote about with such insane detail when I started this blog last summer are finally returning to us. Namely– “True Blood.” Now, “Vampire Diaries” ended up filling the vampire void (let’s be real– I was obsessed), but I’m still VERY excited for TB season 3. My heart has room for many vampires!

Isn’t it hilarious that the acronyms for the two vampire shows on TV are TB and VD? Very old-timey disease-y. (I guess technically the latter is TVD, but that’s not nearly as hilarious.) I want to create a vampire show with the acronym STD (or is it STI now?) or OBGYN or something. Coming this fall: “Heather’s Inner Vampire.” (Too much?)

But yeah, those recaps were not exactly conducive to having a day job. I was keeping vampire hours to get them finished. And… people get paid to post that type of dissertation on other sites. But that doesn’t mean I won’t chime in with my own “holy shits!” or theories.

I am also lucky enough to be working (as of very recently) on one of the shows I’ve blogged in the past. So I will not be discussing it in quite the same way as I did before, for a host of obvious reasons. I mean, the “holy shit” factor that goes into blogging about TV episodes will be a bit diminished on my end, since I will have known the spoilers for months by the time they’re shocking everybody else.

Okay. Whew. Another entry down. This blog is not dead yet!

xoxo…

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Snack Trek: The Quest for the Best Guacamole in LA

May 7, 2010

Nobody's going to read this. The guacamole is transfixing.

Last summer I was all about finding the best curly fries in LA. But let’s face it– that search has not gone so swimmingly. I think I tried three places. I never even made it to Arby’s (probably for the best).

Today there was watermelon in the commissary. And I’m wearing a dress and NOT freezing. It finally seems like summer is approaching. Yay! (I know, I know– I live in LA, but LA-winter is still winter to us.)

Now, I’m going to be real– I’m obsessed with avocado and guacamole all year long. I will order a mediocre-sounding salad over an amazing-sounding salad if the former has avocado in it. But there’s something about summer that makes me want a super-fresh batch of guacamole with an extra-lemony zing to it, even more so than usual. Guacamole is chill food. It’s get-out-of-the-pool, life’s-a-party, I’m-on-vacation food.

Pedestrian as it may sound, I’m a big fan of the chips and guac at Chipotle. It maybe be fast foodish and a little bit salty, but… I’m a big fan. (And I don’t usually order guac at sit-down restaurants because it’s so freaking expensive.)

So tell me, loyal readers– where can I go for the best guacamole? Or– better yet– what are your favorite guacamole recipes? (Any recipe that has sour cream as its base is out of the running! I’m all about the avocado.)

Blogging about food, I will often to a quick Google image search. There were quite a few professional-looking pictures of guacamole. Whoever is styling these sexy pictures of guacamole… your job is awesome.

There are a surprising number of mortar and pestle guac shots.

Drool.

xoxo…

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Snack of the Afternoon, 5/6/10: YOPLAIT RED VELVET CAKE YOGURT

May 6, 2010

There you have it.

Hello, friends. I know, it has been a few weeks. I swear I have a lot of semi-good excuses. Lots of changes. Muchos cambias. Something like that. Even a new roommate, for good measure.

There are so many shows that I am watching but not writing about. There are so many random food pictures that I haven’t posted. Ugh, you guys. I’m rolling this blog uphill!

Anyway, today’s snack is Yoplait’s new Red Velvet Cake flavored yogurt. My friend told me that it was good (however– his tastes are almost completely opposite mine), and then ex-ex-roomie Lauren tweeted that she would drive 10 miles for red velvet yogurt.

But then I found out that Lauren was tweeting about red velvet flavored FROZEN yogurt. From a frozen yogurt shop. (I am going to try it this weekend. In Redlands.) (Snack Trek!)

When I saw this yogurt on the yogurt shelf at my local Albertson’s, I thought… hm, well I know ONE person who likes it. Why not? I decided to try it for the sake of the blog, even though it’s fat free. I have a thing against fat free yogurt, because it’s made with aspartame. In other words, I put my life on the line to try this yogurt for you. If I get cancer, I’m blaming you. The whole Internet.

There’s a shopping list on the fridge at work, and at the beginning of the season I wrote something really snooty, like, “Yogurt without artificial sweeteners.” Ouch. When did I get to be such a jerk? Oh yeah, cancer. My impending cancer made me a jerk.

So I popped open this yogurt, and immediately I was less than impressed. The color was all wrong. Red velvet cake is supposed to be a deep red, like… velvet. You know, lustrous. Example:

Are you hungry now?

I took a picture of the yogurt next to some other red things that I had on my desk, just to show you the discrepancy here…

Red velvet? More like PINK velvet.

I mean, I guess you could just compare the color of the yogurt to the color of the picture ON THE CONTAINER. False advertising.

I also… I guess I’m silly, but when I think of cake I think of a certain mouth feel. You know, a cakey texture. For some stupid reason I expected this yogurt to have… crumbles? I don’t know, something.

Most disappointingly, though… it just tasted like some version of vanilla. The flavor was completely generic. You could have blindfolded me and asked me what flavor it was, and red velvet never would have crossed my mind. It was basically Yoplait flavored.

I took a few bites and then made myself one of those cute 100-calorie packs of Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn just to get the sort of chemical-ish aftertaste out of my mouth.

In all fairness, red velvet cake is one of those sometimes, special occasion snacks. I’d rather have really good red velvet once in a blue moon than a weird aspartame replica of it. I’m actually glad I didn’t love this yogurt. If I loved it, maybe I’d want to eat it every day. One less thing to give me cancer.

And I’m getting cupcakes this weekend from Lauren. (That, AND the frozen yogurt. I’m a lucky gal!) Suck it, bland yogurt fakers!

xoxo…

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