Spanish Rice with Sausage and Shrimps!

Unboxing video of Circulon Contempo Red Nonstick 10 Piece Cookware Set!!!

A Healthy & Uber Tasty Snack Service for the Office

I'm sure many office workers like me find ourselves having the craving for snacks in-between their meals. Unfortunately, most of the snacks that are in stores and featured in office vending machines aren't the most healthy (or tasty for the matter of fact) foods around.

My friend recently gave me a special invitation code and introduced me to a cool new service called graze, which delivers very tasty but healthy snacks straight to your office . Being the constant snacker but also a very health conscientious person, I decided to give their service a try.

I gotta say, the snacks look and tasted great, not to mention, very filling and nutritious too (graze includes a small sheet of all the nutritional facts within the box), so I don't feel bad plowing through these with my coworkers.

The first box of snacks I received was free, but for the set price of $6 a box (that's with shipping), I think this service is well-worth the price. Face it, snacks aren't that cheap, especially healthy ones. And we all know that company vending machines aren't the cheapest.... I guess they want some of that salary back some way.... ^_-  All things considered, I'm definitely going to consider subscribing.

While it is free to try, graze is quite exclusive as they are quite new and you need an invitation code to get in. However, you can sign up on the waiting list for an invitation and you'll eventually get to try this great service yourself!

Put An Egg On It!

Is seems like chefs are putting eggs on everything lately... Is this a New York thing, or are people just becoming comfortable with eggs again?

Dry salad? Put an egg on it!
Boring burger? Put an egg on it!
Sad soup? Put an egg on it!

It reminds me of this episode of Portlandia. It's a lot like "put a bird on it," except the baby version.

But I promise you, it's not that difficult and it really does make a big difference on a ho-hum salad, especially when it's cold outside and a chilly bowl of lettuce is the last thing that sounds good for dinner. This recipe was inspired by a fancy dinner at A Voce in New York City.
 
Peppery Fall Salad with Egg
1 tsp dijon mustard
2 T sherry vinegar
3 T olive oil
Pinch of kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 fresh pasteurized eggs
4 C fresh, peppery greens like frisee or arugula

Mix up the mustard, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper in a cruet, or by whisking with a fork in a small bowl or using a tiny whisk - everyone has a tiny whisk at home, right?

Poach the eggs: Place a square of plastic wrap in a small bowl and spray it with just a tiny bit of cooking spray. Crack an egg into the wrap, so that it sinks down into the bowl. Then twist up the plastic wrap to make a little egg package, winding the closure as tight as you can. Repeat for each egg, then carefully place all the egg packages into a small pot of boiling water, being careful not to leave any portion of the plastic wrap hanging outside the pot. (Just trust me when I tell you that you don't want plastic melting down the side.) Boil for 4 minutes until the egg is just set, and carefully remove the egg packages from the boiling water with tongs.

Carefully unwrap one egg onto the center of each salad, but wait to break the yolk until just before serving. The uninitiated dinner guest may be a little hesitant about mixing in the egg, but the resulting warm yolk offsets the peppery bite of greens, mustard and vinegar creating something entirely new.

Oh yes, and you can certainly add bacon to this. We do. (To everything.)

Pasture Perfect: How You Can Benefit from Choosing Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Products from Grass-Fed Animals

Going Nuts Having to Line up for Cronuts?

Cronuts, one of the other crazy fad food of 2013 along side of the Ramen Burger,  is one of the hardest food to attain. With a limit production every day, people start lining up before the crack of dawn in front of the Dominique Ansel Bakery....

But for people with jobs or better things to do, there's always alternatives to the original Cronut. For example, Crumbs and the Chikalicious offer their own variation on this croissant-doughnut pastry.

Crumbs' "Crumbnut"

Chikalicious' "Dough’ssant"

For a mere $2.95 don't expect too much from the Crumbs variation, I found it quite disappointing. Very dry and quite stale in taste, kinda like an overnight croissant.... However, Chikalicious' creation is well worth the extra $4 to buy it at their Dessert Club (which is conveniently across the street from the Chikalicious Dessert Bar). Airy, fluffy, light toasted, if it wasn't for the high calories, I think I would be able to eat 3-5 at once.

For the more amibitious foodies out there, there is also the option to make your own. Recipes to mimic the Cronut has been popping up around the web since its debut, look, even Amazon has a Cronut Kindle book: Croissant Donuts Preparing from Scratch~

The "Unoriginal" Ramen Burger [UPDATED]

Even if you are a Foodie or not, I think you must had heard of the crowd drawing Smorgasburg Ramen Burger. With a movie coming soon about his success, its hard to avoid tying in Keizo Shimamoto with the creation of this burger. While I have nothing against Keizo, having been credited as being the creator of the Ramen Burger, I think he might had been given too much credit for something that has existed long before his arrival. If you been in Japan, you would know that the Ramen Burger has long existed before him.
 

Personally, I think the Japanese version should be the real ones to be called a Ramen Burger. Why? If you had a bowl of Ramen Noodles before, you would know without me telling you.

While Keizo's creation is more of American Burger with an Asian Twist on the buns, the ones you can find in Japan is literally what you find in Ramen bowl but in a burger form! Now, you tell me what seems like a Ramen Burger more. ^_-

Ready to take you own shot to create a Ramen Burger? Start by stacking up with Ramens first with this deal from Amazon: Maruchan Ramen, Beef, 3-Ounce Packages (Pack of 24)!

UPDATE: Who is Keizo kidding? He copied the whole idea from Japan and now is going around suing people making something similar?

1. You're not a genius, your fame was built on hype.
2. This is not your original idea, please give credit due.
3. If you read the reviews of Bassanova and actually walked pass your near empty establishment a few times, you should be a more humble about your status in the Ramen Noodle world.

We have met the salads, and they are ours

Rare is the dive bar that serves good food, which is why most people don't eat in bars unless they're very drunk or not very discerning eaters. (It should be noted that the latter often follows the former.) But there's one special bar in Brooklyn with a vague nautical theme where I make an exception. The food there is delicious, far better than it has any right to be considering the whole bar looks like someone's basement in the Midwest. I'd tell you where this wonderful place is, but then I'd have to fight you for a seat.*

Now think: what's the sketchiest thing you could order in a bar? A salad, hands down. But I promise you, this bar's green salad with cheddar, onions and pickles is one of the best salads I've ever tasted. And I wasn't even drunk.

We recreated it at home recently and added bacon - because, why not? And so I give you...

Green Salad with Onion, Pickles and Cheddar

Serves 2 as a first course

4 C chopped green lettuce
2 oz. white cheddar, sliced wafer-thin
2 green onions, sliced thin (or 1/4 small red onion)
4-6 T sliced cornichons or dill pickles
6 T olive oil
3 T sherry vinegar
Pinch of salt
Fresh ground black pepper
3 slices of thick-cut bacon (optional)

To make the dressing, whisk the olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper together in a small bowl. If you're substituting red onion like we did, I'd recommend mixing that in too so that it has a chance to soften a little while you assemble the rest of the ingredients. You could even pickle the onion if you're feeling fancy.

Cook and drain the bacon until it's crisp; set aside to cool and then crumble into bite-size pieces. (If you're vegetarian, feel free to skip this step.)

Place the lettuce in a large bowl and mix in the dressing. Add the pickles, bacon and onion and mix well. Add the cheddar once the salad is plated. This last method is a tip from Healthy Appetite chef Ellie Krieger: adding high-calorie toppings at the end makes it seem like you have more and you'll feel more satiated than if they're hidden in the dish.


*Oh FINE. There's a clue in the title of this post. Just keep it between us when you figure it out, okay?