Fabio Wants You to Eat Pizza

Mama Mia! Look what I just found on YumSugar.com! Grocery Hags’ favorite Italian schmoozer is apparently shilling frozen pizzas.

Dr. Oetker, one of Europe’s top frozen pizza brands, is launching its Ristorante line in America, and has called on the reality TV personality to be the spokesperson for the thin-crust pizza. “We feel Fabio is the perfect voice for the brand,” Dr. Oetker USA said in a statement. “He has an incredible personality and a real passion for cooking.”

I don’t know if I’ll buy frozen pizza (in New York?! please) just because Fabs’ face is on the box, but I may try it. You know…because why not? It may make a good blog entry. Maybe we’ll hear more about this at the reunion spesh tonight? CARLA FOR FAN FAVORITE!

Beer Tasting? Yes please!

One of the perks of being friends with media people is they have fabulous events with fabulous little surprises even during fabulous recession-more-like-a-depression-times. That said, I want to tell you about the BEER TASTING Andie took me too last night at Gourmet Magazine.

Yes, you heard right, BEER TASTING. Can’t think of anything better? Nope, we can’t either.

So – the Beer tasting was in honor of/hosted by this guy named Justin Philips who has a little ”eating a drinking room” in Brooklyn called Beer Table that “serves rare and specialized” seasonal beers along with some tasty snacks. And let me just say – this dude knows his brew, and his nibbles. I had some of the best beers and best cheeses I’ve ever had last night.  For you beer and cheese lovers out there (and I know you exist, Wisconsin!) let me lay down a few faves for you:

First, the appetizers, we started with Beer Cheese, maybe the most unbelievable cheese I’ve ever tasted. Commonly made with soft cheese…and…um…beer…and…spices? It sort of speaks for itself, I guess. Anyway, the Beer Table people make their own version of it and I think I could probably eat about a pound of it if let loose in their kitchen.

Jesus God. Ok, secondly they had this homemade delicious ricotta cheese served on little lightly toasted baguettes and topped with almonds, black pepper and a little maple sugar:  unfortunately, I can’t show you a picture, but it was beautiful and it. was. DELICIOUS!!! a yummy sweet little treat which brings me to the beer:

We had six artisinal beers last night,  an assortment of IPAs, stouts, etc. made from small little independent breweries from all over the world.  They were all pretty good, flavorful and satisfying, but the one that stood out was the Hitachino Sweet Stout from Japan.

This beer was served with the ricotta appetizer and the pairing was incredible. The beer is made with lactose, which gives it a sweet sort of milky almost dark-chocolately flavor that really complimented the maple syrup. It was like having a dessert in a glass; Andie noted that it’d be a great substitute for a piece of cake or cup of ice cream after a meal and I have to say, I agree!

SO: survey says: we like beer tastings. I highly recommend attending one in the near future. So choice.

Happy weekend!

DC Celebs that Aren’t Obama

So the Grocery Hags took a lil trip to DC this weekend to have a reunion with their two favorite people. There was shopping, cooking, and of course eating, involved.

Once such eating adventure took us to a burger joint near the Eastern Market. Maybe you know the chef of Good Stuff Eatery?

Complete with Hat

Yep – Spike from TC4!!!! He was manning the grill where there was a special Inauguration weekend menu. I clearly had the Obama burger – with red onion marmalade, horseradish mayo, and blue cheese (red, white and blue – GET IT?!?! Not gonna lie…I didn’t at first). It was delish. And Allie enjoyed her Turkey Burger. Plus, fries come with dipping sauces other than ketchup / mustard – Allie loved the Old Bay mayo but I prefered the Chipotle one. Anyone who knows me knows my love of dip – they are key.

I gained a little more respect for Spike (I wasn’t a fan of his last season) while at this restaurant. I loved that he was there, manning the grill, posing for pictures (by our star-struck yet doesn’t really love TC friend), and wearing funny hats. And it’s a family owned place – his adorable father owns the restaurant and spends his days upstairs finding empty tables, cleaning up and generally being a happy camper. After we polished off everything on the table, we chatted with him a bit. Papa Mendelsohn was so proud of Spike and was thrilled when he decided to become a chef. However, Spike apparently didn’t tell the fam he was going to be on Top Chef until AFTER filming. Scandal?

Smell ya later 08

Every New Years Day, my mom makes a big pot of black eyed peas and makes everyone who enters our home take a spoonful. “For good luck!” she claims. When I was a kid (and hated anything that was remotely related to the word “vegetable” or “healthy”) I had to hold my nose and shut my eyes to make sure she understood how incredibly awful that ONE BITE was. Did I mention I was a stubborn brat as a child?

Now that I’m older, wiser, and actually like veggies, I’m aching for my mama’s good-luck black eyed peas. I’m so not in the mood to do it the old fashioned way – I only have a few hours! Luckily, YumSugar had a great slideshow of BEP recipes for those superstitious southerners like me.

Before we go out, I’m having friends come over for a cheapo dinner of pizza, wine, beer, and – because you can’t party without it – chips, salsa and guacamole. I think I’ll also make these so everyone can have a little luck before we head into 2009. I have most of the stuff already. And everyone MUST have a bite.

Happy New Years! Ya’ll be safe now.

Adventures in Baking

I’m not a baker. AT ALL. My mother does the baking and somehow, I missed that gene. I’m much more inclined to make something I can mess up and it will still turn out yummy where as baking is such a science (and science and I don’t play nicely together) – a little extra of something and it goes to crap!

But I got invited to a Hannukkah party this Sunday at the boy’s parent’s house and I want to bring something. I always (always always) bring a bottle of wine and want to mix it up!

Slashfood had a cookie recipe this week for some cookies that looked so fool proof even the science-flunking nonbaker that I am could possibly maybe handle it. I don’t even need a mixer! And just one bowl!

Is this an appropriate thing to bring? I feel like if someone is nice enough to stink up their house making latkes, I should strap on an apron and say thank you the proper way, right?

Ya’ll bringing anything to a holiday party this weekend?

Cold Night Cooking

So there’s this recipe on Bon Appetit’s I’ve been flirting with for months. It’s the equivalent of a Facebook poke – I would see him online, consider making him, and then go back to my day and forget about him for months. But he was always there as a BA top recipe.

This past Friday, I made a bold move – I printed the recipe. When I went to a birthday dinner on Saturday night, I had something that sounded similar and it was so good I just had to take this relationship to the next level.

Enter The Asian Noodle Soup Bowl. He’s great for cuddling on the couch with a blanket and a good movie. He’ll even let you watch that chick flick again without complaint. And he won’t judge you for still watching The Hills.

I ended up riffing on this recipe. The lemongrass I hiked to Whole Foods for (in the 30-degree weather mind you) wasn’t mincing like I thought it should. This is a new ingredient for me but it just seemed off – I don’t think it had more than one layer to peel and the taste was weird – kinda chewy. I didn’t want to screw up this soup that I had been thinking about for days so I just decided to scrap the chewy lemongrass and go with lemon zest. Totally worked. But for future -anyone got any good lemongrass tips? What am I looking for? How is it supposed to taste? Why wouldn’t mine cut?!

The Goods

Everybody into the pool!!

The recipe took all of an hour (totally easy) and I think it turned out really fantastic! It was the perfect amount of soothing and comforting – I think the (light) coconut milk Padma loves so much helped richen the soup without making it too heavy. My only complaint is that it wasn’t spicy enough for me – I used a green curry paste instead of red, and I think this made it milder. I’ll up the curry or the chili paste next time.

Stay warm, kiddos!

Finished result - steamy bowl of yumminess. Would have gone great with a Sapporo Beer

-Andie

OOPS!

I had an insane night of running around like a crazy person yesterday. After work I hauled my ass to Whole Foods in Chelsea in search of Turkey Stock for my Cornbread Stuffing, which, of course, they don’t carry. So, I settled for three boxes of Chicken Stock that can be described in two ways: not cheap and not light. I know becuase I PAID for them and because I had to shlep them with me to the salon while I got my last minute, “I-haven’t-had-my-hair-cut-since-March-and-I-want-to-look-nice-for-my-boyfriend’s-family” Thanksgiving haircut. Small note to all the ladies out there: I know that the idea of bangs is a romantic one, but try and resist. They’re a pain in the ass. I was reminded of this fact this morning, aka: why my new bangs are clipped up on the top of my head right now. Anway…

After my haircut I ran to the subway in the cold, stopping alone the way at Rainbow Falafel, a delicious little take out hut that I happened upon on my, like, 3rd day in New York last fall and JUST found again yesterday, to get a chicken hummus sandwich (half of which I ate on the train like a heathen) and, once I got home, I took 15 minutes to chop up my new bangs into some kind of something before tackling steps 2 and 3 of my cornbread stuffing!!

Needless to say, at this point, I was frazzled enough that I forgot to take pictures of my cooking. Lets just say that, after I chopped two large onions and 4 cups of celery, cooked them in butter, crumbled up my cornbread, 14 dried up pieces of white bread and two sleeves of saltines, added all that together, took a sip of diet coke, added 10 cups of chicken stock, mixed, added sage, salt and poutry seasoning, beat 8 eggs, added those eggs to my stuffing, baked it all in a greased up casserole dish, watched some Fringe, and took the stuffing out of the oven, it basically looked like this:

Except, you know, less beautiful and perfect-y. BUT IT TASTED GREAT!!! I’m so happy with all the work and how it came out. If you’re lucky enough to be coming to my apartment on Friday, you’ll get a chance to partake, and then you can comment and tell everyone how it was. If not, have a GREAT Thanksgiving and we’ll be in touch RE: Top Chef next week.

LOVE, Allie

Texas our TexMex

This week is all about food – turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce (not that jelly stuff, the homemade stuff is really where its at), gravy, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, chocolate cream pie, and, um, ok I really like pie.

But before Thursday rolls around I have only one thing on my mind: real Tex-Mex.

Texas is known for many things: Barbecue, football, raising kids to be overly proud of their home state (example: The Grocery Hags). But TexMex is what I dream about at night when I’m in New York and is the first thing I want after I get off the plane in Dallas.

So I’ve been here 48 hours – and I’ve already had it. Twice. With plans to have my queso-guac-tacos-enchiladas-CHIPS-AND-SALSA-rice-and-beans meal at least twice more times.

And I guess the real question is, am I crazy, or just a girl in love?

My First Attempt!

Tonight is my first attempt at making anything at all Thanksgivingy. Tonight I’m taking the first step towards making traditional Southern Cornbread Stuffing. YUM!

I say “first step” because all I’m making tonight is the cornbread. Why? Well, the stuffing tastes best when the cornbread has a chance to get a bit stale before it combines with all the liquidy goodness of the stuffing. So, tonight cornbread, tomorrow, the world!

TO BEGIN: the ingredients. Now, who can tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

If you said “all the labels are backwards,” then you get 10 points for noticing the oddities of Photobooth. That is not, however, the correct answer.

The correct answer is:

That box contains CORN STARCH not CORN MEAL and THANKFULLY I caught that before making beginning my recipe because, turns out, they aren’t the same thing (I know, I googled). Good thing I had my thinking cap on!

So: here is the actual sum of my cornbread ingredients

Great! Now, to give credit where credit is due (for ethical and legal reasons): I’m mixing recipes from two Food Network chefs, Emeril Lagasse and, one of my favorite ladies in the whole world, Paula Dean. Paula’s recipe calls for the following:

2 cups cornmeal
1 cup flour
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
4 eggs
4 TBSP veggie oil

Emeril’s recipe gave me two great additions to this recipe:

1 – Emeril suggests heating coating a cast iron skillet (I used a frying pan) with the 4 TBSP of oil and popping it in the oven while the oven pre-heats to 350. Emeril also adds 1/4 tsp of Cayenne pepper to his recipe, but I added 1/2 tsp because I’m a Texas girl and I like it spicy!

So, we combine all the dry ingredients (the cornmeal, flour and Cayenne) and stir. Then we add the buttermilk and the eggs so the pictures looks like a less blurry version of the following:

k, great. Now mix it all together, then get your oiled up pan out of the oven (its hot!) and pour the batter in. Then just let it cook for 20 minutes!

When it comes out, it should look like this:

beautiful! See how the bread looks like its just floating in the middle of the pan? That’s because of that oil we heated up! It acted like a border between the pan and the bread and it also gave the cornbread a beautiful crust. See!?

nyum nyum

This cornbread could not have been easier to make! The hardest part will be waiting until tomorrow to make the rest of the stuffing.

Til then!

-Allie

First Blog

Friday weekend roundup!

Here’s everything I ate this week including the d’lish (bagles) the nasty (Sunset Park chinese takeout) and the regrettable (mini Butterfingers, anyone? Anyone???) Andie doesn’t seem to think that my week was too bad, but thats just because she doesn’t know my plans for Wine/Cheese domination at tonight’s Williamsburg art gallery…TO THE BAR!

Sunday 11/9
For brunch I had a piece of pita, 5 veggie buffalo nuggets from the fridge and the rest of the Samba hummus, not much. For a snack I ate a whole jar of sandwich style sliced pickles. I also ate the rest of this corn/bean/tomato salad I’d made the week before. I worked out, took a shower, watched some TV and then Ben came over and we walked to 8th Ave in Brooklyn, Brooklyn’s “Chinatown”, and had dinner at Gi Lam II. Ben and I shared the sugarcane shrimp appetizer and I had a sliced pork Vietnamese sandwich on French bread. DELICIOUS! When I got home I had a glass of white wine.
 
Monday 11/10
For breakfast I had a whole wheat poppy seed bagel with fat free cream cheese, tomato and onion. I also had a coffee. I met a friend for lunch at 40 Carrots where I had spinach/chicken and cheese quesadillas that came wrapped in a wheat wrap with guacamole and some fresh salsa. We also shared a coffee/chocolate frozen yogurt with Oreo crumbles. Trust me, this fro-yo is definetely all its cracked up to be. I wasn’t feeling well after work so I just toasted a piece of pita and then Ben brought me a small wonton soup from a Chinese takeout place in Sunset Park. I also ate the rice from his chicken and broccoli and those fried wonton thingys

Tuesday 11/11
I stayed home because I wasn’t feeling well. I had a pita toasted with margarine and a can of Progresso chicken noodle soup for lunch. I also had a mini Butterfinger from the freezer, leftover from Halloween. For dinner I made a casserole with wheat pasta, ground turkey, tomatoes, mozzarella (part skim) ricotta (part skim) and parmesan cheese. It was DLISH and I made it even healthier than the recipe originaly intended. I had a heaping helping and a glass of white wine.
 
Wednesday 11/12
I had some special K with Red berries and a coffee for breakfast at work. For lunch I went to Subway and had a 6 inch turkey sandwich on Honey Oat bread with honey mustard, onions and lettuce. It came with a diet coke and Baked Lays, yum yum. Then I stole a 100 calorie pack bag of Sunchips from Amanda and a Quaker Oat granola bar because I was still hungry. For dinner I had more of my noodle casserole and two glasses of white wine. Max came home with Charlie in tow and they ordered Italian; I ate some of Charlie’s bread. Then Sophie came over and ordered a tuna melt and I ate some of her fries. I also had a popsicle and two mini crunch bars during Top Chef.
 
Thursday 11/13
I had my bagel with fat free cream cheese, tomato and onion with a big iced coffee for breakfast and for lunch I had a salad with grilled chicken, croutons and honey mustard dressing from LA Gourmet by my office. I also had some crackers and some pretzels later as a snack. For dinner I had a big ass helping of my casserole … like big. Then I went to Ben’s and ate nothing because he had nothing to snack on.
Friday: 11/14
So far I’ve had Special K with red berries, a large iced coffee, a turkey light sandwich and two bags of chips from Cosi and a diet coke.

Stay tuned for so much more food related fun on this blog. Restaurant reviews! Top Chef episode post-hashes! Favorite Recipes and more!!! Andie and I are excited to share out food related universes with all you skinny folk out there. Keep eating!

-Allie