Hola! Je m'appelle Julie!

Why BLT when you've got TLC from a TLT?

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:36:59 -0400

Once upon a time, I messed around with tempeh… ultimately resulting in a complete failure of a dish. I had dumped the dry thing into hot EVOO with some veggies hoping to make a yummy vegetarian stir-fry. Horrible stuff it was; I ended up throwing the whole dish away. It crumbled into tiny bits and the whole product was bland and unappealingly sour. A few months later go by which brings us to today. I’ve decided to give tempeh another try. There are just way too many tasty-looking dishes that include tempeh, that I just couldn’t resist avoiding the odd soy product.

Today, I sliced these mother effers into thin pieces and marinated them for 45 minutes in: organic agave nectar, brown sugar, EVOO, soy sauce, liquid smoke, cumin, paprika, cayenne, and pepper. Placed them into a pan on medium heat until a bit brown on the bottom and added the marinade. Flipped them, and waited til’ the marinade has evaporated and the little guys were dark and crispy.

The result: a very distant cousin of bacon. I mean, VERY distant. I easily whipped up a veggie omelet and voila! A perfectly healthy, meat-free, yet absolutely tasteful dish.

For lunch, I fried up a few more slices and made me a TLT: Tempeh, Lettuce, and Tomato. I cut off the very top of a sesame bagel, as well the very bottom (for a healthier portion of carbs), and putting the thick middle part of the bagel back in the bag — I suppose someone would eat it in the long run. Smothered the bottom piece with garlic hummus, and added the rest from there. It was so good, Ronald even asked me to make him one before he left for work.

Tempeh, you’ve officially have a place in my heart (:

Cheers!

"Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation"

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:33:22 -0400

“Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation”

- Ben Franklin

"Green leaves and brown leaves fall from the same tree"

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:29:32 -0400

“Green leaves and brown leaves fall from the same tree”

If you want to be happy… be.

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:56:22 -0400

If you want to be happy… be.

The BEST Educational Resource

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 02:33:00 -0400

Khan Academy….

My best friend for the past 2 weeks.

You are going to help me get an awesome score on the TEAS! No doubt!

La la la love you LONG time!

Khanacademy.org
I hope Sal will one day help you on your educational enlightenment too! Props to this homie!

Cheers!!

Worth the Wait for this Upgrade [link]

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 02:26:00 -0400

Worth the Wait for this Upgrade [link]

Sloooow Start

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 01:54:54 -0400

It’s been over half a year and I haven’t really gotten into the heavy labor of my position… well, until soon. I’m a research assistant for the Measurment and Evaulation Research Group under the SDSU Research Foundation, studying thirdhand smoke. More than half a year without subjects; it feels like I’ve been staring at a blank wall all this time and have been getting paid a decent amount of money for it all in the while. We’re so desperate to find participants for this study, the principle investigator has allowed us to even post the information on Facebook.

If you or anyone you know is planning on quitting smoking, who smokes inside of their home, AND are involved in any type of smoking cessation program (I can provide a free hotline if this last one is not fulfilled), let me know, or visit the search “Healthy Homes at SDSU” in the Facebook search bar for more information! This study will compensate for time.

Cheers!!!

'Arry Pottah

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:21:05 -0400

omfg. I’m about to reread the entire Harry Potter series and have a Harry Potter Movie marathon starting this week!! I’m so freakin excited! So excited, I’m over this post. I’ll be spending the next hour putting all the movies onto mi iPad and opening the first book that started it all! Yeeee! Can’t wait to camp outside the theatre with hoards of other nerds! Fun stuff!!

Awesome, lost mi keys. Let me know if they show up…. ASAP. Gotta go to work somehow….

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:42:36 -0400

Awesome, lost mi keys. Let me know if they show up…. ASAP. Gotta go to work somehow….

"If everyone adopted a vegetarian diet and no food were wasted, current [food] production would..."

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 13:45:16 -0400

““If everyone adopted a vegetarian diet and no food were wasted, current [food] production would theoretically feed 10 billion people [49 percent more people than alive today], more than the projected population for the year 2050.””

- Hypothetical statement via Population Reference Bureau

Beat That Meat!

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 02:51:35 -0400

I can’t say that my attempt at being veggie was a fail. For the most part, I was able to be meat free for a good few months. The sole event that changed my decision of having meat back in my diet was one lecture and one thorough understanding of essential amino acids for the body. The easiest way to get all essential amino acids in one neat little package is to just, well, eat an animal. Vegetables and grains will always have one or two missing amino acids. Soooo, for a Veggie to grab these “essential” guys is to mix and match veggies and grains until all is obtained for a complete healthy diet.

I guess my lame excuse was that I’m too busy trying to figure out exactly which veggies and grains lack what and how I could combine them in ways that prevent me from dying from some wierd deficiency (sure, that’s on the extreme end). Well world, I’m no longer busy, besides prepping for some dumb entrance exam in a few weeks. I honestly do feel guilty whenever I eat meat; sometimes I feel horribly gross, especially afterwards. Starting tonight, it’s all about research on the composition of veggies and grains. Tomorrow, I’ve gotta beat the meat!

Yay for a more sustainable earth!

Liked it until I realized it looks like green bay ):

Fri, 13 May 2011 13:42:55 -0400

Liked it until I realized it looks like green bay ):

Crazy Gaga wannabe… minus the stale music.

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:50:14 -0500

Crazy Gaga wannabe… minus the stale music.

"In order to gain anything, you must first lose everything."

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:15:08 -0500

“In order to gain anything, you must first lose everything.”

spread the peace <3

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:01:48 -0500

spread the peace <3

Lentils, My New Best Friend

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:37:00 -0500

It’s not that I forget to post recipes; I have tons of recipes in queue ready to be sent. More than half of them, however, are meat based. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t touch meat everyday (please, no, don’t say it!), but it’s not like I eat it! I still cook meaty meals for my family as though I was the Queen of Carne— I do it for the pure enjoyment of cooking.

I’ve been vegetarian for over a week now, and it’s come to the point where I feel guilty and a bit disgusted to even think about taking a nibble from family meaty meals. It’s only been so long, but my feelings have led me to believe that this lifestyle is right for me. Besides, what’s a more sustainable way to being “green” than to just give up meat entirely?

Source of protein? Lentils and beans and more lentils!

My coworker from my new job used to be vegetarian for 2 years and recommended cooking with lentils for its high source of protein. So fast forward after work and you’d find me a Vons isle holding a bag of organic green lentils. Fast forward to this day, and this is what I did:

Sautee onion, garlic, and carrots in EVOO for 10 minutes. Add tomato. Stirrrritup!
Add chicken broth, white wine, green lentils (rinsed with water), bay leaf, oregano, celery salt, and pepper.
Bring to a boil, cover, then simmer.
Cook until lentils are soft and tender. My pot simmered for about an hour. If you want your lentils to be done quicker, I’m sure you can turn up the heat to medium and let it sit covered for about 15-20 minutes.
Add spinach. Although I’d much rather have added fresh baby spinach, I only had frozen on me. Either way, the product was DELISH.

Lentils are definitely a keeper in my diet. I’d love to experiment with them though… lentil patties? I smell a new recipe coming up!

Cheers!

Living... What?

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 12:57:39 -0500

“Living young”, quite frankly, rings with this daunting sense of immaturity.

Afraid and nervous to grow up. Living is not about ‘age appropriateness’. It’s about the growth and maturity of the mind.

Sure… in some contexts, its fine. But in some other meaningless arguments, I feel like I’m going to throw up.

Yeah, I think I did throw up a bit in my mouth.

Fails.

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:50:12 -0500

Well I guess the natural “Toms” deodorant didn’t work out too well. I really tried though! I went almost a whole month using the product, and I would’ve continued if it hadn’t started making my armpits look all chafed. I know you don’t want to hear it, but the epidermal skin cells were flaking off like crazy. It didn’t irritate the skin, it just kept killing the outer layer of cells. Not fun stuff. So I switched back over to the chemical form deodorant (sigh). What to do next to fulfill my resolution? I’m cutting back on red meat, chicken, and pork to twice a week. It’s all about the veggies and legumes! Hopefully I could start making my own compost and grow a mini garden of veggies on my porch. Yay for sustainability!

As for posting more recipes, I had two in queue, but those were a fail since I had forgotten to take pictures of the final product…. Ronald scarfed most of it down before I could do some fancy shmancy plating…

Maybe I should post a tutorial on filleting and deboning different kinds of meats? I’ll find time.

Me + Sweets ?

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:43:00 -0500

First off, if you knew me, you’d know I’m not a pastry chef. Baking requires pretty accurate measurements— too much flour will result in a very dry and ‘heavy’ product, for an example. Secondly, my taste buddies are more in tune with savory and salts than sweet things. Overall, I can’t say for sure that I’ve given up on sweets— If a sweet opportunity arises, I put up against the challenge. That’s kind of what happened today.

Ronald was hungry and we honestly have jack in the fridge. I saw him grab broken pieces of bread from a bag and stick it in the toaster. That’s when I stepped in and said “Omg. Stop. I’m gonna cook”. Sure, I was pretty tired from having jogged to Tom Cats to get my car back from a drunken night, but not even that is gonna stand in my way from doing some magic in the kitchen.

I saw some left over beef stew my mom had given me in a plastic bag ( don’t question the bag, it’s a Filipino thing ), and saw defrosted wonton wrappers right next to it. I glanced over the two, side-by-side, and shrugged; It was worth a try. I turned on the deep fryer to 350, coupled the two, and fed them to Ronald. It actually was pretty diggity DANK. Moral of the story? I think it’s safe to conclude that anything stuck in a wonton wrapper and deep fried is Bomb.com.

I started to clear up a bit when I spotted the lonely fruit bowl in the corner of the kitchen. In it I was a perfectly ripe pear and a tart apple. With the leftover wonton wrappers in my hand that were on its way to the fridge, the lightbulb flickered back on. So this is what I did!

Chopped up half of that tart apple and half of that perfectly ripe pear, added white sugar, brown sugar, fresh grated cinnamon, and a few fresh grates of nutmeg. Stuck it in a bowl and mixed all that goodness up!

Stuck it in a wonton wrapper and folded that ishhh up! I love the many ways you can fold up a wonton once filling invades its space; this is how I folded mine up:

I fried these bad boys for about 3 minutes at 350F in my deep fryer. I didn’t have whipped cream nor heavy whipping cream (wehhhhh), but it’s also paired beautifully with a scoop of ice cream! Now THAT I have in my freezer!

Results? FREAKIN’ DELISH. It seriously tastes like apple pie. I’m glad that fruit bowl caught my eye! It’s a great desert for the full stomach! Too bad I don’t like sweets. I ended up eating one and leaving the rest for my bro-in-law and sis.

Cheers!

I’m deeply inspired. The British WWII propaganda poster is...

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:55:20 -0500

I’m deeply inspired. The British WWII propaganda poster is the politically correct version of my meaning of when I say “Fuck It”.