Monday, December 29, 2008

Food is love in the form of Excess

I'm jumping on a plane in the morning to visit J's family in NJ for New Years. It's always fun to visit with them (although occasionally exhausting and chaotic) because they demonstrate, as many families do, their love with lots of food and affection.

Breakfast each day, consists of cakes, pies, cookies, baklava, rye breads and jam and coffee. If you find something of a savory nature to eat for breakfast, you've somehow managed to wake up in the wrong house.

We usually skip lunch because the waking hours in this family tend to be from 2pm until 5am. Breakfast is around 2, snacks in the late afternoon, and dinner happens around midnight. Even though I'm a night owl, it does take some getting used to at first, especially since both J and I work in the 8-5 world, but it's not as hard as you'd think. The hard part is attempting to go to bed 5 hours earlier when we get back home.

In Omi's house, you don't get the chance to feel even the slightest hunger pang. No sooner do you swallow the last bite of one delectable and they're asking you if you want them to make you something else. Saying "no thank you" is a guarantee way to ensure you have a schnitzel sandwich the size of a football or an enormous plate of fried potatoes, kielbasa and mustard heading in your direction. Over the years, I've learned to just say yes to their offers and at least this way I can control the size of my own 2nd or 3rd helping.

To aid digestion, bowls of various chocolates are strategically placed throughout the house. If Aunt H catches you not eating at least one while watching TV, she will come over and actually unwrap one and put it in your mouth. Time for bed? How about a cup of hot chocolate? Followed by lots of "kusse". The only vegetables I've seen in the house are pickled red cabbage and cauliflower and even those are rare (and when they appear they are doused in mayo).

When it's time to come home, I'll find that my bags are packed with jars of high-fat deliciousness like Nutella, my jeans are significantly tighter and I've developed a strong craving for large glasses of metamucil and big bowls of fiber one cereal.

It hurts a little to eat like that for days and days, but I now understand why they encourage us to do it. We usually only get to visit once a year so they're trying to squeeze all their love in on one trip. With every bite swallowed they feel a little closer to their family from NH. I've been eating a little extra the last few days to prepare my stomach for all the love that's coming . . .

All text and photographs © 2008, 2009 Food is to love / Andrea Quigley

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Thai Chicken Pizza


This is one of J's favorites. It's got healthy fats and is piled high with veggies but still falls into the comfort food category (without being loaded with tons of cheese). Here I use a store bought pizza crust and a premade peanut sauce (with some tweaking of course!) but you certainly can use raw pizza dough (just increase cooking time by 10-12 minutes) and can make your own peanut sauce with peanut butter, soy sauce, ginger and lime juice. I make enough stuff from scratch that on weeknights I'll swap out substitutions like this to get dinner on the table and into my belly faster.

Ingredients:

1 whole wheat thin-style precooked pizza crust
2 tbsp olive oil
2 chicken breasts
1 1/2 to 2 cups rinsed pea pods, cut in half
1 large red bell pepper, cut into 2 inch strips
half of 1 small can bamboo shoots, drained
1-2 tbsp each
chopped garlic, ginger
1 - 2 tbsp tamari (wheat free soy sauce)
4 tbsp peanut sauce
2 - 3 tbsp sweet n' sour sauce
1/2 cup grated or 2 oz thin sliced smoked gouda cheese
red pepper flakes, basil, kosher salt and pepper to taste
optional: onion / mushrooms

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil (I am not spoiled enough to own a pizza stone). Preheat a stovetop grill pan to medium - high heat. Trim fat from chicken breasts and pound slightly. I pound them just enough to ensure they cook evenly but try to keep most of the thickness as we want decent sized slices of chicken when we're done. Season with salt and pepper. When the grill is hot, lighty brush with olive oil and place chicken in pan. The chicken is ready to be flipped when it easily lifts off the pan, usually 4-5 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, place the crust on cookie sheet and spread sweet n' sour sauce and peanut sauce on crust. Sprinkle red pepper flakes and basil on top of sauce. Once you've flipped over the chicken, toss pea pods, bell peppers, garlic, ginger (and onions and mushrooms if using) into the grill pan and let cook with the chicken. Sprinkle the tamari and a little salt and pepper over the veggies as the cook. Give the veggies a stir once or twice while cooking. They should be done cooking after 4 or 5 minutes (along with the chicken). Remove veggies and chicken to a plate to rest.

While veggies and chicken are cooling down, lay bamboo shoots across the pizza crust (on top of the sauce) and slice or grate your cheese. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, thinly slice at an angle and layer all across the pizza. Pile the veggies on top of the chicken. And then top with the smoked gouda and more red pepper flakes.

Bake for 10 minutes or until gouda is lightly browned. Cool slightly and cut into 4 triangles.

Don't be alarmed if the pizza seems like one huge pile of veggies. That's the way it should be! You will need a fork, knife and probably several napkins.
Serves 2-4 (depending on the how big your appetite is!)

© 2008, 2009 Food is to Love / Andrea Quigley



Saturday, December 27, 2008

Privacy Policy for FoodistoLove.blogspot.com

Privacy Policy for ____.com

The privacy of our visitors to Foodistolove.blogspot.com is important to us.

At Foodistolove.blogspot.com, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit Foodistolove.blogspot.com, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Log Files
As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.

Cookies and Web Beacons
We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.

We also use third party advertisements on Foodistolove.blogspot.com to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

DoubleClick DART cookies
We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. You can opt-out of this ad serving on all sites using this advertising by visiting http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/dart_adserving.aspx

You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.

AdSense Privacy Policy Provided by JenSense