pasta with tomato sauce and salmon

for nyu students like ourselves, food shopping can be a pain in the ass. you've either got to shop at overpriced delis and grocery stores, or deal with the madhouse that is union square trader joe's. tj's is worth it for the prices, but requires climbing over people to get to your yogurt and cereal, and waiting in line for half an hour. so sometimes you just have to go to gristede's and for the sake of saving money, choose the $2 can of tomato sauce over the $7 jar of good pasta sauce.

and when you open up said $2 can of sauce and find out it tastes like metal, you can always improve it with your own ingredients. above, sauce doctored up with a big handful of spinach, 2 cloves garlic (chop, then sautee in olive oil til brown before adding to the sauce), and a big sprinkling each of garlic powder, italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes (cook everything together over low heat for about 10 minutes).
and served with whole wheat pasta, canned salmon, feta cheese, and peas (all bought at tj's, of course).
-Lola
p.s. Averie has an awesome nut butter giveaway!
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one more giveaway...greek yogurt!

vegetarian meatball sandwiches

get ready for a super unattractive photo...
counter covered with random stuff+bad lighting+paper plates+sandwich that looks like...actually i don't know what it looks like...but it looks weird=appetizing.
i've never actually had a meatball sandwich before, so i don't know exactly what should go into it. we made ours with wheat bread, marinara sauce, frozen "italian-style" meatless meatballs, and mozzarella (which tasted good, although i think provolone would melt better. melted in the oven at 400 for about 10 min, just check every 5 min until the cheese is melted how you like it). warm, toasty, and delicious! served with potatoes and sweet potatoes, roasted in the oven at 450 for about 45 minutes in olive oil, salt, and pepper.
-Lola
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tuna salad+ roasted carrots and potatoes

This is the first time we've made tuna salad in the dorm, but at home it's a staple of our diets. It's an easy way to use up the random scraps of food that accumulate in the back of the fridge, and it's hard to go wrong with it. In my opinion, the only way you can really make a bad tuna salad (besides maybe putting peanut butter in it. although who knows, that could be delicious) is to put too much mayonnaise in it. We here at Chez Twin do not allow any mayonnaise to darken our doorstep (and that's harder than it sounds. Sometimes it tries to force its way in. It's diabolical, that mayonnaise) because it is disgusting. But I guess if you like mayonnaise you could add that too our recipe. Just don't try bringing any of your salad to Chez Twin.
Tuna Salad
Serves 2
-1 can tuna
-shredded carrots
-peas
tomato salsa (like the runny kind you get on nachos at baseball games. We used TJ's "salsa authentica")
-1/2 can black eyed peas
combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix together
We served our tuna salad with potatoes and carrots, roasted in the oven at 400 degrees for 45 minutes with salt, pepper, olive oil, and herbes de provance.
-Rita
p.s. i actually do enjoy a tuna salad sandwich if its made with just enough mayonnaise to hold it together but no more...i had no idea rita had such a vehement anti-mayonnaise stance. -Lola

avocado strawberry smoothie

one of my favorite things about growing up in san francisco was getting to try an amazing array of ethnic foods. i have an obsession with asian desserts (actually, i've barely scratched the surface in terms of trying those. but i still love them madly and frequently try to convince my friends from the mid-west and the south that shaved ice with red beans, grass jelly, and condensed milk is a perfectly acceptable, and delicious, thing to eat. if you've never experienced the magic of asian desserts, here are a few more for you to look into: sago pudding, eggettes, and anything with red bean paste). one dessert that i have always been intrigued by but never tried is the avocado milkshake. unfortunately, we had no ice cream on hand, so i decided to try an avocado smoothie instead. with strawberries, which may sound weird but is delicious, trust me.
avocado strawberry smoothie makes 1 large smoothie
*1 1/2 cups soy milk (i used plain, but i think vanilla or even chocolate would be good)

*1/2 a ripe avocado

*frozen strawberries (start with a medium handful and add more to taste)
blend all ingredients until smooth and combined.
1/2 of the smoothie, partially frozen (i was impatient) and topped with cereal, dark chocolate chips, and a dollop of peanut butter. yum!!!
-Lola

grilled pineapple and avocado salad

aww, i wish i was feeling in the mood to eat something so light and summery now! unfortunately its snowing and i've been subsisting more on mac and cheese and chocolate than on fresh salads. despite the snow, you should make this (or maybe you're enjoying better weather, in which case you should definitely make this) because it was quite tasty. we served it as the starter for our cuban feast (followed by cuban sandwiches and key lime pie).
the recipe, from cooking light
-Lola

Tomato and Mushroom Soup

Lola actually made and ate this soup, so I can't testify to its taste, but I'm sure it was delicious. We made an exciting expedition out to the Target in Brooklyn at the beginning of this semester and got an immersion blender, so Lola has been making many soups. It looks a bit weird in this picture, but I can assure you that in person it was a lovely pinkish-red color.


Tomato and Mushroom Soup serves 1
Chop up 1 tomato and saute it in olive oil with a handful of mushrooms. Add a small pinch of red pepper flakes and a larger pinch of Italian seasoning and saute until mushrooms are soft and lightly browned. Blend with 1/2 cup to 1 cup veggie broth (depending on how thick or watery you want the soup)

-Rita
p.s. from lola: the soup was delicious, our kitchen counter is super messy but i wanted you to see my awesome blender, and in the top photo you can also see bread with tj's chipotle hummus, which you should try.

Haggis Quesadillas

The Haggis Quesadilla!! Aka the best fusion food invention ever.

When we were in Scotland, we were determined to eat the local cuisine as much as possible. This meant many meals of haggis, neeps, and tatties (haggis with turnips and potatoes), some fish and chips, and a regrettable meal of dried out deep-fried hamburger. One day we came across a Mexican restaurant that looked like the usual bad Mexican place here, with stale chips and giant margaritas. One thing, however, was different: They served haggis quesadillas. Eager to try what was sure to be a culinary masterpiece, we begged our parents to get lunch there, but they refused. But finally, years later, I had a haggis quesadilla. And it was delicious.

Haggis Quesadilla Serves 1

Heat up a non-stick skillet and add about 1/4 of a 15 oz can of haggis (our parents got it at a Scottish store in SF and sent it to us. If you can't find any, there are recipes for vegetarian haggis online). Stir it until it gets hot, then put it on top of a tortilla. Add some oil to the pan, heat it up and add 1 diced garlic clove and 1 handful of sliced white mushrooms. Saute until lightly browned. Remove from heat. Sprinkle some grated cheese (I used TJ's Mexican blend) over the haggis, then put on the mushrooms and garlic, then add more cheese. Put the whole quesadilla on the pan very carefully (you may want to use a spatula for this), and fry until lightly browned, about 1 minute on each side. Serve with salsa, if you like.
-Rita
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thai noodles with edamame

rice noodles with chopped sauteed onion, shelled edamame, peas, and coconut galangal sauce (i think it was from trader joes?)
-Lola

key lime pie oatmeal

remember how awesome that key lime pie we made was? (it was, trust me.)well, this was not as good. but ALMOST. and its more acceptable/healthier than eating pie for breakfast every morning.
before you get the recipe, i apologize for the fact that you probably don't have "true lime" (concentrated lime...it looks like sugar crystals) around, and i don't know where to buy it. its not the type of thing i would usually buy, but if you happen to have it for some reason, try this recipe.
the reason i had the "true lime", in case you were wondering (you probably weren't, but who knows) is that my roommate last year got the school approved "care packages" from her mother. these weren't actually from her mother, they were boxes you ordered online that contained no real food. so the cheap candies and easy mac would sit on our windowsill for months until someone was finally brave and desperate enough to eat the artificially flavored pb & j snack mix (that someone was me. bad choice there). anyhoo, this year, one of said care packages included true lime, true lemon, and true orange, and she pawned them off on me, so i figured i'd put some in my oats.
without further ado...
key lime pie oats serves 1
*1/4 cup steel cut oats
*3/4 cup vanilla soy milk
*1 packet lime concentrate
*frozen blackberries
*1 cinnamon graham cracker
boil soy milk in a pot. stir in oats, turn heat to low/medium, and let simmer for about 15 minutes, until oats have absorbed milk and are tender. stir in lime. serve topped with blackberries and crumbled graham cracker.
-Lola