100th post! yay!

Black Bean Salad with Feta Cheese and Cilantro, made by my lovely twin, except for the cilantro, which I chopped myself, very confusedly and groggily, as I had just woken up, which made me feel very unaccomplished since Lola had already been up for 4 hours at that point.


Our grandfather loves to send us newspaper clippings, especially recipes. A few weeks ago he sent us a recipe for black bean and feta salad and we decided to make it. This is the first time we've actually made any of the recipes he's sent, but mark my words, it shall not be the last!

Black Bean Salad with Feta Cheese and Cilantro from the Florida Sun Sentinal
Serves 4 as a main dish
*2 cups dried black beans or 4 cups canned black beans, rinsed and drained
*water, optional

*2 ounces pasteurized feta cheese, crumbled

*1 small red onion, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)

*1/4 cup fine-chopped cilantro

*2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

*3-4 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
*salt and fresh ground black pepper (personally, we use only the finest black pepper, handpicked from the dining hall condiment station, in our recipes), to taste

Reserve 1 T feta. Combine the beans (cook them and let them cool down first if using dried beans), onions, cilantro, and the remaining cheese in a bowl. Add the olive oil, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, salt and pepper; mix well. Let the beans marinate 10 min and toss again. Correct the seasoning before serving, adding salt and additional lemon juice to taste. Garnish with reserved cheese.
-Rita

P.S. I forgot to mention, in my haste to type the phrase "mark my words", that later I had this mixed with quinoa and it was very good that way too.

black bean and zucchini soup

left to right:spoon, soup, tortillas.

after a week of eating ridiculously good food, laying in the sun with my family, and watching baseball in arizona (me) and taking a road trip to atlanta to volunteer (rita), and another week of massive amounts of homework, we're finally back to the blogging world!
today, i decided to experiment once again with my spiffy immersion blender.
i chopped up 1 smallish zucchini and sauteed it in olive oil with medium sprinkle each of cumin powder and cayenne, and a smaller sprinkle of chipotle powder. once the zucchini was reasonably cooked, i added 1/2 can of drained blackbeans, a tiny bit of fresh cilantro, and about 1/2 cup water and heated it all up in pot. finally, i blended it all together and ate my soup with a corn tortilla.
this turned out pretty good, but it would have been great with some lime juice, and maybe some sour cream on top(which i don't like, actually, but some creaminess would have been nice. maybe yogurt?). oh well, something to try next time.
-Lola

pasta with tomato sauce and egg

we've been trying to get rid of all our perishable food before leaving for spring break (yay! but we won't be posting all next week, sorry), so meals have been somewhat random. tonight, i decided that my usual pasta with tomato sauce and peas needed something extra, and all we had in the fridge was 1 egg (and pb and j of course, but that wouldn't taste so good).
i love pasta carbonara, but obviously didn't have the ingredients for that or really remember how to make it, so i figured pasta with egg would be good. and, lo and behold, it was.
deconstructed/work in progress.

i made my own tomato sauce thusly:
1. chop up one tomato into about bite sized pieces.
2. add to pan with about 1 T olive oil. stir, add sprinkles of garlic powder, italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, and black pepper. stir.
3. let simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring and mashing tomato bits with a fork until mix is sauce-like.
et voila! le tomato sauce! (i have no idea why i'm attempting french in a pasta recipe. just go with it).
then i cooked up my pasta, stirred it with the sauce and about 1/4 cup peas, and topped with a fried egg (about 3 minutes, in olive oil).
-Lola

carmelized pear oats

i get my best ideas in 3 places: while walking through the city, while in the shower, and while lying in bed, unable to go to sleep. a few nights ago, the latter came into play as i attempted to distract myself from thoughts of my 3 impending midterms. so i started thinking about what i wanted in my oatmeal the next morning, and all of the sudden, it came to me--carmelized pears! it was a very good idea indeed. i added many sprinkles of pumpkin pie spice (you can substitute cinnamon if you like. also, you should try it with vanilla if you have some) and a generous scoop of (plain, nonfat) yogurt to my usual steel-cut oats (i think it would be just as good, or even better, without the yogurt), and stirred this all together. then i topped my concoction with 1 pear, sliced and sauteed in a pat of earth balance (ie, butter or your preferred butter substitute) for about 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. i also added a mini-spoonful of peanut butter on top. if i get to eat this every time i study for my psych midterm (this morning's breakfast reading: 50 pages on "Accessibility of Social Constructs: Information-Processing Consequences of Individual and Contextual Variablity"), i might just be ok.
-Lola
p.s. another giveaway! check it out and you could win some maranatha nut butter!
and another one, for krema peanut butter! can you tell i really want some free pb?
eater not a runner also has an awesome giveaway
i'm on a giveaway finding roll, apparently...this one's for goji and me custom cereal

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!
and enter this newman's own giveaway too!
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
check out this giveaway!

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