Two loves combined (AKA: Food + Coffee)

Since working at Starbucks, my passion and interest in the nitty gritty of coffee (no pun intended) has grown and continues to grow tremendously. I have been blessed to find a job that feels like anything but a "job". I recently got the chance to showcase my "Coffee Master" abilities and set up a pairing for partners in my store. By pairing, I am simply referring to taking one of our Starbucks roasted coffees and extracting its individual flavors using food pairings.

Every coffee that Starbucks carries falls under several different categories -- origin, acidity, body, roast, etc. Depending on where the coffee falls will help to determine the complementary foods and flavors that come from and pair well with that specific coffee. The coffee that I chose to use for my tasting this time was the Starbucks French Roast. Because of the long roasting that it goes through, French Roast has a strongly developed flavor and pairs well with toasted nuts, caramelized sugars, and roasted vegetables. So when making up my pairing, I decided to make a caramelized onion puff pastry topped with toasted walnuts. This pairing would incorporate all three complementary flavors, making it a sure win!

Not only was it DELISH, but it was oober easy to make! PLUS, you can do it with just about anything -- sweet, savory, tart, crunchy, soft, etc. Here's what you've got to do:

In your local grocery store, go in to the frozen dessert isle. Usually around pie crusts and frozen cakes/pies there will be frozen puff pastry dough. Once you have your dough, let it thaw out in the fridge for about 2+ hours. As it is defrosting, you can gather and prep your filling.

I have tried a couple of different "innards" to my puff pastry, and they all have turned out quite delightful, if I say so myself. Different things that I have put in mine are: caramelized onions, cinnamon sugar, chocolate chunks, and goat cheese + portabella mushrooms.

After you pick and prepare your filling, and the puff pastry has thawed out for a couple of hours, it is time to start making your creation. Take out the dough, unroll it and cut it in to a few same sized strips. Then take each strip and cut them in to square pieces of dough. Get your filling and put a small spoonful in the center of your square. Then fold over the pastry dough to make a triangle shape (or any shape you prefer). After all of the squares are filled and folded, take a lightly beaten egg, and brush the top of each one with a thin layer of the egg wash.

When putting them in to the oven, there is a little trick to doing it. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, but as soon as you put the dough in, turn the oven down to 325. I'm not exactly sure what it does, or why you do it, but that it was I was taught. Leave them in approximately 10-12 minutes, or until the tops are golden and flaky. And then..... ENJOY!

Frozen summery goodness

Have you ever been out on a hot summer day -- running around, swimming, playing outside, etc -- and get the craving for something sweet and frozen? Well when you are living in a constant furnace with 100+ degree temperatures every day, you get that craving a lot. Normally, a good popsicle did the trick, that was until I looked at the ingredients and sugar contents of them.

A normal popsicle is made up of basically fruit concentrate and either sugar or high fructose corn syrup. All that sugar does is cause a spike in the blood sugar, ultimately leading to a drop in energy levels and afternoon grogginess. Wouldn't it be nice to find a good frozen snack that satisfied your craving while keeping you energized and was good for you too? I think I found it!

Homemade frozen yogurt pops! ... No no no, actually, homemade frozen greek yogurt fruit pops! Yummmm, I can taste them already. And what's even better is they are SUPER easy to make, and you can customize them to your liking. Fruity, yourty, sweet, not as sweet, etc. Here's what you need:

• nonfat greek (or plain) yogurt
• fresh/frozen fruit of your choice (berries, melon, pineapple, etc)
• milk of your choice (nonfat, lowfat, almond, soy)
• a pinch of cinnamon

Although plain nonfat yogurt is a very healthy choice (especially compared to the fruity kinds), i still prefer greek yogurt. The reason that I like greek yogurt versus plain yogurt is mainly because of the protein content. For every serving (about 6 oz) of plain nonfat yogurt, greek nonfat yogurt has almost double the amount of protein. And when looking for a snack that will satisfy and keep you going, protein is a must! Therefore, greek yogurt is my first choice whenever possible. 

When choosing a greek yogurt, my personal favorite is Fage Total 0%. It has a good consistency and a nice well-balanced flavor. 

But any yogurt of your choice will work just as well. The same freedom goes for the milk as well. You wont need a lot of milk, just enough to help thin out the mixture a little bit. Usually I reach for the lowfat or 1% milk, but on occasion I like to mix it up a bit with some vanilla almond milk. The vanilla almond milk gives it a slightly sweeter and nuttier flavor, making it a nice change from the norm. 

Now it is time to start putting it all together. Get your blender ready and start layering in the yogurt, fruit, milk, and cinnamon. The proportions are rough, but quite simple as well. I usually start out with 1 cup yogurt, 1 cup fruit, and about 1/4 cup of milk and a pinch of cinnamon. This makes a couple of cups of the yogurty goodness, so if you are wanting to make a bigger batch, you can easily double or triple this. 

Once it is all blended together, feel free to throw in a couple of chunks of fruit if you would like some whole pieces in there as well. Then take the mixture and pour into popsicle molds. If your popsicle mold didn't come with the plastic stick tops to place over each mold, then you can pick up a pack of popsicle sticks from the grocery store for a few dollars and use those instead. 

Leave the yogurt pops in the freezer for at least a 2+ hours until their set, and then enjoy at your liking!

Buy once, eat for a week!

I know it's been a while since I have written on here, but I must say, at least it is not because I am just getting lazy. Work has been crazy and any free time I have, I generally spend with my work family :) On the bight side, we spend time cooking and baking, trying out new recipes, and inventing new concoctions.

At least once a week (but usually more than just once), we have what we like to call "Family Dinner". Being young 20 something year olds, the cheaper the better. That being said, we still want to have good quality food. And that is exactly what has inspired this post.

The best solution to a delicious, good quality, well-priced meal all starts with one thing, a rotisserie chicken. Most grocery stores (Randalls, Kroger, Whole Foods, etc.) generally sell hot, fully cooked rotisserie chickens for a fairly reasonable price. My personal preference however, is to get a chicken from Costco. It costs about $5.00 and is big enough to last for a week -- not to mention it is beyond delicious!

More often than not, I get the chicken with the intention of just pulling it off and eating it as is with a salad and some other side. Then, after that meal is over and the chicken has had a little bit of time to cool, I pull the rest of the chicken off the bone and put it in to a tupperware container and in to the fridge it goes.

Sounds a bit boring, I know, but the possibilities of what you do with the left overs are endless. You could literally do just about anything -- nachos, tacos, pastas, salads, sandwiches, etc. Take tonight for example ... After a long and full day of work (that started at 4 a.m.) and an hour and a half of hot yoga, the last thing I wanted to do when I came home was figure out what to cook, not to mention actually cook it. My solution? Left over rotisserie chicken!

I do admit that I did have to put in a little bit of effort, but it was very minimal. I turned on a pot of water for some pasta and put some fresh veggies and garlic in a sauté pan with a little bit of olive oil and let them cook over a medium heat. Once the pasta was done, I tossed it in the pan with the veggies, put some chicken on top and mixed in some left over basil pesto I had in the fridge. I put all of that atop a small handful of spring mix lettuce and dug in.

Between the pasta, the pesto, the chicken, and the veggies, it was the ultimate comfort meal that satisfied every craving I had. All that was missing was a glass of red wine and some good company. So next time, I invite you all to join me.

I hope you try this out for yourself and please share if you have any other ideas or ways that you like to use your left overs! Have a great night and a great holiday weekend! I will be back with more soon, I promise! :)