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Tasty Tuesday: FAGE Greek Yogurt Topped with Fresh Raspberries and Blackberries

2 Aug

What I love about summer is fresh berries!  Raspberries are probably my favorite food.  (Well, along with brownies and coffee ice cream!  And pasta!)

Lately, I’ve been eating a lot of FAGE Greek yogurt with fresh, organic berries for breakfast and a cup of hazelnut coffee.  It tastes so good and makes me feel happy that I’m being healthy.

According to the nutrition benefits page of the FAGE yogurt website:

FAGE Total Strained Greek Yogurt is an extraordinary source of nutrition. Made from an authentic recipe that dates back to 1926 and using 100% natural ingredients, it contains no added sweeteners, thickeners or preservatives and no powdered milk, powdered cream or powdered protein.

Just whole milk, cream and cultures go through our unique straining process to create this blissful, low-calorie taste experience. In fact, approximately 4 pounds of raw milk are needed to make just one pound of FAGE Total Greek Yogurt.

FAGE Greek yogurt is vegetarian and gluten-free.  The 0% and 2% are also diabetic-friendly.

Meanwhile, raspberries are full of all sorts of antioxidant goodness.  Check out what Wikipedia has to say about raspberry health benefits:

The aggregate fruit structure contributes to its nutritional value, as it increases the proportion of dietary fibre, placing it among plant foods with the highest fibre contents known, up to 20% fibre per total weight. Raspberries are a rich source of vitamin C, with 30 mg per serving of 1 cup (about 50% daily value), manganese (about 60% daily value) and dietary fibre (30% daily value). Contents of B vitamins 1-3, folic acid, magnesium, copper and iron are considerable in raspberries.

Raspberries rank near the top of all fruits for antioxidant strength, particularly due to their dense contents of ellagic acid (from ellagotannins, see for instance raspberry ellagitannin), quercetin, gallic acid, anthocyanins, cyanidins, pelargonidins, catechins, kaempferol and salicylic acid. Yellow raspberries and others with pale-coloured fruits are lower in anthocyanins.

Due to their rich contents of antioxidant vitamin C and the polyphenols mentioned above, raspberries have an ORAC value (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) of about 4900 per 100 grams, including them among the top-ranked ORAC fruits. Cranberries and wild blueberries have around 9000 ORAC units and apples average 2800.

As for blackberries, Wikipedia simply says:

Blackberries are notable for their high nutritional contents of dietary fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, folic acid – a B vitamin, and the essential mineral, manganese.

Do you prefer raspberries or blackberries?

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Explosions in the Sky

5 Jul

 

Hope you had a fantastic 4th of July weekend!!  Did anyone go away?  How were all the BBQs?  I want to thank one of my readers, who actually did invite me to a BBQ after reading my last post, after I begged all of you for an invite.

On Thursday night I had dinner with my sister at a Greek restaurant out in Astoria.  Afterward, we decided to walk around for a while.  We were chatting about this and that when all of a sudden from behind a leafy tree an explosion of color burst out over the black sky.  Fireworks!  We followed the glittery reds and purples and the gunshot boom of the explosions down the sidewalk.  Then we stood in the middle of the street with people who had suddenly stopped their car and gotten out to catch a glimpse of the show.

Colors lit up the sky.  Greens.  Purples.  Reds.  Whites.  Oranges.  Dots of color formed rings.  Dashes of color zoomed heavenward.  Color sizzled and dazzled.  Eyes opened wide.  Little kids put their sticky palms flush against their ears.  Others jumped up and down and pointed excitedly.  Cars honked.  We clapped.  We stood in amazement.

Sometimes, if you just look up, you’ll be amazed.

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Perks of Being a Wallflower

13 Jun

An author dropped by my office the other day with flowers! Aren’t they gorgeous?!

 

 

 

 

In case you missed them, here are some flower-related posts on Protomayia and the Feast of Flowers.

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The Buzz on Flash-mob Bees, Bowery Bees, and Greek Bee Myths

1 Jun

Oh my goodness, did you guys hear about the bees that took over Little Italy yesterday??  Apparently, thousands of bees decided to meet up at lunchtime in front of the Italian American Museum on the corner of Mulberry and Grand.  They swarmed a mailbox, completely covering its side.  This leads me to ponder two questions:

1.  Are these flash-mob bees the insect contingent of Improv Everywhere?

2.  What sort of sweet notes would a bee mail to his honey?

It also reminds me that I still haven’t told you about Bowery Bees.  On Sunday, May 8, my photojournalist friend Annie Ling and I went to the Festival of New Ideas for the New City, an incredibly thought-provoking art initiative that brought artists and thinkers together to explore ideas that could shape a new New York.  One of the collaborations was between Anarchy Apiaries, a Hudson Valley apiary run by beekeeper-artist Sam Comfort, and the Bowery Poetry Club, a performing-arts venue founded and run by poet Bob Holman.

After a brief talk on bees, we climbed up to the rooftop of the Bowery Poetry Club for the unveiling of the apiary.  Sam had brought the bees down from Germantown that morning and set up hives so that Bob could start the rooftop apiary Bowery Bees.  Standing amidst the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s East Village, we witnessed the queen bee do her dance.

Even though I was afraid of getting stung, I have to admit it was rather spectacular.  My parents have a large garden in Greece, where they gather olives to make their own olive oil, and I tried to convince my dad he should set up some beehives.  Bee myths play heavily into Greek mythology and Greek literature.  Bee emblems appear in ancient ruins on the Greek islands of Crete and Rhodes.

Bowery Bees honey can be bought at the Bowery Poetry Club, located at 308 Bowery, between Houston and Bleecker.

How do you like the antenna?

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Brunch @ Supper and a Walk along the Pier

19 May

Sunday I went to one of my favorite places for brunch: Supper.  With exposed brick, stained-glass windows, and an eclectic mix of chandeliers, the East Village establishment fits in with the view of downtown Manhattan I had in the ‘90s—cozy and sort of bohemian.  I almost exclusively have Eggs Florentine for Sunday brunch but when I go to Supper I get Molly’s French Toast.  It comes with strawberry butter and freshly cut strawberries, bananas, blueberries, and raspberries.  It’s hard to say whether I love raspberries or Hollandaise sauce more….

After brunch we walked over to Chelsea Piers, which I’d never actually been to before.  There’s a trail outside where you can walk along the harbor.  The salty smell of the river reminded me of my childhood.  There’s a ship near there that was converted to a bar called The Frying Pan.  I’d first heard about it a few years ago when I was covering Slideluck Potshow, which was having its after-party there, for Resource Magazine, but I hadn’t actually gone because a woman journalist going to the pier at midnight seemed like a good way to inspire a Law & Order episode.  Now that I actually went to visit it—in the daytime—it was so cool!  They had an actual train car onboard the boat—it was the turducken of transportation!

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Light at the End of the Tunnel

17 May

For awhile it felt like the light at the end of the tunnel was a train speeding toward me.  All the books I’d been working on at the publishing house came in at once in a raw stage, needing to be edited as fast as my eyes could fly across the type.  Meanwhile, “finals” week approached for my MFA program, and I had twenty-page papers to write and a presentation.

As if my expected workload wasn’t enough, a writing opportunity for a magazine came along that I couldn’t pass up—and I’m very glad I didn’t.

And then there were the lunches.  Usually I try to reserve my lunches for catching up on emails and doing some writing or editing.  Yeah, yeah, I know, nerdy of me, but I try to make the most of my time.  Well, right as all the big projects were landing in my lap, so were working lunches.  I had a lunchtime phone chat with my mentee one day and lunch with my book-publishing mentor another day.  I had lunch with my former editor and a writer, with whom I’d had the privilege of working with.  There were also long-overdue lunches with book-publishing colleagues who’d had birthdays or started new positions.  Each of these lunches were important to me so I found a way to pack them into my schedule.  I love hearing about all the amazing projects everyone’s working on and I get so inspired by them.

Because it was the end of the semester, I also went out after class with my fellow writers to celebrate.  I get to read such personal moments of their lives in the essays they write each week, so it was nice to sit down with them over a glass of red wine and decompress after the end of the semester.  –The end of our first year!  We’re halfway done!  Man, it goes by fast.

I’m also working on a super exciting project for Burnside, which I can’t wait to tell you about.  Soon, I promise!

So, all this to say, I’ve been a bit crazed lately but life is really good.  I love the work that I do and the people with whom I work.  I’m so thankful to my family and friends for giving me the space, encouragement, and prayers to get what I needed to do done.  And I’m thankful to all of you for reading my blog and supporting my writing.

Now, as life returns to a more normal pace, I’m actually feeling a bit anxious about how to handle my newfound time.  Do any of you ever feel like that?  I’m still in the midst of some personal writing projects, but I also have plans for long walks in Central Park, deep conversations over sumptuous meals, choosing which books I want to read.  And, sleeping.

Blogging goes without saying.

Painting I made several years ago.

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10 mins from the GWB

25 Apr

“Ten minutes from the George Washington Bridge.”  That’s how I always described where I grew up.  There was something about growing up in northern New Jersey that made us define our hometown by its proximity to New York City.

Photographs I took of the Manhattan skyline on a recent visit to New Jersey.

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Gelato in Central Park

12 Apr

I passed this gelato stand in Central Park the other day.  Dear spring, I hope you settle in and stay awhile.  I’m looking forward to sundresses, reading by the fountain, and picnics with friends.

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Abstract Expressionist New York @ MoMA

8 Apr

As I mentioned, I recently went to the MoMA thanks to the generosity of a friend of mine.  One of the reasons I’d been wanting to go was to see the Abstract Expressionist New York exhibit that’s running through April 25.  The writers of the Beat Generation used to hang out in bars with the abstract-expressionist painters, so I’ve been fascinated by how the literature and visual arts of the 1950s have influenced each other and have done some writing on the subject.

I like this line that was posted on one of the placards in the museum:

With a grave intensity and sense of responsibility the Americans who would later become known as the Abstract Expressionists set out to make art that would reassert the highest ideals of humankind.

It reminds me of how Jack Kerouac said that “beat” stemmed from the biblical beatitudes.

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