Tag Archives: Tasty Tuesday

Tasty Tuesday: FAGE Yogurt Topped with Fresh Strawberries and Bananas

8 May

 

Now that spring is here I found strawberries at a good price!  I chopped them up along with a banana and sprinkled them over FAGE Greek yogurt.  So delicious!

I’m not really a morning person so I need a breakfast that is quick and easy to make.  This does the trick!  I love FAGE Greek yogurt.  I’ve tried switching it out for less expensive yogurts, but then I never want to actually eat the yogurt.  FAGE yogurt is just so much creamier.  It’s almost as indulgent as ice cream.  Almost.  The strawberries were a fun touch.  I hardly ever buy berries because they’re so expensive, but berries are so healthy and delicious.  My favorites are raspberries and blackberries, but they weren’t on sale.

I know that FAGE makes yogurt with a side of strawberry, strawberry gogi, and raspberry, but I’m not into the jelly-like consistency.  I much prefer the fresh fruit.  That said, FAGE is committed to making healthy foods.  The Philippou family motto in 1926 was “We would never make a product that we would not give to our children.”  The ingredients are 100% natural.  I just happen to prefer fresh fruit.

Yogurt and fruit are such a part of Greek culture.  I remember when I was a child, my father always had to have plain yogurt.  He ate it plain too.  The fruit came afterward and was eaten by itself.  I like to jazz it up.  I like fruit and yogurt together.  I guess that  makes me very American.

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Tasty Tuesday: Chew on These Greek Crisis Cooking Tips

13 Dec

 

My yiayia (grandma) never threw anything out.  She repurposed plastic bottles and sewed up the runs in cheap, drugstore pantyhose.

When she made chicken, the leftover bones got thrown into soups.

Raising her family in Greece during World War II, she had to stretch the drachma as far as it could go.  Now, with the economic crisis in Greece, Greeks are having to return to the thrifty ways of their yiayias.

The Associated Press takes a look at Eleni Nikolaidou’s book “Starvation Recipes,” a collection of recipes and “survival tips” based in Nazi-occupied Greece, and chef F. T. Bletsas’ budget-minded cooking tips in his Greek tv show “Mama’s Cooking” and English-language website www.cookingeconomy.com.

One tip from the article: You’ll feel like you’re eating more if you chew your food veeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy sssssllllloooowwwwlllllyyyyy.

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Tasty Tuesday: Visual Inspiration in Your Cupboard

25 Oct

While I was browsing through all the wonderful posts on Black Eiffel the other day, I came across one that I just had to share with you.  In “Method,” graphic designer Rachel Jones reveals that she pins up food articles and recipes on a hidden wall in her kitchen.

It got me thinking that the inside of the pantry cabinet is the perfect place to tape up photographic inspiration for recipes.  I’m kind of a creature of habit when it comes to cooking.  I forget that I know how to make all sorts of delicious foods, and instead cook up a rotation of angel hair with sauce, fried eggs with onions and tomatoes, rice and beans, and pierogis.  Maybe if I tape up a few magazine cutouts of some new recipes or even just of foods I know how to cook but never think of making, there will be a little more variety to my meals.  I’ll see the inspiration every time I reach for a box of pasta in the cabinet, but the magazines will still be hidden away so I have that nice, streamlined look to my kitchen.

So much easier than poring over my cookbooks, searching for something—anything—to inspire a meal when I’m already hungry!

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Tasty Tuesday: Memories of Orzo

11 Oct

When I was a kid, I loved going to Baltimore to visit my cousins.  We’d pile into the Volvo station wagon and drive the three or four hours from New Jersey to Maryland.  Along the way, we’d stop at McDonald’s.  Nowadays, most McDonald’s have a playground but back then in the 1980s, we didn’t have one like that near where I grew up, so it was always super exciting that we got to make a stop at a McDonald’s that had a playground outside of it on our trip down to Baltimore.  We almost never ate McDonald’s when I was growing up.  My mom said it was “disgusting,” and my dad called it “plastic food.”  But we always got to have McDonald’s on our way to visit our cousins.

When we got to Baltimore, my aunt would always have dinner ready for us.  It was always the same thing that first night: orzo and meat.  My mom isn’t Greek and never cooked with orzo, so this meal always stuck out to me.  I wasn’t sure what orzo even was.  Was it rice or was it pasta?  It turns out it’s a rice-shaped pasta.  Now I know.

My aunt still makes orzo when I visit.  Sometimes it’s orzo in a tomato sauce, like the kind I remember her making when I was a kid; other times it’s spanikorizo, Greek spinach orzo.

I’ve never made orzo before.  Strange, isn’t it, how a food that has such a strong memory attached to it can be something you’ve never even attempted to make?  I think it would be an easy, filling dish to make in bulk so I don’t have to worry about cooking in the beginning of the week when I have both work and grad school.

I looked up a few recipes:

Epicurious’ Orzo with Feta, Tomatoes, and Dill

Holy Apostle Orthodox Church’s Spanikorizo

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Tasty Tuesday: Epicurious’ 80 Dishes Blog – Greek Recipe

27 Sep

Travel the world in your very own kitchen!  Epicurious has been featuring national dishes from around the globe in its Emmy-Award-winning cooking video series.  Chef Michael Skibicky makes Lamb and Eggplant Moussaka in the Greek recipe post.

I used to have a pet lamb in Greece, and I don’t eat lamb, so here’s a vegetarian moussaka recipe from Bon Appetit.

Where would you like to travel to savor world cuisines?

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Tasting Tuesday: Greek Grilled Cheese

23 Aug

I’m a big fan of grilled cheese.  It’s easy to make, inexpensive, and usually a safe bet when you’re at a restaurant.  It’s also yummy—the perfect comfort food.  Sometimes, though, I like to mix it up a little and try out various alternative grilled cheese recipes.

Epicurious has a recipe called “Grilled Cheese and Tomato Stacks,” which is pretty much a grilled cheese gone Greek.  They replace the bread with pita and use a Greek cheese.  I can’t wait to try it!

Also, my sister’s been promising to take me to The Queens Kickshaw, the fancy grilled-cheese restaurant that opened up in Astoria, the traditionally Greek neighborhood in Queens.  They serve so many delicious-sounding alternative grilled cheese sandwiches, like one with feta cheese, which was inspired by the Greeks in Astoria.  They also serve specialty coffee and sodas (sasparilla?!) and craft beer.

What’s the most alternative grilled cheese you’ve ever eaten?

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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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