Gluten-Free Cookies

This is my first attempt at GF baking. I got the recipe for these chocolate chips cookies from The Healthy Gluten Free Life. I was pretty impressed. They taste different from "regular" chocolate chip cookies but they were still good. The only problem I had was that they were much more crumbly than regular cookies. So when I put them in a zip lock bag they started to break into pieces after a while of being jostled around. Going around to several different grocery stores to buy all the flours was a hassle though. The hardest one to find was sorghum flour. But I eventually got it at Whole Foods, which I found out happens to have all the flours I needed. Whole Foods can be quite expensive though. 

Green Sauce Enchiladas

These are black bean and sweet potato enchiladas. I also put a smear of goat cheese down the middle of the tortilla for some zing. I found out that I absolutely adore goat cheese. It has a much stronger and unique flavor. For the sauce, I tried Rick Bayless' Frontera Green Chile Enchilada Sauce. I watched Rick Bayless on Top Chef Masters, his mole looked so delicious. The enchiladas are made with corn tortillas and they're GF. The sauce was super yummy. I bought and made more again. And it was on sale at Sprouts so that made me happy.

Honeycomb

I've never had honeycomb before. I saw this milk chocolate covered honeycomb when I was at Sprouts last week and I just had to give it a try. It's sweet and delicious. My dad thinks it's too sweet but for me, and my intense sweet tooth, I can definitely handle it. The honeycomb is crunchy but not hard to bite down on. The air pockets in it make it more brittle so you're not fighting to chew it. It's a really unique candy, I bought more today when I went back to the store ^.^

Orchard Bar

I think my dad gets these Orchard Bars from the Med Cafe by our work. They are gluten-free so they fit perfectly within my diet. These are different than your typical snack bars because instead of using oats, or chocolate, or peanut butter, they use fruit. What holds all the nuts together is this kind of concentrated fruit jelly. I thought the pineapple one was much more sour than the blueberry one but this may have been because I had a canker sore in my mouth and whenever I ate it would get irritated. I like these bars though, since they are a bit different than normal bars. They're a little chewy and I have always been a fan of nuts.

pineapple, coconut, macadamia

Blueberry, pomegranate, almond

Seoul Garden Korean BBQ

The cute little baby octopus we had at Seoul Garden Korean BBQ in Tustin, CA. We came here because Gen, just down the street, had a 2.5 hour long wait and Nick and I were starving. This place is all you can eat and buffet style. The meats and other foods (salad, veggies, desserts) are laid out on the tables in one area of the restaurant, and you go and pick out whatever meats you want, bring them back to your table and cook them up on your grill. The best things there are probably the beef brisket and the pork belly, staples at any KBBQ. I don't like marinated meats from KBBQ places typically. I feel like if it's marinated you can't eat as much food. Since it's AYCE I attempt to get the most for my money. Overall, Nick and I had 5 plates full between us, so it wasn't too bad. The standard ~$20 per person as with all AYCE places. 

Insalata Caprese

My dinner a few days ago. I don't normally like salad but for some reason I don't think of insalata caprese as a "salad". Plus it tastes good, it's filling, and super easy to make. Here's what I do, this plate was shared between Nick and I:

3 tomatoes

1 ball of fresh mozzarella

few sprigs of fresh basil

salt

pepper

olive oil

balsamic vinegar

Slice the tomatoes, slice the cheese to make little circles. Then I cut the mozzarella again to make little half circles. Attempted to put one half circle of cheese in between each tomato slice, but I had 3 leftover pieces, so some tomatoes have a full circle of cheese in between. Cut the basil into pieces, you can make them as small or as big as you like, you don't even have to cut them at all if you don't want to. Sprinkle it on top along with some salt and pepper. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to your taste. I like mine with a bit more vinegar than oil.

Bruxie

Bruxie is a little food stand in Old Towne Orange that sells waffle sandwiches. They are exactly how they sound, sandwiches but instead of bread, waffles are used! These aren't the frozen Eggo waffle variety either. They're nice, soft, and fresh outta the waffle iron. Bruxie's is an interesting concept, and I had my first Bruxie waffle sandwich several years ago and I went on a recent trip there with my boyfriend a few weeks ago. At first, he was apprehensive to trying them. Waffle sandwiches didn't sound like an idea that would work, but it does. My brother's favorite is the Fried Chicken and Waffle, pictured below. It comes with a piece of boneless fired chicken, in between a waffle with sides of honey with chili flavor and cole slaw. The chicken is nice and moist, I don't really like fried chicken in general, but I have had this one before.

Fried Chicken Waffle

For dessert I ordered a Lemon Meringue Pie waffle. For some reason I find the graham cracker crumbs they use in both this waffle and their S'mores waffle to have a burnt taste that I don't particularly enjoy. But the lemon creme is very intense, the marshmallow creme - nice and fluffy.

Lemon Meringue Pie

My favorite savory Bruxie is the South Carolina Pulled Pork, which is sadly one of their rotating items, meaning it is not on the regular menu. The pulled pork is tender and flavorful, the BBQ sauce gives it a tangy kick. Since it comes in a little container you can add as much or as little as you prefer.

South Carolina Pulled Pork

Nick ordered a Bacon and Egg Bruxie. The smokey bacon mixed with sharp cheddar is a nice touch. It makes for a good savory breakfast waffle. Why eat all the components separately when you can roll them into one? It's breakfast to go in a convient sandwich form.

Bacon and Egg Bruxie

My biggest con about this place is that it's food stand and not a real restaurant. There is limited seating and NONE of it is indoors, which is particularly horrible on days when the weather is bad, especially in the winter. The line always wraps around and down the block. Now they have a worker that goes down the lines and hands out menus, while another comes down later and takes your order when you're ready. Kind of like they do at In-n-Out when it is especially busy. The other pet peeve about this place is the HORRIBLE parking situation. They have a very small lot, consisting of two or three (if they are small cars) spots. Otherwise it's all street parking in a fairly residential area, where you are not allowed to park without a permit.

Snack Bar

My dad bought me this snack bar at work a few weeks ago. It didn't taste horrible but it wasn't that great either. It had a nice chocolate-y flavor but it wasn't crunchy or chewy. The texture was like oatmeal soaked in a sticky substance and mushed together into a square. Overall, it was ehhh. Since I've gone gluten free for medical reasons though, I won't be eating this again.

Corazonas Oatmeal Squares

Jjajangmyun

Nick and I followed this recipe to make jjajangmyun, a Korean dish. It's noodles with black bean sauce. We made a few changes to the recipe; we used 1 lb. of pork belly, since we both love pork belly, instead of 1/2 lb. and we substituted zucchini with two italian summer squashes because there was no zucchini available at the market.

A note when making this, it tastes better if you let the finished black bean sauce cool first. This is because as it cools it also thickens and intensifies the flavor making it taste much better than when it is more watery and just made. Heat it up a little after it cools so you can still have warm sauce. Overall it's an excellent recipe.

Freesoulcaffe Part 2

This is a return trip to one of my favorite Vegan spots Freesoulcaffe, click to see part 1 where I also talk about the BLT (pictured below). It's super delicious. I can't finish the whole one by myself, this time I shared with Nick. I would never think that vegetables are filling but they are! P.S. I don't use salad dressing.

BLT

I decided to give the vegan red velvet cupcake a shot. I adore the red velvet cupcakes from Sprinkles. I haven't had them at many other places yet, but I want to try a few more bakeries in my area. The good thing about this particular cupcake is that I didn't feel weighed down and heavy after I ate it. Usually after eating Sprinkles I feel a little sick if I devour the whole cupcake at once. The cake part was nice, spongy, moist. The frosting however was not how I would have expected. Obviously since it's vegan there isn't going to be cream cheese frosting, which is probably my favorite part of red velvet desserts. Overall, the frosting wasn't bad. It was very sugary, I felt like I could feel the sugar particles inside the frosting. The taste wasn't sickening or artificial though. However, I would prefer the other desserts they offer at Freesoulcaffe, like the peanut butter torte or the key lime cheesecake.

Vegan Red Velvet Cupcake

Ceviche

A buddy's mom had made him ceviche for his lunch, he gave me some because he knows I love mexican food. It was pretty good. The shrimp pieces and citrus flavor were my favorite parts.

Birthday Cake and Free Ben and Jerry's

Today at work we celebrated my coworker's birthday. We had lunch from Bruegger's, which actually makes pretty decent sandwiches. BLT is one of my favorites and the vegetables they put in theirs were fresh and tasty. I think in a BLT the quality of the ingredients makes all the difference. The birthday cake we had was the chocolate marble cake from French's Bakery. The chocolate pieces honestly looked really delicious but they tasted horrible. The chocolate wasn't creamy and the texture was extremely soft and weird. I can't really describe what was wrong with it. But it just didn't taste how I expect chocolate to taste. The cake inside was overly sweet and not very moist.

Chocolate Marble Cake - French's Bakery

The line to get into Ben and Jerry's wraps around the fountain

Ben and Jerry's is offering free ice cream on 4/3 because it is their anniversary I believe. Nick and I went to the one closest to our house. The line was super long, it stretched all the way around the fountain. You can't see it in the picture but right before the entrance there is a little roped off section the line goes into that twists and turns around just like the way the lines at Disneyland are organized. Even though it looked like it would take a long time, we only waited about 30 minutes. They had run out of some flavors by the time Nick and I got there. No more cookie dough. I had the sweet cream and cookies flavor while Nick had the coffee. He enjoyed his, he loves coffee flavored stuff. I think the Oreo Overload from Cold Stone is better than Sweet Cream and Cookies from Ben and Jerry's simply because the cookies are nice and crunchy from Cold Stone and it adds more taste and texture that way.

Doritos Loco Tacos Box

I saw the commercial for this on the tv and wanted to give it a try. Nick was going to eat taco bell anyways so I convinced him to buy the Doritos locos tacos box. The first thing he said when he came home was "big box my ass". Yeah, the box isn't really that big at all. Can't really tell by the photo, but I expected it to be humongous. 

Doritos Locos Tacos BIG BOX

Comes with Doritos Locos Taco, Taco Supreme, Burrito Supreme

Nice little taco holder to make the eating easier

The shell is made of Doritos with meat, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce inside

The big box comes with 1 Doritos Loco Taco, 1 Taco Supreme, 1 Burrito Supreme, and a Medium Drink which Nick decided not to buy and instead got $1 off the purchase price. Originally I thought the box was made up of all Doritos Loco Tacos which I would have preferred. The Doritos Taco is basically just a regular hard shell taco, except the shell has got the nacho cheese Doritos flavoring on the outside. It's not that expensive and it gives a nice kick to the overall flavor of the taco which is just mehhh usually. I mean it is fast food after all. I just wanted to try it to say that I've had it.