happy new year, all. hope your holidays have been filled with lots of love ... and good eats, of course. for me, the holidays mean parking myself on my parents' couch and gorging on the cable tv and dvds i missed during the school year. and on snacks too.
i came across this super addictive peanut butter popcorn recipe in a 1976 cookbook called More-with-Less, which insightfully critiqued North American consumption trends more than 30 years ago. it called for eating better and consuming less. more on this later.
the cookbook obviously isn't perfect because i'm showcasing probably one of the worst recipes in the book! it's an agribusiness dream with corn and corn syrup and sugar, and everything the film food, inc. riles against. but it's so tasty! a sure crowd pleaser. so forgive me :)
first, pop a bag or two of plain popcorn. the recipe says about 8 cups.
dump the popcorn in a BIG bowl being careful to leave out any unpopped kernals.
in a small sauce pan, combine 1/2 cup light corn syrup and 1/2 cup sugar (the recipe says you can substitute 1/2 cup honey for the corn syrup. i haven't tried this yet).
bring to a boil.
remove from heat. add 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth, chunky, whatever you want!) and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract.
pour mixture while hot onto the popcorn, and toss!
mix until the popcorn is coated. it'll be a sticky sweet peanutty mess. i've used one bag of popcorn below. the coating will be lighter with two bags of popcorn.
here's a close up. yum.
and then, snack away. we were watching julie & julia. how fitting. loved meryl streep as julia child. the other girl, not so much.
sigh. so mad workouts and eating deliciously rich foods really don't go hand in hand. one's got to drop, which explains our blogging hiatus. but i'm back! which means ...
oh, well. i tried.
but it's hard to compete with temptations like this mixed-berry tart from the new Thai restaurant, Wat Dong Moon Lek, in Silver Lake. like the LA Times article said, you can't miss the desserts here made by the California School of Culinary Arts-trained pastry chef.
the almond crust tart is sitting on a pool of creme anglaise streaked with a heart-shaped strawberry reduction and topped with vanilla ice cream. the whole thing was a delight to eat and not too sweet. As we were leaving, the pastry chef/owner said to come back for dinner because she was planning to whip up a pumpkin creme brulee!! i'll be back!
Forget the Gross Domestic Product or Goldman Sach's latest economic report...
You can tell the economy is effed just by looking at how national restaurant chains are practically giving meals away.
Until November 1st, Boston Market will give you a quarter white or 3-piece dark chicken PLUS mashed potatoes PLUS cornbread - ALL FOR ONE EFFIN DOLLAR!!
Did you hear me? ONE EFFIN DOLLAR!!!!!! I put it in bold and capitalized it (twice) just in case you missed it, or have severe cataracts.
As a show of gratitude to our dear readers, I'm putting the very coupon you need to get this deal right here, so you don't even have to click on this link to the Boston Market site*. How awesome is that? I bet other blogs don't do that.
The coupon is good for one meal per person per visit. That's effin insane!
There's no limit on how many times you can go back a day. So, theoretically you could visit like 50 times a day and get 50 meals a day for $1 each.
Probably enough, according to my calculations, to feed the entire island nation of Tuvalu, the world's poorest country, for 20 (maybe 21) years.
The great island nation of Tuvalu.
No offense to any Tuvaluan-Americans who are reading this blog. It really is a beautiful country.
*By being a faithful reader of this blog, I probably just saved you the .3 seconds it would take you to click that link and wait for the page to load. But then again, I probably just wasted .3 seconds of your time explaining how I saved it. So it's all a wash. Oh well.
To celebrate 09/09/09, Restaurant.com is offering 90% off its gift certificates if you enter the promo code NINETY at checkout. The promotion began at midnight on the 9th and lasts for 99 hours - so it should expire sometime on the 13th. See here and here.
Other bloggers have posted about this, but it doesn't hurt to spread the love, right?
Most of the Los Angeles area restaurants that participate are super craptastic, but there are a few gems.
I ended up buying $80.00 worth of certificates for $3.20!! This is what I got:
Al Watan - $10.00 certificate Jaipur Cusine of India - $25.00 certificate Annapurna Cuisine - $10.00 certificate x2 YXTA - $25.00 certificate
One of my friends purchased $700.00 worth of certificates for $30 bucks!
Damn, the economy must still be going to hell in a hand basket...
If you can recommend any other gems on the list, please do let us know.
Dearest readers, thanks for the many e-mails and letters of support inquiring as to our whereabouts and showing concern for our safety and well-being!!!
Just kidding. No one has written nuttin' to little ghost and me. So sad...
But I'm sure all of you have spent many sleepless nights wondering about what we've been up to and why our blog has suddenly become quiet. Right?
Well, little ghost and I have embarked on P90X, a 90-day fitness program, so that we can transform our chubby (but cute) ghost bodies into super ripped, lean, mean eating machines!!!! Rwarrr!!!! Ok, that rwar was rather weak. RWARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have dubbed this endeavor, Operation Hotbod*.
Our theory is that getting super ripped will allow us to engorge ever larger portions of food while minimizing the adverse effects of overeating.
Now, P90x, for those of you who don't stay up until 3 a.m. watching infomercials, is an "extreme home fitness" program. When I say extreme, I mean extreme. This is not some Suzanne Sommers thigh master thing where you squeeze a piece of foam between your legs a couple times a day.
Sexxxy in an oh-so 90's way.
P90X requires you to go full out 6 days a week with a mix of circuit training, bodyweight exercises, yoga, kenpo karate and core building routines. There's also a recommended diet that you're supposed to follow.
Check out the results that this bad ass Marine got:
So far we've finished Phase 1 (the first 30 days) and it's totally kicked our asses.
The are some of the instruments of our torture:
The Iron Gym pull-up bar. The bane of my existence for the past month or so. During the chest/back exercise portion of P90X, you might do over 100 pull-ups within the course of an hour.
Bowflex SelectTech dumbbells. By twisting the knob, you can adjust each dumbbell's weight anywhere from 5 to 52.5 lbs. I'm embarrassed to tell you how much I spent on these, but it's almost enough to cover the cost of national health care reform.
Little ghost uses her little 8 lb. dumbbells.
Ok, what does all of this have to do with food blogging again?
Lol, not much, which is the problem. Little ghost and I have found that food blogging is so not conducive to doing P90X. Exercising and dieting is hard enough, but then writing about and fixating on foods every day is pure torture! I've even avoided reading food blogs because it just makes me hungry, and I end up drooling all over my keyboard.
I don't know how some of you food bloggers do it! I mean how do you gorge on all these delicious foods and stay so thin?? God bless all you sexy, Padma Lakshi-type eaters out there:
Model, cook and host of Top Chef. Gah, Salman Rushdie is one lucky man.I wish I was that rib she's eating.
Little ghost and I were not blessed with skinny genes, and we bloat like hot air balloons when we eat too much. So our eating options have been severely limited during this program.
These are some of the fun things I've stocked my kitchen with recently in order to lower my carb intake:
Made wit wheat, soy and rice flakes. Only 5% of your daily carb intake, but 12% protein and 20% fiber. Not bad for a bowl of cereal, huh?
Another source of protein. The other day little ghost and I made a tuna and spinach omelette using this. Was a bit funky, but edible.
Quick and easy way to get vitamins and nutrients if you don't have time to Vita-Mix.
Another good source of protein - 12 grams per serving.
And spinach, used for aforementioned tuna/spinach omelette. Rich in iron, calcium and anti-oxidants.
Boring, huh?
So where does our blog go from here? I think in the near future we'll have to find some healthy eating options that are still delicious and fun for our loyal fans to read about.
Or maybe at the end of the program, when we have our brand new super ripped ghost bodies, we just back to our old selves and gorge on whatever we pleased.
We also have some pre-P90X eating adventures that we haven't gotten around to blogging yet.
So stay tuned...
With much love, Big Ghost
P.S. If any readers are going through the P90X program now or have graduated, please do post about your experience in the comments. I'd love to hear how you are doing.
*This phrase was actually coined by a friend of little ghost's most favorite food partner in crime.
ghost mom has been in town for another visit. she hates the crazy driving and the smog-clouded sky, and would be thrilled if the ghost kids moved out of LA. BUT...the one thing ghost mom does love about LA is the variety of delicious fruits you can find that are hardly seen in grocery stores in the midwest!
i'd have to agree. i've never had so many strange yet delicious fruits before living here--spotted dinosaur plums, bright yellow korean melons, mild golden yellow kiwis, sweet sugar plums the size of my thumb. and now, ladies and gentlemen, our newest find: concord table grapes!
these are not just your regular grapes that just amount to a burst of sweetness. nope, concord grapes are used for making grape jelly, grape juice and those grape gummy candies you can find in asian grocery stores. so when you bite into a concord grape, you get a burst of intense grape flavor!
just watch out for the seeds and the grape skin, which is thicker compared to regular grapes. according to wikipedia, concord grapes are rarely found in grocery stores because people prefer seedless grapes. well, people are stupid because these grapes are awesome!
we stumbled on these beautiful, deep indigo things at the han kook supermarket in koreatown at 1st street and western avenue, although i've also seen them at other korean grocery stores lately. a whole box that's plenty to share runs about $8.99.
hurry and look for them at the grocery store before they're all gone!
the almond crust tart is sitting on a pool of creme anglaise streaked with a heart-shaped strawberry reduction and topped with vanilla ice cream. the whole thing was a delight to eat and not too sweet. As we were leaving, the pastry chef/owner said to come back for dinner because she was planning to whip up a pumpkin creme brulee!! i'll be back!
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