Taste Tests, Recipe Taste Tests

Posted the 07/10/2008 03:16:34 By Kath Eats Real Food (Visit website)

FINALLY!!!

Coconut Cream Pie. It was great!! I LOVE coconut, so I was one happy camper when I took my first bite. My only complaint was that I missed chewing nuts. This guys has almonds and cashews, but not nearly as much embedded crunch as Pecan Pie and Peanut Butter Cookie. Here are the LaraBars I’ve tried in order of my favorites:

TIED: Peanut Butter, Coconut Cream Pie, Pecan Pie
Chocolate Coconut Chew
Cashew Cookie
Apple Pie
Chocolate Mole
Cinnamon Bun
Lemon Pie
Cherry Pie
Ginger Snap (my first!)

Guess there are still a ton I haven’t tried, but I’ve tried all the ones that are “my” flavors. THEY NEED A TOFFEE AND PUMPKIN FLAVOR!!!

Once I got home I also had a few crackers for a carb-a-licious addition.

And a mocktail around 6:30 when we started to prep dinner. Tonic, lime, cherry.

Dinner tonight was Ellie Krieger inspired: Black-Eyed Pea and Spinach Salad. I saw her make this weeks ago and saved it on my “to cook” list. It was AWESOME!! I didn’t know if I would like the buttermilk dressing, but I really did. We both agreed that blue cheese would be a fabulous addition

Of course we made some modifications since we’re always cooking for two.

I boiled some black-eyed peas from scratch yesterday to have when needed tonight. We also had already washed the kale (when it arrived from the CSA) and had the green beans already cooked from last night. So this was a piece’a'cake to put together.

We cooked two slices of bacon until browned and added the kale to saute, followed by the green beans to warm up.

Meanwhile, we made the dressing:

1/3 a cup low-fat buttermilk
1.5 tbsp mayo (Smart Balance Olive Oil Light)
Splash cider vinegar (2 tsp?)
5 dashes hot sauce
1 tsp dijon mustard
S+P
1.5 cups cooked, heated-in-the-microwave black-eyed peas

Our dressing was a bit runny so you might want to use a little less buttermilk.

The recipe called for spinach underneath, but we just wanted to use up our kale. But I bet spinach would have been awesome. Also, we were too lazy to prepare a whole grain with this, but all-of-the-above would be fantastic mixed in: berries, bulgur, rice, quinoa, millet, etc. You guys sometimes ask me why we don’t have more grains with dinner. The answer? We’re too lazy to cook them. I should just make more in bulk on the weekends, but I guess I’m lazy there too!

I banished myself to the upstairs bedroom for an hour of nutrition reading on lactation (fascinating topic!). The downstairs was flowing with TV noise. I came back down a little hungry (probably from the lighter dinner) and promptly made myself a Cereal Surprise