Fit Tip of the Day: The Health Benefits of Cheese

Source: womenshealth.com

Continuing with a theme of healthy living, here's several ways that cheese (in moderation) might actually help with your health!

Did you know that you can actually lose weight by enjoying part-skim mozzerella?

Or have some part-skim ricotta after a strength training session to help build muscle?

A bit of Gruyere could actually help prevent diabetes, while cheddar can help ward off cavities!

If you are intrigued, you can find out more about these cheeses (as well as the health benefits of Parmesan, Feta and Swiss) in this recent article, 7 Delicious Cheeses with Major Health Perks, from Women's Health.

See?  It is possibly to enjoy cheese and still be healthy!  Happy eating!

Fit Tip of the Day: Healthy Mac & Cheese Recipes

Photo source: shape.com

It's the beginning of a new year, which often means the beginning of new, healthier diets for most folks.  In the spirit of healthy food options, I thought I'd share this article for 12 Lightened-Up Mac and Cheese Recipes I found on Shape's website.

In it, you'll find recipes for a Gluten Free No-Mac & Cheese, Quinoa Spinach Mac & Cheese, and, you guessed it, a Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese.  Unfortunately, that last one still makes me feel queasy.  Let's just assume I won't be trying to make that one myself again.  There are several restaurants that make it much better than I do...

In other news, I promise I'll be posting about my NYE Mac and Cheese treat soon!  It's definitely going to be a new addition to my top ten!

Anyway, enjoy!  Happy cooking!  Happy eating!

Recipe: Vegan Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese

Alright, I can hear the criticisms now.  A vegan mac and cheese?  Yes, friends, it's possible.  And no, there's no cheese.  But! Some recipes do a great job with non-cheese mac dishes, so I decided to try my hand at it.

I went with a recipe from Le Petite Eats.  It seemed pretty straightforward, so I went to the local store and picked up all the ingredients, including something called nutritional yeast, which I'd never heard of before.  I'll be honest, however, and mention that this was not a pure vegan mac and cheese.  I wasn't willing to pay eight bucks for a giant portion of vegan butter substitute when all I needed was 2 tablespoons, so I used regular butter instead.  There.  Now that that's off my chest...


I began by steaming the cut up butternut squash in a vegetable steamer.

Then, started putting all the ingredients together under instruction of the recipe.  It was weird how many spices I would need to add flavor since with a regular mac and cheese, it's relatively straightforward.

There was also the need for a kind of vegan bechamel sauce.  This recipe used cashews and almond milk.  Not many cashews.  Just a handful.  It was hard not to just eat them.  Mmmmm, cashews...

There was also a fair amount of prep for the sage breadcrumb topping.  Some butter, breadcrumbs, garlic and sage leaves all had to be prepped and made crispy over the stove.

As I started to realize how many steps would be included in this recipe, I decided some wine was in order to get me though the journey.

After the butternut squash had been steamed to a soft, easy to cut state, it was time to puree in the blender.  This actually proved pretty challenging since the butternut squash kept forming a kind of air pocket above the rotating blades, so I had to constantly start and stop the blender to pop the air pocket.

Once the butternut squash puree was ready, I started the process of heating up the bechamel sauce.  Once that was hot and formed a somewhat thicker consistency (it never really got all that thick...), I added in the butternut squash puree and mixed it all together.

Then it was time to add in the noodles.  The sauce was so thin that it almost didn't even seem to cover all the noodles.  It also didn't help that they were basically the same color.

Then, everything was transferred into an oven safe bowl and topped with the sage and breadcrumb topping.  Popped into the oven for 20 minutes to toast the breadcrumbs, and then, it was done!

The final product had a pretty okay flavor.  I don't know that I would call it a mac and cheese substitute really, but my boyfriend seemed to enjoy it.  He even went back for seconds.

Unfortunately for me, I did not have such an enjoyable time with this recipe.  I'm slightly convinced that I may have had some kind of allergic or intolerant response to the nutritional yeast.  It's possible it was also some bad butternut squash, but since I had such a negative reaction and my boyfriend was relatively fine, I have a feeling it was more than that.

So, that's what I get for trying to go vegan (or almost vegan).  I guess it's good I still really like cheese.

Happy New Year 2016!  I hope the year ahead is filled with lots of good times and good meals.  And good macs! :)

Review: Murray's Cheese Shop

Murray's Cheese Shop

254 Bleeker St, New York City

murrayscheese.com

Hey friends!  It's another field trip post!  This time all the way from New York City!

There were several restaurants to try while visiting the Big Apple, but I knew that I had to make some room for some local Mac and Cheese!  I did some research and eventually found that Murray's Cheese Bar was a pretty popular choice.

To be fair, somehow, we found ourselves at Murray's Cheese Shop (owned by the same folks) in Greenwich Village instead.  I haven't been to the Bar location, but from what I've read, I would assume that the Bar is more like a restaurant, whereas the Shop is more like, well, a shop.

Looking back, I'm actually kind of happy we found ourselves in the Shop location.  it was cute and had a massive amount of unique and fine cheeses and meats and right in the middle of it was this awesome kiosk where you could order all sorts of goodies, including a build-your-own mac and cheese.  I opted for just adding some bacon (I don't care what the World Health Organization says).

The sauce was made up of their special blend of 3 cheeses and then you could choose between any number of toppings or additions.  The sauce wasn't super creamy but it definitely wasn't dry.  I would say this would be a great recommendation for anyone who doesn't like their sauce super heavy.  The bacon flavor was a little overpowering of the cheese, so it was hard to judge alone, but overall, I really enjoyed it.  And I enjoyed my trip into the shop.  They had some great old jazz music on and loads of local foods and candy to purchase.  It was pretty awesome.

While writing about NYC, I have to recommend a second spot, not Mac and Cheese related.  Not far from Murray's Cheese Shop, in neighboring West Village, you'll find some really, really AMAZING cookies from Sweet Corner Bakeshop (535 Hudson St, New York City).  We picked up a large Peanut Butter and Sea Salt Chocolate Chip.  They were super delicious.  I highly recommend stopping in if you're in the area and need a sweet treat! :)

And lastly, I have to show off my new souvenir.  We happened to be in town just before the New York Marathon, which was both really cool and kind of annoying.  It was cool because you could see all the excitement during newscasts and lots of runners started coming in to the city and bringing along their pre-race energy.

The best part was that the local sports stores (Nike, New Balance, Asics) all had some special marathon specific swag that you could purchase for that week only.  Since I'm somewhat obsessed with Nike city specific swag, I figured I'd opt for this cool customized running shirt over the classic "I heart NY" tee.

 

I even made sure to fit in a very quick jog through Central Park,  just so I could wear it without feeling like a hypocrite.  Haha!

Anyway, cheers everyone and happy eating!

Experiment: Mac & Cheese Pancakes

Every now and then, I get these weird mac and cheese suggestions from folks and most of them I never really take the time to try out.

Then I saw a really straight-forward recipe for Mac and Cheese Pancakes as one of those Buzzfeed food hack how-to videos (embedded below).

I was intrigued and figured, hey, what the heck, why not.  It was simple enough.  Get some instant pancake mix, get some boxed mac and cheese and put them together.  What could go wrong?

I'll be honest, I had NO expectation about taste.  It was hard to determine if this was going to be a major failure or something new and awesome to continue making all the time.  I just figured, why not?  Worst that can happen is I have some wasted mix and mac.

So I watched the Buzzfeed video to try to figure out how much to use of each ingredient.  Unfortunately, they don't really give specifics on amounts, and after trying this out, the amounts they show would definitely be really off.

Mac And Cheese Pancakes
Posted by BuzzFeed Food on Sunday, September 27, 2015

So I gathered up my supplies and started making the mac and cheese, using a standard Kraft blue box.

Using Krusteaz mix, 2 cups whole milk and 1 cup cheddar cheese

Kraft Mac and Cheese

I decided to start conservatively.  I didn't use a full box of pancake mix, and though I cooked the full box of mac, I didn't expect to use all of it necessarily.  Once the mac and cheese was ready, I started an initial mix of the pancake mix using whole milk (like the video shows), and then came the mac and batter blend...

This where it started to seem a little more difficult.  I didn't want to have a bad mac to batter ratio so I added the mac and cheese in slowly at first.  Eventually, however, it seemed like I would need the whole box to match up to the batter, even though I hadn't even used a whole box of pancake mix (like the video seems to show).  After adding in the entire mac and cheese portion, I added a cup of shredded cheddar cheese (3 year aged Wisconsin cheddar).

Yum... Cheese...

Then, after mixing that all together, I started to cook on my non-stick griddle pan.  The video shows a greased pan being used, but I generally cook all my pancakes on a griddle, so I left out the oil.  I realize it might have been crispier if I had used oil, but I was willing to make that sacrifice.  I wasn't interested in a crispy glaze anyway. 

Weird.

Hmmm... skeptical...

Then, after cooking for a handful of minutes on each side, it was time to test it out...

Still weird.

It was... pretty awful.  It was super bland, I could hardly taste anything so it just tasted like.. blah.  I imagine that it may have needed less pancake mix, and I probably needed more shredded cheese.  I don't know if I'll ever really try this experiment again.  There's not too much motivation to do so.

It was fun to try though :)

Review: Bear Republic Brewery

Bear Republic Brewery
345 Healdsburg Ave, Healdsburg
bearrepublic.com

Wine Country visitors and residents: you MUST try Bear Republic's Brewers Mac and Cheese.

That's an order.

I had tried this mac and cheese once before with friends, but had a hard time mustering up the energy to truly judge it since we had just spent the day lounging by the pool and day drinking at Francis Ford Coppola Winery down the way.  Yes, hard life, I know.

So when I found myself eating there again this past Saturday, I felt compelled to try it again and give it a proper review.

It was great.  So great.  I love the flavors in this mac and cheese.  It has jack, cheddar, American, Parmesan, and a blue cheese bechamel sauce.  I usually don't even like blue cheese, but it really works well in this mac and cheese.  You can get it plain, or with bacon and/or jalapenos.  Since I tend to avoid super spicy foods, I went with the bacon.  Okay, I admit, I also just really love bacon.

The texture is very creamy and cheesy and I just love that.  The portion size is rather generous, as I remember from my first visit.  On this trip, however, a friend and I split the dish and it was just the right size.  We both felt full, but not stuffed.

With all that said, I have to explain why this mac won't be making it into my top ten, and I may get a lot of flack for it.

While AWESOME, I have a really hard time thinking of Healdsburg as part of the direct Bay Area.  It's a over an hour outside of San Francisco, and I tend to think of wine country in general as it's own entity.  I mean that in the BEST possible way.  I mean, I don't get excited about visiting another part of the Bay Area, but I sure do get excited about visiting wine country.  So, yeah, I guess that's my reasoning.  Sorry If that offends anyone.

So, again, if you are in that area of northern wine country, GO.  Go get yourself a mac and cheese.  Oh, and maybe some of their famous beer offerings as well.  Let's not forget that.

Review: ROCKS Lakeview

ROCKS Lakeview
3463 N. Broadway, Chicago
rockslakeview.com

This is a FIELD TRIP post!  :)

I suppose Disneyland was also a field trip post since it's not the Bay Area, but I get especially excited when I can try mac and cheese offerings across California state lines.

Recently, I visited Chicago for a long weekend, and when friends and I found ourselves at ROCKS in the Lakeview neighborhood, I decided I should probably give a Chicago option a go.

ROCKS has named their dish Mac & Cheesus!  Kind of a funny title.  It contains smoked gouda, jack and cheddar cheese, diced chicken breast and is topped with some breadcrumbs and scallions.

I wish I could say it was as tasty as a Chicago deep dish pizza (now THAT was GREAT), but sadly, not this particular version.  The cheese texture was a little dry and the chicken was pretty flavorless, so it just sort of added to an overall bland taste.  I think that if you added some kind of seasoning to the chicken, or even attempted a kind of BBQ chicken flavor, it would probably give this mac the kick that it's missing.

What is good at ROCKS?  Well, I didn't get to try too much while there, but the sweet potato fries sure tasted awesome.  Stop in for beer, catch a football game and order some sweet potato fries.  And if you want to attempt the fried mac and cheese option (sadly, I could only try one), let me know what you think!