...and we're back!

by caitlin

i'm officially back as a bff with all my other bffs (which fortunately includes most of my friends. we're all pretty into food and only a couple people don't live in brooklyn. sorry, hoboken residents). i've been gone too long to tennessee and north carolina.

today was my first real day back and tyler and i walked with devon down to the blue sky bakery in park slope where she's hopefully going to be working this summer. they have totally delicious muffins.. i think the one i got was a raspberry pineapple but i could hardly eat half of it because we had also just got sandwiches for from farmer in the deli. also, after months of teasing them, i finally ate a "la yogurt" at pat and todd's house this morning. it was guava-flavored, of the sabor latino line, and i have to say, it was quite good. i just think the name is hilarious. la yogurt.

i intended to dedicate an entire post to the food we ate in tennessee, but its just going to get rolled into this one. i know, lay-ZAY. we were there a week ago, but in between then and now i was staying at my parents house getting my wisdom teeth out and was asleep on the couch all week. so much for vacation.

so joan's aunts have a cabin in gatlinburg tennessee and she and laura and devon and i drove down there to spend a few days as a little graduation vacation. i'd never been there, the home of dollywood, and was expecting a quiet little secluded mountain cabin. we got that, but to reach it we had to drive through this weird vegas-y strip of "attractions:" ripley's believe it or not, miniture golf, magic shows, music shows, every chain restaurant known to man. yuck. we were glad to arrive at the cabin after our 12 hour drive to cook our first meal of tortolini with pesto and sundried tomatoes, with a mixed green salad and honey mustard dressing.

in the morning, after some bird-watching on the deck, joan and i decided to make breakfast for everyone, which consisted of eggs scrambled with garlic and herb cheese, carmelized onions and sundried tomatoes. we also had delicious bread to toast along with it.

that night, after antique shopping down in the town, we tried out the grill.

i had brought tomatillos and pineapple and jalapeno to make a grilled green salsa. it turned out pretty well. luckily our group was 87% vegetarian (devon's math) and we also grilled veg burgers with the works and had orange slices in our blue moon belgian white beers.

it was a joyful feast.

the next morning we tried out one of the many pancake houses spread throughout the towns. i think the pictures from that are on joan's camera because i don't have any. it was a pretty good example of southern dining establishments: big food, big people, smoking section. totally outrageous to four little girls from brooklyn. we all got stacks pancakes filled with various fruits, smothered in whipped cream and butter, syrup on the side of course. i also got syrup on my i heart holland bag because i set it in a puddle on the floor. boo.

after looking around at all the tennessee mountain craftpeople, we went back to cook feast number two: macaroni and cheese with tomatoes, black bean burgers, salad, and "guacamole" (the avocados we brought were so hard and i didn't have the foresight to ripen them in a paper bag, so i just tried chopping them up really finely and mixing everything up together. the results were okay..). this was our last night so we were trying to eat as much as we could. we burned the burger buns on the grill and the ketchup bottle broke so we could only salvage a little, but it was a delicious collabo dinner anyway.


we decided to spend our last day in dollywood, after a breakfast (at shoney's!) of grilled cheese. the food, like everything else at dollywood, was great. unfortunately, no photos exist of the 'maters and 'taters we ate (skillet-cooked potatoes, peppers and onions topped with "cheese" and fried green tomatoes dipped in ranch dressing). totally delicious. on our way out of the park, we got kettle corn and candy.

i drove us out of tennessee to my parents' house in charlotte. my mom had seemingly been cooking all night waiting for us, and we found a feast of cavatelli pasta and broccoli (also known in my family as "broccoli and bombs"), eggplant baked with cheese and tomato, caeser salad, olives stuffed with feta cheese and bruscetta. for dessert she made little strawberry shortcakes!


that fanatastic meal transported us to bed. after the girls left in the next few days, i got surgery and ate nothing but applesauce. sorry i don't have pictures of that.

BFF V2.0

by tyler
So I’ve really neglected this blog over the past few weeks. However, now I’m finally done with school and own my very own camera so I have no excuse.

Today, Devon and I thought it would be nice to take a walk and get a bite to eat for lunch. We walked down to Park Slope but nothing really jumped out on us. From there we hiked over to Smith Street and found our way to Café LULUc.

The best thing about eating out with a companion is the ability to split plates of food. This way, you aren’t forced to choose only one dish, but two. We thought we would split two sandwiches—the pressed vegetable with roasted portobello, eggplant, onions, zucchini, red peppers with basil pesto and goat cheese on ciabatta bread, and the LULUc cheese steak with onions and provolone one a sourdough baguette. I had had the vegetable sandwich the first time I ate at LULUc and loved it and Devon’s love for goat cheese made it a sure pick. We went with the cheese steak sandwich because it was called the LULUc and any sandwich bearing the restaurants name must be something special.

The vegetable sandwich was really great… again. There were so many roasted veggies piled on top of each other with a slathering of pesto and a healthy topping of goat cheese. The ciabatta was warm and crunchy. The cheese steak was served with a grilled hanger steak on a warm, crusty baguette. The grease from the onions and steak soaked in he bread to make it extra tasty (it’s a cheese steak!) We had also ordered a side of French fries with a side of mayonnaise. Unfortunately, the mayonnaise never arrived. However, the fries were perfectly crunchy.

From there, we walked down to Dean for dessert at One Girl Cookies. There we ordered 2 Juliet’s, 2 Lucia’s and 1 whoopee pie. The Juliet was a hazelnut cookie with chocolate ganache. Dev and I both felt the cookie was too floury and there wasn’t enough ganache. The Lucia was shortbread with a layer of caramel and a layer of chocolate. These were quite delightful. However, the star of the afternoon was the Whoopee Pie. The cakes were a lovely orange colored spice cake which was crusty on the outside and moist on the inside. The filling was a perfectly stiffened whipped cream.


To say the least, this outing was a wonderful way to bring in the summer and restart BFF.

survey schmurvey

by caitlin

its survey time. its really in the thick of it now: we've got two days to finish and hang all of our stuff. am i ready? not in the least? have i been doing everything humanly possible to prepare for it? no. i've pretty much been not thinking about all that i have to do and sort of pretending that i don't have a lot to do. so, procrastinating=cooking.

yesterday morning i made semi-successful cranberry muffins. i didn't have regular flour so i used pastry flour, and i didn't have milk so i used buttermilk. they were.. okay. i can't wait until i have the time to just bake muffins every morning and perfect everything about them.

and last night i made a creamy asparagus soup and grilled cheeses with provolone, tomato and pesto for me, devon and aleks. the soup was not as good as the sandwiches, being just a little bland. the sandwiches were really delicious though. i tried to take photos of the food but devon's camera battery was dead. oh well.

in the summer, pretty much everyday is a food party. so close......

hey, we're okay. probably.

by caitlin

tonight when i was walking home, even though it was cold and kind of rainy, it really felt like spring for some reason. it was a nice feeling after the horrendous week i've just had. i'll skip all the tear-drenched details. sometimes anxiety and depression over graduating from college can really get you down. weird.

i decided to kind of take the night off from school work since i've been going so out of my mind. i bought a bottle of wine and some gingery thai noodles on the way home, even though i'm kind of broke these days. whenever i cook with ginger, i never get the desired effect... the spiciness either cooks out entirely or is way too overpowering. a difficult balance to strive for.

i've actually been pretty absent from the kitchen (and the internet) as a result of all this school stress. the (sort of) good news is that my food project is finally, actually, on its way to being something, with 2 weeks left in the semester. i did want to mention, since i told him i would, and i don't think he will, tyler's breakfast experiment from sunday. it wasn't the most exciting thing, but it was really a nice little moment in the middle of my ridiculous week. we were out of milk and it was totally pouring (this was in the midst of the dreaded nor'easter) but i did have some buttermilk from when i tried to make biscuits. luckily it keeps for a long time. we thought buttermilk pancakes would be a good start to a dreary day, and tyler embellished them with oats and pumpkin. we don't have any pictures, but they tasted pretty delicious.

that's pretty much it, i'm going to go back to listening to the rushmore soundtrack and eating ginger.

cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes!

by tylerEver have one of those days where you can’t get anything done? Yeah, I’m having one of those days. I think its because I didn’t shower this morning and my hair is really greasy and icky feeling. So after 2 hours of doing nothing at work I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the cupcakes Devon and I made almost 2 weeks ago for Arone’s surprise birthday party. Hopefully by the end of this post I can feel somewhat accomplished.

So the Friday before last (the day we ate the cherry, almond, coconut pancakes for breakfast), Devon and I set out to make the best, non-dairy cupcakes anyone has every tasted. Well, to be honest, I had no intention of making them completely dairy free—butter and milk would be used when necessary, but there would be no buttercream or cream cheese frosting. Instead, I had planned on using tofu cream cheese for the frosting base.

I pulled 2 cupcake recipes from the cupcake bakeshop blog. The first was cherry chocolate cupcakes with a fennel tofu cream cheese frosting. I had wanted to do another herb/spice cupcake but I was told it might be too much. Instead I went for simple—vanilla cupcakes with vanilla tofu cream cheese frosting.

Making the actual cupcakes was rather anticlimactic. I strayed from the cherry chocolate cupcake recipe when it called for dried cherries to soak in brandy over night. Not having any brandy around, I soaked them in warm water with a splash of orange and vanilla extract. Everything else went as planed. The cupcakes formed nice domes and the cake was moist and… cakey?

After Devon and I finished baking all the cupcakes and cleaned up, we went out to get some things done. If I recall, we split a pancetta sandwich and green salad and took advantage of the lovely spring day by eating outside. From there I purchased a pastry bag and tips and (get ready) a butter bell at the Cooks Companion on Atlantic Avenue.

I came home to start on the frosting. Devon was out enjoying the day so I was on my own for this one. I made the vanilla tofu cream cheese frosting first. I decided I would scale down the amount of frosting as I had a hunch I wouldn’t need the whole amount. Since the ingredients were somewhat predictable, I figured the amount of sugar was based on sweetness and texture. I stared whipping the tofu cream cheese and adding the powdered sugar when everything when crazy. Before I knew it, my house and self was covered in sugar. It was everywhere. Meanwhile, I couldn’t get the frosting to thicken. I was getting nervous that the frosting would become too sweet so I said it was done. I scooped it all out into its own bowl and started on the fennel frosting.

The same issue arose with the fennel cream cheese and I began to panic. I started icing the cupcakes and saw the frosting as more of a glaze. To humor myself, I packed some vanilla frosting into my new pastry bag to see what would happen. As the frosting left the bag, it quickly lost its shape and melted into the existing frosting. I had to accept the fact that these cupcakes were not going to be the beautiful centerpiece I had hoped

Well, we brought 36 cupcakes to the party and they were gone within the first fifteen minuets. Everyone said they were really great. I never had one myself as I was too sugared out from testing the cupcakes and frostings throughout the day. As for the pastry bag, I think I’ll stick to a buttercream frosting next time.

sometimes you just want to listen to the rolling stones and make beautiful things

by caitlin

i don't have much to say, but i just want to keep in good habits with my posting. plus maybe i am procrastinating on doing homework just a little. i made muffins the other day (sunday) and they came out really well! they were lighter than my last batch (i guess i am getting the hang of mixing it until just moist) and i used cranberries instead of apples. i was worried that they'd be too tart, but i didn't want to add sugar because i really haven't been into sweeties lately, but they were pretty great! i brought them to my meeting, but my client had just recently switched to a low-carbon diet, so she didn't have any. also, my professor kept saying he was going to have one, but he didn't either. oh well, aleks and i enjoyed them.

in other news, my food/cooking senior project is finally getting somewhere. check out this box design!


even though this looks nothing like the real thing, you get the idea. i can't wait until i finish all the little pieces. i have to build a model of the kiosk. just so you know, i have no idea how to do that. we'll seeeeeee...

also, i just would like to take a moment to promote this woman's art, which i am so into right now. i think i've been dreaming of a life where i can just make beautiful things all day long and sell them to people who love them. i guess it doesn't matter if you refuse to get a del.icio.us because you can just post links on your blog. hah! okay, i'm going to delve into the food proj.

The Perfect Combination: Almonds, Cherries and Coconut

by tyler (all pictures taken by devon)


For the past two years, I’ve been making my own energy food for when I’m cycling. They’re pretty much just high calorie granola bars, but boy are they good. Whenever I bring a batch to the track in the summer, they’re usually gone before the first race is over. Everyone eats them up and asks for the recipe (something I’m not good at giving—not because I want to keep it secrete, but because I hate writing out the recipe on the spot).

Anyways, being a master of the granola bar (if I do say so myself), I have never made plain ol’ granola…that is until this week. My mom had given me an article from her local paper about making granola quite some time ago but when it came home with me, it lost itself in a stack of papers. However, recently I pulled it out and gave the recipe a gander. I had most of the ingredients: oats, wheat germ, brown sugar, oil, salt and I talked about my shopping trip for the remaining few items in my last post (mainly the maple syrup).

In the article they list a few extra ingredients to add for different flavors (nothing any semi-creative type wouldn’t think of on his or her own with some time). Devon thought it would be great to add cherries and almonds, so we did (I also added some coconut—hence the title). The first batch was made sticking strictly to the recipe. After I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool, I noticed it lacked nice, crisp clumps. Crisp yes, but clumps no. I was slightly bothered by this since the lack of clumps meant it would have to be eaten in a bowl instead of hand-to-mouth. Nonetheless, the taste was really great. I made it Sunday afternoon and the entire quart was gone by Tuesday. This meant I would have to make another quart to get me though the week.

For the second quart, I used the same recipe, only I used half the amount of maple syrup and used the same amount of molasses. I thought this might make it stick better and perhaps make it even crunchier. When I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool, I noticed my hypothesis was correct. The great thing was the molasses didn’t affect the taste at all. This morning, after my bike ride, I stopped by the Green Market at Prospect Park and bough some Ronnybrook Farms yogurt and an apple pocket. When I got home, Devon and I topped the yogurt with some of the granola and it was fantastic. I can’t wait for summer when we can eat the same thing, only with summer berries.

Perhaps some of the reason why there is still granola left over is because yesterday morning Devon and I made pancakes. Now let me say something (I may have said this before, but let me say it again) I love rustic, heavy pancakes. If I’m in the mood for a light, golden griddlecake, I’ll go to Mike’s Diner. Sticking with the theme of cherries, almonds and coconut, I added all three to the pancakes. I usually use a ratio of 1:2 cream and milk but I’ve been trying to lay off the cream these days. However, everything else stayed the same—oats, oat bran, bread flour, eggs, milk and a little oil. (Jared once made me waffles with coconut oil and they were amazing, I really wish I had some to use with these pancakes). Oh, in memory of the granola, I threw some wheat germ in the batter for good measure.


The batter was a bit lighter than I would have liked. I think it was the lack of cream. With the pancakes cooked up and Dev armed with her coffee, we were set for a day of cupcake making. To Be Continues…