turkey meatballs: salad & sub.

A really long time ago, my mom made turkey meatballs. I had recently returned from college & was trying to change my bad university habits by vowing to eat healthy all summer. So I incorporated the turkey meatballs into a salad. My brothers & dad were normal. They ate the meatballs as part of a sub sandwich.

And not too long ago at all, less than an hour ago actually, I slammed my finger in a door. All by myself.

Now let me tell you, it takes a hell of a lot more skill to do the latter than the former.

yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

This past Friday was my last day at work at a pharmaceutical packaging & manufacturing company. I feel like many people would expect me to be jubilated at this & at the prospect of returning to school in about a week. However, I am anything but ecstatic.

I truly enjoyed work. The people, the proximity to my house, the sense of a schedule, and the feeling of being busy - I really liked it. 

I would get up at 6:15 am everyday and make myself completely presentable, and half an hour later, I would (hopefully) be on my way to work. I would arrive at 7, don my lab coat and "hair net cap" (which I just looked up because I never knew the name), and make my rounds around the entire company. I would greet the other QAs and continue offering my help to any area that needed it. When I left on Friday, I felt like a true member of the company. My tasks and the results of my findings were actually helping the company. The stuff I was doing was important. And the fact that I got along excellently with everyone and that everyone could be hilarious at times was also a plus. 

But now work is over. A coworker who jokingly makes fun of my (lack of) Gujarati accent brought me Pista Peda - yes! We had an awesome lunch out at a Mexican restaurant with really good food. And now school is about to begin - aka organic chemistry is about to begin its slow, year-long torture upon my poor self. 

But there is hope, yet. 

bran & pear breakfast.

Hm. Bran doesn't sound too good, huh?

Well I made the bran bread I always do when I bake stuff to eat for breakfast. I find making this bread (and others that are similar, containing things like oats, flax, and wheat germ) makes breakfast extremely easy.

It takes zero thought to take a slice of this bread with a glass of skim milk. Or in my case on busy work mornings, down a glass of milk, grab a slice of the bread, grab the keys in true relay race style as I dash into the car, and then take a bite at all of the red lights and on the straight roads.

It's a scene of great elegance and grace, I assure you.

buttermilk chocolate cake. (no butter or eggs)

Wow.

This cake is amazing.

That's all I have to say.

chives flatbread.

A while ago, I was in a mood in which I wanted to make a lot of things that used yeast. But since bread recipes often call for a lot of flour, I picked this spring onion flatbread to work with.

Or rather, "I picked this spring onion flatbread with which to work."

I still can't consciously end a sentence (in writing) with a preposition. Funny, just yesterday my brother was going on about weird ways of speaking. Let me clarify.

Actually, for those of you who just want to know about the flatbread, scroll on down to just before the recipe. There, you shall find a lovely paragraph describing this yum flatbread.

When I used to read food blogs (or anything, but food blogs had it the most), I used to dislike reading "yummy" and "yum," which don't give a hint to how the food was actually good. And my adjectives need to have purpose! But look, I just used yum. Maybe it's because it's early, and my mind is literally blank or maybe because it feels like forever since I've written a blogpost. But I just used yum. I. don't. know.

Ok, on to more important things.

chocolate chip cookies.

chewy, but slightly crisp on the edges. fat & thick, with gooey chocolate chips. the non-chocolate chip portions must also taste excellent. or else everything is ruined. EVERYTHING. non-uniform shapes. craggy edges & tops with ridges. almost slightly underbaked middle.

My ideal chocolate chip cookie. 

Okay, now that you know what I like (I have briefly gone over this before), I hope you can decide whether you want to follow this recipe or not. Of course you can continue to read my babblings, but if you are a die-hard lover of those thin, crispy chocolate chip cookies ... or cakey ones that are really puffy ... this is not the place where you will find your perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.

review: Atlas Horas Lanches.

Remember that Joghurt chocolate I told you guys about?

I got that from a Brazilian supermarket (or supermercado, if you are in Costa Rica) that my friends brought me to. But before going to the supermarket, we got a leisurely lunch at a wonderful little Brazilian eatery.

The place is called Atlas Horas Lanches. The last word means "snacks," but the burgers we got were just a little too massive to be snacks!

Atlas Horas is very authentic. My good friend's boyfriend is Brazilian, and he, along with some of the other people we were with, were speaking rapidly in Portuguese with the people working there. The waiters could converse in English, as well, but Portuguese seemed to be their first language.

The setting is comfortable, and there are 2 flat screen TV's playing Brazilian dramas. I found them akin to Indian serials ... yes, I saw serials, not shows, when I refer to the drama that is Indian television.

The most outstanding thing, of course, was the food. Specifically, the burgers.

Costa Rica!

Volcán Arenal

Do you wanna know a hard question to answer?

How was your vacation? 

Now, I guess if your vacation was miserable, a simple "it sucked" would suffice. But my summer vacations tend to be to exotic places (my parents and in turn, us kids, enjoy travelling) in which we explore a lot of historic sites and wander into a lot of areas. We learn and experience a lot, because we're that annoying type that just can't be satisfied with sitting and lounging all day. 

As a kid, I always dreamed for a non-complicated visit to the beach for a few days, where we would just rest in beach chairs, have pina coladas, and laze around like bums. And although that still sounds nice to me, I now would be restless in that situation. 

Look at little diminutive me!

So, how was my vacation to Costa Rica? 

Excellent. I hope that answer and the pictures of delicious & interesting things I have to proffer you suffice, as I have so many recipes on my queue of things to blog about, as well as a few other reviews, that I do not want to consume you guys with too many images of a wonderfully green and surprisingly super clean country.