veggie beet burgers (vegan, gluten-free).

Drops of liquidy red stipple the counter .... the remains of some recent mess are evidenced by the now diluted pink water in the mugs sitting in the sink .... a pair of hands working hard nearby are deeply stained with red.

Is this a murder scene? Some crime show? 

NOPE. It's all the result of working with beets! And messy as they may be, they make for great veggie (and vegan) burgers.

carrots, with black sesame + ginger.

I made up a new diet plan.

I know there are tons out there - Atkins (do people still do that?), Weight Watchers, low carb, low fat, high-protein, low calorie, Whole30 ... that last one strikes me as really controversial. I understand all of it except for the no legume/soy thing. No peanut butter?!?!? C'mon.

Anyway, my diet is called: the don't be lazy diet. It has 2 rules: Don't be lazy. Cook your own meals as much as possible, and only eat what you cook.

buffalo chicken dip.

I gave in to making this. It goes against every bone and fiber of my being that says to not eat processed food and unnecessary cheese and salt, but but .... I've been having this everywhere! At a potluck. At a work party. At a graduation party.

A person can only stand enjoying something at so many places before making it herself. So I made it, and it was delicious. I even used real chicken (instead of canned, which apparently is common). No regrets!

thai turkey meatballs.

I'm running a 5K in six days. I thought I'd share how I am preparing for this, as I consider myself an elite athletic guru.

1. Don't run for several weeks. In the meantime, stay up late both because you are hanging with yo buds and because you overcommitted yourself, so you have lots of responsibilities to take care of.

2. Make lots of tasty treats, like german vanilla cake. Also, don't hold back on dem Thanksgiving mashed potatoes and gravy.

3. Randomly force yourself to run one day. Run so much after such a hiatus that you feel very sore (but good sore) the next day.

open-faced garden sandwich.

I'm a fan of the "super healthy meals, indulgent desserts" lifestyle (at least until my metabolism completely breaks down). Lately, actually, I've been pretty on top of cooking almost all my meals or eating salads when I do go to the dining hall. Desserts are at a minimum. And I've exercised three mornings in a row!

But there's always that one day that trips you up. The week leading up to that day could have been long. You might have been stuck in a 3-hr lab killing live fish with scalpels and smashing snails with rusty wrenches before massacring their bodies in search of teeny tiny parasites (and disappointingly not finding any :( ) An odd allergy season may have descended.

On these days, you eat a sandwich like this one. And then you go out to Brother Jimmy's with the girls to share a swamp water and the best pulled chicken nachos you've had in a long time. It's okay. It happens.

sesame ginger noodles.

Why are people so wary of self-reflecting? I enjoy it .. it's not like I do it every second I get and look forward to it with longing, but if I find myself, say, on a 5.5 hour bus ride, with nothing but my iPod to accompany me, I let my mind wander.

And eventually, after thinking about how excited I am to bake again, speculating on my relationships with people, and still trying to get over the $14,000 on-campus apartments at BU, my mind turns to me. I don't know about everyone else, but I like seeing how much I have changed and the amount of experiences I've gone through for the past couple years. It makes me more appreciative.

spicy sweet potato quinoa cakes.

Good food is so satisfying. Think about your best memories. Some of them must involve food.

That's how I remember most of my vacations, trips, events and stuff. Arizona I remember for the absolutely fabulous (virgin) pina coladas and from-scratch taquitos served poolside. Krakow is marked by my very first meal in Poland - hollandaise over fish, with rosettes of pommes de terre broiled to a golden crisp. I actually wrote a college essay on this one (and Rutgers liked it enough to take me). I have a memory of a wedding in which I literally remember nothing but the enormous dessert array arranged along the perimeter of the venue.

review: Swad portable bhel puri!

I'm a fan of all food. Other than red meat, I will try (and eat) anything. There are two characteristics of food that particularly appeal to me.

One is a cute or interesting name. You could make regular homemade pudding, put it in fancy glasses, call it budino, and I would be sold. If you want to attract my total attention on foodgawker, put "creme," "creamy," or "custard" in the name. Affogato. Kulcha. Frangipane. I love them all, even more so because they just sound so delicious to say. 

I guess that also explains my attraction to foreign desserts. Besides sounding pretty, their cultural background is so intriguing. 

The second aspect of food is size - I love love love mini food. Whoopie pies? Why not make them a little larger than a quarter! Those fudgy two-bite brownies at Shoprite? Beautiful. Individual pot pies in ramekins? So good. 

quinoa patties.

These are just the most delicious little things. I'm growing an affinity for quinoa. It's so versatile, and if made in big batches, it can be incorporated into a ton of things. You could make pilaf with quinoa, rice and lentils. You could toss them into soup for texture and protein. Or you could make quinoa cakes, or patties, like I did here.

I didn't follow a recipe, and I don't think you should either. I wanted something really healthy for lunch and figured these would work. They did.

fall harvest salad.

Rainy days are so annoying. Unless you're sitting inside doing nothing all day, well then they're beautiful. You get to be lazy, bum around, and snack all day. It's pouring outside today, but I tried to make an effort to change up my usual rainy day diet of snacks and cookies.

mini falafel bites.

Ever have those times where you just want to eat everything?

I tend to be fine during the day, but as soon as night comes .. my ability to gauge proper food portions and my self-will are completely and utterly destroyed. Tonight is one of those nights. I just had chocolate cake with dulce de leche (excellent combo .. also, that dulce de leche is not going anywhere anytime soon, there's a lot of it), a huge thick chewy chocolate chunk (> chip) cookie, and whatever skim milk was left in the container. There's something liberating about drinking milk straight from the gallon carton sometimes.

Or maybe I just need to do more spontaneous things.

omelette crunchwrap.

HEY THERE. Want to hear about something awesome?

It's not the PS3 my brother just got. 

It's not my new favorite color from Essie that is not only a gorgeous coral, but is how my grandmother once lovingly described me. It's good to be "healthy" in the Indian culture. 

And it's definitely not the story about how I survived getting attacked by a deer on a golf course in pitch black darkness. 

roasted carrots with cumin + sea salt.

There's garlic because these carrots were meant to be something else ..

Thursday's over! Friday's tomorrow! Yay! You can come back from work or school, picking up some carrots & good crusty bread on the way home. Change into sweatpants or other comfy clothes, such as lounge pants, before plopping on a couch to take pleasure in senselessly whiling away your time online, on blogger, food blogs, and tastespotting.. oh wait that's just me. You can devour nibble on the dark chocolate covered pretzels your brother just got from a fundraiser while you watch youtube videos or TV shows. Fuel that oft-unquenchable desire to just do nothing.

pumpkin oatmeal + veggie burger.

So the other day I woke up early, by break standards - 7:45 am - and drove about an hour to the greenhouse where The Garden of Eden meets to plant, water, and harvest organically grown lettuce. I ate breakfast around 9 am, as I was driving. We worked at the greenhouse till around 2 pm.

At the end, I was eating the arugula that had been picked because I was hungry and wanted to munch on something, even if that meant eating these really bitter (the flavor was much more pronounced) tiny leaves.

With the knowledge that Thomas Sweet was in close proximity, I proceeded to spend about 15 minutes getting lost on Route 18 and going who knows where to park in a spot that was most likely illegal. But I mean, I wasn't going to be long or anything.

chicken nuggets: baked.

I was at Zumba with my friend one day and she was telling me about these chicken nuggets she made, and how they were baked. I thought they sounded amazing, so she made some to bring to a potluck we had soon after with another friend of ours. And they were so good! 

So I decided to make my own nugs. And they came out really good.

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.

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.

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.

zucchini ricotta galette.

I should try to make more summer-focused things that take advantage of the fresh, in season produce. This way, the wonderful flavor of the fruits or vegetable themselves can highlight the dish.

This galette = summer. It's like those analogies that used to be on the SAT.

chicken fatayer.

Very sorry for the picture quality - all taken at night, therefore have yellow tinges.

Ever write an entire blogpost, complete with EVERYTHING, including a long, detailed recipe, and then have it deleted because your computer decides to only save the draft after writing three sentences, and then goes oh, why save the rest? It's not like it took an hour to type or anything.

So I am sorry, but I cannot retype an hour's worth of creativity and detail. A short post will have to suffice.

I am not too knowledgable about Arabic cuisine; I was just browsing on tastespotting one day when I came across a picture of doughy triangles that appeared to have some sort of filling. The caption read Chicken Fatayer. I had never heard of it before, so it grabbed my interest.

(^that's what got saved. silly blogger.com tricks are for kids ... WOAH. woah wait I just had an intense revelation. TRICKS are for kids. TRIX are for kids. has anyone ever noticed this before?!!?! this is ridiculous. i never knew ... i can't even .. )

The dough has been separated into balls to be rollen out.

I googled the dish, but there is not much online about it. This is what I gathered: chicken fatayer is an Arabic pie. The term pie here is in the sense of how spankopita is a Greek pie. Fatayers can have fillings ranging from meat, to spinach and cheese (see how similar different cultures can be?), to just cheese. The filling is enclosed within a bready yeast dough. Yum.