Smoothies So Thick You Have to Eat Them with a Spoon

They’re my favorite kind. I’m not really into the drippy, runny ones. But if you are, that’s cool. I won’t judge you based on your smoothie lifestyle. Each to hir own, you know.

Vanilla Spice Fruit and Yogurt with Nuts

peaches, local blueberries, walnuts, vanilla, awesomeness...

It’s summer, and here in the South, it’s really hot. I wake up hungry, and I know I need to eat something with protein instead of some sugary cold cereal, but I don’t want heavy, warm, gooey omelet. *shudder* Luckily, I picked blueberries from plants at a horticulture lab on campus (Ask around! I bet someone you know knows where to find free blueberries or blackberries this summer!) and was inspired to make one of my favorite, simple, crazy-delicious breakfast-y snack foods.

Zucchini Soup: My Childhood Comfort Food

Yes!

When I’m down, I like to eat mac n’ cheese, Klondike bars, and chocolate chip cookies, but the coziest comfort food I can think of is warm, creamy soup. I love soup. So when I started feeling kind of down last week, I decided to make the soup that takes me way back to early childhood in my mom’s house: zucchini soup. I think the reason I loved this soup so much as a kid is that it had a really simple, savory flavor. And it went well with cheese. And I love cheese.

Anyway, I called my mom to get the recipe, and she wasn’t near her phone. Seeing as I needed comfort food ASAP, I decided to go for it on my own, and ended up with a successful reinvention of one of my favorite soups.

Adventures in Tapioca-ing

So I drove home to my mom’s house last week for my grandmother’s birthday, and, as usual, my mother had deliciousness afoot. We had stuffed red bell peppers and tomatoes filled with a mix of veggies and either ground turkey or boca grounds, depending on hippie…er…meat-eating status. My brother and I snuck into the kitchen and put cheese in ours, too, because we think alike. But on to the point of this story.

For dessert, my mom had dug up a new recipe that was definitely not one of her old standards: tapioca pudding. She had sweetened it with maple syrup instead of sugar and added cardamom and what tasted like cinnamon and maybe nutmeg. And it was reeeal tasty. But it was also instant tapioca. So my inner kid-who-likes-to-play-with-chemistry-kits and inner food snob convinced me to try making it on my own. From scratch!