/ WHAT JEN DOES

Berry Galette with Salted Caramel Ice Cream

8.08.2013

I had dinner with someone this past weekend who continued to mispronounce quinoa repeatedly over the course of 3 hours. He pronounced it "QWIN-O-WAH" and I pronounced it "KEEN-WAH". I'm too much of a lady - and fundamentally it made me feel awkward - to confront the situation so we both just continued to reference the grain per our pronunciation. All the while I wondered if it made me an ass to keep saying it my way.

This appropriately brings us to the dessert I made for my Bachelorette Finale watch. I'm still not quite sure how to pronounce "galette" but I do know that it is very easy and very tasty.

This past New Years in Vermont my adorable friend Sarah made an apple tart that was just perfect for the occasion. She made the crust with her own little hands at the kitchen island.... no food processor, no stand mixer, just hands. Color me impressed. I can't say that I took the same route for this recipe (I opted for a food processor) but I had Sarah in my mind the entire time.

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Turning 30: Building Your Team

7.25.2013

I think one of the best things about getting older is that you know more about what you need and where to get it from. I like to refer to this as "building a team".

I've been building my team for 30 years now but not really realized it until quite recently. I know now what to try to do myself versus what to go to my team for. For example, I've recently added "James" to my team. James works at this clinical massage place in Back Bay and we've been on 3 "dates" in one week. He's super patient and quite literally put my body back in place after my back was terrible last week. When you are picking team members, you pick people that care about you. I can tell James cares about what he does ... in part because he told me my body was stubborn and spent extra time trying to "balance my hips". I insanely walked extra carefully home because I didn't want to ruin all his hard work.

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Turning 30: Independence

7.22.2013

Turning 30 is different things for different people.

I'll be honest and say that I haven't always had the easiest time adjusting to the impending threshold. Initially, it made me feel like I should have more accomplished. Five years ago, I would have expected that by 30 I would be married and probably have a baby. There would most likely even be a mortgage involved and I would have been thinking about what type of stroller would be better for city living. I would channel my love of bulk purchases into Diapers.com.

My life isn't like that... pretty much at all. I'm single. I have a cat, not a baby. My socks never match (and its obvious because they after often neon). But, it's so fulfilling in ways that I didn't anticipate.

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Quinoa Cakes with Grilled Asparagus & Goat Cheese

7.09.2013

Like I said last week, I haven't really been cooking. I've even been habitually buying lunch - which is just really not me. After all, I did eat crockpot pomegranate chicken for like 9 work days last summer. I'm dedicated to the cause of saving a few bucks each day.

But tonight, I felt a smidge inspired and had a flashback to these quinoa cakes I made last year. They were so refreshing and just screamed light, tasty, and summer. Over the weekend, I had stumbled upon this quinoa salad from Kitchn that I attempted to make for some workday lunches. So with the quinoa already made in my fridge, I had limited excuses.

I didn't even bother to look up the original attempt for guidance, I just figured it would either work out... or it wouldn't. If it didn't, I happened to have a dozen english muffins in the freezer for backup. I didn't have parsley or feta in my stockroom, so I went with some fresh basil from my fire escape for the cakes and creamy goat cheese. Thankfully, my basil had come back to life after the heatwave last week and it only took some water, a dose of miracle grow, and weather that was less than 93 degrees and steamy.

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Life Lately

7.04.2013

Not many things have seemed worthy of a whole post... but the cumulative effort of the last month or so has been pretty great... in an uneventful way. Which is just fine by me.

It's a lot of prosciutto eating, skyline gawking, and rolling on the floor/lawn with a new family puppy.

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summer salads

6.30.2013

You may or may not have noticed that I haven't been cooking .... pretty much at all.

There are probably a few reasons for this of which none are really valid. Sometimes an english muffin just feels right and sometimes I don't feel like doing dishes and sometimes it's just too warm out.

For example, one night this week I bought buffalo chicken at the market while I was grabbing milk. Then I ate it cold with blue cheese sauce. It just felt like the right decision.

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prepping for 30

6.29.2013

In about a month I will be turning 30.

That means I'll have been around for 3 complete runs of the series Friends - which was on for 10 seasons. I've been thinking about turning the big 3 times 10 for about 8 months I would say. I've even gone so far as to take what I would call my "birthday trip" several months in advance of my actual birthday.

Earlier this week my sister asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and I said nothing. Not as in, I had no response but more that my response was actually nothing. I'm happy to attend other people's parties but it makes me feel weird to have a party all just for me. I don't like to work on my birthday and thankfully since this year the 27th falls on a weekend, I can save myself a vacation day. I plan on spending the day eating all of my favorite things, adding layers of sunblock to my skin, taking a bike ride to the beach for dunks in the ocean and hopefully getting the perfect beach hair just in time to eat birthday cake. I haven't planned for rain, so if someone could arrange this weather forecast I'd appreciate it.

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english muffin bread

6.16.2013

This is a story of how I killed the yeast and brought it back to life. There is only one picture of the entire thing because I was quite convinced the entire time it was a slow moving car accident.

Over the past few weeks, I have been attempting to purge my apartment of things that I don't need. It isn't that I don't love my stuff, it's just that there is too much of it and I don't need it. Example? Red flannel sheets. I have moved them from apartment to apartment for 5 years. I have used them once.

As part of all this purging, I have accumulated quite a few recipes that I've torn out of magazines. The pile that I have at my apartment is nothing compared to the pile I have stashed at my parents' house. In an effort to love it or leave it, I figured I'd give this english muffin recipe I found in the WSJ a shot. The timing was perfect. I was out of carbs in my apartment, it was raining, and I had some flexibility in my schedule for experimenting.

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