Dare I tamper with our Ultimate Brownies?

Yes, yes I did!!!

Hop on over to Craftzine for my guest post about the “healthier” version!

Here are the ingredients of the two versions, side by side:

Download the Original recipe:     

Download the Healthier recipe:  

There’s a new place in North Phoenix for healthy eating. It is tucked away off Camelback and 16th Street but don’t let the strip mall location scare you from trying this place. It’s Zoe’s Kitchen. It’s a quaint cafe-like place that serves up amazing dishes that are full of flavor and eye-appeal but are prepared without deep frying.

I visited this place using a free coupon that was given to the office and no one claimed it. They missed out on a great deal because this place did not disappoint on anything. This place offers a great vast array of great dishes, sandwiches, and salads. My coupon got me a platter of quesadillas. These were out of this world! It was not your usual quesadilla at all.

Chicken, spinach, scallions, and feta melted slightly between tortillas with a scoop of rice pilaf. I saw some of you drooling at the sound of that combination. It tastes just as divine as it it sounds. I wish I had a camera so I could share the awesome appearance of the quesadilla for you all. Even Joy, who says she doesn’t like wraps, said she would devour this dish from Zoe’s.

There’s locations in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Give this healthy alternative to the ordinary a try if you have one in your area! Enjoy!

I would like to deviate slightly from the normal Gourmeted path and share something that I feel needs discussing. 

By now, I’m sure you have heard the controversy concerning Robert Irvine fluffing his resume. He has always shocked me with what he is capable of performing. He has an amazing history of leadership and producing fantastic foods from the most unusual circumstances. Why should this impair his ability to perform when the point of the show is wholesome cooking entertainment?

I once believed that the episodes of Dinner:Impossible were staged, but the more I thought about it the more I realized there was more going on than just on the 30 minute performance. He may have had 20 people helping him over a span of 13 hours, but that is 13 hours of instruction, preparing, cooking, leading, and organization. There is amazing pressure to perform these tasks he has been given and he pulls through, almost always within the time given to him.

Pulling Dinner:Impossible will have a substantial impact on Food Network’s quality programming. There was an article released around the new year from the LA times discussing the future of Food Network and how they are faltering with attracting new viewers and retaining current ones. I believe Dinner:Impossible and Robert Irvine makes food preparation worth watching and exciting to follow. If Robert was given a cooking show that was different from Dinner:Impossible, he would bring a show worth watching that would compare to Emeril from so many years ago.

Revoking his command of the kitchen to one of Food Network’s most popular shows just because a few misunderstandings should not be his punishment. His track record speaks for itself. According to his Wiki page, he had a Chefography that was due to play this month, hopefully with this online petition I found here, we can learn more about his journey. Please sign this petition to bring back the glory that he has maintained over the years. Thank you very much for reading. Please continue on our journey of culinary teachings.

First of all, thank you for voting on the chocolate survey. Thanks for satisfying yet another one of my, “I wonder…?”

In a food community I frequent and where I posted about the strawberries, a few gave me flack for using milk chocolate. It felt as if I announced I read pocket paperbacks to a theatre full of elitist bookworms. Que horror! Sadly, milk chocolate gets a bad rap. I’m not sure why. Do chocolate snobs feel holier than thou for eating “purer” chocolate? Do you feel better that you can appreciate it when others can’t? Are those limited to dark, sugar-free chocolates for health reasons wish they could go back to their milk chocolates? Is one type better than the other? OH? Why? Why can’t we all be entitled to eat whatever chocolate we like without getting an upturned nose and asked why we like “crap”? Sharing a box of chocolate varieties would be hellish then if we all wanted the same thing. I’ll take the caramels and milk chocolates and feel free to fight over the darks, thanks.

I eat all kinds of chocolate, and prefer one over the others depending on my mood. I’m an equal opportunity eater and I try to be as open-minded about other people’s preferences as much as possible. When I read the comment that I made someone cringe because I used milk chocolate, I was instantly reminded of what Nick Hornby said about reading on the preface of his book, Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt:

“…reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing. [...] I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud. The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can’t, it might not be your inadequacy that’s to blame. “Good” books can be pretty awful sometimes.

The regrettable thing about the culture war we still, after all these years, seem to be fighting is that it divides books into two camps: the trashy and the worthwhile. No one who is paid to talk about books for a living seems to be able to convey the message that this isn’t how it works, that “good” books can provide every bit as much pleasure as “trashy” ones. [...] Read anything, as long as you can’t wait to pick it up again.”

This is similar to what the NY Times article Dark May Be King, but Milk Chocolate Makes a Move** mentioned from an interview with a chocolatier:

“These pure origins are because we chocolatiers want people to think that chocolate is serious and adult like wine, but underneath it is not,” said Stéphane Bonnat, whose family began making chocolate in 1884. “The first thing we have when we close our eyes and taste must be the pleasure we remember from being 10 years old.” And that pleasure, almost invariably, was from milk chocolate.

I implore you to read the article when you have the time, because as fellow foodies I think we need to be informed. It’s important to learn to embrace the fact that we have choices exactly because everyone has different tastes, and it shouldn’t mean that one taste is superior over the other. It’s food…it’s there to be enjoyed! You might not like it, I might not like it — does that mean it’s bad? Who’s to say what the other person should like? That said, dark chocolate is not the end all and be all.

If you think milk chocolate tastes and costs ‘cheap’, you need to expand your horizons and check out your gourmet shops. You’d be surprised at the quality and range of prices for all sorts of chocolates. One of my favorites is the Green & Black’s with 34% chocolate — smooth as silk, and it has a nice sweetness to it that is not overpowering.

I love it when people take pleasure in their food because it brings them joy, and not just because it’s the hottest trend in town or the coolest thing to be seen eating. Let’s eat for our own pleasures and be merry. Cheers and Happy Friday!

** Thank you for pointing out this article.

Poll Time!

There’s an article in the March 2008 Bon Appetit issue entitled, “Eat Your Broccoli!” that sums up what I think about the new vegetable fad of pureeing vegetables [which looked like multicolored vomit to me in Seinfeld's book] that children don’t want to eat and sneaking them into food they like:

“…if you feed children vegetables hidden in macaroni and cheese, they will grow up learning to eat macaroni and cheese but not vegetables. It teaches them nothing about the pleasure of vegetables, nor does it celebrate the beauty and magic of nature. It teaches them nothing except, perhaps, to be distrustful of food because cooks sneak things into it or be distrustful of parents because they are deceptive.“

I’m reminded of my own childhood, my erratic and picky eating, and my dodgy relationship with vegetables. I still remember the times when my mom tried to make me eat okra and I tried so hard not to gag. My family and our helpers also tried to feed me bitter gourd — a healthy, but unbelievably bitter wrinkly vegetable — with no success.

But wait! It wasn’t all whining. I had favorites that I fondly remember and still enjoy: vegetable chop suey, steamed and buttered snow peas with carrots, bottle gourd, mung bean soup, green beans, lima beans, Chinese cabbage, and a whole lot more. My parents, my grandparents, and our helpers tried their very best to feed me vegetables, Ms. Picky and Appetite-Challenged. I am grateful that they’ve made the effort and practiced utmost patience, without being sneaky or deceptive: “You’re gonna eat it and your gonna love it!” I wouldn’t be enjoying a wide variety of foods today if it wasn’t for them.

For parents who are having a hard time getting their children to eat their veggies, Mark Kurlansky suggests a few things:

• Introduce them to gardening. Children love to eat things they grow.
• Learn from the Chinese cooking’s balancing of all flavors. Bitterness is balanced by sweet or salty, which you can achieve by something like soy sauce.
• Some children have a genetic repulsion to bitterness. Try incorporating tubers, which are usually sweet, with bitter greens.
• Try more sauteing because it makes vegetables less bitter.

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