Sunday, January 5, 2014

Sweet potato apple stew and practice being European.

Today I took Live-Laugh-Eat's "Apple Stoup" Recipe and turned it into my own apple stew. We had the perfect weather for it - crazy things are happening out there!


You can refer to her website for the full exact recipe but I will do a quick run-through of it all here :)

First you start by chopping all of the veggies - onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and apple (I know this is a fruit not a veggie). If you have old rotting or mealy apples, this is a good use for them because they get cooked anyways. Dice all those veggies up!

While this was happening, I had some sweet potatoes cooking, which I later mashed into my own puree. So odd-loooking, but so delicious!

Dump all those veggies into a pot to simmer with some vegetable or chicken stock!

Then you get to puree it - the fun part. I wanted my stew to have more of a thick consistency, so I pureed it enough to give it a thick texture but left some apple and veggies chunks in there. Afterwards, I added some quick-cook faro (her recipe calls for barley but we like faro!) and let it simmer for another 15 minutes to let it turn into a nice, thick stew. 

Serve it up! I made some toast out of a nice, thick sourdough for my parents. I skipped the bread and added my beloved kale on the side. The results=super yum. 

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Today after I ran for 30-minutes in the balmy (36-degree) weather, I rehydrated with some... CHOCOLATE ALMOND MILK. Dairy has been rough on my digestive system lately and this is the best replacement I've found YET. Just a tad thinner-seeming than my favorite 1% Chocolate Milk and just as delicious. I hope they have this in Europe, seriously. 

I also tried some coconut water, which I did not love as much.


Early this afternoon I made the 30-minute drive to go visit one of my sweetest friends from college - convenient that she lives so close! 

She took me to Giant Eagle's "Market District" which is a super-fancy grocery store... sort of like Whole Foods!


She specifically wanted me to try the gelato... and even though I JUST mentioned my dairy-aversion above I still caved and tried some. Luckily they serve it in very tiny cups so it was really just a taste - and SO worth it.

I told her I hope I go to some gelato places similar to this when I visit Italy in the next few months! She said this was probably good practice for that :)

I tried some of the sea-salt caramel! 

Wrapping up the evening with some books and some clean-up from the stew. Happy hibernating, everyone!













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