Jenna Food, Jenna Time

Hi everyone!

First, some housekeeping:

• Love reading all your entries for the free Summit ticket!! I will be randomly choosing the winner at 10 pm EST tonight and will announce the winner in my breakfast post tomorrow. I got my plane tickets this morning!!!!!!! Ahhhh so excited!!!!!!!!!!!

• If you didn’t get a chance to listen to my podcast, you can do so here.

• My story on how I quit drinking coffee is now live on True/Slant. Check it out to read about my journey and how I did it for good (and I’ve never felt better!)!!!

• Tomorrow is the LAST DAY to order Amazing Meal with the 40% discount!!! Unfortunately they are still out of the chocolate flavor but they DO have the original and pom mango (which apparently is their best seller!) available.

This afternoon I was quite hungry since my lunch was on the light side (lol) so I noshed on one of my homemade chocolate peanut butter granola bars and some grapies:

The bar was SO GOOD. I sent Ryan to work with one this morning and he loved it! Of course Ryan’s favorite combo in the world is chocolate peanut butter so these were right up his ally. I modified Angela’s recipe because I didn’t have all the necessary ingredients on hand. The result was nothing short of fabulous!

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup all natural peanut or almond butter

1.5 cups rolled oats

1/4 cup ground flax

pinch of sea salt

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut

1/4 cup hemp seeds

2 tsp vanilla extract

1.5 tsp cinnamon

a big handful dark chocolate chips!

Heat the honey + pb on the stove until it starts to simmer. Turn off heat and pour over remaining ingredients (the chocolate will melt and it will just be amazing). Mix well with your hands and pat into a greased square baking dish. Wet your hands and pat down to get the surface totally smooth without sticky hands. Chill in freezer for 20 minutes. Cut into 10 bars. ~200 kcals, 13 grams of fat and 6 grams of protein per bar.

For dinner I made a classic Jenna meal:

Cool slippery soba noodles, spicy peanut sauce and crisp veggies all in a big bowl for slurpin’. I’m a huge sucker for thai peanut sauces and this one is delicious. For my peanut sauces I like the true flavor to obviously be peanut butter, so I use a lot here and then sharpen it a bit with hot pepper flakes and tie it all together with a little sweetness in the ketchup. Just make sure you use all natural ketchup to avoid icky high fructose corn syrup! If you make this meal in advance, a trick is to drizzle a little toasted sesame seed oil in the noodles after you have cooked and rinsed them. This helps them to not stick together and dry out. Wait until serving to toss with the veggies and sauce so it will be the freshest possible!

Soba Noodles with Spicy Peanut Sauce, Kale and Cucumber

serves 3-4

1 box soba noodles

about 6 pieces kale

1/2 cucumber

1/3 cup all natural peanut butter

1 tbsp tamari

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1/4th tsp garlic powder

pinch of sea salt

1 garlic clove

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled

1/2 tsp (or to taste) red pepper flakes

2 tbsp all natural ketchup

squirt of honey or agave to taste

1/3-1/2 cup very warm water

First make the sauce. In a food processor, blender or Vita Mix, blend together the peanut butter, tamari, rice wine vinegar, garlic powder, sea salt, garlic clove, fresh ginger (just throw the whole nob in there), red pepper flakes, ketchup and half of the warm water. Blend on high until all is combined and then keep on adding a little more water at a time to thin it out to a desirable and runny consistency. Pour sauce in small bowl and set aside.

Cook the pasta in boiling salted water, drain and rinse under cold water. Peel the cucumber and slice into matchstick thin pieces. Roll up the kale and chiffonade into whisper-thin slices.

To serve, put a serving of cold soba in a bowl, top with about two tablespoons of sauce and a handful of both kale and cucumber.

It was absolutely delicious! And I’m psyched because I have leftovers in the fridge (Ryan ate at a meeting after work)

Folks, THIS is the book that determined my entire career. I was so infatuated by it and by Amanda Hesser, whom I adore, that I decided then and there (this was years ago) that I, too, would make a living writing about food. It twas my destiny!! This is my third time reading it–I can’t help myself

Dessert was pretty awesome if I do say so myself—

Yes, I totally baked homemade vegan spelt chocolate chip cookies after dinner I enjoyed every single crumb of not just one, but TWO of them! I have been craving hot, gooey chocolate chip cookies all week (umm hormones?) and I finally got my fix. I’m still working out some tweaks in the recipe though so unfortunately, despite multitudes of food porn, I cannot give you the recipe tonight. I’m going to try again next week with a different proportion of wet to dry sweetener to try to make these even BETTER than they were tonight and then I shall share! Yummy.

Bowls of Hope (yes, please!):

Post Foods (the guys that make Shredded Wheat) has partnered with Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger relief charity to help supply a well balanced breakfast to struggling Americans. Now, for every purchase of Post Shredded Wheat, Post will donate one bowl of cereal to Feeding America. How crazy cool is that?!

Tagged as: chocolate, dessert, Dinner, musings, Snack