Blog Archives
Smoothie Sunday: Cherry Mango Smoothie
Sometimes I give a lot of thought to my smoothie flavor combinations. Other times the ideas arise mainly from, “I need to use up this fruit before it goes bad.” This smoothie happened to come from the latter category. Luckily it happened to turn out really yummy! It became one of my new favorite smoothies. I realize cherries are kind of a pain in the ass to use in smoothies because you have to remove the pit. If you plan on using them a lot you can buy frozen pitted cherries and use those. If not you’re going to have to bite the bullet and pit fresh ones. I admit this does add a bit of prep time to this smoothie, especially since the mango isn’t super fast to dismantle either. But I think it’s worth it.
What you’ll need
Smoothie Sunday: Carrot Cake Smoothie
Smoothie Sunday is back everyone! After taking the winter off from smoothies, now that the weather has finally turned warm it’s time to go back to smoothies. While starting the brainstorming process for smoothies I decided I wanted to try to work some more veggies into smoothies this year, since I didn’t use any last year except avocado (and even then I believe that’s technically a fruit). One of the first things that came to mind was a carrot cake smoothie. Carrots are a vegetable, but they’re on the sweet side, and carrot cake is definitely sweet, so it would make it seem less like drinking veggies, and more just yummy. While a lot of my smoothie recipes call for yogurt, mostly just to add substance, in this case the yogurt plays a vital flavor role. The vanilla yogurt adds a sweet tang, similar to the cream cheese frosting that normally tops carrots cakes, without as much fat and sugar and whatnot. This smoothie is like eating dessert for breakfast, but it’s good for you!
What you’ll need
Food 101: How to Make Basic Frosting
I am very particular about frosting. I find a lot of frostings to be too sweet and often times are piled on too thick on cakes. Then there’s also the frostings (generally I’ve encountered them on store bought cakes) that don’t have much flavor at all but are weirdly artificial and greasy in texture. No thank you. This means that I pretty much have to make my own frosting if I want it to be to my tastes. Fortunately basic frosting is really easy to make at home. We’ve covered basic icing on the blog before, but while some people using “icing” and “frosting” interchangeably to me they are different things. Icing is more thin and glaze-like, whereas frosting is more thick and fluffy. This is primarily due to the addition of fat in the form of butter. Icing is mostly just sugar and milk, while frosting has sugar, milk, and butter.
This is a good place to mention why making your own frosting is better than using the kind that comes out of a can. While flavor-wise store-bought can frosting isn’t terrible, its ingredients aren’t really great. In order to be shelf-stable it tends to be full of things like hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, preservatives, and artificial flavors and colors. Even if you’re someone who is anti-butter I would think one ingredient you don’t like is better than a whole list of potentially sketchy ingredients.
The Snack Report: S’Mores Oreos
It seems like more and more food companies are joining in on the ‘limited special edition’ bus lately. What once used to be this short exclusive list which included breakfast cereals, ice cream, and a couple restaurant chains, has expanded now to huge proportions. Taco Bell went from a couple recurring menu rotations per year to miraculously managing to pump out limited time menu items on what seems like a bi-monthly basis now, simply by stacking cheese, meat, and tortillas in different orders. Lay’s has been doing the “Do Us A Flavor” with whacky chip varieties every Summer for a few years now. And especially Nabisco, namely with Oreos, has been finding various new ways to inject the longtime standard cookies into your veins under the guise of new ridiculous flavors. We’ve covered quite a few of these on PCFG for better or worse (was red velvet cake really frigging necessary guys?), and lo and behold a new variety has popped up for Summer 2015.
The Snack Report: Entenmann’s French Toast Donuts
I think everyone can agree with Homer Simpson that donuts are great. They’re a breakfast, they’re a dessert, and even just a snack. They’re one of the great “on the go” foods because they’re so easily portable. Unfortunately if you eat too many donuts you’ll end up sharing a waistline with Homer Simpson and not just a food appreciation. I suppose this has been my roundabout way of saying that I’m reviewing donuts this week.
I first saw Entenmann’s French Toast Donuts in the grocery store last week, and since they happened to be on sale I decided I couldn’t pass them up. They sounded too yummy not to try, and obviously I always like things better when they’re on sale. Besides, I’m all for interesting breakfast food mash-ups (we did come up with francakes after all). I could already faintly smell the hints of French toast when I picked up the box, so I was excited to give them a taste. So, how’d they do?
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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