Noelle likes Good Food

I love international grocery stores. Tasting new ingredients and new foods is an exhilarating experience for me, and one of the best places to do that is in an international market. I went to Super-H Mart (an asian supermarket in Buford) yesterday to stock up on some rice and other essentials like siracha, fish sauce, and rice noodles. If you have never shopped at an Asian, Mexican, or International Market you are missing out. They have all kinds of interesting things to look at, and most everything is translated so you know what it is. The store I went to yesterday were giving out samples like they do in warehouse stores like Costco or Sams. Except the items they were putting out were not typical Sams fare. They were sampling salted mackeral, furikake, and wasabi rice puffs.  Whenever I go to these kinds of places I always try to pick up at least one thing I am not familiar with to try and expand my culinary repertoire. I found many things yesterday that I am very excited to exp...

A part of this blog is about working towards a more environmentally responsible lifestyle. My contributions are small, but I like to think that they do make a difference. I don't keep disposable plates, ziplocs, or silverware in my house, I wash my hair with baking soda (more on that later), I compost, I clean with biodegradable non-toxic cleaners, etc. I am always looking for new ideas of things that I can implement in my life right now without needing to get a new grey water system or solar panels installed. Though, those would be pretty stinkin' cool. I am all for the self-sustainable lifestyle. Today our topic is paper towels. Have you noticed how the Select-A-Size paper towels are more expensive? Many people justify it's expense by reasoning that the paper towels will last longer when you use smaller pieces. I agree, and it was a very smart marketing move. I definitely feel wasteful when I have to use a whole paper towel to soak up the extra grease from my husband...

I have had a bag of cranberries sitting in the freezer for a few months now. I bought them because they were featured in a big thanksgiving display in my local grocery store. You know I couldn't resist, thinking of many tasty and seasonal possibilities. But after I brought them home, inspiration never quite struck, and they stayed tucked away in my freezer. This morning I was thinking about how much I love craisins, but I don't like how they are loaded with sugar. It got me to wondering if I could make them myself.  I figured why not? I really don't have anything to lose. Consequently, I dumped my cranberries onto a toaster pan and added 1 Tablespoon of coconut oil. I turned my toaster oven to 300F and baked the cranberries for about 2 hours. Between the first half hour to hour they started popping. I guess that is normal so don't be alarmed. As far as I can tell nothing exploded onto the toaster.  Here is a picture of the finished product. They turned out great, h...

Today is our third snow day in Homer, GA. School has been cancelled for both Chris and I for three days and we have enjoyed our time immensely.   Monday we went over to a friends house and played in the snow, ate chili, and made snow ice cream. Last night we had friends over to our house for dinner. My parents got me a really cool pasta maker for Christmas and I have been itching to use it. We decided to make ravioli from scratch!  Here we are making the dough, cutting veggies for salad, and grating cheese. My significant other is the one in the middle. He is pretty cute, huh. :) We divided the dough into quarters and rolled it out just a bit to get it flat. Then we rolled it through the pasta machine on its largest setting. Each time we rolled it through we set it a size smaller until it was as thin as we wanted. We set it on a floured surface so it wouldn't stick while we rolled out the rest. Our friend Clint is on the left holding the rolled pasta. John is m...

Today is Saturday. A special day where Chris and I are home together with nothing to do. I love days like today. I thought long and hard about something tasty that I could make for breakfast this morning. I  don't know if anyone else does this. But I happen to think about food quite frequently. Also, more often than not,  I waste much time looking around the world wide web for ideas and inspiration. I guess you could say I like good food and good food sometimes takes some brain percolation. I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate butternut squash and of course make it dairy, gluten, and sugar free.  I wanted to experiment a little and decided I would make pancakes with grated butternut squash, chai infused coconut milk, and brown rice and millet flour. I peeled and grated the squash, I gently warmed coconut milk on the stove and then set the chai tea bags in the to steep, I ground the flours fresh, I whipped up 2 egg whites separately to give the batter more fl...

Well folks, I wrote a post about salsa roja yesterday. Somehow the text got erased simultaneously as I pushed the publish post button. Resulting in, what I imagine, was a very boring read. I sincerely apologize. However, I still want you to know about this amazing red salsa. So I will try again. It is fresh, flavorful, bold, vibrant, and spicy. Writing this makes me want to make another batch tomorrow. As you know, I have a thing for sauces and spice. You really can't go wrong. Especially when lime juice and cilantro are added to the mix. I googled roasted tomato salsa and found the recipe for Salsa Roja off of the One Particular Kitchen blog. I made two different batches. The first I only put one or two jalapenos in to make it mild for a Christmas Eve party. The other I put in jalapenos, serranos, and red pepper flakes to give it some intense heat for my Mom's christmas present. I am my mother's daughter in many ways, including my love for spicy foods. It was kickin...

 First of all, I want to give a big shout out to one of my favorite fans. This special lady read about when I broke my hand mixer trying to make all that frosting for those wedding cakes. Right away she sent me an email and said she wanted to get me a new one. It came the day before Christmas and I have made good use of it since. Thank you so very much! Yesterday I attended orientation for college, and I was able to register for all my classes. I will be taking 13 credit hours with four classes and one lab. Tomorrow will be my first official day and I am excited!  With so many changes all at once I feel like a new chapter is opening in my life. I want to be ready for anything that comes and recently I have not been feeling the best. It is not anything terrible, I just know that I am not feeling as good as I can. I think it is because of my eating habits. For someone else this would be great. I mean much of what I have been eating has been home baked with fresh ground whole...

Happy New Year! I can't believe it is already 2011. This new year will bring many great opportunities. I will be starting college in 2 days. I will be taking a weekly ballet class starting next week. I am going to get certified to teach Zumba next weekend. I will also be starting a new job next week. It will be a year of learning and growing and more than likely a lot of change. But that's what life is about, right?  To bring in the New Year we had some good friends of ours come over. Whenever I am going to have people over I have the hardest time coming up with a menu. I tend to over think and over stress trying to come up with something everyone will like. I had been going back and forth for awhile, and ultimately one of my Christmas presents made the decision for me.  My dearest husband gave me a wok. He did his research and got a flat bottomed one because of our electric range. It is hand hammered, and he even watched a youtube video on how to season it and did that for...