Honey Wheat Bread

I baked a loaf of fresh Honey Wheat bread yesterday. I won't post the recipe, as it came from a book, and I don't know the netiquette for posting that kind of recipe. I did add 1 scoop of Honeyville Oat fiber to it to boost the fiber content since it uses bread flour and whole wheat flour. I love using the bread machine to make the dough - it's so easy!

Here is the nice dough ball:


After shaping and ready for the 2nd rise:


After baking! Funny how it rose a little uneven, not sure why. You can see the book I used for the recipe, too.


This bread is wonderfully moist with a tender crumb. John is very excited to try making french toast with it tomorrow. I will be having some with my tuna salad for lunch!

SoyJoy Bars

I thought I would give a SoyJoy bar a try today. They seem pretty innocent, and made from all natural ingredients. I don't always buy it when a company says "all natural" on their labels (ProMax, I'm looking in your direction!!).
However, SoyJoy has soybean powder, sugar, raisins, butter, eggs - pretty much normal ingredients. I was kind of surprised.

It's a tiny thing, though. This is after I took a bite, but I think it is about the size of 1 Twix bar.

It looks like I ate the bar at midnight, but I really ate it right after the package photo above. The difference between flash on (this pic) and daylight (above pic).

The flavor was pretty good. Kind of cake-like, but firmer. A little sweet though. It only has 4 grams of protein for 130 calories, but way better than a 100 cal snack pack, right?
At least in a pinch I know I could grab this if I don't want a 200 calorie Zone bar.

Red Fish Grill in New Orleans

Probably the best meal we had over the weekend. We went for lunch.
We both wanted a poboy or gumbo. Well, the lunch menu had a combo option, so we were all set!

I got the BBQ Shrimp Po-Boy
Crispy fried Louisiana shrimp tossed in a peppery butter sauce. Served on a Leidenheimer po-boy loaf with lettuce, tomatoes and red onion.
The soup was the de jour, which was a shrimp and corn chowder. Excellent.





My sister had BBQ Oyster Po-Boy
Freshly shucked P&J oysters flash fried and tossed in a Crystal BBQ sauce. Served on a Leidenheimer po-boy loaf with red onions, lettuce, tomatoes and housemade blue cheese dressing. Paired with Alligator Sausage & Seafood Gumbo.


For dessert, we preordered the Double Chocolate Bread Pudding
A Red Fish Grill Signature...
Rich dark and semisweet chocolate bread pudding served with white and dark chocolate ganache and chocolate almond bark. It was divine!


The aftermath:

Bean and Bacon Soup

I am slowly venturing into Beanland, since I have found some that I like the taste of. Kidney beans and black beans are definitely out, but small white beans are okay. I decided to make some soup today for lunch. Who knew that you could cook beans super fast in the pressure cooker? I didn't! I will definitely try some more recipes with beans knowing how quick the pressure cooker gets them done.
Anyway, I cooked up 1/2 pound of small white beans with some salt, pepper, and a bay leaf.

I reserved half of those beans in the fridge for another day. For John and I for lunch I put in 1 cup of beans and 2 cups of veggie broth in a saucepan. Added a bit of S&P. Brought to a boil and used a potato masher to smush the beans up.
I then cooked up 2 slices of bacon.
After dividing the soup into 2 bowls, I crumbled 1 slice of bacon into each bowl.
Calories were about 230, 6 grams of fat, 15 grams of protein, 18 (!!!) grams of fiber. I wish the soup was a bit thicker, but either less broth or more beans would probably take care of that.
Quite tasty and pretty easy with the cooked beans.

CC's Coffee house

Anyone who knows me knows that I loves me some coffee!

CC's - or Community Coffee House is a Louisiana chain that started in New Orleans. They have some great coffee and lattes - and about the only healthy food I had all weekend!
A yummy whole wheat bagel, paired with a skim milk latte.

Dragos in the French Quarter

Dragos in New Orleans.
This is a newer location for Dragos into the French Quarter.
They are the home of the charbroiled oysters. That actually didn't seem appealing to me, as I tried oysters once and didn't care for them.
However, my sister likes oysters, so she got some and I tried them.

They were fabulous! You could taste the chargrilling and they had the most wonderful buttery garlic sauce on them, plus parmesan cheese. Soaking up the sauce with the french bread on the side was heaven!

For dinner, I had the
CRESCENT CITY SHRIMP
Large Gulf shrimp seasoned with fresh herbs and spices, served the “New Orleans Way” with French roll and a baked potato.

These were quite spicy instead of regular bbq shrimp, which is more garlicky and buttery. This dish had a ton of blackening seasoning. Quite good. The potato on the side was okay, it was on the edge of it's holding time.

My sister had the Shuckee Duckee
Blackened duck breast over linguini pasta
with oysters and cream sauce.

Cafe du Monde

Back from the trip to New Orleans. What a great time! If you have never been, you must go - it is so much more than Bourbon street.

The very first stop we made was, of course, Cafe du Monde for warm beignets with piles of powdered sugar and cafe au lait. For those that have never had a beignet, they are like a french donut. A cross between a cake and yeast donut. Dense, moist and a bit chewy, but with pockets of air in them, and no hole.