tahini

I could not talk myself into waking up early for the gym this morning, but I did talk myself into a 15 minute walk with Olive and a big bowl of banana oatmeal/ oatbran with walnuts, chia seeds, and better n pb.

So hearty and tasty. The perfect breakfast to start a week off right. Work wasn’t too crazy for a Monday morning but I was busy so by the time I knew it, it was lunch time. The marketing team goes out to lunch one day every month and today was that day. We decided to head over to Carytown Sushi (no website). I ordered the Sashimi Lunch Special which came with miso soup, ginger salad and a spicy tuna roll.

The soup was overly salty and the salad was way overdressed. I ended up scooping off a majority of the dressing.

The plating was pretty but I wasn’t at all impressed with the sushi. the sashimi slices were a bit too large for me to pick up easily with chop sticks, the spicy tuna roll came with tempura (which wasn’t announced on the menu or by our server), and the wasabi wasn’t hot. Wasabi is usually always fresh and more potent at sushi restaurants- not so at Carytown Sushi. Just for fun I piled one piece of my roll high with wasabi- not even the slightest tingle occurred in my nose. I was bummed. I ate three pieces of the sashimi (one of each variety) and it was okay, definitely not the best sashimi I’ve ever had and I really wish the slices would have been sliced thinner. The 6 pieces of the spicy tuna roll I liked, but I wasn’t thrilled they included the tempura without asking. Overall, I wasn’t very satisfied with my lunch so I snacked quite a bit this afternoon at the office. I had some grapes, a banana, and some pretzels.

Tonight for dinner I had a big fresh salad with baby romaine lettuce, tomato, green pepper, avocado, and dressing.

I tried a new to me dressing:

I’ve liked all the Annie’s Dressings I’ve tried. I even like the knock offs, like Trader Joe’s Goddess Dressing (I actually like this better than Annie’s). I figured that the honey mustard vinaigrette would be a good change of pace so I picked this bottle up last night at K-Roger aka Kroger. Honey mustard used to be my all time favorite salad dressing, then I sort of got tried of it and switched to other flavors, made my own, or had naked salads with no dressing. Let’s just say that this dressing brought back my love for honey mustard! It’s sweet and not too mustardy or thick- in my opinion, it’s perfect. If you like honest mustard, give it shot.

I also had some leftovers from the recipe fiasco that occurred last night. It was way better after having a long cold bath last night. Sans the tahini overload the soba noodles and spicy tahini sauce was pretty good.

I updated my last post to add that the cookbook did indeed have a misprint, Andrea wasn’t trying to give her readers a heart attack, the amount of tahini should have been 1/3 of a cup instead of 1 full cup!!! Good to know.

I’m off to play with Olive then heading to the gym to do Go Hard Core: 5 Ab Exercises for a Faster Run. Catch up with you all lata.

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Update: I emailed Andrea Beaman from her website and she replied today with a very kind message-

Hi Brittany – I hope you had a fun weekend. So sorry about the typo. Ugh! Yes… I checked the book it is certainly a typo! Thanks for letting me know. It should be 1/3 cup tahini.

I uploaded the change and it should be fixed for the next round of books that the printing company sends me.

Do you have a copy of my first book? I’d like to send you a copy as a thanks.

I’m just happy to know that the recipe really wasn’t suppose to turn out like that – hopefully my misfortune will help it from happening to someone else!

——-

Remember how in my last post I was emphasizing how great Andrea Beaman’s book, The Whole Truth is? Well, I guess it’s Murphy’s Law or something, but I went to try a new recipe from it last night and unfortunately it didn’t turn out so well. And that’s putting it lightly. On the way home from the wedding I found a recipe for Soba Noodles and Spicy Sesame Sauce that I was dying to try.

I went to two grocery stores because the first one didn’t have baked tofu. I hit up Ellwood’s for some locally produced, freshly baked oven “fried” tofu (the same tofu that is in the “bomb” goddess tofu wrap!!) and a jar of tahini. I had never used tahini or soba noodles before so I was stoked to try this recipe. Everything was going well – I cooked the buckwheat soba noodles, cut up the tofu and chopped the scallions. Everything is looking pretty right?

Well, everything was except for that huge blob of spicy tahini sauce. When preparing the sauce I followed the recipe exactly using 1 cup of tahini, 1/4 cup shoyu, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup water, hot sesame oil and some other spicy ingredients. Like I mentioned, this was my first time using tahini so I no idea that 1 cup of tahini is A LOT to be putting in a sauce.

Here’s the finished product all mixed together.

You can’t tell from this picture the extent of it, but the noodles and tofu were literally drenched in the thick sauce. I took one bite and knew something had to be wrong. I let Isaac try it and at first he was being nice and said it was just okay, then he fessed up and said the dish was so rich it felt might give someone a heart attack. I had a few more bites and then I started to get really frustrated and disappointed. I wouldn’t have been so upset if it were a random recipe I was trying to create on my own, but when I follow a recipe to a T from a cookbook, I expect it to come out right. I had been so excited to try this recipe and I had put a lot time and money into making it and then it turned out horribly and almost completely inedible. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good feeling.

After researching and looking at the nutrients in tahini I realized that it would be really odd for a Better Food, Better Health recipe to call for 1 full cup of tahini, even if the dish does serve 6. I found other noodle dishes with sesame sauces on Andrea’s website and none called for over 3-4 tablespoons of tahini.I immediately starting searching online for recipe recalls, but I couldn’t find any. Perhaps the 1 cup of tahini was a misprint? I would be completely shocked if not, because I honestly don’t think anyone could actually eat more than 2 bites of this dish without getting a stomach ache.

I really couldn’t believe the recipe turned out like that, because every recipe I’ve tried before from The Whole Truth was been great. The fact that I had just written about how awesome the book was kind of fueled my fire. I was so upset that ended up emailing Andrea, asking if there was a misprint that she knew of. Hopefully I’ll hear back soon and if so, I’ll be sure to keep you all posted.

I was so frustrated at this point, I wanted to just throw the whole batch in the trash. I hate wasting food so I just put the noodles in a colander and rinsed it with cold water until at least 3/4 of the sauce was rinsed off. The residual sauce turned out to be much thinner than before and hopefully more palatable. I guess we will see when I face the leftovers at some point this week.

Here’s the watered down version.

I was sulking for the majority of the night over the recipe fiasco, but Isaac did a good job of cheering me up. Some banana soft serve with walnuts and chocolate chips helped as well.

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you used a cookbook recipe and it turned out awful? This makes me wonder how often misprints happen.

So that was the bad news, however I do have some good news, I leave for VACATION this Friday!!!! I’m going to Grand Cayman Islands with a friend from high school (and college for that matter). I literally can not wait!

Happy Monday Everyone.