Coconut clears the sinuses.

 

 

During the last winter I had a friend who would whip up a batch of Tom Ka Gai soup when there were several feet of snow outside.  The slightly spicy, Thai coconut chicken soup hit the spot especially if you were not feeling 100%.   I felt like I got ran over with a truck carrying several infectious diseases last week and I could think of nothing else.

The soup itself is rather simple.  A basic version could be made with chicken broth, coconut milk, lime, cilantro, and little else.  Being sick I was entirely too lazy to get near any of that.  I headed into Wegman’s to grab whatever looked decent enough to my sick head to eat.  In the soup aisle I discovered that they had a Wegman’s brand pre made boxed Thai chicken stock.  Reading the label I saw that it contained everything that I would have added to the soup.  Lemongrass, lime, chili, and ginger all showed up on the ingredients. Being sick, wanting the soup and most importantly wanting to become one with the couch made me give it a try.

I used a box of the Thai broth along with a can of coconut milk to make the base.  I added in some chicken, mushrooms, lime juice and fresh cilantro and called it a day.   I dumped in some rice noodles near the end.

Of course making this from scratch would have been better, but for whipping up the entire meal in ten minutes or less I would say this was a huge success.  It is good to know that you can keep that broth in your back pocket when you don’t feel like making anything from scratch or you can’t find all of your ingredients.     Turns out that fresh lemongrass isn’t always something easy to come by.

xoxo

Mia

Hand in the Cookie Jar

 

Summer Sundays are super indulgent for me. They usually include some lazing around, a delicious dinner, sinful dessert, a good friend, and of course True Blood.

 

The lazing around portion of my day seems to interfere in the obtaining of the sinful dessert from a bakery. This week I took a shot and drove to a nearby bakery that I have driven past for the better part of my life but never stopped in. The Cookie Jar is located right off Main Street in Woodbridge, NJ. Turns out they are open till 7 pm on Sundays. That alone pretty much secures a chunk of my weekly paycheck.

 

This time around I ordered one of every type of cupcake they had at the moment. Thankfully that was only six. After the post True Blood squeal-fest, my friend and I peeled back the papers, grabbed some forks, and lazy-susaned the dish as we dove in.

 

The first was a good old fashioned yellow cupcake with butter cream icing. While not remarkable it was tasty. The cake was moist enough and had a nice texture. The icing wasn’t overly sweet and incredibly fluffy. I think I would like that icing on a cake that was a lot more flavorful.

 

After that we dove into a classic chocolate with chocolate mousse icing cupcake. Here again the cake itself was good but nothing all too special. The mousse stole the show. Nowhere near a semisweet flavor, but yet more chocolatey than sugary. The bakery seems to lean in the direction of light and airy icings. Which is my favorite, so that works out for us.

 

It is pretty much all downhill from here.

 

Next was the oh so yummy looking turtle flavor. I seem to remember that turtles are suppose to have caramel somewhere in there. This was more like a plain chocolate cupcake with some sort of indeterminable icing topped with walnuts and a chocolate drizzle. Walnuts? Those should be pecans. I was pretty disappointed because it sure looked yummy.

 

I am a huge fan of anything you can slather cream cheese icing on. Anything. Try it. I am pretty sure I would devour an eraser if it had a thick enough layer. That is honestly the only reason why I go near red velvet cake. I just don’t see the fascination. Imagine how much I wanted to cry when I discovered that they clearly forgot the cream cheese in their icing! This tasted like some sort of bastardized royal icing. Honestly I am not sure exactly what it was suppose to be, but cream cheese it was not.

 

Ditto to the carrot cake. The cake however redeemed them. It held no resemblance to carrot cake but if we called it a nice nut cake light on the spice, it would be a hit. The cake itself was moist but not oily. The nuts were so finely chopped that they added only a tiny crunch in your bite.

 

The strawberry shortcake cupcake was their special of the day / week / whatever. Same plain vanilla cake with syrupy strawberries in the middle and topped with a stiff vanilla icing. My Daddy taught me that sometimes is better to say nothing at all.

 

Would I go to this bakery again? Well, they keep really good hours so yes. The inside was impeccably clean and the girls behind the counter were very friendly. Would I go there if there were other choices open at the time I drag my behind out of the house? I don’t know. Everything was fine. It was okay. Nothing was really bad, just not that great. I want to try some of their other items first. It looked like they had some things that leaned in the specialty direction. Maybe they keep their cupcakes simple. That seven layer mango cake was begging for me to buy it.

 

xoxo

Mia