My ultimate comfort food is tuna noodle casserole. It has been a favorite of my mom's and mine for as long as I can remember. She makes it for dinner sometimes and we eat it warm, then we finish the cold leftovers for breakfast the next morning.

My mom never actually wrote down a recipe for it because she usually uses what she has around the kitchen and doesn't measure anything out, as she does for many things she makes. Most tuna and noodle recipes also involve baking time in the oven, but we eliminated that step throughout the years because we were ready to eat as soon as the stovetop heating was done.

Here is the basic recipe for my mom's tuna and noodles:

Add cream of mushroom soup and milk to cooked egg noodles on stovetop. Stir in onion, cheddar cheese, tuna, and peas. Turn heat to low and add curry, thyme, cumin, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. As soon as everything is heated through, it is ready to eat.

I made this as a late night snack, and shared it with members of my FYS. Only after finishing his serving did one of the guys tell me mushrooms make him sick, though. So although he enjoyed the treat, he was regretting his choice later, and I felt bad. Sorry Ross!

Delicious On The Whole

I was a tad skeptical about how much I would enjoy my trip to Whole Foods. I thought that all I would see was expensive food and stuck up employees. Man was I surprised!! Don't get me wrong, the food was still fairly expensive, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The employees though, those guys were awesome. They all really knew what they were talking about and were super friendly about sharing that info. (as well as some of their food)

While some of the group went throughout the store looking for stuff on the shelves, Luc, Ross, and I all took the easy way out and went back to the BBQ bar for some lunch. I got the pulled pork and mac and cheese (as both of my sides) haha. I got a mug of root beer too; draft, straight out of a keg into a frosty mug. It was all fantastic! I don't think I've ever had BBQ or root beer that good! The mac and cheese could have been a little better though. But all in all, it was a fantastic field trip. Yay college! hahaha

All I wanted was a peach

After all of the reading we had been doing recently for our FYS, I was skeptical about just how “whole” Whole Foods would actually be. While the fruits were for the most part imported from California or from out of state, the ethics that went into all of the foods sold at Whole Foods were a pleasing contrast to some of the twisted ethics that Michael Pollan portrays in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Between the many rankings that the meat department employed and the wealth of knowledge that the employees were so willing to share, I felt that Whole Foods had worked very hard to develop a way for people to both buy and come to understand their food.

The openness of the many departments was what impressed me most, such as the way the meat butchers could identify each of the cuts, and where the meat of that cut had come from. That kind of transparency reminded me of Joel Salatin, and his belief that the food industry, in an ideal world, would be without walls, letting the customers peek behind the curtain, which is what our tour at Whole Foods let us do.

Whole Foods Adventure!

For our class field trip we went to Whole Foods in downtown Austin. There was a tour that I was slightly late for so I missed the produce department. :( I missed the display of guacamole that I could of admired with Virginia and Grace. I caught up to our FYS and "John" our tour guide when he started introducing us to their green college and the program it has. When John talked to us about fish and chicken that's farm raised he would tell us about their vegetarian diet. At first thought, this seems like a properly healthy diet, however after reading Michael Pollan's book, the Omnivore's Dilemma, it gave me a differed opinion about food. Especially a very common grain known as corn. It was brought to our conversation what kind of vegetarian diet was fed to the poultry and fish sold at Whole Foods, however John could not confidently answer, and we suspected that perhaps corn was part of the combination of "vegetables" in their diet.

Omg, we had barbecue and it was delicious! I propose that our FYS go out for barbecue at Franklin's. Lucas, what's a good time for you?

In the end I tried out several sugarless drinks sweetened with fruit juice, gelato, some chips and a variety of salsas, cheese, bread, and this mozzarella pasta. The mozzarella pasta was quite interesting and Antonio ended up getting it for his dinner. The pasta guy was nice, like our taco guy at school.

After spending three weeks at school I really missed rice so I got Unagi with Bok Choy and Rice. I paired it with a bottle of peach sweet tea. It was the perfect combination of the comforts of home food with the influence of school. ;)

Whole Foods

As the end of the Whole Foods tour approached, dinner plans had already been made. Virginia and I combined our money to purchase chips and guacamole, made from the avocados removed from the shelves as they become less fresh.

We chose the guacamole that weighed the least, therefore costing less. Then we made a beeline for the chip aisle, where we chose the cheapest tortilla chips on the shelf. Making our way to the check out, we knew we were the first ones to choose and purchase our food.

With our spare time, we sat at a table by the front window of the store and ate our guacamole and chips while people-watching. Soon enough, though, we finished our "meal" and decided we needed a sweet dessert. We headed back into the store and browsed the chocolates, cupcakes, and baked goods, finally deciding on a slice of Black Magic chocolate cake to share.

While the cake was delicious and completely satisfying, we found it ironic that Virginia and I managed to choose probably some of the least healthy items offered at Whole Foods. When we make a return visit, we might try to find something a little more wholesome, but on this trip, guacamole and chocolate cake were calling our names.

Being Unhealthy at Whole Foods

Grace and I strategically decided to combine each of our 5 dollar bills to buy dinner. Earlier when we were on the tour, Grace spied a sign that said "Fresh Guacamole" in the produce department. We bought some one dollar tortilla chips and went back to the produce department for the guacamole. Our total bill added up to about 6 dollars. We sat at a table by the window and happily enjoyed our chips and guacamole while people watching.
After we ate all of the chips and guacamole, we were still hungry. We had four dollars leftover to spend, so we went in search of something sweet for dessert. We saw a sign for "Black Magic Chocolate Cake" and could not resist.
A slice of the cake ended up being only 3 dollars so we actually ended up being under our budget. Grace and I split the piece of cake and it was delicious. Several of the people from our FYS actually tried to steal the cake from us.
After leaving Whole Foods, Grace and I joked about how we had gone to Whole Foods and probably eaten some of the most unhealthy food that the store sells.

Food as a Whole

I had never been to whole foods before and going with the FYS group made the trip that much better. I knew of it but didn’t really pay much attention to it. The food was great and the fact that we got so many free samples was a great touch. The store is much bigger than I expected and the fact that they give back to the environment and others is great. When I heard whole foods I thought of this very expensive luxurious store that didn’t really care about anything else but making money. The cost of their food does seem a little high for a family of 4 or 5 to be able to shop solely from there but overall you can tell there is god quality. Even though they said that they give back to the environment and to the different organizations it still makes me wonder how much they’re really giving back compared to how much they make.
As for the $5 we were given, Nick and I split some Sushi! It was delicious and didn’t leave me regretting my food choices, as some other sushi had done. Although it didn’t seem like it had been made in that instance I enjoyed a tasty lunch. Overall it was an informative and fun experience and I will probably go back for some sushi.

Making No-Bake Cookies!!!!

For my first "at home" food item, I "baked" no-bake cookies. It was a seemingly simple recipe my mom received when she was a blue bird, which is practically the equivalent to girl scouts. The actual cookies take about 10 minutes to make, but the preparation is very time-intensive if you are a health freak. I decided to use "all-natural," "organic," and vegan ingredients in order to see what it would be like to have to worry about and search for products like these all the time when baking or cooking. The ingredients included: Organic Unsweetened Almond Milk, Organic Quick Oats, Fair Trade Turbinado Raw Cane Sugar, Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks (79% vegetable oil spread?), Valhrona Cocoa Powder (organic), and peanut butter only containing crushed and ground peanuts. The peanut butter has to be ground by the buyer in a machine, there is no way to just pick it off the shelf. The ingredients came from three different stores: Kroger, Whole Foods, and Central Market. I was most interested in two of the ingredients I used...the "vegan butter" and almond milk. In the vegan butter was "Expeller-pressed natural oil blend (soybean, palm fruit, canola oil, and olive oil), filtered water, pure salt, natural flavor (DERIVED FROM CORN, no MSG, no alcohol, no gluten), soy protein, soy lecithin, lactic acid (non-dairy, derived from sugar beets), colored with beta-carotene from natural sources. Contains soy." Of course it has corn, since we learned from Pollan that almost everything we eat or touch is made of some form of corn because of its excess. I actually tried the almond milk because I was curious if it tasted like milk, and I was surprised of the flavor. It has the same texture as milk, but with a much stronger "almondy" flavor, of course.It was very tasty, I would definitely drink it just because it tastes good. Well I decided that before I found out the ingredients in the almond milk. The ingredients in the almond milk are a lot more sketchy than those in the vegan butter, surprisingly. It contains: "Organic almondmilk (filtered water, organic almonds), tricalcium phosphate, sea salt, xanthan gum, potassium citrate, sunflower lecithin, vitamin a palmitate, ergocalciferol (vitamin d2), di-alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin e)." I don't know what half of those words are, which scares me. I looked up xanthan gum and found that it is a bacteria used as a food thickening agent or a stabilizer in products like make up. It doesn't sound very appetizing or healthy. Why would I want to eat the same thing that is used for make up and who knows what else? In conclusion, no matter how much I had to search for these ingredients I had a lot of fun making the cookies, and they turned out to be very yummy!!

~Lauren Boone~