Food, Spirituality

How Instagram helped me develop a joyful attitude toward fasting

Today is the first day of the Bahá’í month of fasting. The Bahá’í calendar is so awesome that it really deserves its own blog post, so I shall provide only a brief explanation here. The Bahá’í calendar consists of 19 months, with the final month spent fasting. During the fast, Bahá’ís abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, making the arrival of the new year even more joyous.

This is my 11th year fasting, which is hard even for me to believe. The first year, I worried about everything. Then, after that, I found a breakfast that worked for me and ate it every day of the fast. That was typically oatmeal, Greek yogurt with berries, a hard-boiled egg, and half an apple sliced with peanut butter. It didn’t seem like a big deal to eat the same thing every day because, at that time, I ate the same thing every day for breakfast anyway: oatmeal in the winter and Greek yogurt in the summer.

But when you really love food, having only one meal that varies for three weeks gets a bit dull. So, in 2015, I decided to do things a little bit differently.

Continue reading “How Instagram helped me develop a joyful attitude toward fasting”

Baking, Food

I made dacquoise, and it was amazing.

A few weeks ago, as I was standing in the checkout line with my groceries, I spotted a special issue of Cook’s Illustrated in the magazine stands: Cook’s Illustrated Make-Ahead Desserts. I put it in my basket immediately, further thought not required. I eagerly poured through each page when I got back home, delighted by everything I saw, but there was one recipe in particular that captured my attention.

Continue reading “I made dacquoise, and it was amazing.”

Food

Learning to eat out as a vegetarian

At the very end of last year, I decided to try being a vegetarian. I love going to restaurants, so one of the the things I was nervous about when I began this experiment was how I would be able to make that work after cutting out meat.

It’s been almost a year now, and I’ve learned a lot! Here are a few tips based on my experiences with this (as well as a few links to the Atlanta restaurants where I’ve tried out these techniques).

Continue reading “Learning to eat out as a vegetarian”

Baking, Food

macaron balls

I’m obsessed with the idea of making perfect macarons, but at this point, they’re still always a gamble for me. For example, I spent much of today making macarons for a party.

Macarons really should not take that long to make , but I’m still getting the hang of it. It was a new recipe for me, using an Italian meringue instead of French. The Italian meringue requires boiling sugar and water together and then adding that to the egg whites, and I had to throw away my first attempt entirely when the sugar turned into caramel. I think I will stick to French meringue in the future.

Continue reading “macaron balls”