Thai green curry noodle bowl

Thai green curry noodle bowl: lots of sweet, tangy Thai food flavor in a lightened noodle bowl for a quick, healthy weeknight dinner.

Yo, peeps: I'm back.

Sorry for being relatively incommunicado over the busy holiday season. It was extra extra busy for The Ninj because ... brace yourselves ... we moved. Again. To yet another state.

(I know, right?)

After bidding farewell to Kentucky, we are now happily ensconced on Maryland's Eastern Shore. (Job 1: I'm personally judging the crab cakes and shrimp salad sandwiches at every local establishment I can find. I mean, how else will I be able to identify The Best?!)

If you've read any of my previous adventures-in-moving posts, you know there's a lot of stress involved. And living in a house that looks like it's built out of moving boxes. And trips to the dump-I-mean-recycling-center. And inability to locate food photography props.

Luckily for you, that box was recently unearthed, which allowed me to photograph and now share this amazing Thai green curry noodle bowl with you.

Trust me, you are going to want to make this for a weeknight dinner ASAP.

Ginger spiced plum sauce

Spread this easy ginger spiced plum sauce on grilled chicken or pork, turn it into a jammy vinaigrette or swap it for fruit puree when baking.

Yep -- it's happened once again. It isn't even October yet, but every yoga-pants-clad food blogger is waxing poetic about all the pumpkin-spiced things that bring her joy. Except The Ninj. I may be wearing the ubiquitous yoga-pants uniform of the work-from-home writer, but I'm still refusing to talk about pumpkin. I'm still hung up on end-of-summer / beginning-of-fall fruit.

Plums to be exact, which you'll recall featured prominently in my recent fresh plum breakfast cake. Good lordy, y'all, I haven't even gotten started on apples yet, let alone pumpkin!

(And, frankly, when the heck did fall become all about pumpkin of all things? Not apples, not butternut squash, but pumpkin? I blame Starbucks.)

Plus, I realized, much to my chagrin that, given my lack of a real garden this year, I haven't canned or preserved very much. And that, my friends, is more than a little TRAGIC.

The lack of canning and abundance of fresh plums brought me to this ginger spiced plum sauce. ERMERGAHD, this stuff is so heavenly spread on freshly grilled chicken or pork -- just the right amount of earthy spice, tartness and sweetness. Shred the chicken and mix in the plum sauce and you've got the basis for an Asian-inspired taco that will blow your mind.

I have even mixed this plum sauce with a little oil and vinegar to make a jammy vinaigrette for a peppery arugula salad. And I also think it would be lovely baked into some marmalade muffins or my favorite homemade granola.

Ginger pear green smoothie

[ While I been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser, all opinions are mine. Thanks for supporting the brands that support me! #BestLifeProject #CollectiveBias ]

Ginger pear green smoothie: an easy portable power breakfast packed with protein that's also low in calories, gluten free, dairy free, vegan ... and delicious!

Pears are one of my favorite things about fall. I'm less about pumpkin and more about pears. And lately I've been kind of obsessed with the pairing of ginger and pears (pairing pears -- ha ha! -- I didn't even plan that). And it's not just in recipes: I recently went a little cray cray when I found a ginger-pear hand lotion.

So when I was asked to incorporate Vega Essentials shake powder into a recipe, I knew it would be a ginger pear smoothie. (Which only makes sense because you shouldn't eat hand lotion, no matter how awesome it smells.)

I've really gotten into a smoothie groove lately. When you're trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle, smoothies can be so helpful. They make eating a healthy breakfast easy and are a perfect afternoon treat when I'm in the mood for a little snack. Way better for me than answering the siren call of cookies!

Ginger-molasses spice cookies (copycat Ivins' Spice Wafers)

Super crunchy ginger and molasses spice cookies are the yummier cousin of a gingersnap -- and a copycat recipe of Philadelphia's Ivins' Famous Spiced Wafers.

So you probably know by now that Mr. Ninj and I recently moved from Vermont to Kentucky (yes, it was a big move). What you might not know is that we originally thought we were moving to Pennsylvania (don't ask, long story) -- specifically, the western suburbs of Philadelphia. Yeah, not exactly Kentucky.

To that end, we started to spend a bit of time in the Philadelphia area, looking for potential places to live. During one visit, I went into a local grocery store chain and was confronted by a wall -- literally a WALL -- of orange and black boxes of cookies.

What the ... ?

Upon closer examination, they were all boxes of Ivins' Famous Spiced Wafers. Famous? Really? Famous where? Certainly not anywhere I had ever lived before (which is TEN different states, but who's counting?). Yet I was intrigued and, since they were cookies and cookies without high fructose corn syrup in the ingredient list, I bought a box.

Photo courtesy of beachpackagingdesign.com

OK, OK, I bought three boxes.

Peruvian pasta bolognese

Spicy Peruvian-style pasta bolognese is hearty, cool-weather comfort food with a garlicky ginger kick.

I was asked in an interview recently what my favorite comfort foods are. Hmmm, let's see: well, there's pasta, pasta and ... oh wait, yes ... more pasta.

(I can't help it. I'm Italian. On both sides of my family.)

And I'm talking real pasta. Even though I'm a largely healthy (or healthier) food blogger, don't get me started on the "veggie pasta" spiralizer craze. Long strands of zucchini are no more pasta than slabs of fried eggplant are bacon. Sorry, I'm just not buyin' it.

But I do realize that regular pasta-based carbo-loading isn't the best if you're not a long-distance runner; therefore, I've been experimenting lately with healthier pasta varieties, such as whole wheat or quinoa pastas.  I have to because I don't think there's any way that I could ever voluntarily limit my pasta intake. 

Sometimes, however, a recipe is so good that it simply requires old-fashioned semolina pasta and nothing else. This Peruvian bolognese is one such recipe.

The recipe is based on a Peruvian dish called tallarin saltado, a noodle stir-fry made with beef or chicken, onions, a few tomatoes, ginger and other spices. This version takes the same flavors but melds them into a spicy bolognese-style sauce using pork sausage ... with no stir-frying required.

Easy Thai tuna sliders

Easy Thai tuna sliders -- a fast weeknight meal and a great way to add Omega 3s to your diet.

Even though creating, tweaking, photographing and writing about food and recipes is my passion, all that can often leave me tired and not too psyched to spend a lot of time making dinner every night. Just like you.

Therefore, I'm a big fan of quick and easy weeknight dinner recipes -- like these Thai tuna sliders.

I think I read somewhere that the slider craze is "over" -- whatevs, people. The Ninj isn't trying to stay one step ahead of the trends: I'm giving you real-life solutions and strategies to real-life eating situations. And one of those situations is not wanting to spend a ton of time making dinner.

(And sliders? Over? Come on -- who doesn't love cute food? Jeesh.)

So, can you open a can of tuna? Can you toast a bun? Then these tuna sliders have got dinner covered for you.

Anytime wholesome spice cookies

Enjoy this easy recipe for wholesome spice cookies (no butter, no sugar) anytime you want, guilt-free.

So there's a funny story behind these spice cookies. Well, maybe more of an exasperating story but a story nonetheless.

Late one afternoon a few weeks ago, I had a craving for some soft cookies. Now, being able to whip up a batch of cookies whenever you feel like it is one of the great perks of working from home. Well, that and being able to wear yoga pants to "work," but I digress.

As regular readers know, I generally like my sweets a little less on the sweet side, so I decided to make a batch of molasses cookies. I pulled out an old recipe for a healthier, vegan molasses cookie, given that it was still Detox January.

Now, you know how in fifth grade your teachers tried to drill into your tiny head that it was always important to read all the directions first and assemble all the necessary supplies before you begin any task? Yeah, that. I'm here to tell you that it is still very, very important.

Too bad I didn't remember that when I started making my cookies.

You see, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess that a molasses cookie will more than likely CALL FOR MOLASSES. When I got to the "add molasses" step, I realized my jar of molasses was nearly empty.

Ah, for the love of pete...

Given that I was slumming in my yoga pants working, I didn't feel like schlepping to the store simply to buy molasses. So I improvised.

Pumpkin ginger cupcakes (gluten-free or not) -- and a giveaway

These delicious pumpkin ginger cupcakes with mascarpone frosting can be made gluten-free or not.

Yes, I know it's November and therefore the all-pumpkin-all-the-time blogger recipe pumpkinpalooza should now be over, right?

Wrong.

As I have mentioned before, The Ninj respects seasonality. To wit, I held off this year on pumpkin-izing the blog until October, to give props to apples and pears in September.

And guess what? Pumpkins are still in season, even though Halloween is over and it is November! I mean, hello? Ever heard of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dessert?

But I'm here to do you one seasonal dessert better, since regular readers know I'm not a fan of pie: pumpkin ginger cupcakes with a creamy mascarpone-cream cheese frosting. Now THIS is a Thanksgiving dessert that I can get behind.

And did I mention these cupcakes are gluten-free? OR NOT!!? And that either way they are moist, not cloyingly sweet and perhaps the most perfect dessert EVAH?

Yeah, I'm pleasing the heck out of everyone with this one, especially for Thanksgiving. Pfffft: Who the hell would eat pie when you can have cupcakes?

Asian pork burgers with quick pickled cucumbers

There's been a lot of talk about veg around here lately, so I thought I probably owed you a nice, meaty post.

So of course I shall focus on pork (not quite bacon, but damned close).

I've been trying out some pork burger recipes over the past few months, looking for some alternatives to straight-up beef burgers -- although there is nothing wrong with a nice, locally raised grass-fed beef burger, my friends, nothing at all.

I came across a recipe for "triple pork burgers" in a recent issue of Food and Wine. Triple pork? You know The Ninj's interest was piqued. And it also included cabbage. Yep, cabbage -- in the burger. Very stealthy indeed.

But, as is often the case, I felt the recipe was way too involved and included some spice that would require a special trip to an ethnic grocery store in another town.

Not happening.

Not to mention that "triple pork" was misleading: that simply meant three burgers per bun. Come on: sometimes more pork is simply too much pork. (Can you believe I just wrote that?) 

So, being all stealthy like I am, I gave the recipe a ninja-style modification to make it more realistic, less unhealthy and faster to prepare.

Pinspiration: slow cooker pumpkin bread

 

Are you on Pinterest? If so, I'm sure you, like thousands of others, have a pin board named "Yummy Food to Make" or "Recipes I Want to Try" or "Hellz Yeah" or some other such cleverness.

Now, show of hands: how many of you have actually made any of those recipes?

(Crickets, crickets, crickets)

Exactly.

That's what inspired this new feature: Pinspiration.

As a food blogger, it's hard to come up with interesting new ideas for things to cook every single day, since I rarely make the same thing twice anymore. Therefore, I really appreciate all the inspiration I get from things I see on Pinterest.

So I decided to create a feature to show some love for all of your pins.

First up, a yummy pumpkin bread with chocolate chips and crystallized ginger made in the slow cooker, courtesy of Katie at Mom's Kitchen Handbook, inspired by a slow cooker banana bread recipe from Jane of The Zen of Slow Cooking.

Shut. The. Front. Door.

Not lying, not a typo: the slow cooker. Now you know why the original pin caught my eye.

Baked oatmeal

Baked oatmeal

Sorry to give you yet another brown food photo but I'm on a whole grain kick right now and whole grains are, well, frankly, brown.

As part of the From Scratch Club's virtual book club, I'm cooking various whole grain recipes out of Lianna Krisoff's Whole Grains for a New Generation. Our new meeting topic is oats.

Yay! I love oats and oatmeal. This will be a bit easier for me (and for Mr. Ninj!) than spelt.

(Sidebar: We have our book club discussions over on GoodReads and are fortunate enough to have Lianna, the author, as a participant. I just want to say hats off to Lianna for agreeing to do so; I can't imagine too many cookbook authors that sit around and listen to what amateur cooks have to say about their lovingly crafted and tested recipes. Particularly last week, when one of our book clubbers reported back that the recipe she made was "disgusting." Ouch -- thick skin required.)

I was drawn to Lianna's recipe for baked oatmeal for two of my favorite reasons: it's easy and healthy. Not to mention that it makes a panful of breakfast, perfect for either the two of us to eat throughout the week or weekend breakfasts when we have houseguests.

You likely also have all the ingredients in your pantry on any given day. A huge plus.

Detox January Mocktails: The Bul

Cuban bul mocktail

Yes, it's Detox January, but that doesn't mean we have forsaken Cocktail Hour in the casa de Ninj.

We've just turned it into Mocktail Hour.

The first week, we drank these spicy, amazing virgin Bloody Marys (hey, if I can increase my veggie intake by drinking them, sign me up).

This week, I remembered a refreshing drink made with beer and ginger ale that we used to drink during the summer when we lived in California. And that made me remember my Detox January secret weapon from years past.

Near beer.

Detox January: gingerbread muffins

Gingerbread muffins

Welcome to Detox January.

(Oh come on, it's not that bad, I promise.)

For new readers, let me explain. This is the Ninj's version of detox, not some scary-ass juice cleanse or eat-only-two-crackers-per-day diet plan. We take this on every year as a way of starting the new year off right, after all the excesses of the holidays. And, frankly, because I'd rather eat a muffin top than have one around my waist.

Detox January is not some overly ambitious resolution that you know you won't be able to keep (new gym membership, anyone?); it's more like a short-term, mini resolution that you know you can achieve.

The rules are simple. For the entire month of January,

• Abstain from all alcohol (but if a recipe calls for a little bit, that's OK) -- we'll be drinking things like virgin marys rather than gimlets for cocktail hour
• Eat a bit healthier every day (I don't expect you to get crazy here -- we just try to eat more veggies than cookies and keep our recipes more Cooking Light than Julia Child) 
• Exercise more than you did in December 

And that's it. Simple, right?

Fruit and nut chocolate bark

Another 2012 milestone reached: the From Scratch Club cook-along virtual book club has come to the final chapter of Alana Chernila's  The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. And, as with so many other cookbooks, Alana saved the best for last: candy and sweet treats.

Now, I have to admit, ever since we started the book I've had my heart set on making the Twinkie recipe that is part of this chapter, way before the no-more-Twinkie shit hit the fan last month. I even added the Twinkie mold to my Amazon wish list.

Then -- ho, ho, freakin' ho -- the holidays closed in and there just wasn't quite enough time for Twinkies. (Don't fret: they'll make an appearance in 2013, although likely not until after Detox January.)

Never fear: Alana has a recipe for chocolate bark (what she calls "Easiest Chocolates") that was exactly as described (wicked easy) and definitely appropriate for the holidays.

If you can wield a knife and boil water, you can make this bark lickety-split.

I love that the flavor combinations are seemingly endless. I went with dark chocolate, dried apricots, crystallized ginger and pistachios, because that's what I like. But if you wanted to make the bark with white chocolate and peppermint, it would still work. Milk chocolate, peanuts and raisins more to your taste? Just follow the same directions.

Cranberry-pistachio biscotti with crystallized ginger

Cranberry-pistachio biscotti with crystallized ginger

I have now participated in my first-ever cookie swap ... and it was a virtual one!

(Although a friend recently suggested a Cocktail Swap would be way more fun. I couldn't agree more!)

I signed up this year to take part in the second annual Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, which was not only just a fun way to exchange cookies and recipes with other food bloggers but also a fundraiser for Cookies for Kids' Cancer.

The premise was simple: once I signed up to participate, I received the names and addresses of three other food bloggers (all new to me, which was cool). I baked each of them a dozen of the same cookies and shipped them off to be enjoyed. In turn, I received three dozen cookies from three other food bloggers (again, all new to me).

So I got a ton of cookies to enjoy and some new blogs to check out: win win.

Today is the day that everyone who participated in the Swap was asked to post his/her cookie recipe. A great idea so that, if you really dug the cookies you received, you'll be able to make them again for yourself!

Maple ginger cookies

Two sweet recipes in one week: y'all are so lucky, I swear.

My posting options were mac and cheese, chicken stew or these wicked awesome cookies. Here's what I considered when choosing:

• It's a Friday before a long weekend (for some -- happy thanksgiving to our Canadian friends)
• The mac and cheese photos sucked
• The chicken stew involves prunes

So cookies it is!

No big story behind these cookies. I was just perusing some neglected cookbooks last week (I feel a little guilty if I ignore some of them for too long -- am I the only one?). I focused on my copy of Cooking With Shelburne Farms because, with its focus on seasonal Vermont foods, I figured I'd find something awesomely appropriate for fall (and more photogenic than the strata).

Aaaaaaaand I was not disappointed.

The authors called these cookies gingersnaps but I don't think that's really accurate: they're soft and not nearly as spicy as gingersnaps.

Regardless, they are wicked.

Sweet potato bisque (Secret Recipe Club)

Sweet potato bisque with homemade seasoned croutons -- a perfect (and easy) soup for fall.

Sweet potato bisque

It's time for another recipe from the Secret Recipe Club (SRC)!

Here's how the SRC works: each month I am assigned another member's blog (a different one each month). I then pick any recipe from that blogger's site, make it and write about it here. There's also a link hop at the end of the post so that I (and you) can check out all the other participating blogs.

I think fate intervened in my assignment this month. Imagine my delight when I headed over to Fran's Favs and found that I was to pick a recipe from a self-described "Italian foodie." That makes two of us!

It's always hard to pick just one recipe from an archive as big as Fran's but, with fall coming on, I gravitated toward the soups and one in particular caught my eye: sweet potato bisque.

Unlike Fran, whose folks were both great cooks (her dad even co-owned a restaurant, lucky girl!), I didn't grow up in a "we-love-to-cook" household -- more of a "we-need-to-cook-to-survive" household, with occasional lapses for holidays (that's when the big Italian recipes came out of hiding) or my dad's specialty: homemade pizza.  All of this means that, after only really learning to cook in my late 20s,  I came very, very late to the homemade soup party.

But once I armed myself with an immersion blender, there was no holding me back. Now I'm practically the Soup Nazi himself: mushroom, cream of asparagus, peanut, stracciatella, pumpkin, turnip, cauliflower ... the list goes on.

Soft molasses cookies

Soft molasses cookies

I've made the transition to fall -- even though I've still got tomatoes and green beans aplenty in the garden.

I love fall, especially fall in New England, and all the season-changing promise it brings with it: beautiful foliage, crisp apples, cool days, even cooler nights and, of course, cider.

There's something about having just one cool, crisp day -- a day in which a jacket is not optional when you go outside -- that instantly puts summer away for me and makes me focus on fall.

My taste buds seem to change instantly as well. I'm no longer craving tomato salads and lobster rolls; instead, I'm thinking about how many ways I can cram spicy sausage and kale into a casserole or hearty pasta dish.

And that's just on the savory side. When fall arrives, I say move over soft lemon cookies, we need something spicier.

Like soft molasses cookies!

These cookies are quintessentially "cookies" to me. I mean, I think if I had to pick a cookie to define cookies in a visual dictionary or to explain what a cookie is to someone from another planet, I'd pick these. The way they look, the way they taste -- simple and classic.

Molasses spice cookies: a recipe

Molasses spice cookies

Hopefully, you were one of the lucky ones that scored the awesome Dorie Greenspan book set deal on Amazon a few weeks ago. Two of Dorie's beautiful, awesome cookbooks for less than six bucks: I'm not sure why, but at that price, who cares?

I'm already a big fan of Around My French Table and as I started leafing through Baking: From My Home to Yours, I knew I would (again) not be disappointed. (After the stuffed pumpkin, figgy pudding and cocktail cookies, I am a Dorie groupie for life.)

I already have about twelve gajillion post-it flags marking the recipes I want to try (be prepared for an onslaught of scones in the weeks ahead).

And this was one of the first.

Gingerbread scones: a recipe

Gingerbread scones

Recently, I've been hearing a lot of the following:

"I don't get Pinterest."

Frankly, I don't get what's not to get. So here it is, in a nutshell, from the Ninj:

Pinterest = visual del.icio.us

That is, it's simply a visual bookmarking tool. If you've used delicious (I guess they got rid of the periods when they went all corporate), you've pretty much already been Pinteresting -- you bookmark interesting items to your account (pins) and organize them by give them tags (boards).

Now, if you don't know what the hell delicious is, all is not lost. You've probably been Pinteresting for years, too. Do you have a folder somewhere called "dream house ideas" or "recipes" with all sorts of ripped out magazine pages in it? Congratulations, that's old-school Pinterest.