Whole Foods Cornbread

After trying cornbreads far and wide, my absolute favorite cornbread's got to be the one from Whole Foods, especially the corner pieces! It's not oily at all, unlike most of the cornbreads out there let alone the corn cakes and muffins. This has the perfect blend of fluff vs. grit, especially when toasted. Don't get me wrong... I love the grittiness of cornmeal, and I'd probably love the dense greasy cornbreads made from cast iron, but there's just something special about this particular cornbread that's fluffy but not cake, and substantial yet not too heavy. And that's just the texture! Taste-wise, it's subtly sweet, and smells delicious (you can smell the eggs). I can't seem to find the recipe anywhere! Even the recipe for cornbread on Whole Foods' website does not seem to be the one they sell in their bakery. The most I can go by is the ingredients on their label, but alas for not knowing the proportions and the method...

unbleached white flour

milk

corn meal

eggs

canola oil

evaporated cane juice

baking powder

sea salt

Polenta Rounds

Love corn-based foods, and polenta is no exception. This is incredibly simple... Just bought those ready tubes of polenta from Trader Joes, sliced them, and put them in the toaster oven with some butter. If I were more hardcore, I would make my own polenta. Maybe next time.

Various Fruit With Greek Yogurt

Yup this is unsweetened plain Greek yogurt, topped with unsweetened Acai puree and unsweetened mango puree, with apples and oranges underneath. There is absolutely no added sugar. The mango puree is actually very sweet, whereas the acai puree is totally unsweet. I'm surprised that the berry doesn't have too much naturally occurring fruit sugars. So all this together was refreshing and a good dose of lysine to combat these annoying cold sores. I love how Greek yogurt is so thick!

Homemade Pork Tamales

Yes these were homemade, but not by me... They were thoughtfully given to me by someone. I actually like Mexican food but don't eat it as often as I used to. These were incredibly delicious, especially the masa part. One of the things I noticed was that there was a lot of the masa stuck to the corn husks. I'm guessing store-bought tamales don't stick because they must use ridiculous amounts of fat. I should ask if he used lard or not. It didn't seem like it but then again I'm not the most discerning person when it comes to critiquing food (and yes I'm still going to maintain my food blog despite that statement).

Corned Beef and Cabbage

I bought this beef already corned... just threw it in the slow cooker with cabbage and carrots (the instructions actually said to use the oven but whatever). Out came this IMPRESSIVELY tender (and fatty) beef!! The particular cut of beef used for this was beef brisket, which I've had before, but never this moist! Anyway the beef was very red even though it was totally cooked through.

So I went to the store to buy another package of this corned beef, and the priced was scanned incorrectly, so I basically got a free slab of corned beef brisket. I'm going to stop by the store again next week and pick up another package and see if it'll be free again. Haha!

Oh yeah I wanted to add that even though people associate corned beef and cabbage with traditional Irish cuisine, apparently it's more of an Irish-American thing. Traditional Irish dishes are more like boxty, colcannon, coddle, bacon and cabbage, brown soda bread, Irish stew, Ulster fry...

Roasted Peppers, Feta, and Pinenuts Over Mache Lamb's Lettuce

I tried to capture the mache in a better light than last time, but for some reason I can't get it to look as pretty in photo as in person. I guess you'll have to buy some mache for yourself and see how pretty and also tasty it is! Alas, the roasted peppers that I bought were not as delicious as the caramelized peppers and onions that I had made for myself last time, but the Israeli feta and the toasted pinenuts were still as awesome as before. Yum!