Who knew that it would be so difficult to find ponzu sauce? I checked at the supermarket and went to the Asian market twice, to no avail. I think that the guy stocking the shelves in the soy sauce/vinegar aisle at the Asian market, who happened to be there on both days that I went, thought I was a little nutty. Oh well. In the end, I improvised and substituted a soy sauce and lemon juice combo. My sauce didn’t have the fish and seaweed elements, but all worked out well, anyway.

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During the last year or so, I have developed a sensitivity to processed (table) sugar and wheat. It’s kind of a bummer because I’m unable to eat mountains of glorious sweets like I used to, but that’s probably what got me into trouble in the first place. Anyway, in order to try and get things back into balance, I’m attempting to replace processed sugar with natural sugars wherever I can. I’m actually really excited about this, as it gives me lots of opportunities to experiment.

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Crisp, crumble, buckle, grunt, cobbler…I’m getting better at knowing what’s what, but this is a confusing food genre. No matter, I’ve come to love them all, which is something that I would never have thought I’d be saying if you asked me a few years ago.

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Pumpkin is something that I like to eat all year long (give me some tasty pumpkin bread or pumpkin cookies, and I’m in heaven), so I’m always looking for interesting ways to incorporate it in recipes. It’s also a superfood, so I feel even better about eating it because it has mucho nutritional value.

I’ve seen a lot of smoothie recipes that sound like pumpkin pie in a glass, which is fantastic, but I wondered how pumpkin would do if I put it in with more “tropical” ingredients and little spice to make a kind of “pumpkin goes summer” smoothie.

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Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich is one of my fast food favorites, so I was intrigued by this copycat recipe and decided to include it as part of a “fast food at home” dinner to see just how close it came to the original. I don’t usually expect these types of recipes to come out exactly like the originals because I know that I could never exactly duplicate the conditions in a restaurant kitchen, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My hope is that I’ll come out with something close, made with fresher ingredients, that I won’t have to worry as much about when it comes to the state of my waistline.

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I bought the new Ellie Krieger (of Food Network fame) cookbook, The Food You Crave, a few weeks ago and have earmarked at least every other recipe in the book. I’m always looking for lighter dishes for my lunches, and her recipe for Noodles with Lime Peanut Sauce was calling my name. The sugar snap peas that I had in the fridge were, unfortunately, no good by the time that I was ready to make this. I went with broccoli only, because that’s what I had, but you could probably add carrots or red peppers for a more colorful dish.

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