Hey Fresh Faces, hope you're ready for another week of yummy veggies, direct from the farm! This week, we are offering roasted leeks from our good friends at Satur Farms on Long Island. Not only will they add a mild and sweet onion flavor to your salad, but they are packed with vitamins A, C, K and E. Give roasted leeks a try this week, and let us know what you think!
We are excited to connect you to our featured fitness expert, Michele Gordon. Michele is a nationally certified Group Fitness Instructor, Personal Trainer, Fitness Presenter, Entrepreneur and Blogger with business all over the New York City and Long Island regions. Michele will be joining us for posts on our Fresh & Co. blog, as well as a new feature called "Wellness Wednesdays" on Facebook and Twitter.
Ever since she was a child, Michele has had a strong interest in nutrition, exercise, and how what we do to our bodies affects our lives. While attending Binghamton University, she saw how detrimental unhealthy lifestyle choices could be and how difficult it was for many people to adopt healthy habits. During her college years, Michele taught innovative fitness classes, trained numerous clients, lead seminars and workshops, and launched a youth fitness business that gained significant press and recognition.
Now, Michele utilizes her experiences, humor, knowledge, motivation, ambition, energy, and passion to help hundreds of people overcome obstacles to leading the healthiest lives they can — mentally and physically. We are thrilled to have Michele team up with Fresh & Co. Michele understands how difficult it is to maintain a healthy diet and exercise program with busy schedules. She strongly believes that keeping everything in moderation, picking up some quick and healthy snacks or meals from Fresh & Co., and learning to apply the facts of fitness, each person can achieve his or her own wellness goals!
Hey Fresh Faces, thanks for joining us on our food journey with Hazel from Tasty Pursuits. I think we all can agree that this was one terrific miniseries, and one we hope to do again soon with Hazel.
Did you perhaps miss a post? Here's a rundown of Hazel's tasty creations, inspired by our sandwiches:
Hazel Sy from Tasty Pursuitsis back with part 2 of our food miniseries! This post, its Lemon Dill Roasted Chicken inspired by our Lemon Grilled Chicken Sandwich. Enjoy!
Food is art. Plating a dish is an exercise in graphic design as you arrange shapes and colors on a white canvas. Food styling for photographs blends architecture and sculpture. Photography is, well, photography…encouraging you to explore angles and perspectives so that even everyday macaroni and cheese evokes emotion and a good amount of stomach grumbling. (A quick tip for the next time you snap a shot of your dinner: sit in front of the dish as if you are going to eat it, then take a photo from every angle BUT that one.) Best of all, you have the vast palette of flavors and ingredients to play with. And just as a painter can create multiple masterpieces using the same set of colors, a cook can create an array of dishes using the same set of ingredients.
But you don’t need a muse to make dinner. Inspiration is as close as the Fresh & Co. sandwich that you had for lunch…that’s what I did. In fact, I created a full meal with each dish inspired from a Fresh & Co. sandwich (you may even see a Fresh & Co. inspired dessert in a future post!):
Side: Greek Feta Couscous inspired by the Greek Feta & Tomato Baguette Sandwich
So how does inspiration work? In some cases I taste something and just know what I would like to create. Who knows, maybe an artist’s muse had extra time on her hands and felt generous that day. However, most of the time I mentally disassemble the dish and think about each component’s flavor and texture. Can I tweak an ingredient’s texture before adding it back to the dish? Could I swap a sour ingredient with something else that is tangy? What if I put them back together in a different order? The process is similar to pulling apart a shiny new Lego fire truck, and using the pieces to create something from your imagination. (When I was seven, I used to take the legs from the Lego people and slap on clear two-holed Lego bricks to create an army of robots in outer space. My imagination and Lego building skills have since improved.)
Once I had a rough plan for the dish, I was excited to hop into the kitchen and get started. Lemon Dill Roasted Chicken was an opportunity to figure out how to keep roasted chicken breast moist (as it turns out, ribs have the right idea with low and slow). It was also a new combination for me: dill and chicken. Delicate dill is often found on seafood, and chicken is usually spruced up with rosemary or tarragon. Thank you Fresh & Co. for this inspiration!
How about your culinary masterpieces? What would you create based on a Fresh & Co. sandwich? Leave a comment and let me know. Then stay tuned for the Greek Feta Couscous recipe, which will be featured next Tuesday on TastyPursuits.com!
Hey Fresh Faces! Hazel from Tasty Pursuits has posted the first recipe in our food mini-series together. She used our delicious Steak and Fontina Panini and turned it into a fabulous appetizer.
Click here to find out more and get this delicious recipe! Remember to check back here on our blog this Thursday the 11th to get the next recipe in our series.
How pretty! For Farm Fresh Friday this week, our very good friends at Satur Farms have brought us Edible Flowers. Enhancing the visual appeal of a dish, these beauties also carry different flavors depending on the flower used, as well as numerous vitamins and minerals! When you're at one of our stores this week, be sure to give them a taste.
Guest blogger Alexandra Suazo is back with another post of the Salad Challenge. As she recently started a weight loss endeavor (you can see her first post here), Alex is back to bring us up to speed on her latest salad addiction. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @la_suazo. We at Fresh & Co. added a little Twitter contest to the bottom of her post as well. Read on to learn more!
Designer what you may ask? Designer SALADS! As if we all don’t love drooling over Madison Avenue’s most desired designers… here’s the chance to feel as exclusive when you EAT! Luckily, this won’t be as stressful on the checking account, either!
Hit up a Fresh & Co anywhere between noon and 2 p.m., and you’re looking at a hefty salad line… and why? These designer salads are perfection and solve the same old salad problems whether you are faint-hearted or someone who can’t deal with a limited number of toppings either available, allowed to mix in, or both. In a crazy twist of irony, the longer the salad line, the better! You have just a little more time to decide on the delicious already mixed designer salad options.
My black label, red-bottom designer salad of choice? The Aegean Salad. For the weight losers out there that know a salad isn’t JUST greens… you’ll probably be a little nitpicky about most of the salads available. Not to say they aren’t healthy but depending on your diet to maximize weight loss, you may skip out on some of the goodies.
This is how I order MY Aegean Salad:
… no cheese is the key takeaway, and order it with the suggested low-fat lemon vinaigrette dressing. Maybe throw some almonds in there for a little protein and TA-DA! Enjoy with a side of black iced coffee or unsweetened iced tea. Way better for you than designer “therapy shopping” AND it’s healthy!
How will you order your own designer salad? Tell us your salad order via Twitter (@freshandconyc) with our Salad Challenge hashtag contest! Tweet it to us using the hashtag #fcsaladchallange
We will randomly select 2 winners to win lunch on us! Deadline is August 9, 2011 at 10 a.m.
