Back to Blogging

It took some doing to get me back into blog­ging. With inspi­ra­tion from blog­ger col­leagues @karensblog, @robinsbite, @theeverydayrd and so many oth­ers, I decid­ed it was time to jump back in.

I am a reg­is­tered dietit­ian nutri­tion­ist by train­ing, a mar­keter by edu­ca­tion, and a com­mu­ni­ca­tor by day (and night). Like my good friend Robyn Flipse, I also am a food explor­er. I love to poke around sleuthing out foods and ingre­di­ents. New York’s Hud­son Val­ley, where I live, is a trea­sure trove of restau­rants, farm­ers mar­kets, winer­ies, brew­eries, and arti­sanal food mak­ers (all on the rise thanks to Taste NY) as well as fun food mar­kets rep­re­sent­ing the many glob­al com­mu­ni­ties that call the Hud­son Val­ley home.

Here’s what I want to share through my blog – food shop­ping finds around the Hud­son Val­ley, some local­ly sourced and some sourced by local res­i­dents; tips and ideas on cook­ing them; and deli­cious ways to explore food in my out­side-of-the-box way.

I dis­cov­ered Al Rayyan, a rel­a­tive­ly new Mid­dle East­ern food mar­ket and hookah store on Cen­tral Avenue in Yonkers, NY, fill­ing my bas­ket with ran­dom foods that caught my eye.

In this pho­to, the front bowl has three dif­fer­ent snacks, green wasabi peanuts, brown sesame peanuts, and “Jor­dan” chick­peas, like Jor­dan almonds but each with a chick­pea inside. The chick­peas are so good – deli­cious and pret­ty too. (Les­son learned that wasabi nuts need their own bowl to avoid fla­vor­ing every­thing with wasabi)

Mov­ing clock­wise, amaz­ing­ly good pick­led veg­eta­bles fla­vored with nigel­la, or black onion seeds. We enjoyed them as a condi­ment and also used them in place of pick­le rel­ish in tuna sal­ad.

Next, a one-quart con­tain­er of za’atar, a sea­son­ing made with a com­bi­na­tion of hys­sop, thyme, sesame seeds, sumac, and salt, depend­ing on the chef and coun­try of ori­gin. I stirred a gen­er­ous table­spoon into a batch of home­made hum­mus and mixed it with oil as a top­ping for pita.
Sweet/sour pome­gran­ate molasses is my secret ingre­di­ent in an unusu­al roast­ed egg­plant dip, to which I also add almond but­ter instead of tahi­ni. Cor­tas is my favorite brand by far!
We’ll use the big jar of tahi­ni with­in a cou­ple of months. Both Yotam Ottolenghi, of Jerusalem fame, and my friend Jacque use tahi­ni with aban­don in dips and on veg­eta­bles.

The hon­eyed nuts, with a hint of rose­wa­ter, would have made a love­ly house gift for some­one else, if I hadn’t opened the jar and added them to plain Greek yogurt. I also mixed them with lemon juice and more hon­ey to glaze a Mid­dle East­ern nut cake.

More finds to come!