Garlic bread is a complete meal 🥖🧄

Plus avotoast with honey and mozzarella, and more.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week we incorporate carbs into every meal. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.  

Roasted garlic garlic bread at home

Recipe adapted from Cookie and Kate.

Garlic bread is a full meal. A thick slice of bread, the kind that’s crusty on the outside and soft and moist on the inside, smeared with roasted garlic and butter, a thick layer of parmesan flakes, and a smattering of parsley, is a full meal. You could pair it with a crispy, light Caesar salad if you want, plus a glass of red wine, but you can also just eat garlic bread alone, for lunch or dinner, or if you are very deranged, breakfast. I never quite know what’s the right bread to use for garlic bread – ciabatta always feels a little wrong, but baguettes are far too French – so I settled for some crusty “artisan loaf” from Trader Joe’s. I’ve never made roasted garlic bread before. It sure does make your apartment smell nice when it bakes, but tbh I prefer the extra bite from raw garlic. YMMV, though.

Oatmeal raisin cookies at Levain Bakery

Apparently now available at many places.

A fun thing about staying really late at a wedding is that you get to take home any leftover wedding favors – which in this case, happened to be cookies from Levain bakery (because I have friends with the best taste!). I’m as shocked as you are to discover that my favorite flavor of cookie at Levain Bakery is the plain ol’ oatmeal raisin. I’ve always gone for the classic chocolate chip (with walnut) or even the more indulgent chocolate pb chip version, but it turns out the oatmeal raisin cookie, which looks a lot like a humble, dry scone, is the one I want to eat the most. Pale in color and barely spiced (this isn’t a spice cookie, it’s firmly an oatmeal raisin one), with just a handful of plump raisins, there’s something about the humble, but classic combo of butter, oats, and sugar that makes me want to keep snacking on it. 

Orange mango Spindrift at many places

You can get it at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Target, etc.

All flavors of Spindrift are equal, aside from the lemon flavor (which is Very Bad – I have no clue how it’s made but it literally tastes like the lemon juice that comes out of the little plastic lemon bottle and burns my throat) and mango orange, which is superior to all other flavors. Honestly sometimes I wonder if Spindrift is kind of a scam because it’s like seltzer mixed with watered down juice, but it does make me excited when I see it and it feels like a special treat. Mango orange wins by virtue of the mango part. Anything mango flavored just has an unfair advantage over all other fruit.

Breaded chicken breast nuggets at Trader Joe’s

Available at your local Trader Joe’s.

One of my favorite comfort meal combos for hot weather days is a cold, very crispy Caesar salad covered in lots of creamy dressing and crunchy croutons paired with freshly heated chicken nuggets. Don’t sleep on this absolutely stellar combo that pushes the limits of salad-dom. The breaded chicken breast nuggets from the freezer section at Trader Joe’s are the absolute best frozen chicken fingers. Don’t confuse them with the “chicken drumettes,” which are more of a classic chicken nug. These have a thick, super crunchy breading and honestly taste fresh out of the fryer. 10/10 recommend.

Avocado toast with ciliegine (fresh mozzarella balls) and honey at home

I made it up?? But I think I got the idea for honey on avotoast from TikTok, probably.

If you’re used to topping your avocado toast with a fried or poached egg, may I gently suggest topping it off with fresh balls of mozzarella, a smattering of chili flakes, and a drizzle of honey instead? Not that it can ever replace the classic egg-and-avo combination, it’s just that five or more years into the trend, it’s time to try something new. The combination of sweet honey and creamy avocado and slightly salty cheese is possibly even better than runny egg yolk and fatty avocado. Contrary to what you might think, this dish is better if you don’t toast the cheese – rather, eat it cold, or room temperature. It just goes better that way. But don’t take my word for it – try it yourself!

Stay cool 😎,

Soph

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