If you don't want to travel all the way to Mexico to get a cornballer on the black market, you can just make this tasty snack in any deep frying situation. I assume that the cornballs in question are similar to a hush puppy, so that was the approach I took making this recipe. They came out great and were a fun app for our little Arrested Development party. Yo soy loco por los cornballs!

Finally there's a date! The much awaited 4th season of Arrested Development will be available on Netflix in full on May 26th. To celebrate, I am dedicating a week of recipes to the greatest food moments of the first 3 seasons. Today is one of my all time favorites, Hot Ham Water. In this episode (s3-e9 "S.O.B's"), Lindsay is trying to be more of a domesticated mother figure to the family, and her first attempt at cooking dinner is a dish she likes to call Hot Ham Water. I took inspiration from this scene to make a flavorful ham broth and load it up with some sauteed ham, collard greens, and udon noodle. Tasty stuff!

Last year at Easter brunch at my Aunt's house, she asked me "Dan, where is that french toast bake that you told me you would bring when we talked on St. Patrick's Day?" You guys probably can guess the end of that story, but the moral is, don't give me a future task at 10pm on a Saturday St. Patricks! That night I put a reminder in my calendar for the week before easter 2013 to make a fun french toast/bread pudding bake.

My goals for this dish were as follows. Don't make it to desserty; keep the sugar on the lower side so it registers more as a french toast than a full on bread pudding. Make it very juicy; I wanted the texture to be creamy and not dried out at all. Make it as different from my Mom's bread pudding as possible; She makes a really good one and this needed to be different to avoid comparisons. I personally thought the goals were achieved and it tasted really good, but my Mom of course couldn't help but do some comparing.

If you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed that I had a serious cake fail last week. Wait what? I never told you that I'm on Twitter? Oh yea, I sometimes forget to mention these things. And while we're mentioning things, the posts might be a little sparse around here in the next few months. Why you ask? Oh, just cause I am writing my first cookbook. No big deal right? The book is called STUFFED! and it is going to be stuffed with comfort food recipes that are literally stuffed inside other comfort food recipes, so you can not only stuff your face, but also your soul! But for now, back to the matter at hand. I messed up this cake while frosting it, so I smashed it up, frosting and all, and stuffed it (see what I did there?) into a graham cracker crust. I tossed some marshmallows on top and gave it a quick broil before serving. It was a huge hit and my friends were none the wiser.

I wouldn't call this the healthiest thing that I ate in the past few months, but it was still pretty good for me and followed the main 3 rules of my diet, to eat much much less wheat, meat, and dairy. The best thing about it though, was it satisfied one of my biggest and most constant cravings- ground beef smothered in a hearty sauce. Honestly, I don't understand why I always crave that. Even when I am eating meat all the time. Even when I had bolognaise for lunch, I still want tacos for dinner. And chili as a late night snack!

Sometimes when you are getting bored with eating a big bowl of veggies, it can be refreshing to not only sauce them differently, but also something as simple as cut them differently. Normally I end up making noodles out of the veggies, but today I went with an almost opposite method, turning them all into squares. I was inspired by cubes of tofu, and it made me want to just eat a big bowl of cubes. I coated the cubes with an insanely spicy sauce loaded with habanero, basil, and yogurt.

This was one of the best things I cooked in the past 3 months of healthy eating. I knew I wanted to make a healthy version of a chicken salad, and happened to be craving the flavors of vietnamese bun vermicelli, so this dish was born. This chicken salad would taste awesome anywhere chicken salad normally tastes awesome, like in a sandwich, wrap, or pita, but I just popped it on top of some lettuce and rice noodle.

When I am eating less meat, I make sure to get a good amount of protein in my diet via nuts, beans, and quinoa. Since I work in a burrito shop, you could imagine that I get kinda bored with eating beans. The idea for this casserole was that I had a bunch of veggies in my fridge, and I wanted to douse them with tomato and bake them, so I decided to puree beans in with the tomato to get the protein in there without really noticing the beans. I also was pretty curious about how the texture and flavor would be. In the end, I absolutely loved everything about this dish and will make it again for sure.

Since New Years Day, I've lost about 30 pounds. I haven't done anything drastic. I've still cooked and eaten things like Lucky Charms Cheesecake, Hamburger Helper Sushi, and Pierogi Lasagna. I just made it a point to cut out some unnecessary meat, wheat, and dairy, during breakfast and lunch on most days.  I also drank whiskey instead of beer.  It's a tough life I know.  All week this week, I will be posting some of the super healthy dishes that have gotten me through the past few months and I think have really helped with the weight loss. This smoothie is a 6 day a week routine and really kicks the day off right and keeps me full until lunch.