Hunger Over Thirst

BBQ Beef Sandwiches.

2012-01-22T19:49:00.001-05:00

I have finally gotten a slow cooker to add to my kitchen and have had some mixed results. But tonight was a home run!

I made BBQ beef sandwiches from the Americas Test Kitchen slow cooker magazine. The recipe was great. You just cook off some onion, add some spices, mix in some ketchup, mustard, and brown sugar, and cook until thick. Put a bit in the bottom of the slow cooker, top with the meat, and cook for hours until tender. It was good and something I haven't had in ages. (So of course I overindulged!!)

Yum! Since G cannot eat cabbage, we made a carrot slaw that was really nice, though a bit too cuminy. I put mine on top of my sandwich, and it was fantastic.

It's been a great year so far and I am following WW and exercising regularly. I even have started meditating! It's important to me to find some peace this year. It's a big birthday year and I am feeling some pressure, I am not going to lie. So it's all in my hands!

And the pressure cooker is pretty cool. I got a cheapie small one that doesn't have an auto turn off. It's a little bit of a downer not to have the auto turnoff, but at the same time, it's a great little cooker and most everything we have made in it has been good.

And as an aside, we bought some duck confit at Sausage Partners this weekend and are going to make a pasta with it this week! Yummy! I love love love duck confit so can't wait! (How many points are in confit?!)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ahhhh... My roots are showing!

2012-01-15T19:34:00.001-05:00

When you miss your family and you can't hop a flight home, cooking a family favourite is the best way to reconnect with your peeps...

So it was with a twinge of homesickness but an ocean of happiness that I embarked on my all-time most favourite meal, chicken fried steak with french fries and gravy. Oh yeah, it's not healthy, but not everything needs to be. It is delicious, and I have to say that it was probably the best I've ever made!

Chicken fried steak may be a bit better known now (I mean, it made it's way into a joke on the Big Bang Theory), but it's not something that I make very often. I would say in my entire life, I've probably only made it half a dozen times. You take tenderized meat (if you can buy it tenderized, all the better) and you flour, milk/egg, flour and then cook it in a little bit of oil. The coating gets flaky and delicious. You take the remaining oil and make gravy. You then add some french fries and a little bit of yummy corn, and then there you go.

It was really fantastic. I took my time with it, which made a big difference, and I made oven fries which cut down a little bit on the overall messiness. But as I stood in front of my stove in my new kitchen/dining room stirring the gravy to make it thick, I really felt a connection to my roots. I thought of my mom and grandma, both of whom I can see in my minds eye standing in front of the stove, stirring the gravy, feeding their family and it made me really happy to be making this for my family.

15 days into 2012 and I have no complaints... it's been a really different year, but it's quite fun and I look forward to seeing what else rolls this way!

Feel good food

2012-01-05T21:20:00.000-05:00

I realized tonight that making a good meal, or at least one that I enjoy eating, makes me feel good about myself. So tonight's dinner was feel good food.I wll say that there's nothing bad about a meal that starts with this:

That is a bowl of delicious spices and chopped parsley that got turned into some beautiful beef kebabs that we had with a bit of rice, some Bick's pickles and some pickled beets that I whipped together just before Christmas. Here's the recipe. The flavours really hit the spot with me.

Ground beef kebabs

1 pound of ground beef (or lamb if you're feeling so inclined)
2/3 cup of chopped parsley
1 small onion finely chopped
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp chili powder

Get 6 to 8 skewers. If you're using bamboo ones, soak them in water. Basically put all the ingredients together in bowl and mix them up making sure the parsley and onion is all evenly distributed. Then make 6 to 8 evenly sized balls. Go fire up the bbq. Take each ball roll it into a bit of a cylinder then put a skewer through it. Mold the meat onto the skewer by squeezing it a bit. Pop them on a med-heat bbq and cook for about 12 minutes turning them occasionally.

Take 'em off and serve right away with rice, pickles, and even some yogurt dip if you like.

New Local Spot!

2011-12-19T10:45:00.001-05:00

A new cafe opened up the street from our house, and we were thrilled to have such a cute cafe within walking distance from our new digs. We decided to check it out yesterday morning while our kitchen is out of order. I walked into the bright space and made my way over to a table for two. The gentleman next to me was tucking into a Full English and I honestly think my heart skipped a beat!!!

So I ordered the same and waited excitedly!! And then it came and I tucked right in before I remembered to stop and take a photo!!

Yum! Egg, beans, toast,bacon,sausage, shrooms, and tomato with a cup of tea!! Bring it Lazy Daisy Cafe!! It was absolutely delicious and I highly recommend it if you're in the Little India area of town. http://www.yelp.ca/biz/lazy-daisys-cafe-toronto

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Christmas Time!!

2011-12-16T20:09:00.001-05:00

Our first holiday season in our new house and I have Christmas lights!

And little reindeer!!!

Our new ornament commemorating our first tree in our new neighborhood!

It's a drawing of the life guard station down the street!!

Happy Holidays!!!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

TIFF.

2011-10-04T20:20:00.001-04:00

What do celebrities and food have in common?

I am sure something -- celebrity restaurants, films about food... whatever.

For the purpose of this post, they have NOTHING in common.... but ME!

This is a selection of the not fantastic pics of celebs that I took at TIFF this past year...

Five Guys...

2011-10-01T14:09:00.000-04:00

I had heard of Five Guys Burgers and Fries, but had never eaten there as there wasn't one anywhere near me. But all that has changed. There is a Five Guys in Scarborough by all of the home improvement stores, so on a blustery fall day, we decided to try it out.

Who knew it was going to come double patty? Apparently everyone but G and I. It explains the price... but was a bit much to eat. I had the cheeseburger (gooey cheese) with tomato, pickle, mayo, and grilled onions. Yum. Yum. Yum. It was really decent and unlike the Burger's Priest, was not overly wet (or greasy).

Orders of fries are HUGE! Gracious, I am not a fan of sharing these sorts of things, but could have easily shared an order of fries with G. The cajun fries were FANTASTIC and reminiscent of the fries from the Diner in Norman, which I miss. Really really good.

Overall, it was totally decent. A nice taste of the USA right here in the Big Smoke. Wouldn't eat there all the time, but ever so often, it will be a nice treat!

Sweet treat with a zing

2011-09-18T18:11:00.001-04:00

I bought some new popsicle molds recently and was excited to put them to use. J is not a big fan of the popsicle-type dessert and it's not like there's lots of traffic through the old homestead just hankering for a cool snack, so it took me a while to try something out. But I'd had a hankering to put together some mango-chile paletas (Mexican popsicles) and I happened upon a tin of mango puree on sale so thought, now's the time.

They are quite easy to do because the mango was ready to rock, no peeling or monkey around with hard-to-handle bits of fruit. So all I did was take the mango puree, add juice of 1 lime, and sugar to taste - if your puree is really sweet, you likely don't need much - and mixed them up. If it's a bit too thick add a bit of water to make it a little runnier. In terms of chile, I used a combo of regular chile powder and ground ancho chiles, which give the little flecks of colour and a bit of texture to it all. Obviously if you want to feel the afterburn put lots of chile but if you just want a little zing of heat, use less. It's hard to say how much because every chile powder packs a different punch and you need to know what you're using.

I liked it. Lipsmacking.

Dinner Rules.

2011-09-14T22:29:00.000-04:00

We've been attending TIFF so our dinner eating has been a bit sporadic at best. We tried out the new food court, er, Urban Eatery, at the Eaton Centre last night. Totally awesome set-up but I think G is going to cover that...

So tonight is a TIFF free night due to a scheduling conflict, so dinner was Chez Moi for the first time in a bit. I wasn't sure what to make, but I came up with a BANG-UP dish that I totally, totally loved!

And there it is!!! Pasta with some browned out of the skin italian sausage, with a diced tomato, peas, and some pasta water cooked for a bit. Mix in the cooked pasta and top with lots of fresh parm reg and chow down.

I gav myself a heaping bowl full...

Really really really good. Honestly, I have a whole tupperware of it in the fridge for tomorrow, and I could go in and eat it right this second. Yay for me.

So try it, super easy and super good. Dinnah is served.

Tomatoes on toast, it's a beautiful thing

2011-09-08T00:46:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, my father always grew tomatos in the backyard. One of the things I most looked forward to during the "harvest" was tomatoes on toast. Sounds mundane but it really is a beautiful thing. Well this past weekend, we went to visit our friends P&D at their place near Cambridge. D cultivates the most fantastic heirloom tomatoes and the night we stayed over we took great pleasure in the turkey-platter sized tomato salad with chevre and tomatoes in green, yellow, orange, red, and cherry black. Both a feast for the eyes and a feast for the tummy.

They were kind enough to share their bounty and we came home with about a nice box of their tomatoes and all I could think about all the way home was having tomatoes on toast the next morning for breakfast. Which I did.

It's so simple but so fantastic. Get yourself a sharp knife and then sharpen it. You don't want anything getting in the way of the perfectly thin slices. Once you're sure the knife is good and sharp, slice your tomato into the thinnest slices you can. Toast some nice bread up and then dribble some good extra virgin olive oil on there. Add a thin layer of tomato, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a bit of olive oil and repeat until you have a few layers on there. Then just enjoy. It may be a bit messy but it's worth it. Importantly: slices need to be paper thin and go easy on the olive oil, you want to taste it but not drown everything in it.

Lameness Rules.

2011-08-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

So I have never claimed not to be entirely lame.

Wait, is that right?

I admit I am totally lame.

I want this...

And there's this....

And I got really excited about this...

LOOK AT THAT CRAZY GIANT PACK OF KETCHUP!!!! Yeah, it came with my veggie Hero burger the other day at lunch and I had to take some photos with my phone. LOVE IT!

And the Han Solo in Carbonite ice tray?

Get yours here...

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e845/

Ride in Dalek?

http://www.scificollector.co.uk/

Happy shopping!!!

Gail picked a peck of peppers

2011-08-21T12:10:00.003-04:00

So it's the first year with my own outdoor garden. Didn't do a whole lot because, well, I don't know much about either gardening or the ins and outs of light etc on the garden in our new house. But we did put a few things in the ground and mostly, it's giving me joy to pick the few things that are growing.

We got a banana pepper plant that is going full tilt and giving us tons of peppers. Also got and planted a bit late a couple of red pepper plants. Not doing quite as well as the bananas! So far only one real pepper and I had to cut it off today even before it turned red because the slugs are snacking on it. But I'm sure it'll be delicious!

The Best Fish Sandwich Ever.

2011-08-16T22:55:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a short but enjoyable trip to Nova Scotia. Towards the end of the trip, while driving back to Halifax, we eye-spied a fish truck and made a quick pit stop to refuel. And the, my friends and family, was the most wonderful fish sandwich ever.

Oh yeah! That is awesome! So I ordered, you guessed it, the fish sandwich and G ordered the fish and chips. Mine was total money, as Guy Fieri would say. See it glisten...

Yeah, it had a big ol' slice of American cheese on it and tartar sauce. With handcut fries that were the best fries in NS hands freaking down. The fish was absolutely delicious and I could not believe our good fortune.

G's fish and chips also glistened in the sun....

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Honestly, one of my favourite food moments of the whole weekend.

You gotta try it!

Tagine in a tagine

2011-08-01T22:00:00.004-04:00

Our friends Joanna and Gary bought us a tagine as a housewarming gift. I have not used one although I'm very intrigued. As it required a bit of beyond the ordinary, the gift ended up sitting on the shelf for a few months. So Friday, I decided I would give it a go and found a recipe online that actually cooked it in a tagine -- versus a slow cooker -- so I was ready to rock.

So you can actually use certain tagines to cook in, rather than just serve in, and the one we were given was a cooker. But that didn't make me any less nervous about putting the clay bottom right on the gas. I was somewhat buoyed by the memory of seeing big clay pots sitting over gas and coal cookers in Mexico recently so I off I went. There were a few weird things, and I'm not sure if once it's been cured and used a few times that it will be different. But the main thing was that putting oil in the bottom, it got hot but wehn I put the chicken in to brown I didn't get much sizzle. There seemed to be quite a lot of liquid. So the chicken didn't brown but it didn't matter much. The whole event was quite fun and I must say that I deboned that chicken with quite some skill!!

Anyway everything gets chucked in there and then it boils way for a bit with the lid on and steam escaping through a little vent in the top.

The final product was very delicious although I will likely mess around with the spice mixture becaxuse that's what I do. It's got preserved lemon in it, which is classic, but I'm not so sure about it. Regular lemon may just do the job. The recipe I used also doesn't include any fruit, which is also classic, but I don't really like fruit in my food, so I was happy about that.

Served over some lovely couscous. It's a meal worthy of a king! Or at least two happy-go-lucky gals on a Friday night.

Lavash pizza on the bbq

2011-07-31T12:26:00.005-04:00

J loves pizza and we've discovered the great joy of making it on the BBQ. We've done it a few times now using lavash as the pizza crust. It's ultra-thin, which I love, and very low point, which J loves, so everybody wins. And they take no time at all to cook. We whipped up a few for a quick lunch today. Max 8 minutes cooking time on the pizza stone on the grill.

Here's mine. It was light bocconcini cheese, a few really thin slices of hot genoa salami, black olives, some thinly sliced onion, tomato and hot banana peppers from the yard. Dee-licicous.

Time to blog about it....

2011-07-27T21:44:00.000-04:00

Sigh.

Double sigh.

It's been such a weird year. So fresh on the high of having lost weight, I promptly forgot everything I learned, got ridiculously stressed out and depressed, and gained a bit back. And by a bit I mean an entire stone. I say a stone because I can't face the fact that I let myself gain 14 pounds back.

Ridiculous.

But I've learned, right? I know what to do. Weight Watchers works. Exercise works. When I work, it works. And so slowly, I am getting back in the swing.

I've lost 4 pounds, I've run a 5K and an 8K race, and tried to stick to running 3 times a week and doing at least one Wii strength workout. I can already see the difference in my body, and I feel better too, so I know it's working.

But for f-ck's sake, does it ever freaking end? Is it ever just, "oh yes, there you are, normal weight, normal girl" life?

So while I relished the positives of it all...

Look at me, back in the swing!

And the post race amazing turkey sandwich, tomato and cheese salad, and potato salad...

I still feel like a giant tub o' lard.

So yeah, there's a million positives, but I still feel like a giant fatty who's kidding herself into thinking that she had ever made this whole weight loss thing work. I mean, never mind the fact that I haven't been this weight (even THIS weight) for more than a decade. Never mind the fact that as of my WW weigh-in this morning I am only 10 pounds over goal. Never mind any of it. I am just so freaking tired.

I read the book "The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl"... have you read her blog? So basically she lost half her body weight. She looks amazing and has certainly had her share of ups and downs. Parts of her story I completely related to and other parts just made me angry. She dismisses doing Weight Watchers for the same reasons that I would never ever go to meetings, but also talks about how it is a crutch and she should be able to do it herself. (And to her credit, she has done, so well done, mate!) but I find that I need that accountability. I need to see those points moving along and tallying up. I need that in order to know that I am on the right track.

One major change of the last almost two years on WW? I love shrimp now. I mean, this is a food that I literally would gag on and I absolutely love it now! So score one for losing weight (while not 2 stones 2 pounds, I still can say I have lost 1 stone 2 pounds, which is pretty impressive)!

A little garden bounty

2011-07-27T21:14:00.001-04:00

In our first garden in the new house, I planted just a few things and tonight's dinner includes a bunch. I made a potato and golden beet salad with veg from our neighbourhood farmers' market. But I dressed it with parsley and onions from our yard. Yay! Also along with our delicious hamburgers, we will have hot peppers also from our gardoonie.

Yay for Italian Food!

2011-07-10T18:24:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in my last post on San Diego, G and I ate at Bencotto Italian Kichen twice. It was amazing and while not cheap, it was worth every single penny and would have likely cost double had we had this same meal in Toronto.

Anyway, we read about this restaurant and decided that we absolutely had to eat there. And we fell in absolute love. So much so that when we were leaving, we made another reservation to return for our last dinner in California!

And what a dinner it was.

Sheesh man.

I started with stuffed squash blossoms.

Delicious blossoms stuffed with ricotta cheese. They were then lightly battered and fried. Served on a parmesan cream sauce that I would pay to just dip my fingers in it and lick off, it was amazing. The sauce had some sun-dried tomatoes scattered over the top. Heaven!!! Absolute heaven.

I was really excited about my second course. Asparagus gnocchi with cream sauce, bacon and more asparagus. Fan-freaking-tastic.

Oh yeah. Every single bite of gnocchi was beyond amazing. Seriously, it could not have been better had it been even much better. Even thought it was a huge plate of food, I still cut each gnocchi into threes just to make it last longer. I didn't realize that I was ordering two creamy dishes, but it happens. And it was amazing...

If you are in San Diego, I highly recommend this place. Our first time there, I ordered two appetizers, a glass of bubbly red (which I love), and a HUGE plate of baked pasta. With another appetizer and G's main, our bill was still only about $70 or so. Which is a lot, I understand that, but the quality is just out of control.

San Diego.

2011-07-03T21:25:00.001-04:00

I went to a conference in San Diego recently and took an extra few days to spend vacationing with G.

What an amazing city! First up, we knew we had to try fish tacos. Staying in La Jolla, we were THISCLOSE to the beach, so off we went to a little beachside taco place to have the first round...

Tooooo yummy! Lightly fried fish, avocado, fresh salsa and shredded cabbage wrapped in two corn tortillas. Fantastico!

But this was not the only memorable meal in San Diego...

We also ate at this fabulous place called the Whisk N' Ladle in La Jolla...

I didn't take a photo of the food, but I had an amazing charcuterie platter followed by fish taquito's that were absolutely OUT OF THIS WORLD. And this place has the same quote on their menu that I have on my blog, so they are obviously cool like me. (As cool as I am, I thought you'd know this already...)

We also went to the famous Fish Market, which was really pretty decent, but the Bob Hope and Life Magazine photo tributes were better....

Super neat... we enjoyed the view while sipping some local brews...

I also had to try the local favorite, Hodad's for a good ol' fashioned American hamburger! OMG what an amazing hamburger and fries it was...

We ate at the bar and just took it all in. Really a great place but super small inside and we had to wait in line for about 15 minutes outside before we got a table! But it's not too expensive (especially compared to the #1 ranked 'burger place in San Diego, the Burger Lounge), lots of fun, and a really nice vibe. I enjoyed every bit of that burger. (And didn't have to think to hard to figure out how I gained back a few pounds while in California!)

The conference hotel was near Little Italy, and so off we went to the farmer's market. This is an AMAZING market and if you live there and haven't been, you really should sort it out and get there ASAP. It's beyond fantastic.

We had some amazing tastes of local food, and bought a few treats. I bought a vanilla macaroon that was the size of a person's head! Only in America!

And the most amazing spicy green chile pork tamale...

Gracious, I could eat a few more of those right now!

I also almost got eaten by a shark...

But I survived.

And good thing to, because we discovered what could be my most favourite restaurant ever... Bencotto in Little Italy. I am going to devote a whole post just to that big smackin' bunch of delicious Italian food like never ever in my life previously... Stay tuned!

Happy Canada Day!

2011-07-03T21:03:00.000-04:00

Ahhhh, beach day. We spent Canada Day hanging out with our fellow Canadians at the beach. This is the end of our main street. That's right. 10 minutes and this is at our feet.

We're too lucky by half.

Happy Canada Day and Happy July 4th!

Tijuana taco hunt

2011-06-25T14:12:00.006-04:00

It's been a bit of time for the blog, I miss it. Not sure if you miss us . . .

Well we went away to San Diego for a week so we've a few food-related things to say about it. J was down there mostly for a conference and I was there mostly to tag along, mess around, and do no work. I succeeded on my end.

I did not realize that San Diego was as close as it is to the Mexican border. But it is. You can take the trolley/streetcar from downton San Diego to the border. It's a bit of a slow go at 45 minutes, or you can drive it in about 15 minutes. I also did not realize that a friend of ours who we met on the folk fest circuit also lived in San Diego. And he was most obliging and agreed to take me on a taco tour of Tijuana.

Thus Jimmy G and I set out on the trolley for the Mexican border. We had been down a few days before to an outlet mall and were suprised to see the "border fence" going right through the parking lot. So that a bit set the mood for me. Anywho, big red trolley down to the border and then toodle across by foot. It's easier than getting on the subway, because you don't have to pay. You just walk through a couple of turnstiles, no border check, no immigration officers, nothing. Bienvenidos a Mexico!

So Jimmy G and I wandered the streets of Tijuana for many hours and stopped at quite a few taco stalls along the way. We avoided the most touristy area and wandered through the town's nice and not as nice parts. It's surely not the prettiest place but the food was good. We had a few tacos and also tried some paletas, Mexican fresh fruit popsicles, which were delicious. I was wary of the ceviche on the hot street and the delicate disposition of my stomach, so I did not take the chance. My only disappointment was that I didn't get to have a taco de lengua. Next time.

Off all the ones I tried, the best came from our first stop at Asadero el Abuelo. It was carne asada cooked right there in front me over a charcoal grill. Kept simple with a bit of onion, cilantro, guacamole and hand-made corn tortillas. Toss in a bit of radish and a spritz of lime and perfecto!

Along with it I had my first (of many that day) aqua frescas. This is why you go with someone who's more familiar, because they'll make it feel safer to try stuff you might not otherwise. The first was horchata, basically cold cinnamon rice milk. Very refreshing and delicious. Over the course of the day I also tried papya, tamarind, and flor de jamaica (hibiscus flower). By the end of our wanderings, my legs were ready to fall off but one last treat as we approached the long line to cross back into the USA: freshly made churros!! The best ones ever.

So while Tijuana is not exactly what I would call one of my favourite places, the street food was fantastic! Oh and I got a new comal and some fabulous pottery bowls for next to nothing, so I am ready for more Mexican at home!!

Ah... Lavash Pizza At Last.

2011-05-14T21:32:00.000-04:00

Years ago, before coming to Canada, I saw a cooking show where the person used lavash to make sandwiches. I couldn't ever seem to find it.

Then, years later (or circa now), I started seeing WW bloggers talking about the awesomeness of lavash pizza because lavash is usually pretty low point.

Then even more recently, we moved and the local grocery store CARRIES LAVASH! SCORE! After grilled pizza (haven't read that post, it's down the line a bit), we had leftover fixin's so I made up some low point lavash pizza's on the pizza stone in the over. And it was a total freaking hit!

See that huge pizza??? That is a SINGLE SERVING! Now I dipped into my weekly points for some extra cheese lovin' but the whole thing was very very low point. The lavash sheet is only FOUR POINTS! FOUR! FOUR!

You get the picture.

So it's been a meal twice this week and I really love it. Go try it as I am sure you live somewhere cooler than I've ever lived (until now) and are able to get your hands on some lavash.

BBQ Pizza.

2011-05-07T13:53:00.000-04:00

Look at that beauty! My first pizza on the bbq. We made two and you can just see in the corner there the charcoal of the other pizza, but even burned, it was delish!

We bought a ready made pizza dough at the store this morning. Brought it home, stretched it out into two pies. Heated the grill to super duper hot and oiled one side of the pizza dough and plopped it on the grill. Leave the lid open and let it cook for just a few minutes. Don't do like I did and let it burn. It sounds like a cool idea, I know, but it just doesn't taste nice. And really, we get enough carcinogens from the fresh air we breathe.

After the dough seems done (just a couple of minutes), lightly oil the other side and flip her over. TOP TOP TOP! Sauce, cheese, veg, salami... it's YOUR pizza so make it your way. Close the lid and let cook. Again, notice I say COOK not BURN. Do as I say, not as I did.

Take her off the grill after a couple of minutes, let it set and slice it up and eat it. You will be in pizza lovin' heaven.

I got the beets

2011-05-04T22:38:00.005-04:00

I roasted a whole package of beets last week and it was really A LOT. So we made our regular and favourite beet salad the first night and then I didn't know what to do with the surfeit of leftovers. They sat in the fridge for a few days as I could not come up with another option but didn't want to toss 'em. So finally on Sunday I decided to make borscht. J said she was not keen on it but I wanted it and nothing else was going on in the kitchen on that dull and rainy afternoon.

I have not made it before so went to the bible - Joy of Cooking - to see what it had on offer in terms of recipes. There were a couple but neither seemed just right so I ended up doing a bit of a hybrid.

Now don't let the picture scare you, it was actually quite delicious and turns an excellent fuschsia colour when you stir in the sour cream. It also turned out to be totally vegetarian as somehow I ended up instead of buying regular veggie stock cubes getting ones that were veggie-beefy flavour. Anyway, it worked in this case as the stock needs to be, well, beefy. And it's quick.

G's roasted beet borscht

3 small or one large roasted beet (make extra when you're doing them for something else), slivered (leave a few chunks for colour purposes)
1/4 red onion, chopped
4 cups of beef stock - chicken stock does not really have enough umph!
1 potato, cubed
juice of about 1/3 of a lemon
sour cream and dill for garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Put the stock in a pot and bring to the boil then add the few chunks of beets, onion, and potato and simmer until the potato is mostly cooked. It should be a nice purply colour. At this point, you can take out the chunks of beet as they have done their work. Add the slivers of beet and the lemon juice then cook for about five more minutes. Taste and season to your liking then serve with a dollop of sour cream and dill.

It's easy peasy and a good hearty soup. I didn't even bother to brown the onions, they just cook up nicely in the stock and float around. I also don't add cabbage, carrots, or even peppers like some recipes. I was pretty pleased with how it came out. A do-over for sure.

I've got green balls

2011-04-25T22:55:00.005-04:00

Now you're reading this!!

So last year I wrote about making poblano matzoh balls but there were no pictures. Well I had to recover from my matzoh ball disaster of last week as well as wanting to try making the green balls again. Am happy to report that after a good weekend of cooking, I feeling like I'm moving away from the sense of disaster that had been haunting me in the kitchen recently. Anywho, I also have to get out the good camera, the phone camera is not really optimal - but it is easy.

So to make the green balls, first thing is to char the skin of the poblano, which is easily done over the burner of the gas stove.
Using this method, it didn't get quite as soft as when you char the skin under the broiler. So in order to soften it up so it's easy to mush, I just put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Then mushed it up, added to a regular mix of matzoh balls at the point just before you make the balls and put them on to boil.

I will say that I made perhaps one of the best batches ever of chicken soup and these green-tinted matzoh balls make a nice change. I will probably be making them every year and maybe next year even try some red ones made with another type of chile.

The highs and lows of cooking for Pesach

2011-04-21T17:58:00.010-04:00

It seems there's been a lot of highs and lows for me lately in the kitchen and Pesach was not to be passed over, so to speak, on this front.

My mom asked me to make a cake or some manner of sweetness for Monday's seder. I was happy to oblige and my search for an interesting and different option began. You'd be surprised by how few options there are out there on the internet and baking is just not something that I'm comfortable making up. Anyway, I ended up using a Nigella Lawson recipe from her book Feast for damp apple and almond cake. It worked out quite well (no pics, however) but would have probably been better if I'd had the right cake pan. But not bad for a first try.

This year, I also wanted to do something different than going out and buying dem coconut macaroons, jellied fruit slices, or Manischewitz kosher for Pesach chocolates. J bought a Bonnie Stern cookbook that had a few gems in it. Although her recipe did lead me astray on the issue of whether or not to stir the caramel as it cooked (you stir constantly btw), I did get a particularly tasty treat to share with friends and family.
Basically whip up some caramel - that's 1 cup of butter and 1 cup of brown sugar - then spread it over a few matzahs. Let it get all nice and bubbly, get it out the oven and sprinkle a bag of chocolate chips (kosher for passover, of course), wait five minutes and give it a nice schmear to cover it all up. Let it cool, which usually takes a few hours, then break it up into small pieces. Let the oohs and ahhs ensue as everyone enjoys the matzah crunch.

Oh yeah, so that was the high. The lowest of the low: matzah balls like golf balls. They were not a delight. I shall try to remedy that before the week is over. Following the instructions properly will likely help.

The highs and lows now that we're cooking with gas

2011-04-17T08:49:00.006-04:00

Having lived in the new house for a couple of months, we are still getting used to cooking with gas. For the most part, I love it. For instance, I've always wanted to make my own baba ghanouj but I like it really smokey and have had neither a bbq nor a gas stove . . . but that has now all changed. So the other day, I picked up some beautiful aubergines, eggplants, berenjena - whatever you may call them - and set to.

The most important part of the whole operation, according to Nigel Slater and I'm middle eastern cooks the world over, is charring the skins of the fruit so you get that awesome smokey taste. So basically I took the two eggplants that I had and put them right on the burner of the gas stove and charred the heck out of them until the skin was burnt and the flesh was all soft. And oh how fabulous the kitchen smelled.

Next step - put the piping hot fruits into a colander resting on a bowl. Once they've cooled a bit, peel the charred skin off and discard. During the process, your eggplants will be leeching some water, but you want to get rid of most of it because it's kind of bitter and who needs that! So you can either just sort of mush the flesh with a fork until you've got rid of most of the liquid or sort of chop it up a bit and then mush it. Either way, get as much liquid out as you can and discard it.

You now have a nice load of mushy eggplant. Add to this:

3-4 tbsp tahina
2 garlic cloves chopped as fine as you can
3 tbsp olive oil
juice of one small or 1/2 of one large lemon
salt and pepper

Most of the recipes I read for this say you don't need to use a blender but depending on the quality of your eggplant, you may want to. I think mine may have either been a bit old or had some bruising because I got a couple of nasty hard bits that couldn't be mushed with just a fork. And getting little hard bits in your creamy dip is not pleasant, so if you need to, waz it up with the blender if you want to. Finish it off with a sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley.

I served it with some chicken grilled on the bbq after a bit of a greek marinade (lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and oregano) as well as a green salad and rice.

So you'll see in the photo above some fluffy white rice and that brings me to one of the lows of cooking with gas. Now, you see, I have been cooking rice perfectly for many, many years. I took the knowledge passed down to me from my mother and others and then made it work for me (1 cup basmati rice, 2 cups water, pinch of salt and a drop of oil/2 tsps of tomato paste if you want. Bring water to boil. Add rice and bring back to boil. Turn down to low, cover, and cook for 17 minutes). My rice came out perfect every time. Every time. My rice mojo, however, is now lost. I've made mushy rice, I've made some absolutely charred rice, and I've made some passable but mediocre rice. I have not made perfect rice with this gas stove. So there is much to learn. For now, I'm tending more toward the potato!

I'm a Geek.

2011-04-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

Yep. Royal Wedding tea and my Wills and Kate mug. Very much a moment of excitement at our local tea shop to find the mugs. I wanted the tea cup set but at just around $80, I could not justify it. The morning of the wedding you will find G and I, Royal Wedding brew in hand with a full English breakfast. Because that's how we roll in this town, baby. :)

The Burgers Priest.

2011-03-17T21:36:00.000-04:00

I've been seeing the naturopath and am supposed to be following a "clean" diet. But I have been really really really wanting to try the Burgers Priest, and so, tonight was the night.

And the photo was taken with the iPhone. Sorry.

I got the doublemeat based on the recs from Chowhound but it was wayyyy to much for me. So off came the second patty and down went the burger and fries. Really good! Kind of a cross between the Shake Shack and In-n-Out, so not a bad thing to be a combo of! Enjoyed it but it was wicked heavy.

Tomorrow - back on track!!!

Barley Risotto.

2011-03-08T20:40:00.001-05:00

One of my favourite blogs, Girl Interrupted Eating, has such a way with food and words. And she just seems so totally British. She seems to make the things that I see the contestants on MasterChef make, just because she's creative and in love with local ingredients. I just love her blog and for the first time ever have made one of her recipes.

Should have known it would be delicious... how could it not be? Barley, stock, chicken, carrots, all cooked together in the over? Bring it...

I made a few tweaks on her recipe... but here's the overall picture of the meal...

Pearl Barley Oven Risotto with Chicken

You need:

2 carrots chopped
3 shallots diced
1 clove of garlic (I used the press bc while it's wasteful, my hands don't stink)
2.5 cups of chicken broth
2 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless, cut into cubes
200g of barley
14 ounces of tinned chopped tomatoes
Goat Cheese, soft, to taste

Cook the chicken cubes to just starting to brown. Remove from pan and soften the shallot, carrot and garlic in the pan adding salt and pepper and a little bit of oil. Add water as necessary to keep from burning or over browning. Once softened, mix in the broth, barley, and tomatoes. Add the chicken back to the pan and give it a stir. Bring to a simmer, cover and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. When ready, put a little bit of the soft goat cheese on each plate to mix in and make unctuous.

So it was delicious and just a happy tasty bowl of goodness. I highly recommend it. I am not sure if barley is given the a-okay on my clean plan, but it's an ancient grain so I am saying oh yeah.

Hope you like it.

Clean Eating Once Again!

2011-03-07T20:40:00.000-05:00

Phew! It's been a whirlwind, hasn't it?

In an effort to keep myself on the right track, and to figure out why all of the energy in my body has been completely drained, I have been seeing a naturopath. She is convinced that I have some food intolerances (and I agree) and she thinks that my whole system is out of balance with too much inflammation (which I also know is true)... but instead of me just knowing it, she's got me on a whole whack of supplements and a "clean" diet to sort myself out. It's just day two and other than an overwhelming feeling of tiredness and crazy high fibre bloating, it's going okay.

But I did labour a bit with what to make food-wise. No wheat, no sugar, no dairy, no eggs, no red meat, no pork... ancient grains, brown rice, chicken and turkey, veggies but no corn or mushrooms, no fresh berries, no caffeine... on and on. I had a moment of thinking I was just going to end up spending this two weeks doing nothing but eating chicken and brown rice, and then I thought, 'isn't one of us supposed to be a foodie here?' and I got off my arse and made some menus.

First up was a delicious turkey meatball with kamut penne. Sadly, the penne was toooo fibre-y for G's colitis (our two needs with regards to dietary fibre do not meet anywhere near the middle), but otherwise... it was great!

So here I am in the new kitchen getting the fixin's ready. Turkey, onion, red pepper, spelt breadcrumbs, garlic....

It was pretty easy. I took two roasted red peppers, onion and garlic and whazzed them up in the little cuisinart. I mixed that with the turkey, some no salt or sugar added tomato paste, spelt breadcrumbs, and a bunch of chopped parsley. Oh yeah, and tons of herbs including copious amounts of crushed red pepper!

I baked them in the oven (400 degrees) for about 25 minutes with the last two or three minutes under the broiler...

Ooh arty ball shot.

Once cooked, I mixed them into the marinara sauce (store bought with some sauteed onion and extra spices mixed in)...

Yummmy!

And then I served it up with the kamut pasta, sprinkled with parsley, and tried to pretend I didn't miss the cheese...

Now doesn't that look delicious?

It was really very good and hit the pasta spot for me. Like I said, it was not so excellent for G, but I guess easily digestible is in the eye of the beholder (or the colon, or something). Anyway, whatever the reason, it made me forget that I was all clean eating. Instead, I just enjoyed dinner. And a spoonful of some essential fatty acid liquid and a digestive enzyme. All in preparation for my Calm Magnesium supplement that I take at night. With a castor oil pack. Really? It's all a bit crazy.

But we'll see. Day two and I am still super tired with a tinge of a headache. Maybe day three will be the charm! :)

Pimento Cheese Heaven.

2011-02-23T20:06:00.000-05:00

Food memories are a weird thing.

My Mom had this postcard when I was kid hanging on her mirror that said, "The things that have lived longest in my memory never really happened." I always liked the sound of that, but as I get older, I start to see the truism.

This pimento cheese renaissance is just like that. Other than the stuff you buy in the jar and spread on celery during the holidays, I don't remember ever eating pimento cheese. But I feel an affinity towards it that makes no sense, and if asked, I'd probably make up some story about eating it since birth or something because I FEEL like that's true even if it's not. The things that live longest, and all that.

So it was when the new Bon Appetit arrived at my new front door! The cover recipe drew me in.. "Hands down, the tastiest version we've ever made" -- how can I say no? We immediately drew up the grocery list and set about figuring out when to make it.

Today was the day (and I still haven't read the magazine, just that recipe!).

The verdict? Very different from my stand-by but really delicious. G loved it. The pimento cheese was really nice and gave it a spicy sweet cheesy loveliness. I added quite a bit more ancho chile then they called for, and didn't add the extra parm in the cheese sauce AND I had to use jarred roasted red peppers because it's all we could find... but all in all it was pretty delicious.

Hang on, I am going to run the recipe through the WW recipe builder... let's laugh together at the damage of this all cheese meal...

Okay... it seems to be about 13. Not too bad, but not great, either. BUT it was delicious and I highly recommend it. Page 79 of the new issue... Mine was far redder than theirs, but it was really lovely. Go make it and send me an email and let me know how it goes!

...and the dream is realized.

2011-02-22T19:54:00.000-05:00

One thing that G and I might not say enough is that we have the most rocking families in the entire world. G's dad surprised us with a gift of a new bbq this past weekend. Despite being dead tired and completely starved, we new that the moment we got home, that bbq was being assembled and put to use. Racing to beat the snow was also fun!

Alas, we didn't beat the snow but we did have our dream realized of owning a home with a backyard so we could bbq whenever we wanted. It seems like a silly thing, maybe, but for us it was a big deal. And last night, thanks to G's dad and my family's present of a gift card to Home Depot, we made the dream happen...

First... the Q.

G is q'ing it up!!!!

So of course, the first meal on the new q had to be steak. Simply cooked with all the fixins...

Yum! That is my half piece of steak (the whole piece wouldn't fit on the very full plate!!!)... baked potato... sauteed spinach...sauteed mushrooms and onions... and peas! It was without question the most excellent steak I have ever had in my entire life! We can't wait to cook for all of you!!!

Getting set-up!

2011-02-21T19:53:00.000-05:00

Hello friends. We've been in the new house for two weeks today (!) and are finally getting settled. The bruises, the soreness, and the allergies from all the dust are finally subsiding and we are getting back into the flow of it.

The first week we were here, we had a major urge to make dinner. We've had this steady stream of eating out because of all the chaos, and the first meal in the new house was not anything fancy... but it was a big ol' bowl of spag bol.

And there she is. Our first home cooked meal in our new house, eaten surrounded by boxes on a gentle slope of our 100 year old dining room. It was excellent and felt good to finally be cooking again, even if it was something really simple. Of course, one of the first things unpacked were our deluxe Peugeot salt and paper grinders. A girl has to have priorities.

The plan from here on (and thank you Ontario for the most excellent made up holiday of Family Day for giving us a much needed catch up day) is to get my arse back into running, to start tracking those Weight Watchers points that have been hiding the last few weeks, and to cook at home all week this week. Plus, watch out for blog posts on our first bbq meal and a new mac-n-cheese!

It's nice to be home.

British Invasion.

2011-01-24T20:13:00.000-05:00

I've said it before and I'll likely say it again, I LOVE British food magazines.

With the strong Canadian dollar and the weak pound, I am able to subscribe to my beloveds (Olive, BBC GoodFood and Weight Watchers UK) and I love getting them in the mail every month! (I'm pretty easy to please.)

Last week, the new Olive and BBC GoodFood came and hurray! Lots to make!

First up was a Beef and Mushroom pie with Blue Cheese. It was great BUT as usual, my crust fell apart and sank into my little pie. AND my beef and mushroom filling didn't thicken up properly. I combined the recipe in Olive with the recipe that came with one of the two magazines, a collaboration with Weight Watchers. Maybe I should have cooked it longer? I made the filling in the pressure cooker...

What? You want to know what it looks like? Well hold it right there...

A little liquid with your crust?

The secret to this pie was the blue cheese. You roll it into the puff pastry crust! Oh those Olive people are geniuses! CLEVER by half!

So, despite my tears of frustration when the crust COMPLETELY sank into my pie, I managed to get through it.

I got through it so well in fact that I had to make Gregg's Perfect Pud from BBCGoodFood. My favourite dessert, Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Now just wait a second. I don't have a pudding steamer thingie. But I do have a muffin tin and a bigger roasting tray. So I made the cakes in muffin tins and it worked BEAUTIFULLY! What didn't work so well was my toffee sauce. I cooked it for TWICE as long as the recipe said and it still didn't get very brown. Having never made it before, I kept thinking the magic would happen eventually, but it didn't. I soldiered through and ate that sugary buttery bunch of heaven!

Sticky Toffee LOOOOOOVES Me.

So yea, it looks like a cupcake but it's OH SO VERY MUCH MORE! :) (The point count for the amount I ate of dessert last night? 21 points JUST for pudding. TWENTY-ONE POINTS! That's a treat that won't be repeated very often, just two more times each for G and I until all those little STP muffins are eaten!)

Pick up the February issues. Lots of good stuff inside and I for one am going to keep cooking from them.

On an unrelated note, we close on our new house in a matter of weeks. It's very scary and getting harder to cook as the kitchen and related items are slowly being packed away waiting to be moved to their new home. Stressful, yes, but very very very exciting!!!!

(Oh, and I am watching this crazy BBC show (did I mention my love of the Brits?) called "How Not To Live Your Life". It's MENTAL. Any other suggestions?)

Chicken Paprikash

2011-01-24T19:52:00.000-05:00

Wowie. It's been a non-stop cook-at-home-a-thon lately.

And I have to tell you, this time of year, when it's dark at noon (or so it seems), the photos are total crap. Please spare a little patience when you see the photos...

Last week, we had a giant chicken breast to cook. What to do what to do? I tend to like saucy noodle- things, and I had recently read a recipe for chicken paprikash on weightwatchers.ca that sounded good. I had also read a recipe in the little insert in Olive magazine for beef paprikash that sounded even better, so I took matters into my own hands and combined them up and made...

Chicken Paprikash on Noodles

Chicken cut into little pieces, mixed with mushrooms, onions, red pepper and LOTS and LOTS of smoked paprika. Really nice served over some no yolk really white looking egg noodles and sour cream. It was small in points but delicious in flavour.

I used my new technique of frying in a little cooking spray and then, when that dries out, just adding little bits of water to keep it going. It really works!!! So see, you learned something from me today.

And here's another free nugget of wisdom... don't put reddish food on an orange plate in a darkish room and take a photo. Flash, no flash, it's all crap. But the food? The FOOD is delish!!!

Just ducky

2011-01-17T21:16:00.004-05:00

It's not your average work day dinner that I whipped up tonight but since I didn't have the enthusiasm for it last night, I had to do tonight. Sometimes I enjoy the frenetic-everything-has-to-be-cooked-at-the-same-time madness and tonight was one of those nights. I've been having a hankering for duck for quite a few weeks and finally last week picked up a nice magret duck breast at the St. Lawrence Market. Popped it in the freezer and then took it out on Sunday with a plan to make a nice meal for both of us. That planned got a bit scuppered by events of the day, and as mentioned, my enthusiasm for the cooking had waned.

So it had to be eaten tonight, so I got to it. Pan fried duck breast in a red wine and mushroom reduction (based somewhat on this recipe). I get a kick out of making the diamond shapes in the fat of the duck breast and searing it. And then continuing the low-fat meal prep, I used the duck fat to pan fry some gnocchi, which was what J had a hankering for. They come out spectacularly. Even using the packaged ones, they were crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy inside. Nice!!! Along with that, we roasted some broccoli.

There were pots and pans and all manner of things flying about the kitchen. What fun! And a friggin' gourmet feast for a Monday night people!

Faux Mexicana.

2011-01-16T14:49:00.000-05:00

G is the Mexican food cook in our house. I am the Mexican food eater.

But the other night, while packing up for the evening, a colleague mentioned a pretty easy chicken dinner recipe that I thought, this sounds perfect! Basically, you take your boneless skinless chicken breasts and put them in a baking tray, cover with salsa, top with bread crumbs and grated cheese. Bake and eat.

Well-ell, that sounded doable! We had a jar of G's salsa opened that needed to be used (and was one of her less spectacular offerings), chicken breasts thawed out and ready to be cooked, and some lovely queso fresco that would make an excellent topping. Dinner was born!

While the chicken baked, I whipped up some tomatillo rice with shredded spinach mixed in, some corn sauteed with red pepper and onion, and super light salad of iceberg lettuce, onion, and avocado in a lime vinaigrette. What a massively filling dinner for pretty low WW points+!

Granola!

2011-01-16T14:43:00.000-05:00

J here.

As I have mentioned at least a million times, I follow Weight Watchers. As you may know, if you care about such things, the while Weight Watchers plan changed at the end of last year and it's been a bit strange for me. I never seemed to have a difficult time following the plan, but lately, I have been. I think part of it is just that it's different and I still have to get my brains around the fact that spending more points on breakfast, or something similar, is not such a big deal because I have more points to start with. But it's also because things around here have been quite stressful getting ready for the move. It's tiring and frustrating and the condo seems to be in a constant mess! It is not conducive to getting anything accomplished in the kitchen, but it IS conducive to going up the street and chowing down at Ginger. *Sigh* It's never easy, is it? But that's what life is. Having hard parts and smooth parts and making sure it balances out in the end of it to the best that it can and you can.

Anyway, in the spirit of that, I decided to make granola. I am on a big greek yogurt kick, and the yogurt with a bit o' granola makes for a filling breakfast. However, granola that you buy in the store is REALLY caloric. So for my first attempt, I used a recipe found on Everbody Likes Sandwiches, which can be found here. It was super easy and super deluxe! See for yourself...

Yum!!! It's clumpy, but wayyyyy too sweet so next time, less sugar. Also, G talked me into getting these golden raisins that taste really ass-y to me, so no more of those. But otherwise, it's fantastic. We turned it into 20 servings at about 2 points a serving.

We took photos of the cooking process, but they are really yellow. I am SO hopeful that the new house will have better lighting in the kitchen so the photos of the process will be better. But whatever, it is what it is. I am a professional lawyer, not a professional cook or photographer so I suppose it's all okay.

Anyway, I do recommend this recipe highly! It's really nice to have something that's made from your own kitchen with ingredients you trust. Good luck and drop me a line if you try it.

Gourmet in Aurora

2011-01-12T21:58:00.005-05:00

It's not often that I post anything about anything that happens in Aurora. I basically work there and the food aspect of it is not particularly remarkable - in large part because I take my lunch to work most of the time. Anyway, today I had a lunch meeting and we went to the Edward Street Bistro. I didn't realize it was actually a restaurant. I'd been into the gourmet food store and knew it had a sandwich and coffee bar so was surprised that lunch ended up being more than soup and salad at a counter.

I started off with the soup of the day, an excellent seafood chowder. Iam often wary of chowders that often tend to be a little gelatinous for my taste. This was had a light broth with loads of chopped up vegetables and chunks of fish in the bottom. And it was a decent sized cup - not too much but more than enough to enjoy.

I will say that generally I would not order a hamburger at a business lunch but how could I pass up a $19 bison-kobe beef burger? I couldn't and I didn't. It came dressed with Jensen aged white cheddar, red wine onion, topped with a giant crispy onion ring and seved with a generous helping of frites. Really one of the most delicious burgers that I've ever eaten. Good stuff. If you're in the area, give it a try. It's not cheap but is probably the best food in town.

Now this is how you use up turkey leftovers

2011-01-10T20:40:00.009-05:00

We had a lot of turkey over the various holidays in Q4 of 2010 (see how all-business I've become). Each time there was a bit left over that I ensured did not go to waste. Almost all the extra meat was shredded, bagged, labelled, and put in the freezer. Carcasses, vegetables and other goodies were turned into stock that was also saved in one or two cup servings in ziploc bags and also put in the freezer. The stock has many, many, many uses!

So it had been some time since I'd rustled up some Mexican food and over the weekend, I had a hankering. Also wanting to use up some of what we had in the freezer before our move, I thought I would do something with both the shredded turkey and some stock. I really enjoy the chicken tacos with chicken tinga so thought I'd adjust a recipe from my Mexican Home Cooking course and use turkey to make some tinga. It used some of the chipotle en conserva that I made last summer, and I added some tomatoes, herbs and other jazz and voila!

So, of course, this also meant a quick trip to the market to get a few goodies like my new favourite fresh tortillas, some queso fresco, etc. etc. Put that all together and you have a totally delicious turkey taco (with a not so excellent picture to illustrate the point).

While at cooking school, we also had this fantastic soup of poblano peppers (crema de chile poblano), which I really wanted to make. It was a cold day and soup was going to warm the soul. So put that together as well - really easy and relatively fast except for the charring and cleaning of the peppers - and I used my homemade turkey stock as the base. The soup was so smooth, creamy, a slight hint of spice and just generally absolutely delicious.

Not only was the food great but we also got to use this spectacular tortilla warmer that J's family gave me. Put eight tortillas in it in the microwave for a minute and you've got steaming hot flatbreads that stay hot! Yeah.

And the other most awesome thing for those on the Weight Watchers: low points, ahoy. Four tacos, with a bit of queso fresco, some salad, a bit of crema, and a plate of soup is only about 12 points. That's a big feed for not too many of the Points Plus!

Breakfast of Champions!

2011-01-08T19:01:00.001-05:00

Yesterday had a nice twist to it. We were out looking at housewares and we stopped at the best British Food Store in the whole province. It's located at the Eglinton Square shopping centre, and totally rocks. But honestly, they outdid themselves last night. They had one of my most favourite foodstuffs in stock...

Yeah!!! Yeah!!! Yeah!!!

We were so excited, but it was a bit late so we stocked up on provisions there including some really delicious Scottish bread and some Dubliner's cheese in order to make ourselves some extremely rocking breakfast sandwiches.

Despite our plans to get out early and go to the markets this morning, the snow had a different idea. So leisurely breakfast was on order!

Lovely toasted bread with a perfectly fried egg, cheese, and a big ol' dollop of Baxter's tomato chutney. And if it's up to scratch for the Queen...

... it's good enough for me.

And oh yeah, that rockin' Okie Grown mug in the background? It's mine. A super good Christmas present from my brother and I love using it for tea.

Good morning!!!

Livin' Large.

2011-01-08T09:45:00.001-05:00

I love cookbooks and food magazines.

I have dozens of them. I subscribe to a number of food magazines and I buy cookbooks when they catch my fancy.

The trouble is, I don't always have time to cook from them because there's always a steady stream of magazines and books coming in! New Year's Resolution? To cook from every cookbook I have, and to make at least one thing each month from each food magazine I subscribe to. Yikes. It sounds daunting already and none of my food subscriptions have even come in yet!

On the cookbook front, I am stoked, though! While I was home in the great state of Oklahoma, I bought myself a new cookbook...

I read it the second I got back home and promptly ordered her second cookbook. Lots of what she makes is familiar to me, and lots is what I imagine my life would have been like living with a more steady church goin' family in the 1950's instead of the rock awesome family that I actually lived with. Regardless though, it's absolutely fabulous! Cream of something in lots of the recipes and things that sound amazingly comforting. So yeah for having this resolution BEFORE I bought this cookbook, because I am going to be kicking it southern style. (While lightening what I can for the Weight Watchers part of me, of course!)

We are also in the process of preparing to move and it's been quite daunting. Trying to find a mover that is reasonably priced (I mean, sheesh, we're moving across town not across the country!), reliable, and that will help us do this thing stress-free! I'll keep you updated!

In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying the New Year as much as I am. Happy Days!

Happy New Year!!!!

2011-01-02T21:11:00.001-05:00

Whew! What a whirlwind this year has been!!!

I managed to keep my weight steady and maintain my Weight Watchers weight loss, I ran in two 10Ks, 2 5Ks, AND a half-marathon! I went to Mexico City and tasted some delicious Mexican food. I bought a house. I had a good work/life balance and some solid work achievements. Went to TIFF and saw Keanu Reeves up close and personal. Sang-along at Nuit Blanche. Went on a cruise of the Western Caribbean and spent a week on a beach in the Dominican. Went to Tulsa for Xmas. What I didn't do was cook a lot of anything interesting or even, for the most part, eat out anywhere interesting. And when I did, I didn't take photos.

If I had to do it over, I would have liked to have blogged more, taken a few more photos, and kept up with it all a bit better. But I would be lying if I said that this year didn't have some really amazing moments.

I am amazed constantly at how much weight I have lost (just about 30 pounds, with a goal this year to lose about 8 more), how different I look, how different I feel, and that I can safely say for the first time ever that I am a runner. I feel pretty good being me these days, and really, it's hard to write about that stuff without sounding overly smug, so I think I shied away from posting because of it.

But no longer....

So first up...

Christmas home with the fam. YIPPIE! Good year!

We went to El Guapo for Mexican food. Delicious and really nice. I absolutely loved it. It was sensational and a really fun restaurant in downtown. Would go back in a second. No photos of my delicious combo plate, but get there and enjoy yourself.

For Christmas dinner, we broke with tradition COMPLETELY and had G's mom's brisket for dinner with oven roasted potatoes (as seen on Nigella), broccoli cheese that I made from scratch, green beans, dinner rolls, and roasted carrots. Really really good.

As you can see, this was a nice looking plate of food and a really really rewarding Christmas dinner. It was the first time in my 38 years that we had a different dinner, and nobody died. I completely enjoyed every morsel of it.

Also, in Tulsa, I really really like Smashburger. I know it's a chain and all that jazz, but it's so freaking delicious. Super good hamburgers.

Then home to find myself back on the Weight Watchers with the brand spankin' new plan. Have you checked this out? It's insane. I am still finding my way around it, and keep telling myself that WW works and I will sort it out and be fine. :) It's all good.

But it's HAPPY NEW YEAR'S world-round right now, and we had a GREAT New Year's Eve! G very generously took me and her brother and his wife to a lavish dinner at Origin.

No pics of the food, but we managed to take one of us...

Hey! It was dark in there!!! I am the bugs bunny toothed one to the side.

I also took one of the amazing light fixture in the Warhol Room...

The food was amazing and we had the absolute nicest waitress in the world. Lots of food was had including their delicious devilled eggs, bangkok beef salad, duck wrap (DRROOOOOLLLLL), black cod (sigh), manchego rice/chorizo/poached egg (deliciousness personified), and chocolate cake. Throw in a bottle of prosecco, a jameison and ginger ale, and it was one amazingly memorable meal. It was a good good-bye to 2010.

This year, I have a few goals lined up for myself and am going to use this blog to share the journey. Food, running, working out with the Wii, and making delicious, healthy food to help G and I on our journey. Plus, we move into the new house in just over a month! Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally a shrimp taco

2010-12-06T22:09:00.003-05:00

I have been trying to whip up some shrimp tacos for weeks. For a variety of reasons, including not really cooking much in the last two weeks, there has been no shrimp tacos. But tonight, the stars aligned and shrimp tacos there were!

It was a total shortcut day though! So we had a bag of pre-cooked, peeled, deveined shrimp in the freezer that we got on super special somewhere. Anyway, they were easy to deal with and I just defrosted in a bit of water, pulled the tails off and we were ready to roll on that front. Whipped a cup of frozen tomato-chipotle sauce out of the freezer, put it in the frying pan and brought it to the boil. Popped the shrimp in there for a few minutes and that was all ready.

Had a couple of avocados in the fridge and had picked up a few tomatillos at the store yesterday, so whipped up a bit of a tomatillo-avocacdo salsa. Not my usual as the garlic, onions, and tomatillos all went in raw instead of with a bit of a roast on as usual. I just did not have the energy. There was also no cilantro around, so that got left out and my fresh jalapenos had gone mouldy (did I mention about not being in the kitchen much lately!) Anyway used a couple of the tiny dried chiles that I bought in Israel and that are mighty potent.

Served it all with some green rice (regular rice cooked with a tomatillo boullion cube in the water) and fresh corn tortillas purchased in the market over the weekend. Delicious and spicy!

Now for the final cleanup to get the kitchen back to that not-lived-in look that the realtors like so much!

Good Day for Food.

2010-12-05T20:23:00.000-05:00

It was a good day for food. It was not as good of a day for photos, selling our house, or getting rid of this cold, BUT, this is a no whining zone, so back to the food!

We had to be out of the house so we decided to go out to brunch, something we used to do a lot but stopped for some reason...

Today's pick was Fire on the East Side, which is a nice walk from the house. There was quite a wait, which was fine since we had to kill time anyway. We chatted in the entry and waited for a table to open up. Once it did, we cozied in, G ordered a martini of some sort and I had a mimosa. Delish.

The brunch menu is really varied, and everything looked really good. I ordered the Southwest Omelet (or something) and added chicken. (Am I weird that I absolutely LOVE chicken and eggs together?) It came with a small side salad and a small amount of french fries. That is the ULTIMATE for me. I always want a bit of of both. Anyway...

There it is! It was really fantastic, with chicken, salsa, guacamole, and fried tortilla strips on top. I really enjoyed it.

We walked around a bit after that, and made our way slowly to Whole Foods to pick up supplies for dinner.

Tonight's dinner came from Bon Appetit magazine. I read it last night and immediately decided that I had to fix it straight-away! Dinner was Tortellini with Italian Sausage, Fennel, and Mushrooms. I knew that in the past I had bought some awesome turkey italian sausage from Whole Foods, but wouldn't ya know it, but NOPE, no italian sausage other than the pork variety. So I thought, hey, that's okay...I can make my own (because it had to be out of the casing anyway..).

I bought some ground turkey, and all the rest of the fixings... I mixed the turkey with paprika, pepper, salt, fennel seed, ground fennel, and crushed red pepper flakes. It was FANTASTIC!

So here is the finished dish... two issues with this photo. The first issue, I took it on my iPhone. The second issue, it's total and complete crap and I have no ability to adjust it's crapiness. But nevertheless, I persevere because it's just that important....

But gosh, this was so delicious. And it features one of my new favourite things, FENNEL! I have hated fennel all my life because of it's licorice flavour. But a few weeks ago, I had roasted fennel on a sandwich and I just loved it. So it made this recipe a double must try!

Anyway, I sauteed the sliced fennel with mushrooms and the sausage I made. I added garlic, then whipping cream and chicken broth and let it cook. Then some spinach. Mix with the cooked tortellini.

Next time, and there absolutely WILL be a next time because it's freaking delicious, I will not make it with tortellini because ti's just way too much. A nice orechiette would be fantastic and will be the likely choice next time because the cheese tortellini is just so heavy. I highly recommend it, though, and it cooks super super fast so it would be a good weeknight dinner. Go on, try it!!!

Lunch of Champions.

2010-11-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

It's been a bit quiet around here lately, and a bit since I've posted. We've had a lot going on, nothing bad, but just really busy and all that jazz. But there are exciting things on the horizon including the launch of the new Weight Watchers on Monday! Yippie! I am about 8 pounds away from where I would ideally like to be, and I am hoping that the new WW will help get me there... So wait for that stuff. (But that all being said, it's almost a year since I hit my WW goal weight and I have stayed at or under that weight. Yeah for me!!!!)

ANYWAY... enough of that crap.

Today, G and I had to vacate the premises so that someone could fall in love with our condo and offer us a bazillion dollars cash for it. We hadn't eaten and had spent all morning making our home perfect, so we decided to treat ourselves. Little did we know the major treat that was in store for us!!!!

Oh yes, my son. Off to Ronscevalles to eat some Polish food! Yippie!

And the Polish Platter for Two was the way to go. And there it is! Two schnitzels, four potato pancakes, TEN pierogies, two cabbage rolls, and a BUNCH of salads....

Oh yeaaashhhh.... beets, cole slaw and pickles.

Aren't those pics great? Ha ha, they are from my silly phone. I just can't seem to take a good photo with it. I am lame.

But whatever... Chopin Restaurant is a winner, at least in my book. I am not saying that it's everybody's cup of tea, or that it's the best or most authentic necessarily because honestly, I have no idea. BUT, I will say that it was super duper great to have a nice meal and a relaxing moment amidst the chaos of getting our home ready for sale.

Ancho-guajillo enchilada sauce

2010-11-11T13:50:00.008-05:00

I love guajillo chiles because they are such a deep, robust red and colour whatever you add them to so beautifully. I had also just bought some anchos because I like them and realized I'd not cooked with them in some time. So sitting in the kitchen I had both and wanted to use them to whip up a dinner for some old friends who were visiting from England and to whom I had promised Mexican food.

It took some searching but i finally found a recipe that gave me some guidance on putting together an ancho-guajillo enchilada sauce. It was a bit of work but did yield a rich red sauce that wasn't too spicy.

Ancho-guajillo enchilada sauce

3-4 each of guajillo and ancho chiles
1 med. onion quartered
4 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp ground coriander
0.5 tbsp dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
2 tbsp olive oil
2.5-3 cups canned tomatoes
1 cup chicken stock
salt and pepper

Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles. Soften the chiles by first roasting them for 10 to 15 seconds on each side on the comal or a hot, dry frying pan. Then pop them into a small pot of boiling water while you do the rest of the preparations. Once they are soft, put them in a blender.

Dry roast the garlic cloves and onion on the comal. Peel and add to a blender. Also put the tomatoes in the blender.

If you have whole spices, it's best to use them and grind them up just before you need them. If you have pre-ground, that's fine too. Add the cumin, coriander, and oregano also to the blender.

Add one cup of liquid to the blender (can be 1 cup of chicken stock or a combo of chicken stock and some of the chile water. The more chile water you use, the hotter your sauce will be). Puree until quite smooth.

Sieve the tomato/chile mixture into a bowl, using a wooden spoon to push as much liquid through the seive as you can. You should be left with some bits of skin and seeds once you've got all your sauce through. Just toss that stuff.

Heat the oil in a medium pot and add the tomato/chile mixture so you get some sizzle. Reduce heat and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes. The sauce should become a deeper red and still be quite runny. If it gets a bit too thick add some water or chicken stock to thin it out. Once it's all nice, you can go ahead and make your enchiladas.

We used left-over turkey that we had frozen after Thanksgiving. Mix it all up with some of the enchilada sauce so it's covered but not too saucy. I also didn't have the usual corn tortillas at home but had seen someone at the Brick Works market making them that morning so ordered up a dozen from her. They were good but at $1 a tortilla, not really the most cost-effective way to go! Basically once you've got the meat sauced up, just dip each tortilla in the sauce to make it soft, put a spoonful of meat inside, roll it up and place in a baking dish. Once you've got the baking dish full of rolls, cover with the rest of the sauche and top it with cheese (I used queso fresco, which I think is great but it doesn't get all melty like some other types of cheeses). Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes.

oh that versatile sweet potato

2010-10-30T20:16:00.004-04:00

The end of the season with our CSA box yielded quite a lot of sweet potatoes and never one to pass up a challenge of finding a new use for whatever we have in plenty, I thought I'd try a sweet potato biscuit. J had read a recipe for one in one of the many food mags she gets but after a lengthy search, we could not find it so I turned to the trusty internet and voila, Martha Stewart had a recipe.

I have never really made biscuits from scratch before but I was determined. So on a Saturday morning before heading out to the Brick Works market to meet some friends, I got busy in the kitchen. While they did taste really good - not to greasy and not to potatoey - they were not as fluffy as Ms. Stewart's appear in the picture on the recipe page. Nonetheless, throw some sweet butter on those babies right after you take them out of the oven and they are quite heavenly.

This picture is terrible - they did come out in a relatively nice golden colour - who knows what was going on with the lights and the camera on this one!

Fresh never tasted better

2010-10-27T09:17:00.003-04:00

I was spoiled during my trip to Mexico earlier this year when I was able to eat freshly made tortillas every day. Coming back to Toronto and having only the option of pre-packaged was disappointing. It's a lot easier to find fresh flour tortillas but corn ones were elusive. So imagine how thrilled I was to happen upon La Tortilleria the other day.

I was working at home that day and decided to take advantage of the nice weather by going for a ride on my scooter to get some lunch in Kensington Market. Lunch, in case you were wondering, was a Jamaican goat patty, which I love. As I was heading back to my scooter I spied the sign of the tortilla shop on Augusta Ave. near Baldwin. I had to go in. It's only been there a month or so and is apparently a chain. They serve up Mexican food (which I did not try) and, of course, make fresh tortillas. They have white, blue, and yellow corn. I got the yellow as there's no blue available on weekdays, I was told.

They were still hot and wrapped in newsprint for the trip home. I could barely wait to taste them . . . they were absolutely delicious and not very expensive: $1.75 for that big pile you see in the photo. Of course, they didn't all get eaten the first day and still a few days later, after being kept in a ziploc in the fridge, they were still fresh tasting. I could tell they were going a little stale when they started to fall apart like the packaged oneswhen you tried to wrap some food in 'em. But that was five or six days, and at that point they are still better than the store-bought ones. So a great find and I hope the tortilleria stays in business!

Oh what a beautiful cupcake

2010-10-22T23:21:00.003-04:00

J really wanted red velvet cupcakes for her birthday, so who am I to say no even if it's way out of my comfort zone to make 'em.

I used the recipe from the Hummingbird Cafe cookbook, which was a present from a friend for my birthday. I followed the instructions religiously but was worried the batter was too dense. Same deal with the cream cheese frosting, which didn't look like it was coming together. But it all worked out well and the cupcakes were delicious. My frosting job wasn't too professional but as they say, it's what's inside that counts.

Toronto Restaurants!

2010-10-17T17:42:00.000-04:00

I love Toronto. It's positively the best city to live in, and it's even better to eat in!

One night, after a particularly harrowing day, french fries were calling my name. Shwarma was calling G's name. What's a girl to do? Shwarma fries!!!!

Crazy. This is some random shwarma place on Yonge street, and the meat was reallllllly fatty. I know some people like pork belly and all that kind of fatty meat, but I just don't go for it. I find the texture of fat to be really off-putting. So while an interesting idea, better shwarma would've made it. But fries and hummus... oh yeah baby.

We also had a lovely feast at the Lahore Tikka House. Now the first time I ate there, I had curry which made me very sick. But I've been back and fallen in absolute LOVE with their grilled meat platters.

Yep. It was as good as it looks! So, on that plate is a MOUNTAIN of rice, cooked perfectly. Then topped with this marinated beef that absolutely makes me salivate to think about with some chicken tikka. On top of that, yes, there is grilled onion and peppers and carrots and schtuff. It's so tasty, and an absolutely GINORMOUS portion. I can't remember how much it cost, but it's somewhere under $20. If you've never been to the Lahore Tikka House, you're in for an experience.

More Food From Other Bloggers.

2010-10-17T09:12:00.000-04:00

About three years ago, G and I went to Ireland. I may have mentioned it at the time.

I did poor research on good food in Ireland, and therefore we ended up not having the best meals while there. Until Galway Bay and this amazing sweet potato and lentil curry with brown rice that totally rocked my clock. It was like the first good meal I had had in weeks, it seemed, and I absolutely SNARFED it!

I was in heaven. Shortly after that, I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchens blog for a very similar dish. And I was so excited and vowed to make it the very next week!

Fast forward three years and look at our house full to the brim with sweet potatoes, and that vow finally made its way to the dinner table!

It's not pretty. No it surely isn't. But it was goooooooood. It is full of veggie goodness, and with a serving of brown rice was a very fibre rich bowl of yum. The swiss chard was delicious, but I honestly think I could have doubled the amount. We have an enormous amount leftover, and will likely have leftovers tomorrow and Monday for lunch! Goooo fibre!

I made a few changes to the recipe, which again, you can find here... mostly just added more curry powder and left out the cilantro because I am not a huge fan (though I think a little bit would have been nice)... and I forgot to add the nuts or chopped scallions, so whoopsie daisy, but yeah, it's a definite keeper.

Easy Peasy Pudding.

2010-10-16T21:11:00.000-04:00

As G has been hellbent on turning our humble home into a Mexican restaurant, I have been relieved of spending too much time in the kitchen lately. This has worked out well for me, as I was training for the Scotia Half-Marathon and was too tired to do much of anything! (I did run the half, and I did do well, thank you for asking!!!)

G was travelling for business recently and I was hankering for something sweet and spongy. I am not a huge sweets eater, but I can be convinced from time to time to partake in cake, so I searched the internet for a little recipe I had seen some time ago for a microwave sponge. And I found it!

Alex Rushmer, of Masterchef fame, made this delicious Microwave Sponge Cake that I knew was perfect for me! So, I halved the recipe and made use of what was in the house... that would mean some nasty-ass I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spread that G bought on sale, flour, and some lovely orange marmalade...

So. I halved the recipe but neglected to half the cooking time. D'oh! It was quite overdone, but also quite delicious! And super easy... 25g flour, 25g butter, 25g sugar, mixed together with half an egg (I used egg beaters) and poofed onto a generous amount of jam, jelly, or in this case marmalade. Microwave about 2 minutes or so until it's all ready to go. Flip out onto a plate and enjoy!!!

I really enjoyed it and will make it again soon, I am sure of it. :) Alex's blog is great, with lots of neat recipes. I was surprised that he didn't win Masterchef, but Dhruv was amazing, as well! I really liked that season of Masterchef!

A touch of the south

2010-10-10T10:02:00.001-04:00

It is Thanksgiving here this weekend and this house was full of sweet potatoes, so what to do but make something that I've not done before. Sweet potato pie rang my bell as it has that bit of the south that I find attractive!!

Once again I lazed out by using pre-made pie crust but that is life, man! The filling was actually really easy to make though. Boil up some sweet potatoes then mash them up with butter, loads of sugar, some evaporated milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, and eggs. Pour the filling in the shell and pop it ij the oven for an hour or so. It made the apartment smell like heaven. Haven't eaten it yet though so let's hope it's taste and wonderful as it smells.

A vegetatation sensation

2010-10-09T17:58:00.005-04:00

I have not been around the homestead very much lately with work travel taking me all over. As a result, we've had a bit of a buildup from our veg boxes. There is currently a surfeit of carrots and sweet potatoes, which I will deal with later on. However, I did manage to make a dent in all of it with last night's dinner: leek and gruyere tart and some squash soup.

A couple of weeks ago, we got a double helping and that week included what is known as delicata or sweet potato squash. Here it is inside and out.

I've not used or eaten it before and didn't know what to expect. But I marshalled on and hoped my extensive kitchen experience and general know-it-allness would keep me afloat. So I cut it up and started by roasting for about an hour with just a bit of salt. Once it was softened, I took it out of the oven and removed the skin and went ahead with my plan for slightly spicy roasted squash soup.

Roasted delicata chipotle soup (4-6 servings)

2 small or 1 large delicata/sweet potato squash roasted and peeled
1 dried chipotle, seeds removed and sliced thinly.
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, diced
pinch of nutmeg
few tablespoons of sour cream
1 tbsp of olive oil or butter
salt & pepper to taste

In a medium-sized pot, saute the garlic and onion in the butter or oil until it is soft. Add the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Then lower heat to medium-low and add pieces of squash, nutmeg, chipotle, and salt and pepper. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and blend until smooth. Check seasonings. Serve with a little dollop of sour cream.

The other half of the dinner didn't seem all that complicated but somehow it all took forever. It was pretty delicious and used up the whole lot of baby leeks I had on hand but next time I might make my own pastry as the frozen pie shell I used was a bit too greasy. But here's my recipe.

Leek & gruyere tart

Some leeks (I had about 10 or 12 baby leeks of various sizes and it was about right)
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp fresh thyme (I used some from our window herb garden)
salt & pepper
75 grams of gruyere, grated
1 frozen pie crust thawed out

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Cut the leeks into 2 cm rounds and rinse well (discard the dark green end leaves). Saute the leeks and thyme in a frying pan until they are soft, probably about 15 minutes or so.

Lay the softened pie crust out flat on a piece of parchement paper and put half the cheese in the middle of it (leaving about 5 cm around the edge uncovered). Then spread the leeks on top of that and finish it off with the rest of the cheese. Slowly fold the edges of the pie crust up until you have a nice round tart with an open middle so the cheese can get all nice and brown and crispy. Slide the tart and paper onto a baking tray and put in the oven for about 25 minutes until the pastry turns a lovely golden brown.

It is rich but also very yummy. We ate the soup and tart together. I also roasted a few grape tomatoes which added a sweet, sweet extra to the whole affair. The tart is enough for 4 people if you add a salad or eat lots of the soup. I, however, managed to eat a half by myself, no problemo! Both of these recipes are adapted from about 50 things I looked at on the internet, so let me know if you try either one and how you liked it.

Good but surely not fast

2010-09-27T22:01:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I've had the time to make anything in the kitchen. Eating out has it's high points but I miss the home cooking. I took a quick jaunt to the grocery store at lunch today and there was ground turkey on sale. So I bought some and the ideas for dinner started percolating. At home were still the remainders of our last food box (didn't get one this week because we just couldn't make it to the farm to pick it up) that included some corn and carrots. Also in the house were potatoes, onions. Hmm . . . sounds like the fixings for a cottage pie, or is that a shepherd's pie.

Turkey cottage pie (4-5 servings)

1 pound extra lean ground turkey
1 onion
1 carrot
1 clove of garlic
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup corn kernels (I cut 'em off the cob but you can use frozen)
2 tbsp worchestershire sauce
1 cup chicken stock
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp flour
salt & pepper to taste

2 russet potatoes
splosh of milk
2 oz of cheddar cheese
salt & pepper to taste

Peel and cut the potato into 1/2-inch squares and boil until soft. Once ready, drain water and add milk, cheese, and salt & pepper and make a lovely bit of mash.

Preheat oven to 400F.

Chop the remaining vegetables up quite finely. Saute onion and carrot in olive oil. Add turkey and brown. Add garlic and saute for a couple of minutes. Then add peas and corn along with the worchestershire sauce, thyme, tomato paste, and chicken stock. Let it all simmer away for about 10 or so minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add a bit more stock if it boils away. Add the flour and stir to thicken the mixture.

Put the meat mixture into an ovenproof dish that's been sprayed with a bit of cooking spray. Cover the meat mixture with the mashed potatoes and make a groovy little design in it with a fork. Cook in the oven for about 20-25 minutes until the peaks you've made in the mash turn golden brown.

Eat it up!

Powered by smoothies

2010-09-26T21:42:00.005-04:00

Well it's been a bit busy so not had much time for blogging (or cooking much) lately. The busy-ness quotient doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon either but hopefully HOT will not suffer too much!

Today was a big day in our house. J ran her first half marathon and it was quite a success with her finishing a few minutes under her goal time. Three cheers for the first person in my family who has ever accomplished such a feat.

Keen to have me involved . . . or to motivate by butt or whatever . . . J signed me up to do the 5K that was also part of the running festivities on Toronto's waterfront today. I did get out there and motored through it (walking with great vigour rather than running - except for that exciting last 100 metres where I turned on the running jets).

Well after dropping J off at 6 a.m. or so this morning, I came back to get ready for my events for the day. I'm never really sure what to eat before this kind of thing, not to mention there is not a huge selection of stuff in the house right now. So after a gander into the refrigerator, I settled upon a delicious and nutritious smoothie to power the day. And it was very, very tasty and was more than enough to get me through.

Here's the recipe - or rather the ingredients as all you do is put them together and waz it all up:

1/2 banana
bunch of frozen strawberries
1 heaping teaspoon of Dagoba hot chocolate powder with chiles
3 tablespoons of Greek-style yogurt
1 tablespoon of honey
enough 1% milk to cover the whole lot and make it as liquid as you prefer

I'm always interested to know what people eat and drink before they excercise - run, play soccer, whatever. Comment if you've got any thoughts.

Flower power

2010-09-13T22:00:00.007-04:00

One of the ingredients I was most enamoured with using while learning the finer points of Mexican cuisine is squash blossoms. I love eating flowers, I don't know why but it seems very decadent. So every opportunity to eat flowers, I take. But usually, like nasturtiums, they are eaten raw. The squash blossom is often cooked.

Over the weekend, J & I attended the 70th birthday party of my sister-in-law's mother. They live on a farm north of Barrie and while we were sipping tea from delicate china cups, my nephew discoved a patch of squash that he took me over to see. There were many varieties of squash bearing many fruits, so to speak. But also many blossoms were showing their pretty yellow faces. I was asked if I wanted some of the squash but said I'd really rather have the blossoms. After a few odd looks, I was given permission to pick some, so I did!

Tonight we took a break from the film festival - neither of us were keen to see the Nicole Kidman movie we had on the schedule - so I wanted to make something with the blosssoms. They are delicate and don't really last long so they had to be used ASAP. My first plan was soup but J was not keen. I had had squash blossom quesadillas while in Puebla, Mexico, so that became the plan!

First thing is to clean and ready the squash blossoms. Here they are ready for dinner.

They are pretty easy to put together, so here's my recipe.

Squash blossom quesadillas

6 flour tortillas
1 small onion
1 poblano pepper
dozen or so squash blossoms (cleaned)
1/3 cup cheddar cheese - grated
1/3 cup queso fresco - grated/cut into little squares
2 garlic cloves
olive oil

Roast the poblano pepper under the broiler until the skin bubbles. Take it out and put it in a plastic bag for about 10 minutes. Remove it from the bag and peel off the skin and remove the seeds. Slice it into thin strips.

Finely chop the onion and the garlic (which you can dry roast if you're feeling energetic). Heat the oil in a frying pan then add the garlic, onion, and poblanos. Saute until everything is soft and lovely. Add the blossoms and cook for another few minutes until they are fully wilted.

Put 1/3 of each of the cheeses and the mixture on a tortilla. Top with another tortilla and then fry in tiny bit of oil in the frying pan. Flip when one side is browned. Cut into four. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

I served it with some of my homemade salsa and a bit of guacamole. Mmm. Mmm. Good.

All Sephardi, all the time

2010-09-11T17:16:00.004-04:00

My Aunty Dianna from Israel is visiting and we had her over for lunch today. She's a tough old bird and I wanted to impress with some traditional Sephardi foods. So the main course was my mainstay of albondigas and rice. You can't go wrong with the good old meatball in sauce. No worries there, it's a tried and true recipe that is one of the faves in this house. But that was not enough to impress. So I had to come up with something else . . . well we had a few eggplants in our veggie box plus still quite a few tomatoes left over so I thought I might try something with them. I decided to give pastelikos a go. These are little pies that can be made with a variety of stuffings, one of which is eggplant (or berenjena as they like to say in Ladino). I have never made them before. I have not had a granny or an old aunty show me how. I was flying without a net on this one because without the wisdom of ages, the old cookbook from the shul in Salisbury/Harare does not always have enough info to guarantee success, especially when there is pastry involved. But I would not be deterred from my mission to impress so on I soldiered.

Yesterday afternoon I prepared the filling - gomo de handrajo - which is basically onion, eggplant, and tomato cooked for about an hour and a half into a soft pulp and then with some fresh parsley added.
The complicated part of the operation is making the pastry and the little cups to hold all that tastiness. The recipe calls for boiling oil, water, and salt together and then mixing it all together with flour and kneading into a "firm dough." All well and good if you know what it's supposed to feel like, not so useful if you don't. So mine ended up being a bit soft and my cups, when shaped from a ball with the thumb were not sitting up. J suggested using a muffin tin and all was saved by that bit of brilliance. So pastry was put in muffin cups, filling was added, and little lids were made and dipped in sesame seeds.

Putting on the lids is a bit of a mission as well but I figured out some system that actually got the lid and cup pastry to seal, so good news there. The tops are supposed to have a delicate frill design created by some subtle knife work but I was under a tight time constraint and this was not a road I was willing to go down this day. Here they are on their way to being ready for the oven.

Into a 400F oven for 40 minutes until golden brown and presto!!

Things of beauty, I tell ya!!! Aunty Dianna had two with minimal commentary on how they could have been better (her main issue was that there was no cheese inside). As she doesn't really eat a lot, the fact she consumed two pastelikos and a full plate of albondigas and rice made me feel pretty good about the whole affair. And now, I have conquered the fear of pasteliko preparation. I will make them again (probably not soon, but I know I can now!).

More bounty

2010-09-07T22:40:00.003-04:00

It is tomato time, there is not doubt! Went out over the weekend and picked a half a bushel of tomatoes including some beautiful yellow ones and sweet sweet grape tomatoes. Many of the heirloom tomatoes were already done but we did find a good selection of romas and they are the stars of this show! Monday was a holiday and what better way to spend it than making a whack of salsa. Here's the little red beauties readying for the oven for some roasting.

While the tomatoes were getting all delicious, I dry roasted some garlic on the comal. All dark and sweet.

And then roasted some serrano and poblano peppers.
There was lots of stuff to pull together - cilantro, veggies, salt, garlic, onion - and then it all got wazzed up in the blender. It's always a bit of a balancing act in our kitchen with limited counter space!

A couple of weeks ago, we acquired a Le Crueset dutch oven. Hadn't used it yet but needed a big pot to use for the canning of the salsa. So it got its maiden voyage. Here the jars are getting all clean.
After about four hours of all this action, about 16 jars of roasted tomato-serrano salsa stood proud.

Tinga de pollo or how to make the most out of a giant bag of tomatoes

2010-08-31T22:42:00.006-04:00

I have not mentioned it yet but last week, el presidente-of-the-company-that-used-to-own-me-but-doesn't-anymore gave me a giant sac of tomatoes from his farm. I can't say how much exactly but many kilos of tomatoes and they were all pretty much ripe and needed to be dealt with shortly. So I spent a number of late nights in the kitchen and brewed up a few sauces.

The first one was a relatively traditional tomato sauce for pasta. I enjoy the roasted tomato sauce the best but don't have a flame of any kind for the roasting so decided to mix some cultures and Mexicanize (if you can even believe it!) the proceedings. Essentially I roasted the tomatoes and the garlic on the comal so they were all nice and charred up and then went about making the sauce in an ordinary way - with some onion, salt, pepper, oregano and basil (from my window garden). Cooked it for a while and then just bottled it up.

I have not tried it yet so don't have any verdict on how it worked out. The taste out of the pot while cooking seems to point to good news . . . .

The next night I used up a whole whack more of the tomatoes and made a big batch of roasted tomato and chipotle sauce. It is my favourite sauce and I like to eat it in many ways. It was one of the first introductions to the beauty of Mexican cooking that I got from, you guessed it, Rick Bayless. Now I make it all the time and I had been waiting for the good tomatoes to start rolling in. So I made a lot. Gave some to el presidente and kept the rest.

Having some fresh sauce on hand, I decided to make a tinga de pollo. In this case, it's shredded chicken (let's just buy one already cooked, it is a weeknight!) along with shredded onion and potato. Cook up the potato and onion, shred about half the chicken and add it along with a cup or so of the sauce and you have an absolutely outstanding dish. You can use this inside tacos, on tostadas or sopes, or just eat it straight up. I toasted a few tortillas and layered them up with some sour cream, chopped white onion, sliced avocado, and freshly chopped tomato. What a feast.

Tomatoes pure and simple

2010-08-31T10:41:00.003-04:00

It is tomato season and this year's tomatoes are just spectacular. I have been partaking of the bountiful harvest in many ways (posts to come) but one of my absolute favourites is also the most simple.

My dad always ate tomatoes like this and why mess with a good thing, I say. All you're seeing here is a beautiful ripe tomato sliced as thinly as possible (a good knife goes a long way in this situation), layered with a little salt, pepper, and good quality olive oil on top of a piece of crispy toast. Nothing could be easier or more delicious. A great way to start the day.

2 for 1 roasts

2010-08-22T22:42:00.004-04:00

Metro had some eye of round and outside round roasts on 2-for-1 special this week, so I thought I'd drop by and see what was what. The thing about shopping at the store that's right in the confines of Ryerson University is that they have lots of smaller sized cuts of meat, which is great if you're cooking for just a few people rather than a whole family. So I managed to find a couple of smallish roasts, being quite chuffed to get the deal.

Apparently with the eye of round, some people cook them in the oven but they are also okay as a pot roast. As a someone who hearts her pressure cooker, I decided to go the pot roast route as you can really get a lot of flavours in there and you don't have to have the oven on for ages! Oh and just in case, I've not shared my great pressure cooker with you, here's a pic of her. It's a Futura brand and I love it because it has the easiest and least scary pressure valve that I've ever seen on a pressure cooker. And it is pretty easy to clean.

Once you've prepared everything - sauteed some onions and garlic, browned the meat, then added beef stock, a bay leaf, some thyme, and - it takes about 40 minutes of cooking time (maybe a little less). While it was cooking I cut up some carrots and fingerling potatoes that we got from our Cooopers' Farm box this week. I added them after the 40 minutes and let them get up to pressure and cook for another eight minutes. Then I made a gravy by thickening and reducing the sauce, adding some sliced up mushrooms and a little bit of worchestershire sauce for a bit of zing. It all came together very nicely and the potatoes were just out of this world!! And there were lots so J could carbo-load before her 10K race that she was going to run the next morning!

We also got heirloom tomatoes and beets in the box this week. And never one to pass up a chance for a beet salad, made one to go with our lovely Friday night roast dinner. This one had some soft goat's milk cheese and candied walnuts to go with the beets, onions, and tomatoes. Delicious and I roasted enough so we can have a rerun of this fab salad again.

I was up at Cooper's Farm this past week and they assure me that they are growing poblano peppers, which I am thrilled about. We'll be doing some of our picking soon as the tomatoes and tomatillos are ready to roll. I have purchased new canning bottles and salsas are on their way!! Can't wait.

Getting tippy with it

2010-08-18T23:06:00.006-04:00

I recently bottled some chipotle en conserva and there was quite a bit of sauce left over once I had put most of the conserva into bottles. I kept the saucy onions that were left over and figured I'd use all that juicy goodness as a base to cook up something spicy in the pressure cooker. Well tonight was that night and I decided to make sirloin tips in chipotle sauce.

I obviously used sirloin tips and the leftover conserva sauce. I also added a poblano and a couple of cloves of garlic, dry roasted on the comal. I browned the meat and added everything else to it in the pressure cooker and cooked it for 15 minutes. I wanted to use up some other vegetables that were in the fridge so cut up and added a zuke and a combination of beet greens and swiss chard after I opened the pressure cooker. Let the veggies boil in the sauce for a a few minutes and presto, a quick and delicious meal. J had said she wanted polenta so I kind of obliged. We only had white corn meal but I made it up and managed to get a pretty good consistency.

The meat come out nice and tender. I really enjoyed the flavour of the greens, which were stronger than spinach. And all of that sauce, which was a little sweet as the conserva was made with quite a bit of sugar as it's supposed to be kind of marmalade-y, absorbed by the polenta. Mmm, mmm. Served the whole thing with a small salad of lettuce, tomato, onions, cilantro and a lime vinaigrette. Salad brought the whole thing together, aha! :)

What's Cookin'?

2010-08-15T18:29:00.000-04:00

As you've seen, G's been cooking up all manner of Mexican food goodness here lately, it's been great! It's been fantastic having a Mexican restaurant in my own home, even though it means I haven't been cooking all that much... it's not just that G's been having a blast in the kitchen, but I seem to have lost a bit of my cooking mojo. The will to eat is there, don't get me wrong, but there's not a ton of enthusiasm for the process of making that food!

But tonight, G's away and dinner is on my own. So I decided to serve myself up a classic... low-fat mac n cheese with a little hamburger patty.

I thought to take the photo about half-way through, hence the manky state of my hamburger patty! I made the mac n cheese with 1% milk, no butter, low-fat cheddar, a bit of parmesan, and a laughing cow cheese combined with some smart brand macaroni. It was so creamy! Hard to believe it's about 9 points for the whole dinner! (The single serving bowls are the ONLY way I can make mac n cheese without eating the whole pan!

Since I've been training for the half marathon, creeping up my weekly mileage, I find that my appetite is coming and going with some ferocity. I am either not at all hungry or starving. No in-between. The other night, with no dinner plan in sight, G and I used one of her previous successes in a new and exciting way. Chorizo Potato Hash with Eggs!

Really good! I made this one, sauteeing some chorizo (President's Choice Chorizo is AWESOME) then adding an onion for a bit, then adding some mostly cooked boiled potato cubes. Stir it around with some salt and pepper and smoked paprika and then spread out to cover the skillet. Crack in eggs, cover, cook for about 7 minutes or until the egg is as you like it (these were a bit too done, really), then serve. Really delicious and a very satisfying dinner in about 30 minutes.

And, just because I think this picture is cute, here's Bello sleeping on the couch like a goof...

What a silly boy!

So all in all, in this part of the world, it's been a good few months. Still going strong on the Weight Watchers, running three times a week, and just overall trying to keep my good humour. The humidity the last week or so has brought some crazy headaches, but other than that, I can't complain. (And along those lines, my cardiologist gave me the thumbs up on Friday, and notice that I don't need to come back for a follow-up for 9-12 months! Go me!)

How's your summer/winter going?

This is what a popsicle is all about

2010-08-14T23:09:00.006-04:00

Recently we went up to Muskoka for the weekend and had a very relaxing getaway which involved lots of sitting by the lake relaxing and reading magzines. One such magazine was the latest issue of Saveur, The Greece Issue. So of course, I instantly ended up at the one thing Mexican in the issue. It is my destiny! So what was this fascinating article about . . . well popsicles of course!

According the article, paletas, or Mexican popsicles, are a speciality of the town of Tocumbo in the southwestern state of Mochoacan. They fresh-fruit dense and come in an array of fantastic flavours, including chile-flecked ones, which always excites me. My interest was piqued and I decided I had to try to make some.

Anywho, got a whack of strawberries in our food box this week so decided to try my hand at making a paleta of my own. The family coming over for dinner was a good excuse to make a bunch of popsicles! I did not use the Saveur recipe, which has cream in it but a straightforward strawberries, sugar, and lime juice combo. I will definitely be making the mango-chile ones in the future but for now . . .

The strawberry ones were fantastic. Best pospsicle. EVER!!

Strawberry paletas

3.5 cups of chopped up strawberries
1/3 cup of sugar (I put too much by mistake and they were fine but a little less sweet would be OK so I'd use this amount)
2 tablespoons lime juice

Waz up the strawberries in a blender. Then pour it into a fine strainer over a bowl and press through all the good stuff while leaving the little seeds etc behind. Add the sugar and lime juice to the strawberry juice, stir until the sugar is all dissolved. Pour into popsicle holders and freeze for at least three hours.

So good you should bottle it

2010-08-12T21:59:00.007-04:00

One of the big benefits of being able to work at home on occassion is that I get to spend the hour between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. doing something other than sitting in traffic being anxious. This morning I used it to start making chipotle en conserva - basically a chile-garlic-onion marmalade that is delicious as a condiment and also as a base for some meat dishes. We made it at cooking school and I've been jonesing to make some ever since I got home.

I've had the ingredients sitting around for ages so this morning I decided to put it all together.

Chipotle en conserva
(From Mexican Home Cooking School)

10-16 dried chipotles (I prefer moritas)
some bay leaves (from my parents' garden)
four heads of garlic (mostly from our CSA farm box)
1 tbsp dried oregano (also from the farm)
1 tbsp dried thyme (also from the farm)
1 large cone piloncillo (Mexican sugar)
1/2 cup of cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
salt
2 onions

Add everything but the onion to 6 cups of salted water. Simmer partially for an hour. Take off the heat and let sit overnight (in this case I did it in the morning. let it sit all day, and then finished it in the evening). Slice the onions very fine, add to the pot and then simmer for another half an hour or so. Put into sterlized jars and refrigerate.

According to Dona Elena, it'll keep in the fridge for a year if you always use a clean spoon when dipping in to use it.

It was fun and made the house smell really good. This made about six little bottles plus I had some leftover sauce and onions once I ran out of chipotles. I think I'll see if I can use it to braise some ribs or something in the pressure cooker and use it in tacos or something . . . we shall see, we shall see.

They deserve a mention

2010-08-09T23:32:00.004-04:00

My friend P makes the most awesome waffles in the world. When he used to live in the same apartment building as me, he often made waffles for us on Sunday mornings and the beauty was I could just ride the elevator in my jammies. Well he and his partner live some distance away now but we occasionally go to visit and sometimes stay overnight. Last weekend we headed out to the Cambridge area to see them and had a great bonfire in their backyard on Saturday night. And on Sunday morning, some beautiful (and I am told virtuous) waffles with fresh blueberries were served for breakfast. I think P is still using the same trusty waffle maker. Delicious!!!!!!!

Getting the job done

2010-08-09T22:54:00.006-04:00

Mondays really are just the most exhausting days. So often dinner does not get made on Monday nights . . . it more often gets acquired, shall we say. But tonight even though neither of us really felt like cooking, there was some food in the house and we could pull something together. I realized we had some chorizo and a whole whack of potatoes that had come in the past few weeks in our veggie box. Also last week in da box, we got our first jalapenos from the farm.

This is all adding up to something Mexican, as you can well imagine.

I read somewhere about potato-chorizo tacos. I imagine it was Rick Bayliss related but hey, I could just pull these together, I did not need to resort to a recipe. So easy peasy. Took two large potatoes and cut 'em up into tiny squares and tossed them in a pot of boiling water for about 10 minutes until they got soft. Then I took some chorizo and also some onion and chopped them up into little bits. Heated a frying pan and got the chorizo and onions frying up nicely. Once the potatoes were cooked and drained, they got tossed into the frying pan with the other stuff. I added a bit of oil, a sprinkling of salt, a smattering of smokey paprika, and a little bit of garlic and just let it fry for a bit. Kind of mushed up the potato and chorizo, let it brown a bit and that's that for that.

Along with it, made a little avocado-tomatillo salsa. While the potatoes were boiling, just put a couple of fresh tomatillos in the boiling water for a few minutes until they were soft. Then took an avocado, a jalapeno, a dry roasted garlic glove, and the tomatillos and blended it all up together. Presto, you've got some lovely salsa.

If you want, grate a bit of cheese, chop up some onion, some more jalapeno, or some lettuce or whatever. Use them as garnish. We used flour tortillas because it's what we had in the house, so just warmed them in the microwave for a few minutes. Put all the ingredients together in a lovely little hand-holdable package and enjoy : )

Bringing it home

2010-08-06T21:02:00.005-04:00

It has been an absolutely crazy week. My company got bought, well part of it did, and others not. Not much actual work got accomplished despite the show going on, etc, etc. So I needed to get in the kitchen and try and calm it all down. Of course, a little Mexican feast was the perfect antidote to get me focused and my mind away from the reeling . . .

While in Mexico recently, I purchased a comal -- the metal flat cooking sheet for dry roasting -- but had not seasoned it yet so it couldn't be used. But in order to make tonight's delicacy, the comal had to come out of its shell and get to work! So I got it out, washed it, wiped it with oil and heated up until it was good and hot. Then let it cool, washed, wiped with oil again and got it all hot and smoky once more for good measure. Another cooling and washing and wiping and we were ready to rock and roll. I imagine it will get blacker over time but this is just it's virgin voyage.
This is the comal after the seasoning and then getting itself in the game with some garlic and tomatillos.

The dinner plan was chicken in pasilla sauce. It was one of the sauces I learned at cooking school and have wanted to give it a go since I got back. Luckily I had planned ahead and pasilla chiles were sitting in the kitchen waiting for their moment in the sun! Tonight I made it so.

Dona Elena would be pleased that I cooked my chicken (a whole one cut into pieces) in the pressure cooker. I'll tell you this, 10 minutes of pressure cooking time is too much!! Who knew? So the chicken was a tiny bit more done than necessary but I did also get a couple of cups of chicken stock for the freezer out of the deal, so double excellent.

I will admit that I did leave out one of the herbs from the sauce, which may explain why it was as awesome as the one we made in Tlaxcala but it was still pretty freakin' good. It started with many tomatoes, tomatillos, and cloves of garlic cooking it up on the comal (as you've already seen from the fab pix above!). Then taking the dried pasilla chiles, which are not hot but have a very deep taste, cleaning the seeds out and toasting them on the comal. I kept in mind the lesson of doing it very quickly -- they will blister in seconds, flip 'em over for a few more secs and then toss them in some boiling water with onions for five minutes or so until they're soft. Then you waz everything together in the blender. Do it for longer than you really think it needs because that'll make the sauce smoother. This is where I forgot to add the thyme but the sauce was still good.

I added small cubes of potatoes to the sauce and chicken, which needed to cook together in a pan for a while to get all flavourful. The taters were from our CSA box and were like the hardest potatoes ever. It took forever for the tiny lit squares to get soft so the already well cooked chicken got even more well cooked. Luckily in the case of this saucy dish, it's okay if the chicken fell of the bone. Served it up with some tomato rice and some fresh corn on the side.

We have also been getting a tremendous number of cucumbers in our veggie box and seeing as how J doesn't really eat cukes and they can't be cooked really, there is not a whole heck of a lot to do with them. So tonight I tried a really simple cucumber salad. First thinly slice the cuke and salt it and let sit for about half an hour to get some of the liquid out. Rinse off some of the salt and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Add an equal amount of water and vinegar (depending on how much cucumber you use, you need just to cover it all), a pinch of sugar, and a bit of dill. Mix it up, put it in the fridge to chill and eat!

It was actually nice to cook at home tonight and it did the trick and calmed me down a bit. And I think J enjoyed it after her super-terifically long run! And just for good measure, I finally bought James Taylor's Mexico (and other of his super tunes) so I've got them on my computer and I can really feel like it's summer because to me, JT's music means summer.

Just plain old good pizza

2010-07-27T21:59:00.003-04:00

For years I have walked past Olympic Pizza on Gloucester just east of Yonge and wanted to stop in for a classic pie. Finally a few months ago I managed to convince J to go along and check it out. As a lover of classic pizza, it's a surprise that it took so long to get her to accompany me but there it is. We have not looked back. The place has a great patio on a relatively quiet street and you can sit out there under big old trees and order some lovely pizza or pasta or calzones . . . you get the idea. I generally order the deluxe with pepperoni, green pepper, tomato, and mushrooms. The crust is not too thick and always very crispy. There is a sufficient amount of mozzarella cheese (which for me means a lot of cheese) and it is well cooked. I do not like pizza that is too doughy. I do not like pizza that is not cooked enough so that there is liquid running off it from the sauce or the tomato slices. I do like it with lots of cheese and cooked well. The sauce and the pepperoni are also good. And none of it is frou frou or full of claims about being the most authentic this or authentic that. Olympic hits the all the good points. Here's my delicious personal-size pie from a couple of days ago.

Two great things about Olympic: 1. They bring parmesan and chile flakes in the shakers to the table; 2. If you order anything bigger than a personal pizza, you get it on one of those groovy stands so your pizza is on a pedestal in the middle of the table, as it should be!! Not a bad thing about going here, except that you want to go back for more and more and more delicious pizza.

No kidding on the sweet tooth

2010-07-20T22:20:00.003-04:00

So tonight I went to see a Chinese medicine man who conducted tremendous amounts of acupunture on my belly, so of course it was too late to come home and cook dinner so we had to fend for ourselves among the many restaurants on the streets of Toronto. We voted for the beloved gyros sandwiches at Messini on the Danforth. Although there was slight disappointment that they were out of lamb, the chicken hit the spot.

I do think the increase of energy flow through my belly due to the dozen or so needles from Mr. Acupuncture made me hungrier! So we set off to get a coffee and a baklava but instead hit upon this little joint on the other side of the Danforth called Sweet Tooth. It was not the traditional Greek pastry spot we were aiming for but it hit the spot fer sure. There was a wonderful selection of cakes, pies, etc. I picked out a beautiful piece of key lime pie - which had a chocolate crust, which a lot of key lime pies seem to have these days. I prefer not a chocolate crust but in this case I was not complaining because it wasn't overly choclate-y, if you know what I'm saying!?
J had a vanilla cupcake with strawberry frosting. Tasty and pretty!!

A surfeit of zukes

2010-07-14T23:11:00.004-04:00

The president of my company came into my office yesterday and reported that he had an abudance of zucchinis from his garden (which is really more a farm than your run of the mill garden) and would I like them. Sure, I said, of course. Shortly thereafter he delivered a large box of them, which I promptly gave out most of to co-workers. I took a couple home with the promise that I would bring something back for the provider of the zukes to taste. I also had some zukes still in the fridge from our CSA box so decided to use up the older ones first and make a zucchini-cheddar loaf.
The recipe is right out of the bible - The Joy of Cooking - and I've made it a few times and always loved it. It doesn't use a whole lot of zuke but it does also use green onions, dill, parsley, and sharp cheddar. Sliced up fresh or lightly toasted, it is a fantastic and filling breakfast. I have it with a tiny bit of butter but it's awesome straight up as well. It got a good round of approval from various work colleagues when I took it in this morning. So good news all round and it provided some fuel for getting through our company baseball game later in the day.

La Casa de las Sirenas

2010-07-12T23:07:00.010-04:00

There are still a few leftovers from the trip to Mexico . . . one of which was our dinner at La Casa de las Sirenas, which was the swankiest place we ate while in the capital. There had been plans to go to Puyol, considered one of the top spots in Mexico City but the size and madness of the city bested us and we could not get ourselves back to that part of town without a bit more of a Herculean effort than I wanted to put into having a meal. La Casa de las Sirenas is in the central historical district just off the main square behind the cathedral, which was all very close to where we were staying and so quite convenient. The food was also great.

You have to hike up quite a few rounds of stairs because while there is a bar on the ground floor, the restaurant seating is three stories up with most of the tables on a gorgeous patio overlooking the whole scene of central Mexico City below you.

It serves traditional Mexican food but also new twists on the old classics. My first dish was the very rich La Cazuelita de Tuétanos - basically marrow in a sauce with green chiles and served with fresh onions, fresh chiles, limes, and homemade tortillas. I ordered it in large part because I wanted some food served in the little clay cazuelita. Enjoyed it a great deal but this is a bit of a once in a lifetime dish it is so rich.

J ordered the Chilitos de la Casa, essentially stuffed chipotle peppers served with a creamy walnut sauce.

My main course of three different crepes stuffed with squash blossoms, meat, and chicken and smothered in some lovely creamy cheesy sauce does not make for a good photo but it did make for some good eats. Again, not the lightest of meals and it's a good thing we walked around for many hours this day.

The steak J ordered was absolutely fantastic - tender, flavourful - and served with fresh tortillas, grilled cheese wedges, the fantastic grilled whole small onions that were everywhere, cactus, and of course a homemade fiery chile salsa. Seemingly a safe choice but incredibly tasty.

It was all finished off with a shared piece of cheesecake that was made from a local cheese that I cannot recall offhand. Lovely blackberries and another fantastic Mexican meal in the belly!!

Pride and Remembrance Run.

2010-07-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

This morning, I ran in the Pride and Remembrance Run (5K). I had a personal best of 32:37 and my goal was a sub-35min, so yippie for me. (My *real* goal was sub-33, so you can imagine my elation.) The race had a great energy despite the INCREDIBLE heat. Thank heavens for low humidity, but it was a scorcher!

Oh yeah! Action shot baby! That's me cranking it up at the end... I am really proud of myself.

They had a TON of food after... bananas, apples, yogurt, OJ, pasta salad, and CUPCAKES!!!!!!

Yummmmmmmy! Thanks Dufflets!

So all in all, it was a good run. I have been a bit slack with my training lately, just really tired. I find the heat really stifling when I run, but this was a great run, lots of fun, and really motivated me to step up my training for the half. And honestly, running in races is just good times.

Local eats in Puebla

2010-06-25T22:38:00.007-04:00

Taking you back to my first full day in Mexico last Saturday, I had an absolutely brain splitting headache that I imagine resulted from both the altitude (7,000 plus feet above sea level) and a terrible night's sleep after a very long day of travel. None the less, I was not going to let that stop me from trying some of the local delights. I did have to wait until well into the afternoon though!

First stop, a local craft and flower market. I had been walking around looking for a taqueria but ended up going in a direction that took me past a whole street of handmade furniture and then into this market, where I might add a variety of unique orchids were available from some somewhat sketchy looking individuals. Who knows if they were legal or not but they sure were amazing. Anyway, one thing I learned quickly is that any place that people are gathered for anything, there'll be some stand set up selling tacos or whatever. Some are a bit more sketchy than others but at the one end of the flower and craft market was a whole series of tents serving food.
So I bravely took my chance and had a couple of tostadas - no beans - with various sauces and a giant pineapple drink. It was delicious and cheap and the people were very nice. We tried to have a conversation but man, my Spanish is bad, and well, their English non-existent. But it was fine. I was able to just sit quietly and eat and drink as fast movement was not on the agenda for the day.

I walked around the city of Puebla a bit, sat in the zocalo (main square), and did a lot of people watching. It being Saturday, there were just tons of people out and about shopping, eating, just hanging out. It was great. But all the walking around made me peckish, of course, so I decided to head into one of the taquerias that I finally found. Again, I'm guessing because it was Saturday, everywhere was just packed. But I wanted to get my hands on a taco al pastor and I would not be denied. And I figured if the places were full of people that the food had to be good. So I ended up at place called Las Renas.
They bring you a sheet and you mark on what you want, which of course I had no idea. So I just watched what other tables were getting and pointed to them when the waiter came. So I ended up with taco called a 'gringa" which is a taco al pastor with cheese, cream, and onions and cilantro in a flour tortilla. Now what makes a taco al pastor is that the meat is cooked in the same fashion as a schwarma - on an upright spit - with spices and unlike the arab version which has onion and tomato on top, this has pineapple that drips its flavour into the meat as it cooks. The pineapple flavour is not really pronounced but the hint of it is noticeable. Nothing to say but this was absolutely deliciously fantastic!! I could have eaten fifty, well I couldn't have, but I wanted to!

Cooking school day 5, cooking like we mean it

2010-06-25T20:50:00.011-04:00

Today was our last day in the kitchen so we had to make it count with a couple of star dishes: tamales and mole poblano. Both specialities of the Puebla area where Dona Estela's family is from.

On the menu for the last day:
-Tamales (and many sauces)
-Caldo de abas (fava bean soup)
-Suspiros de novia (sighs of the bride)
-Arroz con perejil (rice with parsley)
-Mole Poblano

We started off with a soup like every day and this one had a fava bean base. It's pretty light but being made of the blessed bean, my stomach was not up to it, so I didn't try it. My cooking companion Beverley however said it was excellent.

The supsiros de novia are like little deep fried pancakes that are smothered in a sugar syrup. The syrup is flavoured with lime and cinammon and is totally delicious. A little zest from the outside of the limes adds a bit of flair as well. We decorated with slices of limes from the tree in the backyard, which were more like regular limes than the little ones we used in the recipe. I had ot have a taste, of course, and man were they TART! But the smell was out of this world. Like with everything else this week, I had my nose in there first, It was a fiesta of the senses in the kitchen.

Next up was the mole poblano sauce with its many, many ingredients. My restaurant experience in Puebla a few days ago did not make me as keen as I once was to try this sauce but I held out hope that I would like the version we created more. And I did. My biggest issue with the first version of the mole poblano that I tried was that it was too sweet. I'm all kinds of keen to test out the chocolate in my savoury food but I don't want it to be sweet. This sauce had about 20 or so ingredients including garlic, ancho and mulato chiles, cinammon, cumin, cloves, onion, etc and of course chocolate. We used a big round of Nestle Abuelita, which is pretty widely available in Mexican and Latin grocery stores.

As you add it all together it becomes richer and darker as it cooks but I was happy that it didn't get to the almost-black syrupy texture of the other one I tried. We ate it with chicken, and I had seconds! Will for sure try this one again but it is so rich, it can't be eaten too frequently.

Now the tamales, they where a major operation. We made a bunch of different kinds so had all manner of sauces and jazz to make and use. We used some of the leftover tinga that we made a couple of days ago as well as some of the mole poblano that we'd just made. We also whipped up a green sauce with tomatillos and a red sauce with tomatoes and cheese. There was pork, chicken, and Oaxacan cheeese with epazote and slices of jalepeno. So it was a fun festival of fillings. But the trick to these magnificent tamales was the masa, which we did not make but was purchased fresh from a local store. It was light and fluffy and we used it in a much runnier texture than I realized. See, this is why you gotta go to the source for the tricks . . . it can't all be learned from books. Trick no. 2, after the fresh masa, is to take the salsas and essentially press a spoonful into the masa inside the corn husk as it'll keep the masa moist and you won't have dried out and difficult to swallow tamales. All I can say is they were absolutely fantastico and I think I might have eaten a dozen of them all by myself. All the fillings were good but the chicken and salsa verde as well as the tinga topped my list. Luckily there are leftovers to take on the road when I head for Mexico City.

Well that's it for the Mexican Home Cooking School adventure. It was a great learning experience from both the cooking and the cultural sides. We ended off our stay with a trip to the local mercado in Tlaxcala where I bought myself a comal so I'm ready to head back to Toronto and roast some tomatoes, garlic, and onion!! Stay tuned for a few more adventures in food from Mexico City, where I'm meeting J for a fun weekend of adventures.

Cooking school day 4, let's stuff some chiles

2010-06-23T23:01:00.009-04:00

Again as I sit to write, there are all manner of fireworks going off outside for no apparent reason. There are fireworks every night and during the day when you can't see anything but only hear them. To join in with the fun, church bells have just started ringing. It is after 10 p.m. on a Wednesday. There is no explanation.

So . . . on the menu today was:
- Sopa de tortilla
- Pork in adobe (we made it with lamb)
- Salsa de jitomate basica (basic tomato sauce)
- chiles rellenos
- chiles en nogada

The tortilla soup was excellent and is not milk based, which I'm all for in a soup. We made it with oyster mushrooms and seranno (fresh) and guajillo (dried) chiles. The guajillos give it a very deep and satisfying red colour. It's served with strips of tortillas that are sun dried (basically very stale) and then fried quickly to make them crispy. I would bake them in the oven but what's important is crispy strips!! Soup was good and spicy.
The only thing I know about adobe sauce is that you can buy canned chipotles that come in it. Well today we learned how to make it and who knew it's got a base of caramel. That's right, caramel. In addition, of course, there's cumin, oregano, garlic, tomato, apple cider vinegar, stock, ancho chiles, onion etc. The sauce comes out quite thick, which I like, and is sweet and sour. Being made with the anchos, it's not very hot either. The sauce can be used with all different types of meat including shrimp and other fish, so is quite flexible. We had it with lamb and fresh blue corn tortillas from a local tortillaria. Fantastic.
The main action of the day was reserved for the stuffed poblano chiles of which we made two kinds: chiles rellenos (stuffed with cheese and in a tomato sauce) and chiles en nogado (chiles stuffed with beef, almonds, and fruit in a creamy nut sauce). The process involves roasting the chiles, making the stuffing, stuffing the cleaned chiles, coating them in flour, making a batter with very fluffy egg whites later mixed with the yolks and a bit more flour, then frying them, and making a sauce to go with them.

The chiles en nogado are a traditional dish of the Puebla area and the sauce is usually made with walnuts, which are seasonal here. And as it ain't the season for them right now, we made the sauce with pecans. It's a no cook sauce that is basically nuts, crema, and milk all wazzed up. The rellenos are served with a tangy basic tomato sauce. I like them all right but they are lots of work and they are fried. Might try them at home baked instead but not sure. They are, I was told, a special occasion food.
After dinner tonight, I asked for a hot chocolate, which I have been dreaming about for days. It was super fantastic. No pictures, just know, it was fantastic. The Mexicans know from chocolate. Starbucks does not. Until tomorrow.. . .

Cooking school day 3, fútbol & chipotles

2010-06-22T23:29:00.012-04:00

Mexico was playing Uruguay today so technology had to be brought into the kitchen so I could listen to the game (Mexico lost but got through to the round of 16). Above before making our 7 dishes. Below, after making them.
On the menu today:
- Crema de chile poblano (cream of chile poblano soup).
- Frijoles negros
- Chipotles en conserva
- Tinga (shredded skirt steak)
- Pipian rojo with meat
- Sopes
- Guacamole (finally!!)

The cream of chile poblano soup is another relatively easy to make dish that comes out in a great colour. The trick we learned for this was not to roast the poblanos too much or else the flesh turns yellow and your soup doesn't get the great green colour. Just char the skin and make sure the flesh is still crispy. Clean all the black off the skin, again, to maintain the beautiful green colour. Charred skin will make it turn grey, which is not a nice colour for soup.
We made this conserve with chipotles that then went into the tinga recipe later. But it's basically a chipotle marmalade that keeps in the fridge for up to a year and is delicious on anything from sandwiches to tacos. One of the ingredients, which you can see in the middle of the pot (and which melts as you cook it) is piloncillo, raw Mexican sugar. Just let it cool and put in a bottle that's been boiled and you can keep for ages.
We added a few of the conserved chipotles to the skirt steak along with a bunch of chopped up tomatoes and such and it was the filling for the sopes that we had for lunch. To make sopes you use the same masa you would to make tortillas but they are smaller and thicker. Here you can buy pre-made masa just like we get pizza dough in the bag. Apparently it's the way to go but I'm not sure I will be able to find it back in old T.O. so may have to stick with the secondary option of using masa harina and not having them be quite as good. The sopes were topped with mashed black beans, the extremely delicious tinga, cheese, crema, lettuce, and a radish for good measure. Yum!

Guacamole was also finally created . . . made in the molcajete, it's quite a job but tastes fantastic. This version has serrano chile, tomatillos, 1 clove of garlic, cilantro, and salt. No lime, onion, or tomato. The tomatillo gives it a bit of crunch and also tartness. I could easily have eaten the whole bowl, which I'm sure will surprise no one.
Dinner was pipian rojo with meat and we used chilacayote, an ingredient that I had not used before, so there was rejoicing about that. It's basically a round zuke so can be interchanged.Now I don't think there are too many dishes that the Mexicans make that don't have some sort of sauce as a base and every sauce seems to emanate from the blender, which I dubbed the heart of the kitchen. So here's the kitchen workhorse with the fixin's for the pipian rojo, which uses both guajillo (so it's really red) and ancho chiles.
The sauce can be used with chicken, turkey, or pork as well as a vegetarian version using the chilacayote (which we added as well) or potatoes. Also very delicious. It was served with the black beans we made (of which I had only a few) and some crusty buns to soak up all the tasty sauce.
And sadly with all that . . . no dessert tonight :(

Cooking school day 2, not everything's a winner

2010-06-21T23:37:00.011-04:00

Day 2 dawned fne and sunny with one of the local volcanos spewing smoke, a sight I had not seen before, so double points for that!

On the menu today:
-Crema de flor de calbacitas (cream of squash blossom soup)
-Pipian verde con bistec en relleno (stuffed beef rolls in pipian verde sauce)
-Bistec en chile pasilla
-Arroz rojo (red rice)
-Gaznates rellenos de cream (cream filled pastry tubes)

Cooking with squash blossoms again was most excellent. We made a milk-based soup with it that also included poblano chiles, lots of garlic and onion as well as cheese. You blend the milk and squash blossoms to get a really pale orange liquid that is really pretty. The chiles and onions etc are not blended and give the whole soup a bit more texture but all still with a very delicate flavour. Not really spicy at all. Not sure if you can see the lovely colour in the picture but here it is. Tasted a lot better than it looks just sitting there in the bowl.
Our lunch main course was stuffed beef rolls in green sauce. The sauce was really like a big salad wazzed up in the blender and included spring onions, fresh lettuce, radish leaves, cilantro, epazote, tomatillos, and parsley. That was added in the pot to a puree of roasted pumpkin and sesame seeds with cumin and garlic. The stuffed rolls consisted of thin slices of beef rolled around slices of carrot, zuke, green beans and, for me, turkey ham. The beef rolls were simply added to the sauce and cooked for a while. Must say I think the rolls might have been a bit better if browned first and definitely if the whole thing had cooked longer. So far, my least favourite dish. It was served with the red rice, which while very tasty required more steps to make than I'm usually willing to put into rice.
The hit of the day was the beef in pasilla sauce. Pasillas are a dried chile and you toast them before making the sauce. The trick, I learned with the dried chiles, is not to toast them very long or they will make the sauce bitter. So it's just a few minutes, flip and then off the heat.
The sauce included roasted tomatoes and tomatillos (which were tiny and came from the garden in the back) as well as thyme, garlic and onions. Thin slices of steak and big chunks of potatoes were left to stew together and make beautiful music. The sauce got a bit spicier over the course of the day but a big slab of crusty bread to mop up what was left on the plate wouldn't have been out of place. This is definitely a make at home recipe.
Tonight we had another variation of the fried dough. This one was rolled like a cannoli and then filled with cream and topped with some mashed strawberries.

Mexican Home Cooking School, Day 1

2010-06-20T22:52:00.013-04:00

While I arrived in Tlaxcala at the Mexican Home Cooking School last night, this morning was the first day of classes, which as you may imagine started off with a quick primer on chiles - dried and fresh. There are many and this wasn't even all of 'em, just what was in the kitchen today.
On the menu for today - we cook the food for both our lunch and dinner every day.
- Sopa de Hongo (mushroom soup with nopales - cactus - poblano peppers, and squash blossoms
- Ensalad de Napolitas (cactus salad)
-Pollo Almendrado (almond chicken)
-Tortas de paps con espinaca (potato pancakes with spinach)
-Salsa roja en molcajete (red sauce in molcajete)
-Buñueolos (thin fried dough)
So any day that I can cook with an ingredient that I've not used before is a great day. Make that new ingredient a chile and that's double good. Today had new ingredient and new chile, so it was all manner of excellent.

I had cooked once before with cactus paddles but today learned a better way to do it (boiled not baked) and to clean them. The trick with the cleaning is to scrape in the same direction as the spikes, not against them. Faster and more efficient. Also less chance of getting spikes in your hands. So good lesson on that front. We also used squash blossoms in the soup, which I have not cooked with before. They're basically what you get before the zukes and pumpkins etc turn into veg. So if you want to cook with them, you have to give up the chance of having the zuke or pumpkin, which if you grow zukes and never know what to do with the bounty is a blessing in disguise. Here's the soup of the brew - it has squash blossoms, cactus, mushrooms, onion, garlic, roasted poblano peppers and more!

And the finished product at lunch:
Today's new chile was the cascabel, which we used to make a red salsa. Now with all salsa you roast the ingredients. For the most part I have done it in the oven but I think perhaps my new purchase here in Mexico is going to be a comal, which will let me do the roasting right on the stovetop as we did with the cascabels.
The tomatoes, onion and garlic were also roasted in such a fashion and then all mashed up together in the traditional mortar and pestle of Mexico known as a molcajete, which is special because it's made of volcanic rock. It's a lot more work than making salsa in a blender, that's for sure.

And the potato/spinach pancake (which is really like a mini quajodo to those who know that is) with cactus salad and salsa rojo at lunch - this is an all vegetarian meal for those keeping track of such things:

Dinner was the pollo almendrado, which unusually for Mexican food had cloves in it, which our teachers Jon and Estela say comes from the Arab influence in this area. The almonds, along with dried bread, are used to thicken the sauce so it has a very creamy texture without any cream. Good for the low fat and kosher diets! The sauce also includes dried serrano chiles, cinnamon, and roasted tomatoes (cue the comal!) As we made it in the morning, it sat all day so the flavours could get to know each other better. It was much smoother and deeper in flavour by dinner time.

The day finished off with buñelos, which again may be recognizable to some as pitikas. These were dough rolled out really thinly then fried in very hot oil for a few seconds and doused in vanilla sugar. Crispy and delicious.
Thank you and good night!

First meal in Mexico

2010-06-20T08:32:00.007-04:00

After 15 hours or so of travelling by plane, car, and bus, I finally arrived in Puebla, Mexico. Everything was pretty excellent and smooth except for a headache, which I think was due mainly to the altitude - Mexico City is at 7,200 ft above sea level. So the whole thing left me a bit breathless, literally, but otherwise quite excited to see it all.

The first meal of the trip was actually BBQ in the airport in Houston, which wasn't too bad. The sliced brisket was a bit salty but still better than anything available in Toronto! The potato salad had not too much mayo and a hint of mustard and the place, Pappas Bar-B-Q, also had a great cucumber salad which is unusual for a BBQ joint and was perhaps my favourite part of the meal. Topped it all off with sweet tea and I was good to go for the rest of the day.

By the time I arrived in Puebla, some six or eight hours later, I was ready for my first Mexican meal. I had sussed out some restaurants before leaving Toronto and was glad of it as I was tired and pleased to already have my destination picked out so I wasn't messing around trying to figure out where to eat. Mesones Sacristia was one of the places where I'd been looking at going to cooking school but decided against. However, I was intrigued by their menu, so made it my first stop for a Mexican meal. I arrived at about 8:30, which is apparently quite early for dinner and was the lone diner in the pink courtyard (which has hotel rooms above it).
No worries, everyone was very nice and I stumbled through with my not-so-excellent Spanish. As it caters to tourists, though, the restaurant thankfully had a menu in English, so I didn't have to sit there like a dweeb with my dictionary figuring out what everything was. So I started off with quesadillas with Oaxan cheese and squash blossoms because I just wanted to eat squash blossoms and that was the menu choice. They were fantastic. Came with a little bowl of guacamole as well as the fresh and tomatillo salsas that come to the table. Alone they were excellent. Smothered in the guac and tomatillo salsa, even better. Not much too look at but really great.
Puebla is the home of mole poblano, the complex sauce made with chocolate and served usually over chicken. I was keen to try it but there were also a few other moles on the menu, one a speciality of the house made with chipotles (oh how I adore thee) and red and green pipian which are nut-baseed. I wanted to try them all and luckily for me, they had a combo platter.

No vegetables in sight (well there were two slices of radish) but a good helping of all four. I found that, not surprisingly, I enjoyed the house special chipotle-based mole the best. I thought the mole poblano would be bitter but it was actually quite sweet and I found it a bit too cloying and heavy even in the small portion that I had. Enjoyed both the green and red pipian. None of them were particularly spicy so tried a few in the hot, fresh corn tortillas that came with it sprinkled with some of the salsas, also very tasty but I really couldn't eat too many tortillas, it was just too much.

There was no room for dessert, so no report on that end. Overall, not sure how I'm feeling about moles. I do hope we'll learn to make one while at the cooking school but they seem to be very complex to create without the taste punch that I would have expected.

This is not pizza

2010-06-16T23:02:00.003-04:00

Tonight we went to a little shindig at the law society and afterwards just decided to grab a quick bite before heading home. There's a place on Yonge Street across from the Eaton Centre called the 3 Brewers (it's 3 Brasseurs in most of the French world where the restaurant chain has most of its outlets) that we had been thinking about going for a while. Since we were down there without any other solid plan, we gave it a go. There was a promise of something better than pizza.

It's called a flamm. This "tarte flambee" is better than a pizza, they claim, and from Alsace. Well who wouldn't want to try something billed as better than a pizza as pizza is already such a great thing. As the name would suggest, it is a brew pub so I ordered a half pint of their wheat beer, which was pretty good. It starts off with quite a sweet hit but then settles in. Never bitter though, which is important to me being the big beer drinker that I am. We also ordered a couple of flamms. J had a bacon, raclette, and onion one and I had smoked meat and gruyere topped with pickles (not cooked, I had to check).

Basically what ye olde flamm is is a thin oven baked flatbread, topped with a bit of cream (which you can barely see or taste) and then the cheese and other toppings. It's pretty crispy and tasty but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's better than pizza. I think it's more a something that would work cut up into squares and served as an appetizer rather than as the whole event. Not bad, not particularly ground breaking but we've tried a new place, which I always feel good about.

Sporty snacks

2010-06-14T21:32:00.005-04:00

The World Cup is upon us and that, of course, calls for snacks. And why not mix our love of sport with the love of Mexican food. On Friday night, I made a roast turkey breast in this fantastic New Mexico chile/citrus marinade -- no pix so no blogging about it :(. There were leftovers, so what better use for them than some nachos that also used up the remaining corn tortillas and a bunch of queso fresco that were in the fridge.

One of the things I like to do when we buy whole bags of tortillas is to use them up by cutting them into 6 triangles and baking them in the oven. I just shake them up in a bag with some salt and chile powder or whatever then put them in a 400F oven on the pizza stone for 10 or so minutes. That gives us low fat but delightfully crispy tortilla chips.

Anywho with those in hand, J and each built our own pile of nachos. Mine included said chips, a couple of other chipotle tostadas broken up, some light cheddar, some queso fresco, chopped green onions, red pepper, green onions, and canned green chiles (one of J's faves that I'd never tried before), and of course some turkey. All baked in the oven for about 10 minutes then topped with some daubs of the creamy green homemade guacamole. Oh yeah!

J had a similar conconcotion but added black beans and some rice (more excellent leftover usage). That and a cold Diet Coke and you're made in the shade for some footie-watching fun. Although kudos must go out to our friends who hosted the England-USA game the day before and had soccer-themed cupcakes, lots of cheesy and dippy treats, and a great decorating spirit.

Welcome back oh beautiful chick pea

2010-06-09T22:42:00.005-04:00

This may be in the realm of too much information but stomach troubles have recenetly kept me from eating the beautiful chick pea. Well things are better and I was feeling brave so decided I wanted to have a go with the garbanzos. I had been looking through the cookbook from Vij's Indian restaurant in Vancouver realizing that we'd only ever made one thing out of it -- the lamb popsicles (which are lamb but not frozen, just creamy and a real treat for the tastebuds!) A recipe for a green onion and chick pea curry was found near the back of the book and it looked relatively simple and piqued my interest. So I did it. And it was excellent, easy, and fast. It's made with coconut milk but I used a low fat version so felt virtuous about the whole thing.

And as I may have mentioned, never will there be only one veg curry at a time. There was a load of green beans in the fridge crying out to be used, so I made one of my favourite Indian side dishes which I have been making for years and I think may have originally come from Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking.

Basically you take a whole lotta green beans and clean the ends off. Then put them in a frying pan that has just enough boiling water to cover the beans and a teaspoon or so of tumeric in the water. Boil them for a few minutes until tender crisp then drain and put aside. In the frying pan, heat up a bit of oil and when hot toss in a teaspoon or so of black mustard seeds. Add 1/2 a chopped up chile (either dried or fresh), a few pinches of unsweetened shredded coconut, the beans, a bit of salt and fry for a few minutes until the beans are a bit crispy. Lovely.

Put it all on a plate with some rice and a colourful, quick, and not too spicy Indian vegetarian meal is ready to be enjoyed.

The first fruits of the season

2010-06-07T21:14:00.004-04:00

We are once again signed up for a veggie box from our friends at Coopers CSA Farm in Zephyr, Ontario! Last week we got our first box, which included thyme, sage, oregano, russet potatoes, lettuce, and asparagus. J had a craving for potato salad so I boiled up the taters and served up some salad borne of my mother's recipe, which, in my opinion is the best in the world. I shall share it, because I'm that kind of a gal!

Cut up some potatoes into 1/2" squares - as much or as little as you want -and boil them until tender. Depending on the potato, I usually don't peel the skin off but in this case, it was necessary.

Finely chop an onion (which will be enough for a salad for about 6-8 people, use a half if you're making less). Chop a whack of parsley. I use probably about 1/3 to 1/2 of a cup for 6-8.

Once the potatoes are cooked, drain them and put hot into a bowl. Right away, squeeze at least half a lemon over it and add about 1/4-1/3 cup of plain vegetable oil, canola is best. Add two teaspoons salt (or to taste), the parsley, and onion and gently mix it up. It should be good and lemony, so add to taste. It's best if it sits in the fridge to cool for an hour or two before serving.

It was most delicious and made with parsley from my indoor herb garden and the beautiful potatoes from the farm. As such, it was part of a fantastic little "we don't have a bbq but we're still going to eat like we have one meal" that had a bit of steak and corn on the cob to round it out.

Feeding the Soul.

2010-05-30T20:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we went to see some friends who just moved into a beautiful country house. We had tickets to see a play in Stratford, and were excited to head over and see the house, stop in at our favorite Stratford spot, Pazzo, and then see the play. We struggled with whether it made sense to stay the night with our friends and head out in the morning, or to just drive home. A number of factors weighed, we determined that we would drive home last night. Which meant, impromptu breakfast at home before our second softball game of the season!

What to make? You guessed it, one of my faves... BREAKFAST BURRITOS!

Yum! I took three eggs and two egg whites, mixed them with some salt and pepper and a splash of water. Set it aside while I cooked some chopped white onion with a little bit of diced chorizo. Once the onion and chorizo were toasty and delish, I plopped in the eggs and scrambled the lot. Divided it between mine and G's plates, with mine on a smallish whole wheat tortilla bought at Kensington Market and topped with a bit of low-fat shredded cheese and ketchup. Really good!!! (Oh, the softball game? Lots of fun! We lost something like 14-2 BUT I hit the ball and made it on base BOTH TIMES I was up to bat! That's right! I'm going to be sporty yet!)

One of our goals for this week is to eat at home more. When I was in the midst of losing the 30 pounds I have lost, we ate at home most meals. The last couple of months has seen a bit of an eating out fiesta that must stop. I am pleased to say that I haven't put any weight back on (good fortune and running, I think), but I don't want to lose sight of all my healthy changes! So we are using up what we have in the house and eating at home.

First up, must use the slider buns we bought forever ago that have been lounging in the fridge... so sliders it was for dinner!

G made an amazing onion marmalade to have with them. I cooked the slider patties under the broiler (a bit too long, sadly) and topped them with more shredded low-fat cheddar (shredding really lets you feel like you are getting a ton of cheese for not a ton of WW points), tomato slices and the FANTASMAGORICALLY delicious onion marmalade. Toasted the buns, had some garlic pickles and baked lays on the side, and woo hoo, a points friendly feel-good dinner that we all could enjoy.

On the whole, it's been a good weekend!

Friday afternoon treats

2010-05-28T17:37:00.003-04:00

On Fridays my office closes at 1:30, which is lovely. Most of the time I leave some time after that but it's always a lot earlier than any other day of the week and so is always something to look forward to. And on many Friday afternoons, I treat myself to a little Sri Lankan nibbly on the way home. There's a little bakery on Parliament St. just south of Wellesley called the Absolute Bakery. They make lots of the usual breads, cakes, and pies -- most of which I admit I have never tried. I go there only for their rolls and rotis. My favourites are the beef pancake rolls, a bit of spicy beef stuffed into a roll made I think of potato and covered in something crispy then fried. They have said rolls also with fish and sometimes vegetable. The other delicacy is the little rotis. Most often I have the veggie roti, which again is a bunch of spicy vegetable stuffed in a little roti and then fried up into a little package. Today I went for the chicken. Mmm. Good. And cheap. A nice treat on a sunny Friday afternoon.

I feel like chicken tonight...

2010-05-26T18:02:00.000-04:00

As a girl who has only recently embraced the vegetable as friend, I am still finding ways to incorporate them into my life that will trick my brain into eating them happily. Case in point? BBQ chicken dinner night with twice-baked potatoes. Oh sorry, were you wondering where the vegetable came in? No silly reader, it's not JUST the potato! Them there potatoes had SPINACH lurking within!!!

Oh yes, bbq chicken is lovely. And green beans lightly steamed with some salt, pepper, and lemon is a delight. But the twice baked potato was DIVINE!!! I sauteed some spinach (or did I microwave it? hrmph) and, after baking the potato sans foil in the oven for about an hour, I cut the spud in half, scooped out the innards, mixed in some light laughing cow and spinach (and salt and pepper), and then stuffed the shells with the filling. Sprinkled a little bit of grated old old cheddar on top (grating gets you the feeling of lots of cheese for very few points) and baked for about 15 more minutes. You can't beat that sort of feel-good comforty food!!! And pretty points friendly! (I don't know about you, but I tend to save about half of my daily points for dinner. It's how I eat and how I am comfortable keeping track... you???)

Life...

2010-05-26T17:56:00.000-04:00

G's been doing an excellent job posting all of the DELICIOUS food that we've been eating the last few weeks... and how does a girl like me, who's reached her goal weight due to counter all this eating? RUNNING! But new gear was needed... and of course, I thought I would blog it...

Yep, a few running shirts, a running skirt, some Teva flip-flops recommended to me years ago by a friend and I never picked any up (and they are COMFORTABLE!!!)... I had already picked up some pants. But that's not all, no sir. The warm weather we've been having has meant that even MORE kit was needed...

Right... since I am no longer wearing jackets, I have no place to put my iphone when I run... there's the arm strap. I needed a visor to help shield my face from the sun AND wipe up sweat (which this one does admirably) and a water belt. The water belt. I've debated this one over and over. I run with a bottle that fits into your hand that's perfectly comfortable. But it's been so hot that I can't stand carrying it the whole time. Plus, I am going to need the ability to carry more water soon as my training kicks it up for the half. So, water belt. Thanks to all those on the dailymile.com who recommended Nathan products. It's an absolute dream to wear!

Any running gear YOU particularly love? Next up for me is a new pair of shoes. I have been married to my Asics for some time now, but tried on a pair of Brooks Glycerin 8's yesterday and really, it was a swoon worthy moment. They were amazing but PRICEY! I don't know anyone who wears them...

And for a blast of food... I took my Mom to NY Fries today for her first taste of poutine. She loved it!!! No photos, but trust me, it was good. :)

Dumplings are terrific

2010-05-24T21:51:00.006-04:00

Today was a fantastic Victoria Day in Toronto. The sun was shining and J's mom was visiting so we went down to Cherry Beach and well . . . got sunburned. Nonetheless, a good day was had by all.

Of course, sitting outside makes one hungry and today's plan was to partake in some Mother's Dumplings. Now we haven't been back since this joint moved out of the nasty little basement digs in had in downtown Chinatown so did not know what to expect from the move. However, the stage was set by the note on its web site: "We have moved to 421 Spadina Ave. No longer does our restaurant appear to be a hole in the wall. We hope you will like it." Well it's much bigger, much airier and generally much less grim.

Known as perhaps the best dumpling place in Toronto, they have a wide selection of boiled, steamed, and fried dumplings plus noodles, salads, and some other items but we remained focussed on the main event: dumplings. From the steamed category we tried the beef and chives; our boiled choice were chicken and mushroom; and the fried were pork and bak choi. I did not try the pork dumplings but since the plate of 10 got cleaned up, I assume they were delicious. I enjoyed the chicken immensely. The beef were good too. They are all made fresh so the wrappers are soft and easy to bite through, which I feel is particularly important as rubbery wrappers really can make the whole operation of eating very, very messy. Fillings were flavourful and of a nice texture. All were dipped in a dipping sauce of my own design as the table comes with a couple of kinds of hot sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper, etc so you can make your own sauce in a little saucer. Apologies for the grim photo. I have not mastered the art of taking inside photos with my new phone.

The meal was rounded out with a bean sprout salad, which essentially was flavoured like kim chi but without the cabbage, which is currently not on the best of terms with my stomach. I enjoyed the pickled spiciness of it all. They also make a remarkable green onion pancake, which is crispy and delicious, especially dipped in my bespoke sauce!

A good, relatively cheap option and open on public holidays!

Breakfast for dinner, Mexican style

2010-05-17T23:40:00.008-04:00

We often have breakfast for dinner because it's generally fast and easy and we have the necessary ingredients around the house. So tonight we decided was a breakfast for dinner night as we were without any other dinner plan. But I didn't just want scrambled eggs and homefries or whatever, so put a bit of a Mexican (can you believe it?!!) twist on the whole affair. I'd been reading about chilaquiles but they are usually fried and that's not on right now. But the idea of them was in my mind . . . This is what I did. It's easy. It's tasty. This is pretty low fat. It's the way to go.

Took 4 whole corn tortillas and sprayed them lightly with cooking spray then put them on the pizza stone in a 400F oven to crisp up.

In the meantime, I found about a half a cup of frozen roasted tomatillo salsa (having the sauces and salsas in the freezer really makes it easy to whip up the dishes in a hurry) and heated it up. We had a few bits of leftover chicken, which got sliced up and added to the salsa with a little squeeze of lime juice. Also mashed up an avocado with some chopped green onion, salt, pepper, and the juice of half a lime. No chili because I didn't want to compete with the tomatillo salsa. Grated some queso viejo duro (old strong cheese, really, I don't make this up that's what is says on the package) which is a strong and dryish cheese so you don't need much. Last but not least, fried four eggs (if you put them in a good Teflon pan with just a splash of water and cover it, you don't need any oil here either!).

Then put it all together in layers on top of the crispy tortillas and serve with the avocado on the side.

It's 10:30 pm - must be time for snickerdoodles

2010-05-16T17:13:00.003-04:00

Well J had a hankering for cookies last night and it could not be denied. Her focus had been on trying to make the cookie part of a Twix bar. We didn't happen to have the ingredients for that adventure on hand late on a Saturday night but we did have everything two gals needed to put together some snickerdoodles, which just happened to be J's favourites anyway.

We perused a number of recipes and decided the classic from the Joy of Cooking was the way to go. So we mixed it up - basically eggs, butter, sugar, a bit of cream of tartar, baking soda and Bob's your uncle. Make 'em into balls and roll them in sugar and cinnamon, then bake.

Out they come and feast on the deliciousness, not to mention the house smells fantastic all night!

More on the schnitzel front

2010-05-13T21:29:00.011-04:00

So there's this place Schintzel Queen on the somewhat sketchy corner of Sherbourne and Queen streets in downtown Toronto. I'm always intrigued by places that seem to have been around forever and are kind of a bit rundown and homely looking from the outside. So I've always wanted to stop in and give the schnitzel there a try. Problem is it's not really open for anything but lunch during the week, which when it's at the edge of sketch downtown and you work 50kms away, it's not so easy. Well today I was working from home and my planned lunch got cancelled. I decided to grab the scooter and head down the few blocks and give it a try.

The menu consists of series of different schnitzel sandwiches (traditional and chicken) with various kinds of toppings including the basic mayo, tomato, and lettuce to cheese, roasted onions, and more. You can also just grab a piece of schnitzel or have a dinner that includes sauerkraut and potato salad. Well I just went for the basic sandwich but substituted mustard for mayo, as I'm not too keen on the may-o-naise. It's a big sarnie, let me just say.

It comes on a triangular multi-grain bun. I decided that there really was no need for the bun. It was just too much. So I had a stripped-down version of the schnitzel, tomato, and dijon mustard. It was actually very delicious. The schnitzel was light and crispy and not deep fried like at the last place where we had it. Usually I like to have lots of lemon juice squeezed on the meat but it was different and quite tasty with the mustard. Next time I'll try the potato salad because I've heard good things about it.

I had mine to go but there is a counter in the tiny little mom-and-pop shop where a few people can sit. I understand it gets quite crazy in there at lunchtime. I think when I arrived today, they'd just had a run of customers as the owners seems quite out of breath! But they were very pleasant and it homey inside and I liked it! You just have to get over the location and head in.

Classic chicken soup

2010-05-09T22:56:00.013-04:00

Someone at work asked me for my recipe for chicken soup, so here it is. It's dead easy, just takes a lot of time on the stove. You can use this as soup or strain everything out of it and keep it as stock. I usually save it in 1 cup portions in baggies in the freezer, which makes it really easy to use.

Classic chicken soup

1 whole chicken cut into pieces (if you're using it for soup) or any amount of leftovers and carcasses if you're just making stock
2 or 3 ribs of celery
3-4 unpeeled garlic cloves
2 leeks roughly chopped
2 mediums onions, sliced into chunks
3 large carrots, cut up
3 bay leaves
2 sprigs of rosemary
8 sprigs of fresh parsley
5 springs of fresh thyme
10-20 black peppercorns
optional: 1 whole chile pepper

Put it all in a very large stock pot and fill with enough water to cover. Bring it all to the boil and then turn down to simmer. Skim the foamy stuff off the top when necessary and continue to simmer for about 4 hours.

Cool a bit and then strain it all so you have the veg/chicken and liquid in two separate containers. If you're going to be serving it as soup, save some of the carrots and shred some of the chicken and return it to the soup. If you're just looking for stock, then toss all the solids. Once it's totally cooled, you can seperate it and then freeze. It will keep for a few days in the fridge but quite a few months in the freezer.

Now if you're looking to add some matzoh balls to that soup, I've got a bit of a Mexican twist, of course, that you can use. This is especially excellent when you're in a week of eating a lot of matzoh-flavoured foods and need a little something different.

Poblano matzoh balls

I do not make my balls from scratch - use any boxed mix and this will work.
1 large poblano pepper

Take one poblano pepper and either grill it on a bbq or in the oven until the skin is black. Take it out of the oven and cover it with a kitchen towel for a few minutes while it cools. Peel the skin and remove the seeds. The flesh of the pepper should be pretty soft and mushy.

Once you have prepared the matzoh ball mix, simply add and mix the poblano in well. Then, refrigerate and then make the balls and cook as per the instructions on the box.

They're not spicy but the pepper adds a little extra zip.

Sorry no pics for this one, but I'm sure it's not hard to imagine a steaming hot bowl of chicken soup with a couple of green matzoh balls floating in the middle . . . divine!

The stuffing was excellent

2010-05-08T07:36:00.006-04:00

I had bought the ingredients to try another Rick Bayless recipe: Ancho chiles stuffed with potato and chorizo with escabeche, which in this case is sort of like a quick sweet and sour pickle sauce. Well it sounded interesting and gave the opportunity to try some different techniques and flavours. I wouldn't say it was the most successful ever but I did learn something, so all good.

The escabeche was basically frying up some carrots, adding ground allspice, garlic, cider vinegar, piloncillo (unrefined Mexican sugar), water and onions. You get a sweet-tart sauce and into it let the ancho chiles sit and rehydrate for a while. Then cook up some potatoes and chorizo, split and clean the rehydrated chiles, then stuff them with the potato-chorizo mixture.

It is actually an appetizer but I made it as the main so we had a few each instead of just one and served it with salad and corn. Pretty good but not the best ever. I think there were a couple of reasons: 1. the ancho chiles I had were of varying quality. Some were really wrinkled and didn't soften up evenly, some had really thin skin and tore too easily, etc. etc. So every one was totally different. 2. The escabeche was okay - very tart and sweet - but I was not sure whether to serve it cold or warm. I didn't really want cold liquid on my dinner so heated it before serving.

But I try some new techniques: softening the dried chiles on a hot griddle, splitting and stuffing them, etc. And the potato and chorizo stuffing was really easy and can be translated into other things in the future for sure.

Again with the champagne and chocolates

2010-05-06T21:42:00.011-04:00

Another law firm hosted a champagne and chocolate event tonight. This one at Moroco choclatiers in Yorkville. It was a very fun event hosted by the firm's women's group and it was almost universally women clients. There were four different sparkling beverages - one was a hard cider from the Loire Valley in France, then there were three champagnes, of which I don't remember the names of any except the Veuve Cliquot. Along with that many, many, many kinds of chocolates. My favourites were the truffle balls with the fleur du sel liquid centre, truffle with strawberry and balsamic, the raspberry cream one and the marzipan with orange and brandy. There were a whole lot more but honestly, I couldn't keep up they were coming so fast. Each one had a different design on it - here are a couple of them. I believe the hearts was the raspberry cream and the dots were espresso.

We were greeted upon arrival with a glass of champagne and there was a table of sweet goodies ready for the guests that included: Maroc's famous homemade marshmallows, macrons, brownies on a stick, shortbread cookies, meringues, chocolate-covered pretzels, mini cupcakes, and more.

We also got a little goodie bag at the end that had some treats from Maroc and little bottle of French Cross sparkling wine.

All in all, I'm giving the law firms the thumbs up on these events and letting them know I'll be happy to attend your events if they continue in this fine style. And in keeping with the fact it's work . . . all pics taken with the work BlackBerry . . .

Pot roast under pressure

2010-05-04T20:34:00.006-04:00

I may have mentioned how much I adore the pressure cooking. Using it more, I'm getting used to how it works, how much liquid etc is needed. Pressure cookers are not really the cool kids of the kitchen, so there's not a tremendous number of recipes available for them out there. The recipe book that came with it is mostly Indian curries, which I like but . . . Ours is also pretty small. The combo makes it a bit complicated to figure out how to make things. But it's kind of fun to try.

Anyway with all that preamble, I'd been wanting to have some pot roast so pot roast it was. I cobbled together something quite delicious from a bunch of different sources that accomplished what some might consider the perfect Sunday dinner . . . pot roast in a mushroom wine sauce with potatoes and carrots. All cooked in about an hour!

A thing of beauty really, for the tummy anyway.

Who Me?!

2010-05-02T13:59:00.000-04:00

Yes folks. It's official. I completed my first 10K this morning! I met my goal of running the ENTIRE race. I exceeded my time goal. I had wanted to finish in one hour and twenty minutes, but I ran it in one hour and 7 minutes!!!!!!

Here's me at the finish line...

Yeah, it's a bit blurry, but it's because I was sooo fast! :) I felt great! Honestly, I felt really strong, really solid on my feet and totally pain free. My breathing was steady, my mind was clear. I kept trying to stay relaxed and focused on my breathing and my pace. Thank you Nike+ for not letting me get carried away at the start!!!

I am a lucky girl. G came to the finish with one of our friend's in tow and waited it out through the constant threat of downpour for me to finish. Another friend was also running the race (he ran in 48 minutes!), and he waited to see my after. It was brilliant and I was so happy to have so many smiling familiar faces cheering me on!

Here's P and I at the end...

Yep. There we are, wearing our medals and brimming with pride!
Before the race, I was pretty nervous and could really only eat about half a WW bagel with some peanut butter... I brought my own water bottle to the race, and a few of the carb/electrolyte jelly beans that I got at the Running Room. My stomach started growling before I'd even taken off!!!

But the race was run, and since it was my first, I had a PB!!! Go me!

After the race, you corral through this area where there's food and whatnot. First stop, gatorade. Blessed fruit punch flavour. Love it. Then, off to the food bar. Bagels, cookies, juice boxes, bananas. My stomach wasn't sure I wanted anything, but my mind told my stomach to get over it and eat something. So a bit of a bagel, a juice box, and a delicious banana were enjoyed.

It's nice that they give out food. I mean, I suppose it only makes sense that they would, but it's nice that there's so much there to eat. You're tired after running, even when it's "just" 10K, that having that little bit at the end really kept you from just wanting to lie on the ground and sleep.

From there, it was off to Cora's for a celebratory breakfast. By then, my stomach was having some cramping, but I think I was just too hungry and too worked up. It feels better now.

A year ago I would never have dreamed that this would be possible. I have made so many positive changes in my life, and I am really just so freaking proud of myself. I have a few 5K's and 10K's this summer that I've already registered for, and then it's the big one.. the half marathon in September!!!! Watch this space, I will keep news coming on the training, the food, and the fun of it.