Clean Eating Once Again!

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!  :)

On Point and Delicious.

So after the hamburger binge of the day before, Saturday was an on point day!

I started the day with my morning training run. 2 miles!


That's my 5K training schedule (thank you Hal Higdon!)... the 2 miles went pretty smoothly. I have downloaded a bunch of new songs for my iPod and so I was really feeling it. You'll see on my schedule that I alternate running with Wii cross-training days (EA Sports Active)... it seems to be a combination that is working. I feel strong and I am not constantly sore, which is brilliant.

After the run, I came home and made G and I some breakfast sandwiches. Nothing special, so no photos. Just a fried egg (in a non-stick pan so no added points), a very toasty English Muffin, some old cheddar, and for me, one slice of bacon and some ketchup. Yummy.

We then took off for errand running and ice skating lessons! The second lesson went really well. I feel like I am getting the hang of it, and today, we even learned how to skate backwards. It was really cold yesterday and the ice was crazily slick. I really enjoyed it, though. It's challenging but I am pretty proud of myself for trying despite my terror!

We realized that we hadn't had a lot to eat, especially since it was now after 5pm! We ate a couple of Fibre 1 bars, and then went home to make dinner...


Oh yeah, crispy turkey schnitzel with brown rice and asparagus. It may not seem glamorous, but it totally hit the spot last night. We had bought some very thin turkey scallopini that G breaded in WW bread crumbs and spices. The brown rice was a new try, we found this parboiled brand that all you have to do is boil the rice like pasta. It seemed to work, though G felt it was a bit dry. The asparagus was on sale at the Loblaws, so we had to get some. Lightly steamed, it was a delicious addition to the day!

We ended the day with some President's Choice low-fat hot chocolate (which RULES) and all in all, it was a good day. Went too long between breakfast and dinner due to the no lunch situation, but all in all, on point and delicious.

Two Dinners -- Delicious and Low-Point!

Look at that pizza! It's probably been one of the most difficult things to lighten, especially since I can't seem to find any low-point pizza base ideas that I see on other blogs (other than tortillas and english muffins, neither of which I like as a pizza base)... I tend to save about half my points for dinner each day, so I often will have a 9 or 10 point dinner without any issue, and I am more than happy to give an extra point or two from my weekly allowance for such delicious indulgences.

For this pizza, I used a pizza crust that Whole Foods makes, thin crust, whole wheat and really delicious IF you spray the crust with cooking spray and sprinkle on a bunch of herbs before making the pizza. If you don't, it's a bit bland. Anyway, half of that comes out to be about 6 points. I added low-fat moz, turkey pepperoni, some low-point sauce and a TON of veggies. Really delicious and well-worth the points.

Another good alternative for a full-fat dinner? Healthy fish and chips!


Look at that! We used the President's Choice Blue Menu Haddock fillets, and I oven baked some potatoes. Look how brown and crisp they are! I have to give a huge THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to the You Tube video's that the WW Chick puts up. Her chili cheese fries was inspiring. I make the fries by cutting up the potatoes, spraying liberally with cooking spray and adding about 1 teaspoon or so of oil and salt and pepper and chili powder. Put on a well-sprayed baking pan, put in the oven (450 degrees) initially for about 5 minutes then put in the pan about three ice cubes. Close the oven and cook for another 10 or so minutes, flip over and cook for about 15 more. They get super crispy. Our nod to the Brits was to include peas, though they weren't mushy. I love this canned pea, Lucerne Canned Baby Peas. I have eaten them since I was a little girl and I really really love them. They don't really taste like peas, but they totally hit the spot.

Two great dinners for reasonable points. G loved them, too!

While J is away G will play

J is in OK so G is guest posting!

From my research, I see that Jamaican goat curry is a special dish that is made for the holidays. Well being neither Jamaican nor celebrating the Yuletide, I thought I'd give it a go.

The goat meat has been in the freezer since the end of our meat CSA a few months ago. J is not keen to eat it, so I thought I'd make some goat dishes while she was in OK visiting her family for the holidays. So goat curry it is.

Note: You need to start this process the night before!

First of all, I realized that Jamaican curry powder is not the same as regular Indian or the high-test Sri Lankan stuff we have in the cupboard, so I had to make my own. Happy to report that I had all the ingredients on hand so no troubles putting together this brew late at night. The main difference is that Jamaican curry powder has allspice (or pimento as it's called on the island). This is a mild one because you add scotch bonnets to the sauce later for heat. So I gathered all the indredients:

• 2 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp fenugreek
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds
• 1 tbsp anise/fennel seeds
• 1 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1/2 tbsp allspice seeds
• 1/2 tbsp mustard seeds
  
• 1 tsp ground ginger
  
• 2 tbsp ground tumeric

Toast all the seeds in a dry frying pan.


Let them cool, then grind them in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle. Add the ground tumeric and ginger and stir it up so you have a nice fine powder.

The next step is to create the marinade. Take the following ingredients, cut them up and throw them in a blender.

• 2 onions
• 2 green onions
• 2 scotch bonnet peppers (or more if you're feeling extra bold)
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1 tbsp of chopped fresh ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 1/2 cup of water
  

Waz it all up. Add more water if you need it to make a nice paste. Then add 2 tbsp of the curry powder and stir it all up nicely together.

Now add 2 lbs of goat meat to the marinade. Ours had no bones, which was lovely for eating, but generally it actually tastes better if you cook it with meat on the bone. I put it all in a baggie and got the marinade all over the meat and then slapped it in the fridge overnight.


Next day when you're ready to cook it up. Take the meat out of the fridge and scrape off the marinade. Put it in a bowl and save for later.

Then put some oil in a large frying pan and brown the meat.

Once it's good and brown add the marinade, 1/2 lb of chopped up carrots and 1/2 lb of chopped up potatoes (use WHITE potatoes as they don't fall apart when you cook them for hours on end).


Cover the whole lovely concoction with water and simmer for 1.5 hours or until the meat is tender. Add more water if you need it as you go along. I added it a few times so the lovely sauce didn't stick to the bottom.

It's okay to make this well ahead of time. It gets more delicious as it sits. I made it in the morning (and the whole house smelled very fragrant all day!) and ate it with my dad that night. Went out and bought some roti from the local Jamaican restaurant because even though I'm energetic in the kitchen, making the breads does not appeal to me. The dude behind the counter also pointed out that making the roti would probably have taken longer than making the curry, so I was glad not to have gone down that road!

So I served it up with roti, some chopped up banana (weird you say, but the bit of sweet is delicious with curries), rice and peas, and some raita (yogurt, chopped up carrot, onion, tomato, salt, pinch of garam masala). It may not be pretty but it was DELICIOUS!!!

Good Day at Chez HungerOverThirst.

Food is a feature in my life, no doubt about it. But today was a triumph of a different sort. I packed away my suits that no longer fit. I folded them up, gave them a pat and stuck them in the giant tupperware container that will be going down to the storage locker to sit until I know for sure they can leave the building. But having them out of my closet is an amazing feeling. As I get nearer to my goal, I can't believe that it's really happened. (And that I bought jeans on sale at Old Navy yesterday THREE sizes smaller than the jeans I was wearing over the summer AND on sale for $15 a pair!)

And so you don't think I've completely lost it... a random dinner from the last few weeks featuring lovely roasted ontario beets. I think I could honestly eat roasted beets every day.


The steak was from out CSA, the salad was just salad, and the potatoes were my attempt at a cross between potato salad and mashed potato. They were delicious. I just boiled the potatoes and then drained them, added a bunch of salt and pepper, some light mayo and mustard, and just stirred/squished it all around. Good times!

Steak Dinner.

Sometimes, you just want simple dinner. Some protein, some starch, and some sweetness. A while ago (I am so behind, it's not even funny) we had just that sort of day... and there was born, the easy steak dinner...

I was making oven fries, and I overcooked them in my efforts to ensure a crispy chip. Oh, they were crispy... I cut up the fries into wedges, coated them in cooking spray, and baked them in a single layer in a 425 degree oven.

The corn was the last I believe of our CSA summer stock. Delicious to the last. Our meat was a simple steak from our meat CSA, which I topped with a little sauce made of mushrooms, onions and butter. Really a good dinner, and on the table in 45 minutes.

Tomato Day at Chez Hunger Over Thirst

G and I headed up to Coopers CSA to pick up our weekly CSA box and to show me the farm (I'd never been before). It was so nice, and such an amazing day!!!


And goats!


How cute are these freaking goats? They just walk around, stretching their legs and eating grass. They come around and let you pet them, and they are too incredibly sweet. When we got there, we decided to do a pick your own tomato thing. You got tons and tons of tomatoes for only $6, plus you get to pick yer own!

Here's me picking my own!


There were tons and tons of tomatoes...


I highly recommend the tomatoes. They were so terrific, but we had tomatoes coming out the wazoo-y! G promptly came home and made a batch of gazpacho while I devilled some eggs...



That was a great lunch! We had the eggs as a side dish, and really enjoyed the zingy taste of my devilling. The gazpacho was terrific. Really fresh tasting, zingy, and full of good for you texture.

The next day, my friend was coming for dinner so we decided to make an all tomato dinner. I had a panic at the last minute that perhaps R didn't like tomatoes! No fear, she did. We cooked up a mean dinner.

G made this Spanish Jewish delightful eggplant and tomato salad with fried potatoes thrown in the mix.


Wow. It may not look good, but it is absolutely unbelievable. The veg are all fried slightly and just dripping in flavour.

I made an amazing stuffed tomato from my French Cooking School Cookbook...


Here's the grub, with some of our Cooper's Farm corn (which is 100% awesome).


(We also had some more gazpacho, but I didn't include it because you can just scroll down to see it....)

This was a really enjoyable lunch. R brought a bottle of bubbly, which was very refreshing as it was actually still hot that day (unlike today where it was 9C at 2pm!). It matched the lightness of the meal perfectly.

Having farm tomatoes really has ruined having grocery store tomatoes for me. We've made an effort over the last few years to try and eat things in season, though we will buy tomatoes in the winter at the store when it makes sense. But it's amazing how different things taste when you pick it from the vine yourself and you know it's been grown with care and likely harvested by hand. These were harvested by my own hands, so I know it was all good!

The last of these tomatoes were used to make a great bolognese sauce and we really just enjoyed the heck out of all of these tomatoes. The CSA box has given us such a nice taste of Ontario's all too short summer.

The Best Grub in Waterloo is at D & P's!

A few weeks back, we went to Waterloo to spend a short stay with our good friends D & P. We had such a great time, I am embarrassed that I have not blogged about it before now...

We had such a good time. We went to the St. Jacob's Farmer Market and walked around having a great old time. It's really neat, with lots of veg and tasty foods to eat. I really was amazed at how much stuff they had on offer.

Especially these amazing cupcakes...


Red velvet is my absolute favorite, I really really love them! It was my first weekend away on Weight Watchers, and I was nervous that I would completely mess it up, especially when we had to buy these cupcakes (and I mean, we had too or else the cupcakes would have had hurt feelings). No such worries, Weight Watchers truly is something you can do everywhere and anywhere. (And I truly have found this to be true. We've had Jewish new year, conferences, fancy dinners out, and a gourmet cooking class throughout my four and a half weeks on WW. All that, and I have still lost almost 13 pounds.)

ANYWAY, this is not about WW (even though it will likely come up again, especially when I get to posting tonight's delish WW Cassoulet recipe). As we walked around, we immediately ditched any plans to go out to dinner and bought some goodies to have at P and D's, with some good times cooking in their excellent kitchen. We were really excited to have such a concentrated amount of time to spend with them!

So P and D wanted to get some fun treats for dinner, and D treated us to this amazing Sticky Toffee Cheese. You heard me right...

It was such a weird flavour. Sharp from the cheese, sweet from my all-time fave sticky toffee pudding. And just all around delicious, rich, and weirdly yummy!

They also got this amazing artichoke asiago dip that we had with cheese bread from the market...



Yum yum yum! We had some crackers too, but I don't seem to have taken any photos of that.

On the menu were Eggplant Parms, Tomato and Goat Cheese Salad, and Roasted Potatoes. AND P's amazingly fantastic SANGRIA!


The sangria was so nice. It was cold, fruity, juicey, winey... just like it should be. Really a nice accompaniment to our dinner...

Here's the delightful salad...


The tomatoes were farm fresh, skinned and chopped then mixed with balsamic and oil, goat cheese, and herbs. As it sat around, the cheese started to melt and it just became this amazingly cheesey gooey loveliness.

Here's the plate of delish dinner...


Really really good. It's not lookin' so hot, but it was really really good. The eggplant was so easy, you just dip the eggplant in bread crumbs, bake it was sauce and cheese, and then you put the amazing roasted potatoes in the mix, no pasta, nothing too terribly heavy.

Rick Bayless Meet Mesa Grill.

The other day after rummaging through the freezer, we realized that we had some frozen short ribs that needed to be eaten. G loves Rick Bayless and has a favorite beef short rib recipe of his that she has made in the pressure cooker before. (G loves the pressure cooker!)

And we decided to take our first stab at recreating the Mesa Grill corn loveliness that so many of you have been writing to me about! I am glad to know that we were not alone in our deep love of this beautiful corn dish...

But here it is...


The meat was fast cooked but tasted slow cooked due to being made in the pressure cooker. It had a lot of flavour and am amazingly rich sauce.

The corn... it was a good effort... baked in the oven (next time we'll use a grill pan), with a lovely squeeze of lemon, and crumbled queso fresco cheese. Not quite Bobby Flay, but really a good effort.

G also made an amazing guac to have with it...


And some delicious roasted tomatillo salsa with tomatillo salsa from our CSA box...


Gail has so graciously offered the recipe:

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
Adapted from 15 recipes found on the internet but inspired by Rick Bayless

5-6 fresh tomatillos
1 jalepeno (or a similar amount of the fresh chile of you choice)
1 yellow onion
3 cloves of garlic - unpeeled
handful of cilantro
salt

Turn oven on to high broil and put rack so vegetables will be about 4 inches away

Clean the husks of the tomatillos and wash them. Peel onion and cut into four relatively thick slices

Place garlic, jalepeno, tomatillos (whole), and slices of onion on a baking sheet covered in foil.
Put under the broiler. Cook until tomatillos start turning olive green and get the black, charred spots (about 5-7 min).
Flip everything over and broil for another 5-10 minutes until tomatillos are charred and cooked (the skins will burst). Onions are good with a little bit of char as well.

Take everything out. Peel the garlic and remove the top and seeds from the jalepeno.

Put it all in a blender and waz it up. Eat and be merry.

This was so amazing. We ate tons if it!!!

We're going to keep trying the corn. We'll get there, don't you worry yourself. It will happen. IT WILL HAPPEN. BOBBY FLAY, YOUR ROASTED CORN RECIPE WILL BE MINE....

CSA and the G/J Household.

As I have previously mentioned, G and I have signed up for a summer meat and veg allotment. The meat for the most part has been fantastic, which is a great treat. The veg is also great, though we get so much of it that sometimes it feels like a total waste. We've been freezing strawberries left and right just to make sure that we squeeze as much from our box as possible!

It's given us some good locavore dinners!

Including...


Sausages from Cumbraes with peas, sauteed zukes, and mashed potato. All veg from our box!


Roast chicken with potatoes, corn on the cob, roasted carrots, and green beans. The veg in this box, while all starchy, was DELICIOUS! Every bite of this veg was amazing. When G served the carrots, our friend Pat thought we were being very British and serving sausages!

You may notice a theme. We eat this veg all pretty simply cooked. It's so delicious on it's own that we've done very little to it and just enjoyed all the natural flavours. G did make a green bean stew in the pressure cooker, though...


...that totally kicked it. The green beans in this were so soft, they honestly reminded me of the green beans my grandpa used to make when I was a kid. My grandfather died right before I entered high school, and I remember so vividly the holiday dinner when we finished the last of grandpa's canned green beans. It was like really letting him go, losing this center of the family that held us all together. There were lots of tears (and a few right now just thinking about it) because it was like losing someone all over again. It's amazing how this memory has lasted with me, and how fast life can change.

My mom and I have tried quite a few times to recreate the flavour of grandpa's green beans, looking for that delicious taste and that tie back to a person we loved so much. It hasn't happened, but this was pretty close. Next time Mom visits, it's on the menu!

Local Food Tastes Good!

We've been subscribing to a meat and veg CSA box this summer and it has been a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it's given us some amazing meat and vegetables to eat, and a curse because there seems to be this ABUNDANCE of meat and veg to eat staring at us all the time!

If you aren't involved in a CSA program, I highly recommend it, though. Ours is through Cooper's Farm and Maze, and the quality of ingredients we have been getting has been amazing! Our biggest down-side for this farm (and a large part of why we may find something different next year) is that it's quite far away from us so it's a bit of a mission to get there every week.

Nevertheless, we've had lots of nice things to eat, peas, carrots, zukes, eggplant, tomatillos, lettuce, chard, and lots of lovely meat! The chickens have been amazing and the beef is very flavorful and fresh tasting, even when frozed! This meal was a very "local" meal for us, in that just about everything on the plate came from the farm!


The yellow is a sauteed zuke that was nicely cooked, but had a very bitter after-taste. Maybe it's the skin? The white to the side of that is a scalloped potato I made from a recipe in America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two magazine (which I HIGHLY recommend if you are a bit like me and have a hard time cutting down recipes to feed only two of you!) and a lovely steak of some sort pan grilled with sauteed red onion and mushrooms. Pretty much all local and all made at home.

Cooking at home is also a blessing and a curse. You may not think so, but with cooking and eating there is always clean up of dishes to do that, when you get home late to begin with, means the "dinner time" activities can often take up a couple of hours of the very short evening. I am trying to get past that, and I have realized that doing the dishes takes less time than complaining about doing the dishes, so it's been productive in that sense. It's really important to us though to start eating more at home. Long talks with my cardiologist (nothing major wrong, no need for concern, but I do now officially have a cardiologist) suggest that eating at home more and cutting down the portions (my biggest issue) would improve the issues I am having significantly because I would then have control over what's going into my food. Add to that the cost of eating at home being substantially cheaper than eating out, it's a win-win right now.

Plus, and I don't know if this is just us or what, but we are so tired of everything that there is to eat here. We still go to Rashnaa, and I love it to bits, but there is little else that is reasonably priced and inspiring to eat these days. Very little holds any interest, and I don't know if that's just dining out fatigue or what, but it's very much there. So eating at home more (even when that dinner is simple scrambled eggs and toast) has jumped in to save the day. Fortunately, the kitchen at Chez Hunger Over Thirst generally serves up tasty treats!

Eating at home. The Simple Life.

Work and life has been pretty crazy lately so it's been necessary to just have some comfort foody quickness.

At the market, I bought some fantastic gluten-free hot dog buns. Well, they're a bit dense, but they aren't crazy sweet. Quite lovely. We also bought hot dogs at one of the meat stalls that were labelled gluten-free and were organic. They were fantastic, but the woman who sold them to me was rude. Anywho...


That's my hot dog with tomato chutney and mayo (don't start, it's a delicious combo) and sweet chili rice chips which are one of my most favorite things in the whole world. Goooooood times. It's easy and lovely and while not gourmet, it's also sometimes just what the doctor ordered.

Cream Tea at My Place.

Mother's Day was celebrated over two weekends for us, the first here in Toronto with G's Mom and then back home to Oklahoma to celebrate with mine. For G's mom's mother's day, we thought it would be nice to have them over for an afternoon tea. G's mom gave G a glorious china set that was forgotten in the basement from the Rhodesia move to Canada, and we haven't had much call for using it. Tea was the perfect excuse!


Ah! On the top are gluten-free chocolate chip cookies (from the bag, I am embarrassed to say) mixed with gluten-free empire cookies from the British Bakery stall at the St. Lawrence Market. GO THEM with the gluten-free offerings. I bought some gluten-free hot dog buns that will feature in a post later on... Good stuff. ANYWAY, back to the tea...

The second layer was my homemade g-free scones. There are two sizes because the dough didn't seem right and so I was making a little sample round that were the small ones and then when they turned out alright, I made bigger ones. The bigger ones didn't rise at all. But they were delicious. We served them with my homemade butter (the famous shaking the cream in a jar for 30 minutes method -- which rules) and with rose jelly, blueberry jam, and orange marmalade. Yummy!

The bottom tier was our stab at little sandwiches. This was early in the whole gluten-free process and I had taken a stab at trying a kamut bread. That didn't work for me, sad to say. But the sandwiches were lovely. We made two kinds, egg salad and smoked salmon/cream cheese.

We made a big pot of tea and all tucked in. It really was a lovely tea and a delicious mother's day!

My Mom's mother's day consisted of g-free cupcakes my brother made. Yummmmy! I didn't take photos. I was a bad blogger when I was in OK.

More Random Food.

As you may have guessed by today's somewhat continuous blogging, I am quite behind on my posts. There are a number of reasons, persistent illness topping the list, and I am determine to get fairly caught up so that I can start to blog more on the wheat-free things we are doing...

First up... a household favorite, HAMBURGERS!!! I love a solid cheeseburger with Baxter's Tomato Chutney. And with the new bottle recently acquired, hamburgers were not long off...


Yum!!! Some meat, tomato, sauteed onion and mushrooms, and lovely chutney. What an excellent hamburger and yeah for me for getting to eat it! How do you like your hamburgers? I prefer ground meat and salt and pepper only (this one was buffalo meat). In Canada, where I currently live, hamburgers tend to have lots of stuff in them like bread crumbs, egg, and flavorings. I am not so keen on that. How bout you?

Next...I made a lovely scrambled eggs on toast with creamy mushrooms. They mushrooms weren't too creamy because G is not a fan of creamy things, but with the soft cooked scrambled eggs, it was a very nice brunch...


The bread we used was leftover challah from Shabbat dinner, but it's funny because in this picture, it just looks like this giant log of bread!!!

Along the egg vein, I also used an idea found while reading Homesick Texan's blog and made me up some migas one morning. The migas I made were corn tortilla strips lightly fried in oil then mixed with eggs, cheese, and a little bit of salt and pepper. I didn't add onions or peppers because I was too lazy.



I also used a chipotle salsa (President's Choice brand) and served with a side of organic refried beans. It was a delcious meal that G has absolutley no interest in!!!

Homemade canneloni graced our table a few nights ago. I made Nigella Lawson's Spinach and Ricotta Stuffed Shells from her Forever Summer cookbook, but used canneloni noodles instead of shells. I also don't gussy up the passata too much, I just add some basil and oregano and let the tomato-y flavour really sing.

This was delicious and absolutely decadent because we had some garlic bread on the side!!!

The last meal in this set, vegetarian risotto!


YUMMY! We used veg broth, mushrooms and parsley, cheese and butter and made up a lovely creamy risotto for one of our Vegetarian Nights. We have Veg Night every week or so with our friends upstairs, and this time it was our turn to cook! G came up with this amazing risotto and made everything because I had to work late! But the risotto was a success. We use the recipe from the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver's first cookbook.

Diet food.

Every time G or I make a good meal that falls in our diet, we both have a hearty laugh after I exclaim, "THIS is DIET food?!!!" Ha ha ha ha... ha.

No really, G's made some very tasty food over the course of the last couple of weeks. See for yourself...


First up, Basque Chicken from the GI Diet Cookbook. I didn't add the rice that the recipe calls for, but we did have the rest of it. Yum! It was a delightful chicken with tomato, white beans, smoked paprika, and sausage... it was truly wonderful and I highly recommend the cookbook.

G made a steak involtini that was filled with ricotta and spinach...


G served this with cooked tomatoes and some sauteed zucchini. Really really nice. I don't know how she made it, but since it was a weeknight, it really seemed to go quickly.

She also made a stroganoff a bit ago in our new pressure cooker. G rules in this department. She said she was in the mood for something like a stroganoff, and she just made one. Because we are off the carbs, we had it on top of steamed green beans, which sounds weird but was totally delicious...


May I just say that while I have not used our pressure cooker, she really enjoys it. It makes stews and soups taste like they have been cooking for hours while in fact they have been on for only about thirty minutes. It's quite amazing...

And G's hits just keep on coming...


I had been craving something macaroni cheese-like, which is strictly not allowed on our diet. So imagine my delight when coming home from work to find that G had roasted chicken and made a leek and mushroom gratin! The gratin was cheesey and mustardy and absolutely delightful. It really fit the bill for the cheesey delight I was craving, and it went really well with the chicken and asparagus.

And further proof that the internet is an amazing thing...


Chocolate mousse-y pudding. G found this sugar-free recipe online, which meant we were able to make pudding for dinner on Friday (G's parents came over for dinner, and not having dessert is just not on). Anyway... they were absolutely delightful, and I just finished mine about two seconds ago since I couldn't eat the whole thing on Friday!

So as you can see, we have not been going hungry in our home as of late...