Good but surely not fast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.