This week's meal plan is something of a balance between my memories of San Francisco and the reality of April in Saskatoon. We can't all have cardoons growing in our backyards in the middle of winter, and we can't just pull shellfish out of the bay when you live in a landlocked location.
Hence, my dinner menus this week are relatively light, but still making use of what is available in the stores, and what I have to use in my freezer (read: meat).
Monday
Molly Katzen's West Indian Red Beans and Coconut Rice with Collard Greens
I made this tonight, and while I had to ixnay the chili flakes from the red beans and the Tabasco from the collard greens so that my kids could handle the spice level, I was gratified to see D power through everything on his plate, and announce that he loved the cooked greens. "Cabbage?" he asked. "Collards," I said. "Kind of like a cross between cabbage and spinach." "Mmmm!" he said.
My husband was also a fan of the collards. We had the collard salad last night, and he said, "Can we have collards every day?"
Before we had kids we'd often have a beans and rice meal. But then our little kids rejected those kinds of meals. While G wasn't super keen on the meal, he is also recovering from a cold, so we'll test him again once his appetite returns.
Tuesday
Grilled lamb chops
Ottolenghi's Orange and date salad, posted by Stacey Snacks
Ottolenghi's Carrot & mung bean salad
I bought myself Plenty More after Christmas after I'd accepted that no one had fulfilled that wish from my Christmas list. I haven't spent enough time with it, but I intend to start.
Wednesday
Mark Bittman's Sesame Glazed Brussels Sprouts with Chicken from We Gotta Eat
Soba Noodles
Thursday
We're off to my parents' place for Easter on Friday morning, and I want to do a 'finger food' theme on the last day of school before a week off. I've decided to introduce my kids to cheese fondue. I'll hopefully give a report on how that goes...bread and cheese and dried beef, apples and grapes...how could it be anything but delightful?
Showing posts with label Web resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Web resources. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2015
San Francisco, Part 2 and Transition to Home
I've now been home for a few days; I landed into a frenzy of preparation for a presentation and some other events, so I was slow to get back to this. But San Francisco holds a large and fond place in my recent memory.
Tuesday, March 24
My day started with trying to wrap up my blog post which made me late for the keynote talk at the conference. I was looking for somewhere to grab a quick snack on my way to the conference (shouldn't be difficult, right?). I stopped at Boudin Bakery, thinking I could get some kind of pastry. While the latte they made was good, the cheese muffin I picked up tasted more like cake for breakfast.
I realized then how little sugar (except in the form of sparkling wine) I had actually been eating. I chose not to eat the muffin and instead gave it to a homeless man and carried on my way. There were several interesting shops just outside the hotel in Embarcadero Centre, so I decided to take my chances. Paramo Coffee was the answer. I grabbed a sweet potato paleo muffin that felt MUCH better to eat. It gave me pause, in fact. Maybe I should be eating like that more often...
Lunch at the conference that day was much more enjoyable. The Hyatt had set out a buffet of salads, fresh seasonal vegetables, soup and more. I filled up my plate with salad, veggies, and a little piece of chicken, and felt great about the meal.
I wasn't sure whether I would connect with anyone for dinner that night, but I had set my sights on The Slanted Door at the Ferry Building. My husband and I had lunch there about 10 years ago, so I was curious to see whether it had stayed popular and current—and more importantly, delicious.
By the end of the day of intensive downloads of information on web content, I was pretty much ready to go off on my own. So I headed to the Ferry Building and discovered that The Slanted Door is indeed still hopping. So much so that I snagged the very last chair at the bar. After that they were telling people there was a 45 minute wait for even one person at the bar.
Service at the bar was excellent. The bartender walked me through options for matching wine to the food I had ordered: green papaya salad, uni (also on my bucket list) and shrimp and green onion dumplings. He started me with a Gruner Veltliner, which was perfect with the salad. It also went well with the wild Mendocino uni.
More to say on uni, otherwise known as sea urchin. It's the Big Thing right now, and I had never had the chance to try it. Slanted Door serves it raw, over an avocado (I think) lime cream, topped with flaky salt and caviar. It was quite highly seasoned, with lime and salt coming through, with an undercurrent of the weird, briny 'other' flavour of the uni. The creamy avocado purée put the uni texture in context, since it was less creamy, and actually had some structure next to the avocado cream. The pop of the caviar and crunch of the salt added more texture.
I reserve judgement on uni until I've tried it once more. As a good friend of mine says, "I'll try anything twice."
We did a bit of back and forth on figuring out the wine for the shrimp and chive dumplings. The bartender suggested a Riesling, which was just too sweet for me. He found another option, although I think I would have been better off to stick with the Gruner Veltliner.
I'm amazed though, at the continued popularity of the Slanted Door. 10 years or more in, and they're still packed.
Wednesday, March 25
I opted for a smoothie again this morning, and showed up less late, but still late, for the keynote. Luckily, the whole conference seemed to be running late, so I didn't miss much. I had lunch with some different people, including the organizer of the conference, and again kept it light in anticipation of my evening adventures.
This evening, I had tickets to a Howell Mountain spring wine tasting at the Presidio, a former military base in Golden Gate Park. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was glad to have received the Bottlenotes email promoting the event, which just happened to be taking place while I was in San Fran.
The evening was a wonderful education in Cabernet Sauvignon. While some vintners had other varietals, all of them offered at least one Cab. I tried Cabs ranging in price from $45 to $300 a bottle, and got a good cross-section from this specialized mountain region. The most memorable were a Cab Franc from Black Sears Estate Wines, which, strangely, had the aroma of baby diapers (not a bad thing, overall). Arkenstone wines offered a Cab blend that was unbelievably balanced and pure old world style. I loved those. Roberts + Rogers had a fairly pricy Cab that tasted meaty—as in beefy— and delicious. It was super fun, and I spoke with both some interesting vintners, and a very entertaining gentleman named Frank. If you ever see book published, titled PIMP: Personally Invested in Managing People, that's Frank. I think he'll be famous very soon.
From there, I was going to try to get in to a new and crazy popular restaurant called State Bird Provisions. I had hoped that I could sneak into the bar, as I'd been managing to do at other popular places, but no luck here. I arrived at 7:15 and was told that there would be nothing available at the bar until 9:45. Truly, I'm not even sure how that is even possible.
But they directed me next door to The Progress, owned by the same people, and set up in the same style of dim sum inspired small plates. I was seated almost instantly at the bar next to a restaurant manager from The Chalkboard in the Napa area. We chatted while he finished up his meal, and I started mine.
The menu changes daily, but on the day I ate there, I had:
Tuesday, March 24
My day started with trying to wrap up my blog post which made me late for the keynote talk at the conference. I was looking for somewhere to grab a quick snack on my way to the conference (shouldn't be difficult, right?). I stopped at Boudin Bakery, thinking I could get some kind of pastry. While the latte they made was good, the cheese muffin I picked up tasted more like cake for breakfast.
I realized then how little sugar (except in the form of sparkling wine) I had actually been eating. I chose not to eat the muffin and instead gave it to a homeless man and carried on my way. There were several interesting shops just outside the hotel in Embarcadero Centre, so I decided to take my chances. Paramo Coffee was the answer. I grabbed a sweet potato paleo muffin that felt MUCH better to eat. It gave me pause, in fact. Maybe I should be eating like that more often...
Lunch at the conference that day was much more enjoyable. The Hyatt had set out a buffet of salads, fresh seasonal vegetables, soup and more. I filled up my plate with salad, veggies, and a little piece of chicken, and felt great about the meal.
I wasn't sure whether I would connect with anyone for dinner that night, but I had set my sights on The Slanted Door at the Ferry Building. My husband and I had lunch there about 10 years ago, so I was curious to see whether it had stayed popular and current—and more importantly, delicious.
By the end of the day of intensive downloads of information on web content, I was pretty much ready to go off on my own. So I headed to the Ferry Building and discovered that The Slanted Door is indeed still hopping. So much so that I snagged the very last chair at the bar. After that they were telling people there was a 45 minute wait for even one person at the bar.
Service at the bar was excellent. The bartender walked me through options for matching wine to the food I had ordered: green papaya salad, uni (also on my bucket list) and shrimp and green onion dumplings. He started me with a Gruner Veltliner, which was perfect with the salad. It also went well with the wild Mendocino uni.
More to say on uni, otherwise known as sea urchin. It's the Big Thing right now, and I had never had the chance to try it. Slanted Door serves it raw, over an avocado (I think) lime cream, topped with flaky salt and caviar. It was quite highly seasoned, with lime and salt coming through, with an undercurrent of the weird, briny 'other' flavour of the uni. The creamy avocado purée put the uni texture in context, since it was less creamy, and actually had some structure next to the avocado cream. The pop of the caviar and crunch of the salt added more texture.
I reserve judgement on uni until I've tried it once more. As a good friend of mine says, "I'll try anything twice."
We did a bit of back and forth on figuring out the wine for the shrimp and chive dumplings. The bartender suggested a Riesling, which was just too sweet for me. He found another option, although I think I would have been better off to stick with the Gruner Veltliner.
I'm amazed though, at the continued popularity of the Slanted Door. 10 years or more in, and they're still packed.
Wednesday, March 25
I opted for a smoothie again this morning, and showed up less late, but still late, for the keynote. Luckily, the whole conference seemed to be running late, so I didn't miss much. I had lunch with some different people, including the organizer of the conference, and again kept it light in anticipation of my evening adventures.
This evening, I had tickets to a Howell Mountain spring wine tasting at the Presidio, a former military base in Golden Gate Park. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was glad to have received the Bottlenotes email promoting the event, which just happened to be taking place while I was in San Fran.
The evening was a wonderful education in Cabernet Sauvignon. While some vintners had other varietals, all of them offered at least one Cab. I tried Cabs ranging in price from $45 to $300 a bottle, and got a good cross-section from this specialized mountain region. The most memorable were a Cab Franc from Black Sears Estate Wines, which, strangely, had the aroma of baby diapers (not a bad thing, overall). Arkenstone wines offered a Cab blend that was unbelievably balanced and pure old world style. I loved those. Roberts + Rogers had a fairly pricy Cab that tasted meaty—as in beefy— and delicious. It was super fun, and I spoke with both some interesting vintners, and a very entertaining gentleman named Frank. If you ever see book published, titled PIMP: Personally Invested in Managing People, that's Frank. I think he'll be famous very soon.
From there, I was going to try to get in to a new and crazy popular restaurant called State Bird Provisions. I had hoped that I could sneak into the bar, as I'd been managing to do at other popular places, but no luck here. I arrived at 7:15 and was told that there would be nothing available at the bar until 9:45. Truly, I'm not even sure how that is even possible.
But they directed me next door to The Progress, owned by the same people, and set up in the same style of dim sum inspired small plates. I was seated almost instantly at the bar next to a restaurant manager from The Chalkboard in the Napa area. We chatted while he finished up his meal, and I started mine.
The menu changes daily, but on the day I ate there, I had:
- grilled lap cheong (Chinese sausage) with salted chili paste
- tempura of bouchot muscles and seville togarashi aioli (chili citrus aioli was fantastic)
- shaved cauliflower with herbs and pig fries (that's pig ears in the form of French fries)
- butter clams on the half shell with kimchi piccata and snap peas
- Pecorino 'roti' with perigord truffle buttermilk
- roasted mushrooms and kale with local wakame kraut (best thing ever, even if kale is so 2014)
- black butter butternut squash with caramelized onion and swiss chard (also fantastic. Heck, it was all fantastic)
And for dessert, I had poppyseed angel food cake with Sicilian pistachio and mascarpone. Yum.
So that was my last meal in San Francisco, except for the delicious heuvos rancheros prepared by authentic Mexicans at the SFO airport the next morning.
When I arrived home in Saskatoon, I was of course glad to be home but was struck instantly by the prevalence of meat and starches after living on shellfish and vegetables (with frequent garnishes of salted pork). I missed that style of eating.
I didn't get a chance to cook right away, because we had friends in town. At Aroma Restobar in the Radisson, I skipped the steak special and ordered the 'breakfast trout', served with a 'bacon and spinach soufflé' which was really more like scrambled eggs with spinach and bacon and a piece of oatmeal crusted trout on top. There were also a lot of potatoes. I ate the trout, and my vegetables, but skipped most of the scrambled eggs and the potatoes. My husband happily cleaned up my plate.
The next day our friend generously offered to order pizza for dinner after we had classic bacon and eggs for brunch. Tasty, but again, not quite what I had been used to.
Sunday, I made gourmet macaroni and cheese for my kids at lunch, because it's one of their favourites, but I didn't eat much. Instead I made a meal plan for the week and took the first step toward eating more like San Francisco by making a collard salad with cashews and lime. That was more like it. And D was keen on what he called the "cashew pudding" that you spread on the plate under the salad.
I'm glad the Canadian winter food desert is over as well, so we can get more vegetables from closer to home. I found an organic cucumber, Canadian grown, in Safeway yesterday. Hallelujah! My fresh meal plan for this week will be up next.
Friday, October 3, 2014
My New Way to Preserve Produce: Make Soup!
For those of us who grew up on farms, watching our mothers and grandmothers put up the garden produce, we know what we're supposed to do. I helped my mom pick and process bushels of fresh peas, beans, and corn (blanched and frozen in little bags), cabbage (krauted, then processed in a boiling water bath), cucumbers (pickled in vinegar), beets (pickled or made into a borscht concentrate with a collection of other garden veggies and frozen), and tomatoes (canned in a variety of ways).
I've been spending the last few years reconciling my own approach to gardening and preserving food with the one I grew up with. For one, I don't have a 5,000 square foot garden. I also have had no luck with peas (one of the best yields in my mom's garden), and I have never had the space to grow many root veggies. Plus, my mom's (now smaller) garden still offers up enough beets and potatoes for us to enjoy.
I've also discovered the joys of lactic acid fermentation, so I am loathe to pickle anything in vinegar. Instead I've been experimenting with salt brining various veggie combinations, and I don't process anything in boiling water. This activity is limited somewhat by refrigerator space, as they have to be kept in cold storage.
I took on the canning of my mom's tomatoes last year because she and my dad were traveling during canning season. I found it labour intensive, hot and messy, and while I like the results, I prefer my own method of slow roasting tomatoes and throwing them in the freezer.
And then there are are the few vegetables that are too plentiful for me to eat fresh or find a way to ferment. This year, that includes zucchini, corn (not that I grew it, but I did get carried away at the market gardens), and chard.
With the cold weather coming, I picked all my chard at once, and then wondered what to do with it. My mom blanched and froze it, which I loved. My kids have yet to warm up to cooked leafy greens, and while I did blanch some last year, it is still in my freezer. This year, I decided to make soup. I found a couple of freezable recipes that can be used as is or added to, and which call for a ton of veggies. My kids love soup, and will eat things they normally avoid, like lentils and chard, when it is served in a broth.
Every one of those containers in the freezer is a quick and easy meal, and a (hopefully) effective way of getting my kids to eat their veggies.
My two favourites (there are tons more--I just Googled 'corn chowder for freezing' and 'chard soup for freezing' and these came up:
Sweet Corn Chowder, c/o Keeza's Freezer Meals
Lentil Swiss Chard Soup, c/o Flavia's Flavors
The lentil chard soup is perfect as is; the sweet corn chowder has all kinds of potential. It is vegan and packed with veggies when it comes out of the freezer, but when you add a bit of ham, cheese or cream, it is elevated to absolute heaven. I could imagine adding some seafood or bacon, along with cheese and cream, for an absolutely decadent soup. And it can change every time. Kind of like my mom's borscht recipe...
I've been spending the last few years reconciling my own approach to gardening and preserving food with the one I grew up with. For one, I don't have a 5,000 square foot garden. I also have had no luck with peas (one of the best yields in my mom's garden), and I have never had the space to grow many root veggies. Plus, my mom's (now smaller) garden still offers up enough beets and potatoes for us to enjoy.
I've also discovered the joys of lactic acid fermentation, so I am loathe to pickle anything in vinegar. Instead I've been experimenting with salt brining various veggie combinations, and I don't process anything in boiling water. This activity is limited somewhat by refrigerator space, as they have to be kept in cold storage.
I took on the canning of my mom's tomatoes last year because she and my dad were traveling during canning season. I found it labour intensive, hot and messy, and while I like the results, I prefer my own method of slow roasting tomatoes and throwing them in the freezer.
And then there are are the few vegetables that are too plentiful for me to eat fresh or find a way to ferment. This year, that includes zucchini, corn (not that I grew it, but I did get carried away at the market gardens), and chard.
With the cold weather coming, I picked all my chard at once, and then wondered what to do with it. My mom blanched and froze it, which I loved. My kids have yet to warm up to cooked leafy greens, and while I did blanch some last year, it is still in my freezer. This year, I decided to make soup. I found a couple of freezable recipes that can be used as is or added to, and which call for a ton of veggies. My kids love soup, and will eat things they normally avoid, like lentils and chard, when it is served in a broth.
Every one of those containers in the freezer is a quick and easy meal, and a (hopefully) effective way of getting my kids to eat their veggies.
My two favourites (there are tons more--I just Googled 'corn chowder for freezing' and 'chard soup for freezing' and these came up:
Sweet Corn Chowder, c/o Keeza's Freezer Meals
Lentil Swiss Chard Soup, c/o Flavia's Flavors
The lentil chard soup is perfect as is; the sweet corn chowder has all kinds of potential. It is vegan and packed with veggies when it comes out of the freezer, but when you add a bit of ham, cheese or cream, it is elevated to absolute heaven. I could imagine adding some seafood or bacon, along with cheese and cream, for an absolutely decadent soup. And it can change every time. Kind of like my mom's borscht recipe...
Thursday, May 9, 2013
30-Day Yoga Challenge: Lessons Learned
I just got through Day 27 of my 30 Day Yoga Challenge. Today was the first day that I started to get grumpy about the limitations on my diet. I'm still following it, still practicing yoga, but I'm also starting to think seriously about what I'm going to cook when I'm done this thing. Moussaka, for example, has been on my mind.
It's funny the things that have tempted me the most. I tend to want to be where coffee is being made and served, if only to smell it. I just love the taste and smell so much. Surprisingly, I miss coffee more than wine. One of my weakest moments was earlier in the week when I was drinking only smoothies for three days, and someone had left half a piece of multi-grain bread, spread thickly with peanut butter, on the counter. It looked SO GOOD.
Confession time: over the last two days, after finishing three days of liquids only, I've felt compelled to taste a small sample of the food I've prepared for my family. If I lived alone, the diet portion (and heck, finding time for the yoga portion) would be a piece of cake (pardon the pun). I can't feed my growing children veggies and quinoa every day. I have a theory about kids and their nutritional needs, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing low-carb about a toddler's optimal diet. This is one of the things that has kept me from eating optimally (for me); because it matters more to me to eat together as a family, and for my kids to see me eating the same things I'm serving them (the message is, there's no difference between grown-up food and kids' food. We all eat the same, healthy stuff). So I've sampled a piece of the elk New York steak (just a bite) and also tasted the beautiful pasta with radish leaf pesto that I served for dinner tonight, as I was eating acorn squash, stuffed with quinoa and almonds. Also tasty, but dammit, I'm ready to have a bowl of pasta if I feel like it.
I don't think I'll be going straight back to my earlier status quo, however. I love how I feel, both from the yoga and the food. I have tons of energy, I'm never uncomfortably full, and I'm never terribly hungry. I have become very aware of how good it feels to eat a lot of vegetables. And I mean a lot of vegetables—nutrient-dense ones, like dark leafy greens and squash. After drinking these primarily vegetable and protein smoothies, I don't think I'll be able to take Booster Juice seriously, either. Check out Dashama, the amazing yogini, and one of her smoothie recipes here.
In my search for interesting and tasty foods to eat on this diet, I have also uncovered a few gems, which I would like to share.
Goddess dressing (delicious, tahini-based salad dressing recipe that keeps in the fridge, and is deliciously savoury and creamy)
Quinoa Sushi
This was a bit of a surprise; it was so delicious that my husband announced that he never needs rice sushi again.
It was a bit of an experiment, but it worked really well. I cooked the quinoa according to Mark Bittman's directions for brown sushi rice, which goes something like this:
1 c. rinsed quinoa
3 T. rice vinegar
1 T. agave syrup
1 t. Himalayan sea salt
1 t. fresh ginger, finely chopped
Add quinoa to a pot and add water to cover by an inch. Bring to a boil, and cook until water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. In a separate small bowl, bring remaining ingredients to a boil to dissolve salt and steep the ginger. Strain, if you prefer to avoid the chunks of ginger. Add vinegar mixture to the hot quinoa, and mix vigorously with a flat wooden spoon, to break up the grains a bit and make it more sticky.
Finely slice or julienne any sushi fillings you like (I used roasted asparagus, avocado, red pepper, green onion, cucumber, carrot, kohlrabi and umeboshi plum, as well as crab-flavoured pollock for the rest of my family) and roll using nori sheets and a sushi mat. I know the instructions are sketchy here, so go here, if you need a tutorial.
And it was so pretty, I even took a picture! Unlike me, I know. Instagram may just make a photographer of me.
Now that I'm closer to the end, I can see myself continuing with the smoothies, maybe for weekday breakfasts, and then having real breakfast on weekends. Or, if I've overdone it somehow, I can throw in a smoothie to replace a meal. I will also aim to make our salads full of sprouts, kale, avocado, and all of the really healthy, nourishing salad ingredients. Not iceberg, thank you. I will keep making water kefir, which the whole family loves. I have paid it forward to my parents and my inlaws, and was just singing its praises to my neighbours tonight, so they will soon be requesting a starter kit from me, and I'll be happy to share.
My last day of the cleanse is Mother's Day. I'm still not sure I'll be able to get through it without brunch, but I've already scheduled a gentle entry back into the unlimited world of food: a movie date with my girlfriend to see A Place at the Table, and a bag of popcorn (another one of the things I've missed most), so I have something to look forward to. The day after, I have a full day workshop, followed by a bus trip back to Regina for two days of working on a contract there. How will I ease into regular eating while forced to eat at restaurants? Still not sure...I'll keep you posted.
It's funny the things that have tempted me the most. I tend to want to be where coffee is being made and served, if only to smell it. I just love the taste and smell so much. Surprisingly, I miss coffee more than wine. One of my weakest moments was earlier in the week when I was drinking only smoothies for three days, and someone had left half a piece of multi-grain bread, spread thickly with peanut butter, on the counter. It looked SO GOOD.
Confession time: over the last two days, after finishing three days of liquids only, I've felt compelled to taste a small sample of the food I've prepared for my family. If I lived alone, the diet portion (and heck, finding time for the yoga portion) would be a piece of cake (pardon the pun). I can't feed my growing children veggies and quinoa every day. I have a theory about kids and their nutritional needs, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing low-carb about a toddler's optimal diet. This is one of the things that has kept me from eating optimally (for me); because it matters more to me to eat together as a family, and for my kids to see me eating the same things I'm serving them (the message is, there's no difference between grown-up food and kids' food. We all eat the same, healthy stuff). So I've sampled a piece of the elk New York steak (just a bite) and also tasted the beautiful pasta with radish leaf pesto that I served for dinner tonight, as I was eating acorn squash, stuffed with quinoa and almonds. Also tasty, but dammit, I'm ready to have a bowl of pasta if I feel like it.
I don't think I'll be going straight back to my earlier status quo, however. I love how I feel, both from the yoga and the food. I have tons of energy, I'm never uncomfortably full, and I'm never terribly hungry. I have become very aware of how good it feels to eat a lot of vegetables. And I mean a lot of vegetables—nutrient-dense ones, like dark leafy greens and squash. After drinking these primarily vegetable and protein smoothies, I don't think I'll be able to take Booster Juice seriously, either. Check out Dashama, the amazing yogini, and one of her smoothie recipes here.
In my search for interesting and tasty foods to eat on this diet, I have also uncovered a few gems, which I would like to share.
Goddess dressing (delicious, tahini-based salad dressing recipe that keeps in the fridge, and is deliciously savoury and creamy)
Quinoa Sushi
This was a bit of a surprise; it was so delicious that my husband announced that he never needs rice sushi again.
It was a bit of an experiment, but it worked really well. I cooked the quinoa according to Mark Bittman's directions for brown sushi rice, which goes something like this:
1 c. rinsed quinoa
3 T. rice vinegar
1 T. agave syrup
1 t. Himalayan sea salt
1 t. fresh ginger, finely chopped
Add quinoa to a pot and add water to cover by an inch. Bring to a boil, and cook until water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. In a separate small bowl, bring remaining ingredients to a boil to dissolve salt and steep the ginger. Strain, if you prefer to avoid the chunks of ginger. Add vinegar mixture to the hot quinoa, and mix vigorously with a flat wooden spoon, to break up the grains a bit and make it more sticky.
Finely slice or julienne any sushi fillings you like (I used roasted asparagus, avocado, red pepper, green onion, cucumber, carrot, kohlrabi and umeboshi plum, as well as crab-flavoured pollock for the rest of my family) and roll using nori sheets and a sushi mat. I know the instructions are sketchy here, so go here, if you need a tutorial.
And it was so pretty, I even took a picture! Unlike me, I know. Instagram may just make a photographer of me.
Now that I'm closer to the end, I can see myself continuing with the smoothies, maybe for weekday breakfasts, and then having real breakfast on weekends. Or, if I've overdone it somehow, I can throw in a smoothie to replace a meal. I will also aim to make our salads full of sprouts, kale, avocado, and all of the really healthy, nourishing salad ingredients. Not iceberg, thank you. I will keep making water kefir, which the whole family loves. I have paid it forward to my parents and my inlaws, and was just singing its praises to my neighbours tonight, so they will soon be requesting a starter kit from me, and I'll be happy to share.
My last day of the cleanse is Mother's Day. I'm still not sure I'll be able to get through it without brunch, but I've already scheduled a gentle entry back into the unlimited world of food: a movie date with my girlfriend to see A Place at the Table, and a bag of popcorn (another one of the things I've missed most), so I have something to look forward to. The day after, I have a full day workshop, followed by a bus trip back to Regina for two days of working on a contract there. How will I ease into regular eating while forced to eat at restaurants? Still not sure...I'll keep you posted.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Yoga Challenge and Cleanse: A New Amazon Adventure
What happens when an obsessive foodie decides to embark on a 30-day yoga challenge and corresponding cleansing diet? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm in the process of finding out.
I have been quiet on the blog front as I got my head around the prospect of 30 days of no dairy, no alcohol, no white flour/rice/sugar, no juice, no grilled/fried things, no red meat, and no coffee (caffeine isn't on the banned list, but with no dairy and no sugar, it may as well be, in my books). Ironically, two days before I was scheduled to start (and timing is tight because I had to sandwich the 30 days between a conference my husband was attending and a conference that I'm attending in May), my parents delivered half a lamb and half a pork, cut and wrapped. Lamb is not technically red meat according to this diet (thank God), so I have managed to sample it in a healthy stew, thanks once again to Mark Bittman's Food Matters. Tahini and Spinach Stew with Lamb was reposted here, thanks to "The Accidental Brainwashed Foodie."
Nine days in, I can honestly say so far so good. The smoothie recipes are all made up of real food, so I get to feed my recipe addiction by making them as well as some other healthy recipes. I can still enjoy some variety in my food, which might get a bit harder when I have to drop down to only vegetables, fruits, quinoa and millet in Week 3. But by then, it will be half over, and I'll be able to tell myself I'm on the home stretch.
This weekend was a bit surreal, visiting my parents while my brother and sister and our families were all home. This is a time for celebration, since we're not all together very often. We didn't actually get to eat many meals together, since there was a family function on Saturday, which I ended up unable to attend due to sick kids. So I holed up at home, doing yoga and meditating while my kids napped, while everyone else enjoyed their roast beef dinner and celebratory cake.
My dad, however, thanks to the arrival of the aforementioned pork, was in full bacon production. He was curing, frying up slices to test every day, and then spent Sunday morning smoking bacon and pork chops. I confess I wasn't able to avoid tasting it completely. I HAD to sample it, as he relies on our opinions of whether he's got the seasoning quite right.
So Sunday at breakfast, everyone (but me) got to gorge themselves on salt pork, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and toast. I got to enjoy an egg and some tomatoes alongside my smoothie. I didn't find this painful, however. I love food so much that I even enjoy the smells of the food, as well as watching other people enjoy it. G made up for lost time after being ill the day before by finishing off half a plate of the bacon.
The dichotomy of being on a diet while watching my family enjoy one of their favourite pasttimes (eating) got me thinking about the lessons in the diet book I'm supposed to be following, which warn against eating beef or pork, or white bread, or pickles. Dashama (the instructor) also speaks about the energy of food, and the environmental impact of eating meat. She also encourages us to do what's right for our own unique situations.
Let's use our lunch (following shortly on the heels of the bacon feast) as an example. I helped mix up hamburgers from scratch while my mom made buns. My dad grilled the burgers in between checking the progress of his smoker. Lunch consisted of homemade cole slaw, freshly made burgers on fresh homemade (white) buns, store-bought potato salad, and homemade pickles, old white cheddar, sliced on the vine tomatoes, mustard and ketchup as toppings. The beef came from a cow raised on the farm my parents live on, and was shaped and cooked with love, as were the buns and the pickles.
How much does that love count in the 'healthiness' of the food we eat? I don't know if anyone has measured it, but I have long argued to anyone feeling guilty over an indulgence that truly good food, made with love, has its own nourishing qualities that counteract the fats and free radicals. I don't have any science to back that up—call it a 'gut feeling.' Granted, maybe the hamburger feast needn't follow two hours after the bacon feast, but the two meals in themselves were truly nourishing to everyone involved.
So along with my box of hemp protein powder, greens powder, aloe juice, kombucha and kale that made the round trip with me to the farm, I brought back three hunks of freshly smoked side bacon and a dozen or so smoked pork chops. They'll go into the freezer next to my pasture-raised goose from Cool Springs Ranch, half a lamb, half a pig, and a few whole frozen fish, and when I'm done my 30 day challenge, I'll resume my daughterly duty of making room in the freezer for a large portion of the beef currently hanging at the butchershop, waiting to be cut and wrapped. And I won't just be cooking it for my family—you can bet that I'll be eating it.
I know my habits are changing already. Somewhere in the midst of this challenge, I have jumped headlong into the world of fermentation—not the liquor kind, but the probiotic kind. I now have a jar of water kefir on my counter, a kombucha scoby in my broom closet, and buttermilk and sourdough cultures ready to start. My sister-in-law has milk kefir for me when I'm ready. I'm pretty sure fermenting vegetables and more fun adventures are in my future. But so is goose fat, wine (I took great pleasure on Saturday night, post meditation, reviewing the latest catalogue for the wine club I belong to) and coffee with thick farm cream.
I'm really not sure how the outcome of this exercise will look. I know I'll be incorporating some of these practices—maybe all—because they feel really good, and they fit with my philosophy of enjoying wholesome, healthy foods, and my yoga practice will definitely be more entrenched. But I strongly doubt that my definition of 'wholesome' will cease to include cream, butter, beef and pork at the end of these 30 days.
It may not be the healthiest choice by some standards, but I LOVE the taste of fresh-brewed coffee in the morning, with a dash of cinnamon, raw sugar and raw cream. Maybe I won't have it every morning, or maybe I'll make a commitment to taking a month off from it every year, but I really doubt it will go completely. And our focus on food is one of my favourite things about my family. It fills me with joy, and it will continue to fill my belly, too. Although perhaps with a bit more moderation.
Nine days in, my current perspective is that it's ALL good. Maybe I'll learn a little bit more about eating for nutrition rather than for taste, and maybe that will help me lose that extra bit of post-baby weight that's been hanging on for the last couple years. Maybe I'll balance out a rich dinner with wine to match by having a smoothie for lunch the next day. Maybe this new kefir discovery will help me curb my cravings for a San Pellegrino Limonata while watching a movie. Not sure it will do anything for my popcorn cravings, though.
We'll see. I'll keep you posted.
I have been quiet on the blog front as I got my head around the prospect of 30 days of no dairy, no alcohol, no white flour/rice/sugar, no juice, no grilled/fried things, no red meat, and no coffee (caffeine isn't on the banned list, but with no dairy and no sugar, it may as well be, in my books). Ironically, two days before I was scheduled to start (and timing is tight because I had to sandwich the 30 days between a conference my husband was attending and a conference that I'm attending in May), my parents delivered half a lamb and half a pork, cut and wrapped. Lamb is not technically red meat according to this diet (thank God), so I have managed to sample it in a healthy stew, thanks once again to Mark Bittman's Food Matters. Tahini and Spinach Stew with Lamb was reposted here, thanks to "The Accidental Brainwashed Foodie."
Nine days in, I can honestly say so far so good. The smoothie recipes are all made up of real food, so I get to feed my recipe addiction by making them as well as some other healthy recipes. I can still enjoy some variety in my food, which might get a bit harder when I have to drop down to only vegetables, fruits, quinoa and millet in Week 3. But by then, it will be half over, and I'll be able to tell myself I'm on the home stretch.
This weekend was a bit surreal, visiting my parents while my brother and sister and our families were all home. This is a time for celebration, since we're not all together very often. We didn't actually get to eat many meals together, since there was a family function on Saturday, which I ended up unable to attend due to sick kids. So I holed up at home, doing yoga and meditating while my kids napped, while everyone else enjoyed their roast beef dinner and celebratory cake.
My dad, however, thanks to the arrival of the aforementioned pork, was in full bacon production. He was curing, frying up slices to test every day, and then spent Sunday morning smoking bacon and pork chops. I confess I wasn't able to avoid tasting it completely. I HAD to sample it, as he relies on our opinions of whether he's got the seasoning quite right.
So Sunday at breakfast, everyone (but me) got to gorge themselves on salt pork, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and toast. I got to enjoy an egg and some tomatoes alongside my smoothie. I didn't find this painful, however. I love food so much that I even enjoy the smells of the food, as well as watching other people enjoy it. G made up for lost time after being ill the day before by finishing off half a plate of the bacon.
The dichotomy of being on a diet while watching my family enjoy one of their favourite pasttimes (eating) got me thinking about the lessons in the diet book I'm supposed to be following, which warn against eating beef or pork, or white bread, or pickles. Dashama (the instructor) also speaks about the energy of food, and the environmental impact of eating meat. She also encourages us to do what's right for our own unique situations.
Let's use our lunch (following shortly on the heels of the bacon feast) as an example. I helped mix up hamburgers from scratch while my mom made buns. My dad grilled the burgers in between checking the progress of his smoker. Lunch consisted of homemade cole slaw, freshly made burgers on fresh homemade (white) buns, store-bought potato salad, and homemade pickles, old white cheddar, sliced on the vine tomatoes, mustard and ketchup as toppings. The beef came from a cow raised on the farm my parents live on, and was shaped and cooked with love, as were the buns and the pickles.
How much does that love count in the 'healthiness' of the food we eat? I don't know if anyone has measured it, but I have long argued to anyone feeling guilty over an indulgence that truly good food, made with love, has its own nourishing qualities that counteract the fats and free radicals. I don't have any science to back that up—call it a 'gut feeling.' Granted, maybe the hamburger feast needn't follow two hours after the bacon feast, but the two meals in themselves were truly nourishing to everyone involved.
So along with my box of hemp protein powder, greens powder, aloe juice, kombucha and kale that made the round trip with me to the farm, I brought back three hunks of freshly smoked side bacon and a dozen or so smoked pork chops. They'll go into the freezer next to my pasture-raised goose from Cool Springs Ranch, half a lamb, half a pig, and a few whole frozen fish, and when I'm done my 30 day challenge, I'll resume my daughterly duty of making room in the freezer for a large portion of the beef currently hanging at the butchershop, waiting to be cut and wrapped. And I won't just be cooking it for my family—you can bet that I'll be eating it.
I know my habits are changing already. Somewhere in the midst of this challenge, I have jumped headlong into the world of fermentation—not the liquor kind, but the probiotic kind. I now have a jar of water kefir on my counter, a kombucha scoby in my broom closet, and buttermilk and sourdough cultures ready to start. My sister-in-law has milk kefir for me when I'm ready. I'm pretty sure fermenting vegetables and more fun adventures are in my future. But so is goose fat, wine (I took great pleasure on Saturday night, post meditation, reviewing the latest catalogue for the wine club I belong to) and coffee with thick farm cream.
I'm really not sure how the outcome of this exercise will look. I know I'll be incorporating some of these practices—maybe all—because they feel really good, and they fit with my philosophy of enjoying wholesome, healthy foods, and my yoga practice will definitely be more entrenched. But I strongly doubt that my definition of 'wholesome' will cease to include cream, butter, beef and pork at the end of these 30 days.
It may not be the healthiest choice by some standards, but I LOVE the taste of fresh-brewed coffee in the morning, with a dash of cinnamon, raw sugar and raw cream. Maybe I won't have it every morning, or maybe I'll make a commitment to taking a month off from it every year, but I really doubt it will go completely. And our focus on food is one of my favourite things about my family. It fills me with joy, and it will continue to fill my belly, too. Although perhaps with a bit more moderation.
Nine days in, my current perspective is that it's ALL good. Maybe I'll learn a little bit more about eating for nutrition rather than for taste, and maybe that will help me lose that extra bit of post-baby weight that's been hanging on for the last couple years. Maybe I'll balance out a rich dinner with wine to match by having a smoothie for lunch the next day. Maybe this new kefir discovery will help me curb my cravings for a San Pellegrino Limonata while watching a movie. Not sure it will do anything for my popcorn cravings, though.
We'll see. I'll keep you posted.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Three Summer Parties
The parties are over, and my recovery is mostly complete. I confess to spending last week and weekend cooking as little as possible, and sleeping as much as possible, to catch up as much as I can from three weeks of visitors, parties, and camping trips, all while suffering from a nasty summer cold which has made its rounds on the entire family. My kids are still coughing and sniffling. I thought I'd share my recipes and experiences from three very different, but all wonderful, summer events.
Party #1: Food Writers' Get-Together
I invited some local food writers, with whom I had taken a food writing workshop last year, to a get-together, which will hopefully become a regular occurrence. It's great fun to hang out with fellow foodie/wino peers and indulge in food talk and a bit of wine snobbery. Especially with this gang, who is particularly down-to-earth.
The party theme (I always have to have a theme) was 'matching your favourite wine to food/favourite food to wine' depending on your priorities. Since one of the attendees is a wine writer, his focus was obviously on the wine side.
The day was HOT and it had been hot for days prior. I ran in to said wine writer at the grocery store that day, and he said, "all I'm bringing is salsa and some chips. And wine, of course. It's too hot to eat!" The unmentioned fact is that it is not too hot to drink wine.
I had a few simple items planned, including fresh, homemade goat cheese on baguette, topped with radish leaf pesto (my new favourite recipe for turning garden waste into deliciousness—thanks, Chocolate and Zucchini!). I also prepared another canapé topped with homemade chorizo sausage mixed with butter beans and basil, topped with yogurt, a recipe from Cook, Eat, Smile.
The other writers showed up with homemade deer sausage (delicious!) and a couple of homemade salsas. The wine writer showed up with a CASE of vinho verde and Lambrusco (for any true wine snobs out there, you'll laugh, since Lambrusco does not have a very respectable reputation), his recommendations for light, refreshing summer drinks. He was right. It was delicious, and went GREAT with sausage! We had a great time until the wine writer got too enthusiastic about playing with my kids and wiped out on the carpet while giving 50lb. D a piggy back ride. The party ended on that note, with a grown-up with a bloody nose (D was fine) and the rest of us shaking our heads and wondering how it had gotten to that point. Perhaps foolishly, we are already talking about the next event.
Party #2: Blessingway BBQ for 25
My sister-in-law is due to have her first baby on G's birthday in August. She asked if I would host her "Blessingway," a sort-of baby shower that has many spiritual aspects to it, and is intended to surround the mother with loving women and prepare her for childbirth and motherhood. It was a beautiful ceremony, and was followed by a bbq that included husbands and kids, as well as all the women that had attended the ceremony.
From the food perspective, I needed to prepare a meal that could mostly be made ahead of time, so that I wouldn't be distracted during the ceremony, and which could be set out the second we were done to accommodate the hungry kids coming back from the park. My menu worked perfectly, except for the fact that I second-guessed myself on food quantities late the night before, and had to pull out another package of meat from the freezer to make myself feel better. The quantities were just right before I pulled out that package, so we ended up with a few leftovers, but nothing too unreasonable. It was a good lesson in trusting my instincts. I truly have cooked enough to know the right amounts for 25 people. But I still live in terror of running out of food.
The menu, taken mostly from recipes on the internet, with an Asian theme, and nothing too spicy, as my sister-in-law's baby-infused tastebuds are very sensitive to things like onion and raw garlic:
Raw vegetables with Asian-inspired Dip (made ahead)
Szechuan Noodles and Shredded Vegetables (designed to be made the night before)
Cold Chinese Rice Salad (cooked the day before and mixed that morning)
Grilled chicken, beef, moose and elk skewers, with various Asian marinades (marinated over night, skewered early in the afternoon)
Grilled baby bok choy with Asian marinade (my new favourite from a couple weeks ago)
Thai Iced Tea (using red tea from Thailand that my brother and sister-in-law brought back with them a few years ago)
Coconut milk and honey frozen pops (made the night before)
It all came together with a minimum of stress. A very satisfying experience!
Interlude: Ukrainian Braided Wedding Bread
Oh yes, and besides the parties, I was also trying to work out how to appropriately honour my grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary (65 years is a big deal!). I considered making 65 bread doves, which my grandma has made many times as table decorations for her grandchildren's weddings. My mom got the recipe and instructions from her, at which point I realized that I did not have time, nor enough sanity, in the three days remaining before their anniversary, to make them, 20 at a time, dry them in the oven overnight, then glaze them and paint eyes on them.
I opted instead to make them my version of a traditional Ukrainian wedding bread, which my grandma had made for our wedding. It had probably been 65 years since someone had done it for her, so it was time for a redux. I found a recipe on King Arthur Flour's website. The dough was wonderful to work with, and the resulting loaf, while a tiny bit lopsided (I made it in an 8" pan instead of a 9" pan, and used some of the extra dough to make doves for decoration, and then had some left over, which I added to the centre of the loaf, and it turned out to be too big for the pan) was still not bad for a first try. My dad took a picture, which I will try to scam from him to post here.
My granddaughterly duty done, I could then return to meal planning for the next big summer event.
Party #3: Wyld Womyn's Trail Ride Supper Duty
The weekend after the Blessingway was our annual wyld womyn's trail ride. My mom and I are usually in charge of suppers. We usually cook over the fire, or outside in some fashion. I wanted to try something a bit different this year, so I pitched the idea of making southern fried chicken in the turkey fryer. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, and this seemed like a good opportunity, especially because my dad has the fryer basket required to make the job easier, a piece of equipment I have yet to purchase.
Night #1:
Lynn Crawford's Southern Fried Chicken (this calls for a bbq spice rub as part of the spicing. I used this recipe)
Mom's homemade potato salad and coleslaw
Fresh fruit (eventually...first, we went for a ride to burn off the chicken)
I can happily report that the effort of marinating, breading and frying chicken, while messy and a bit hot when done outdoors in 30-degree temperatures, is well worth it. The results were fantastic. I am now hunting in earnest for a basket for my own fryer, so I can do it again at home.
Night #2:
Greek Night!
Beef souvlaki kebabs, cooked over the fire
Lemon rice (we cheated for this and plugged in a rice cooker in our camper, which was hooked up to power)
Greek salad
Baklava (from the RecipeSource website, an amazing resource for all kinds of ethnic dishes. Check it out when you have a chance!)
Our beef was a little tough, in spite of marinating overnight, but everyone still raved about the food. The baklava was especially popular. I forgot that I had also picked up some Lebanese candied fruits from a new shop in Saskatoon, and we never even got around to eating them.
Night #3 is the night when husbands, kids, friends and other family is invited, and we have a big wiener roast. Great fun for everyone.
So after the past few weeks, while I enjoyed every minute of it while it was happening, you might be able to imagine why I laid low this past week, cooking minimally. We still ate well though, thanks to some thawed pizza dough that covered us for two meals. More on that in an upcoming post!
Party #1: Food Writers' Get-Together
I invited some local food writers, with whom I had taken a food writing workshop last year, to a get-together, which will hopefully become a regular occurrence. It's great fun to hang out with fellow foodie/wino peers and indulge in food talk and a bit of wine snobbery. Especially with this gang, who is particularly down-to-earth.
The party theme (I always have to have a theme) was 'matching your favourite wine to food/favourite food to wine' depending on your priorities. Since one of the attendees is a wine writer, his focus was obviously on the wine side.
The day was HOT and it had been hot for days prior. I ran in to said wine writer at the grocery store that day, and he said, "all I'm bringing is salsa and some chips. And wine, of course. It's too hot to eat!" The unmentioned fact is that it is not too hot to drink wine.
I had a few simple items planned, including fresh, homemade goat cheese on baguette, topped with radish leaf pesto (my new favourite recipe for turning garden waste into deliciousness—thanks, Chocolate and Zucchini!). I also prepared another canapé topped with homemade chorizo sausage mixed with butter beans and basil, topped with yogurt, a recipe from Cook, Eat, Smile.
The other writers showed up with homemade deer sausage (delicious!) and a couple of homemade salsas. The wine writer showed up with a CASE of vinho verde and Lambrusco (for any true wine snobs out there, you'll laugh, since Lambrusco does not have a very respectable reputation), his recommendations for light, refreshing summer drinks. He was right. It was delicious, and went GREAT with sausage! We had a great time until the wine writer got too enthusiastic about playing with my kids and wiped out on the carpet while giving 50lb. D a piggy back ride. The party ended on that note, with a grown-up with a bloody nose (D was fine) and the rest of us shaking our heads and wondering how it had gotten to that point. Perhaps foolishly, we are already talking about the next event.
Party #2: Blessingway BBQ for 25
My sister-in-law is due to have her first baby on G's birthday in August. She asked if I would host her "Blessingway," a sort-of baby shower that has many spiritual aspects to it, and is intended to surround the mother with loving women and prepare her for childbirth and motherhood. It was a beautiful ceremony, and was followed by a bbq that included husbands and kids, as well as all the women that had attended the ceremony.
From the food perspective, I needed to prepare a meal that could mostly be made ahead of time, so that I wouldn't be distracted during the ceremony, and which could be set out the second we were done to accommodate the hungry kids coming back from the park. My menu worked perfectly, except for the fact that I second-guessed myself on food quantities late the night before, and had to pull out another package of meat from the freezer to make myself feel better. The quantities were just right before I pulled out that package, so we ended up with a few leftovers, but nothing too unreasonable. It was a good lesson in trusting my instincts. I truly have cooked enough to know the right amounts for 25 people. But I still live in terror of running out of food.
The menu, taken mostly from recipes on the internet, with an Asian theme, and nothing too spicy, as my sister-in-law's baby-infused tastebuds are very sensitive to things like onion and raw garlic:
Raw vegetables with Asian-inspired Dip (made ahead)
Szechuan Noodles and Shredded Vegetables (designed to be made the night before)
Cold Chinese Rice Salad (cooked the day before and mixed that morning)
Grilled chicken, beef, moose and elk skewers, with various Asian marinades (marinated over night, skewered early in the afternoon)
Grilled baby bok choy with Asian marinade (my new favourite from a couple weeks ago)
Thai Iced Tea (using red tea from Thailand that my brother and sister-in-law brought back with them a few years ago)
Coconut milk and honey frozen pops (made the night before)
It all came together with a minimum of stress. A very satisfying experience!
Interlude: Ukrainian Braided Wedding Bread
Oh yes, and besides the parties, I was also trying to work out how to appropriately honour my grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary (65 years is a big deal!). I considered making 65 bread doves, which my grandma has made many times as table decorations for her grandchildren's weddings. My mom got the recipe and instructions from her, at which point I realized that I did not have time, nor enough sanity, in the three days remaining before their anniversary, to make them, 20 at a time, dry them in the oven overnight, then glaze them and paint eyes on them.
I opted instead to make them my version of a traditional Ukrainian wedding bread, which my grandma had made for our wedding. It had probably been 65 years since someone had done it for her, so it was time for a redux. I found a recipe on King Arthur Flour's website. The dough was wonderful to work with, and the resulting loaf, while a tiny bit lopsided (I made it in an 8" pan instead of a 9" pan, and used some of the extra dough to make doves for decoration, and then had some left over, which I added to the centre of the loaf, and it turned out to be too big for the pan) was still not bad for a first try. My dad took a picture, which I will try to scam from him to post here.
My granddaughterly duty done, I could then return to meal planning for the next big summer event.
Party #3: Wyld Womyn's Trail Ride Supper Duty
The weekend after the Blessingway was our annual wyld womyn's trail ride. My mom and I are usually in charge of suppers. We usually cook over the fire, or outside in some fashion. I wanted to try something a bit different this year, so I pitched the idea of making southern fried chicken in the turkey fryer. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, and this seemed like a good opportunity, especially because my dad has the fryer basket required to make the job easier, a piece of equipment I have yet to purchase.
Night #1:
Lynn Crawford's Southern Fried Chicken (this calls for a bbq spice rub as part of the spicing. I used this recipe)
Mom's homemade potato salad and coleslaw
Fresh fruit (eventually...first, we went for a ride to burn off the chicken)
I can happily report that the effort of marinating, breading and frying chicken, while messy and a bit hot when done outdoors in 30-degree temperatures, is well worth it. The results were fantastic. I am now hunting in earnest for a basket for my own fryer, so I can do it again at home.
Night #2:
Greek Night!
Beef souvlaki kebabs, cooked over the fire
Lemon rice (we cheated for this and plugged in a rice cooker in our camper, which was hooked up to power)
Greek salad
Baklava (from the RecipeSource website, an amazing resource for all kinds of ethnic dishes. Check it out when you have a chance!)
Our beef was a little tough, in spite of marinating overnight, but everyone still raved about the food. The baklava was especially popular. I forgot that I had also picked up some Lebanese candied fruits from a new shop in Saskatoon, and we never even got around to eating them.
Night #3 is the night when husbands, kids, friends and other family is invited, and we have a big wiener roast. Great fun for everyone.
So after the past few weeks, while I enjoyed every minute of it while it was happening, you might be able to imagine why I laid low this past week, cooking minimally. We still ate well though, thanks to some thawed pizza dough that covered us for two meals. More on that in an upcoming post!
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Unexpected Guests: Thank Goodness for Eggs
Over the weekend I wasn't planning to cook much because we were going to a wedding, and my sister and her family had to delay their arrival by a day. I figured I could take it easy, and use up a few of the leftovers in my fridge.
It didn't quite work out that way. My sister and her husband drove straight through the night, arriving at my house at 5:30 am on Saturday. I fed them toast for breakfast, and a LOT of coffee, as they straggled up the stairs at 9 am with their 9 month old baby in tow.
Lunch rolled around, and I threw all the leftovers from our Vietnamese summer roll feast (Chinese sausage, bean sprouts, shrimp, basil) into egg foo young. I used this recipe as a guide, but then just used what I had on hand, including homemade beef stock rather than chicken stock. I found a recipe for egg foo young sauce that called for beef stock—you add oyster sauce and soy sauce and then thicken. Not the perfect flavour match, but the kids went crazy with the sauce on their rice.
The next morning, my parents brought over muffins and fruit and the whole family (brother, sister, S.O.s and children) were all there. Everyone except my parents was still there at lunch, and I started wondering what to serve, since our kids were going to get hungry again. I realized I had everything I needed to make roasted tomato clafoutis, like a giant, savoury pancake. I mixed in cherry tomatoes from the Farmers' market, leftover goat cheese and lentil caviar from my book club meeting, and some more basil, stuck it in the oven, cooked some breakfast sausage from my freezer, and there was lunch. I used this recipe, and then adapted it to what I had, and prepared it right in a frying pan that could transfer to the oven.
All I can say is that I'm glad to have a few dozen eggs in the fridge at any given moment. With no microwave on the premises to thaw out food from the freezer, impromptu lunches would otherwise be a challenge.
It didn't quite work out that way. My sister and her husband drove straight through the night, arriving at my house at 5:30 am on Saturday. I fed them toast for breakfast, and a LOT of coffee, as they straggled up the stairs at 9 am with their 9 month old baby in tow.
Lunch rolled around, and I threw all the leftovers from our Vietnamese summer roll feast (Chinese sausage, bean sprouts, shrimp, basil) into egg foo young. I used this recipe as a guide, but then just used what I had on hand, including homemade beef stock rather than chicken stock. I found a recipe for egg foo young sauce that called for beef stock—you add oyster sauce and soy sauce and then thicken. Not the perfect flavour match, but the kids went crazy with the sauce on their rice.
The next morning, my parents brought over muffins and fruit and the whole family (brother, sister, S.O.s and children) were all there. Everyone except my parents was still there at lunch, and I started wondering what to serve, since our kids were going to get hungry again. I realized I had everything I needed to make roasted tomato clafoutis, like a giant, savoury pancake. I mixed in cherry tomatoes from the Farmers' market, leftover goat cheese and lentil caviar from my book club meeting, and some more basil, stuck it in the oven, cooked some breakfast sausage from my freezer, and there was lunch. I used this recipe, and then adapted it to what I had, and prepared it right in a frying pan that could transfer to the oven.
All I can say is that I'm glad to have a few dozen eggs in the fridge at any given moment. With no microwave on the premises to thaw out food from the freezer, impromptu lunches would otherwise be a challenge.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Two Summer Party Menus
Two parties in two days, and wedding tomorrow! That's my kind of pace (truly! Okay, well at least I can handle it for about three days and then I'll need a rest for one day before diving in again).
Last night, I hosted the Sturgeon Ladies' Literary Society (that's a fancy way of saying my neighbourhood bookclub) meeting. We always put on a bit of a spread, although it's after dinner, so not a huge meal. I relied heavily on Mark Bittman's Food Matters cookbook (if I haven't convinced anyone to buy it yet, then you must not be paying attention. There are 500 recipes, so even though I use it all the time, I have barely even scratched the surface! And there are many more recipes I want to try) for this summer-themed menu. Everything was light and delicious (except for the quinoa cake, which was delicious, but not-so-light) and gluten free.
Party #1 Menu: After Dinner Summer Snack Buffet for the Bookclub
Radishes with Olive Oil and Sea Salt (that simple. Just serve radishes next to a small dish of olive oil and coarse sea salt. Barely a recipe, but I got the idea from Mark Bittman's book)
Quick-Pickled Watermelon with Feta (I'm new to pickling melon, but I definitely liked the results)
Lentil "Caviar" with All the Trimmings (recipe below)
Olives, Cucumbers and Tuna, Mediterranean Style (just a toss of olives, cucumbers, tuna, lemon juice and zest, olive oil, garlic, parsley and chile flakes)
Homemade goat cheese with herbs de Provence
Assorted crackers
Fresh strawberries and watermelon
Quinoa chocolate mini-cupcakes, inspired by the chocolate cake recipe in Quinoa 365
I was feeling kind of ambivalent about the lentil caviar when I made it the day before. It just didn't seem to be all that interesting. But it was the thing that the ladies liked best (except for maybe the cupcakes). They asked for the recipe so they could make it themselves.
Here it is:
Lentil "Caviar" with All the Trimmings
Party #2 Menu: Impromptu Vietnamese Fresh Roll Feast, or, What Would I Do Without the Internet?
The next party had a bit of a roundabout development. Earlier in the week I stopped at the Saskatoon Asian Market to get seaweed to make the lentil caviar. I couldn't just buy the one thing, and had to wander around to see what else they had of interest. What else they had was beautifully fresh bean sprouts, the cutest little mini baby bok choy, some Chinese sausage, which I bought without knowing what I was going to do with it, and a couple kinds of noodles.
When I got home, I started planning what to make with my ingredients, and thought to myself, it's hot out, and I have some greens in the garden...maybe I should make salad rolls. I wonder if there are Vietnamese salad rolls that call for Chinese sausage? Well, if you Google "Vietnamese salad roll Chinese Sausage", you will find that the answer is yes! How easy is that, and how often do I have two seemingly unrelated ingredients that I Google to come up with an amazing concoction? Almost daily. If you can conceive the combination, chances are someone else has, too, has blogged about it, and the recipe is ready and waiting.
So here is my impromptu Vietnamese Fresh Roll Feast menu, which we enjoyed with good long-time friends and their daughter. The kids mostly ate the sausage, but generally seemed to enjoy the rolls, too. Hey, this menu is almost gluten-free, too...the sausage might be questionable...
Pre-dinner cocktail (served alongside leftover lentil caviar and goat cheese on crackers): Plum wine tonic (1 part plum wine, 2 parts tonic water, and a squeeze of lime over ice)
Our friends brought a bottle of Cava, sparkling Spanish wine, which I would match with anything and drink every day if I could. Delicious!
Boa Bia, Chinese Sausage Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce (thanks to The Ravenous Couple for the recipe)
Mark Bittman's Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce (I skipped the sauce and just used the ingredient list as a guideline: lettuce, cilantro, basil, julienne cucumber, bean sprouts, shrimp)
Grilled baby bok choy with Asian marinade, inspired by Dad Cooks Dinner (this was a sleeper hit. They were a little bitter, a little sour, smoky, savoury, just a bit crunchy, and totally delicious. My baby bok choy were really tiny, so I didn't bother cutting them in half, just tossed them in the marinade and 'stir-fried' them in a grill basket).
Quinoa cupcake ice cream sandwiches (and the last of the Taylor Fladgate 20 year old tawny that I was keeping in the fridge)
I am replete. Tomorrow I take a break from cooking (except for making breakfast from the leftovers of Chinese sausage, dried shrimp, basil, carrots, and bean sprouts. Can you say "egg foo young"?) and attending my cousin's wedding. Then I'll be cooking something for my sister and her family who will be staying with us after the wedding, and thinking ahead to Tuesday when I host some local food writers for a little get-together.
I love summer entertaining. Who am I kidding? I love entertaining, period.
Last night, I hosted the Sturgeon Ladies' Literary Society (that's a fancy way of saying my neighbourhood bookclub) meeting. We always put on a bit of a spread, although it's after dinner, so not a huge meal. I relied heavily on Mark Bittman's Food Matters cookbook (if I haven't convinced anyone to buy it yet, then you must not be paying attention. There are 500 recipes, so even though I use it all the time, I have barely even scratched the surface! And there are many more recipes I want to try) for this summer-themed menu. Everything was light and delicious (except for the quinoa cake, which was delicious, but not-so-light) and gluten free.
Party #1 Menu: After Dinner Summer Snack Buffet for the Bookclub
Radishes with Olive Oil and Sea Salt (that simple. Just serve radishes next to a small dish of olive oil and coarse sea salt. Barely a recipe, but I got the idea from Mark Bittman's book)
Quick-Pickled Watermelon with Feta (I'm new to pickling melon, but I definitely liked the results)
Lentil "Caviar" with All the Trimmings (recipe below)
Olives, Cucumbers and Tuna, Mediterranean Style (just a toss of olives, cucumbers, tuna, lemon juice and zest, olive oil, garlic, parsley and chile flakes)
Homemade goat cheese with herbs de Provence
Assorted crackers
Fresh strawberries and watermelon
Quinoa chocolate mini-cupcakes, inspired by the chocolate cake recipe in Quinoa 365
I was feeling kind of ambivalent about the lentil caviar when I made it the day before. It just didn't seem to be all that interesting. But it was the thing that the ladies liked best (except for maybe the cupcakes). They asked for the recipe so they could make it themselves.
Here it is:
Lentil "Caviar" with All the Trimmings
8 oz. (about 1 1/2 cups) Le Puy or other dark green or black lentils (I used beluga lentils from Hestia Organics at the Farmers' Market)
2 T. vegetable oil
1 large shallot or small onion
1/4 c. dried dulse, arame, or hijiki
1 c. sake, brewed green tea or water (I used jasmine tea)
2 T. mirin or honey (I used mirin)
Salt and pepper
8 slices whole grain bread or crackers for serving
1/2 c. capers or chopped cornichons, for garnish, optional
1/2 c. chopped red onion, for garnish, optional
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped, for garnish, optional
1/2 c. mayonnaise, sour cream, or creme fraiche for garnish, optional (I used sour cream)
Put lentils in a pot and cover with cold water by 2-3 inches. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce heat so that the lentils bubble gently. Partially cover and cok, stirring occasionally, checking hte lentils for doneness every 10-15 minutes. When the lentils are tender but not falling apart, drain them.
Put the oil in a deep skillet over medium high heat. When it's hot, add the shallot and sea greens and cook, stirring constantly, 3-5 minutes. Stir in the sake and miring. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and let the mixture bubble away until it reduces and thickens to a thin syrup, 5-7 minutes. Strain.
Pour the glaze over the lentils and toss gently to coat; taste and adjust seasoning. Chill for at least 30 minutes or up to a few days (I chilled overnight). Toast the breatd if you're using and cut each slice diagonally into 4 toast points. Serve with the toast points or crackers, along with any garnishes you like.
Party #2 Menu: Impromptu Vietnamese Fresh Roll Feast, or, What Would I Do Without the Internet?
The next party had a bit of a roundabout development. Earlier in the week I stopped at the Saskatoon Asian Market to get seaweed to make the lentil caviar. I couldn't just buy the one thing, and had to wander around to see what else they had of interest. What else they had was beautifully fresh bean sprouts, the cutest little mini baby bok choy, some Chinese sausage, which I bought without knowing what I was going to do with it, and a couple kinds of noodles.
When I got home, I started planning what to make with my ingredients, and thought to myself, it's hot out, and I have some greens in the garden...maybe I should make salad rolls. I wonder if there are Vietnamese salad rolls that call for Chinese sausage? Well, if you Google "Vietnamese salad roll Chinese Sausage", you will find that the answer is yes! How easy is that, and how often do I have two seemingly unrelated ingredients that I Google to come up with an amazing concoction? Almost daily. If you can conceive the combination, chances are someone else has, too, has blogged about it, and the recipe is ready and waiting.
So here is my impromptu Vietnamese Fresh Roll Feast menu, which we enjoyed with good long-time friends and their daughter. The kids mostly ate the sausage, but generally seemed to enjoy the rolls, too. Hey, this menu is almost gluten-free, too...the sausage might be questionable...
Pre-dinner cocktail (served alongside leftover lentil caviar and goat cheese on crackers): Plum wine tonic (1 part plum wine, 2 parts tonic water, and a squeeze of lime over ice)
Our friends brought a bottle of Cava, sparkling Spanish wine, which I would match with anything and drink every day if I could. Delicious!
Boa Bia, Chinese Sausage Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce (thanks to The Ravenous Couple for the recipe)
Mark Bittman's Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce (I skipped the sauce and just used the ingredient list as a guideline: lettuce, cilantro, basil, julienne cucumber, bean sprouts, shrimp)
Grilled baby bok choy with Asian marinade, inspired by Dad Cooks Dinner (this was a sleeper hit. They were a little bitter, a little sour, smoky, savoury, just a bit crunchy, and totally delicious. My baby bok choy were really tiny, so I didn't bother cutting them in half, just tossed them in the marinade and 'stir-fried' them in a grill basket).
Quinoa cupcake ice cream sandwiches (and the last of the Taylor Fladgate 20 year old tawny that I was keeping in the fridge)
I am replete. Tomorrow I take a break from cooking (except for making breakfast from the leftovers of Chinese sausage, dried shrimp, basil, carrots, and bean sprouts. Can you say "egg foo young"?) and attending my cousin's wedding. Then I'll be cooking something for my sister and her family who will be staying with us after the wedding, and thinking ahead to Tuesday when I host some local food writers for a little get-together.
I love summer entertaining. Who am I kidding? I love entertaining, period.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Foodie Confessions; Planning Father's Day Brunch
It must be my status of "lapsed Catholic" that requires me to confess my "sins" (usually only considered sins in my own warped view of reality) to everyone whenever I commit some sort of transgression. Because food is a primary focus, any time I break one of my own self-imposed "rules", I feel the need to shout it to the world.
So yesterday I was planning Father's Day brunch, which I will be hosting for my in-laws. When I asked my husband what he would like me to make, he had two requests: a classic version of the wife-saver, "French Peach Brunch" and, "Meat would be good."
I am also notorious for asking for my husband's input and then ignoring him. I didn't quite ignore him this time, but I did request that instead of using canned peaches in the French Peach Brunch, that I adapt it to use fresh rhubarb. He was okay with that.
I have entirely given in to his meat request. So here's the menu, then the confession:
Homemade Elk Sausage (ground elk meat mixed with an equal amount of ground pork, seasoned with brown sugar and salt and pepper, and formed into patties)
Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps (I have made this a few times before, and it's lovely. It uses fresh tarragon, which is abundant in my herb bed, and I have a plethora of small fresh farm eggs that will work perfectly in twos, and not take too long to set)
Toasted Brioche from Christie's Bakery
Rhubarb Baked French Toast (I'll post the recipe after I work on adapting it)
Fruit Salad
Tea, coffee, juice
I was looking this over, and while it is already pretty full, I felt like it was missing something—something that involves potatoes. I went on line and searched through Epicurious's hash brown recipes, and stumbled upon on of my guiltiest pleasures: hash brown casserole (please note, though, that my family recipe is not the one on Epicurious, but rather this one).
And here is my confession. I am making it for Father's Day brunch. Why? Because I a) I love it, even though I know it is a fat-filled mess of mostly processed food, and I virtually NEVER buy canned soups; b) my guests will be universally appreciative; c) it is a good excuse to feed my occasional trashy food cravings, so that they stay in check.
I know there's nothing really wrong with cooking the occasional hash brown casserole. I just feel guilty, as a fairly militant food snob, giving in to the urge to make a dish that is SO not whole, fresh food. But hey, you can't deny your roots, and every once in a while, a can of cream of mushroom soup or Cheez Whiz (my other guilty pleasure, which my husband has banned from the house, since D was asking for it on his toast in the mornings, and since I no longer have pregnancy cravings as an excuse for buying and consuming it) has to cross the threshold. Now, I will go do my penance by baking bread, cooking beans from scratch and making my kids fresh fruit popsicles.
As an aside, I gave in while in the grocery store checkout line and picked up Canadian Living's Special Cookbook Edition on Summer Entertaining. My first flip through made me think I'd made a mistake, since most items seemed pretty familiar. But I've spent more time with it now, and it has worked my way into my meal plan this week in several ways. Tonight, to go with our grilled elk steak, I am trying out Dilled Potato and Grilled Corn Salad as well as Asparagus and Mixed Greens Salad. There are several more recipes that I'll be trying over the next few weeks, and I will share as I make them.
Happy Father's Day, to all the dads out there. I hope you have an excellent, meat-filled day (if that is your preference, of course).
So yesterday I was planning Father's Day brunch, which I will be hosting for my in-laws. When I asked my husband what he would like me to make, he had two requests: a classic version of the wife-saver, "French Peach Brunch" and, "Meat would be good."
I am also notorious for asking for my husband's input and then ignoring him. I didn't quite ignore him this time, but I did request that instead of using canned peaches in the French Peach Brunch, that I adapt it to use fresh rhubarb. He was okay with that.
I have entirely given in to his meat request. So here's the menu, then the confession:
Homemade Elk Sausage (ground elk meat mixed with an equal amount of ground pork, seasoned with brown sugar and salt and pepper, and formed into patties)
Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps (I have made this a few times before, and it's lovely. It uses fresh tarragon, which is abundant in my herb bed, and I have a plethora of small fresh farm eggs that will work perfectly in twos, and not take too long to set)
Toasted Brioche from Christie's Bakery
Rhubarb Baked French Toast (I'll post the recipe after I work on adapting it)
Fruit Salad
Tea, coffee, juice
I was looking this over, and while it is already pretty full, I felt like it was missing something—something that involves potatoes. I went on line and searched through Epicurious's hash brown recipes, and stumbled upon on of my guiltiest pleasures: hash brown casserole (please note, though, that my family recipe is not the one on Epicurious, but rather this one).
And here is my confession. I am making it for Father's Day brunch. Why? Because I a) I love it, even though I know it is a fat-filled mess of mostly processed food, and I virtually NEVER buy canned soups; b) my guests will be universally appreciative; c) it is a good excuse to feed my occasional trashy food cravings, so that they stay in check.
I know there's nothing really wrong with cooking the occasional hash brown casserole. I just feel guilty, as a fairly militant food snob, giving in to the urge to make a dish that is SO not whole, fresh food. But hey, you can't deny your roots, and every once in a while, a can of cream of mushroom soup or Cheez Whiz (my other guilty pleasure, which my husband has banned from the house, since D was asking for it on his toast in the mornings, and since I no longer have pregnancy cravings as an excuse for buying and consuming it) has to cross the threshold. Now, I will go do my penance by baking bread, cooking beans from scratch and making my kids fresh fruit popsicles.
As an aside, I gave in while in the grocery store checkout line and picked up Canadian Living's Special Cookbook Edition on Summer Entertaining. My first flip through made me think I'd made a mistake, since most items seemed pretty familiar. But I've spent more time with it now, and it has worked my way into my meal plan this week in several ways. Tonight, to go with our grilled elk steak, I am trying out Dilled Potato and Grilled Corn Salad as well as Asparagus and Mixed Greens Salad. There are several more recipes that I'll be trying over the next few weeks, and I will share as I make them.
Happy Father's Day, to all the dads out there. I hope you have an excellent, meat-filled day (if that is your preference, of course).
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Leftover Series #2: One Pot of Porridge Makes Three Delicous Breakfasts
Sometimes what seems to be a problem or limitation is actually an amazing opportunity. Case in point last week when I discovered right at breakfast time that we were out of bread, rendering our usual breakfast of toast an impossibility.
Oatmeal porridge is also welcome at our breakfast table, so it wasn't that much of a hardship. D asked for raisins and apples in his oatmeal, so I obliged. Porridge isn't my favourite thing, but I have worked out a cooking method for oatmeal which is slightly unorthodox, but which I like. I add three cups of cold water to 1 cup of slow cook oats, bring it to a boil, and simmer until it thickens, about fifteen minutes. This creates a smooth, creamy texture, which I prefer to the more grainy approach of adding your oats to a smaller volume of boiling water (the recommended water to oat ratio in most cookbooks is 2:1). Critics of my approach might say the resulting oatmeal is too gooey, but I won't apologize, because that's the way I like it, and my kids like it too. (Delicious Breakfast Number One)
Anyway, I ended up with about a cup and a half of leftover oatmeal, and I was loathe to toss it. I've been trying my hand at bread-making lately, and so did an internet search for leftover oatmeal bread. Alton Brown didn't let me down! I made some adjustments to his recipe, however, using butter instead of oil and honey instead of agave syrup. I love learning the science behind bread-making—as long as I have some kind of fat and some kind of sugar, it will turn out just fine!
I was also appreciating having my handy-dandy Salter kitchen scale, which makes measuring by weight for baking super easy. I use it all the time.
Anyway, the bread turned out beautifully, and we enjoyed it simply sliced and buttered, alongside some fresh fruit, the next morning for breakfast. (Delicious Breakfast Number Two)
The next morning, with the bread a little over a day old, we opted for French toast. Another kid favourite! I sliced up some of my dad's home-cured bacon to go along with it. Breakfast was very quiet that morning, with my kids each inhaling an entire slice of French toast. The oatmeal bread, which was very light and fluffy, took on a creamy texture when dipped in the egg mixture and cooked on the griddle. The slight sweetness from the apples and raisins (which were ground into nothing during the dough mixing process, but added a nice aroma and touch of sweet to the bread) reminded me of a cruller doughnut. But not quite as unhealthy. (Delicious Breakfast Number Three)
My Preferred French Toast Batter
3 eggs, beaten until frothy
3/4 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1/4 t. salt
3 T. raw sugar
Mix all ingredients together and stir until sugar and salt are dissolved. Dip bread slices in the mixture, and cook slowly on a hot, buttered griddle until browned on each side.
So, one pot of porridge, one loaf of bread, three delicious breakfasts, and, most satisfying for me, no waste!
Oatmeal porridge is also welcome at our breakfast table, so it wasn't that much of a hardship. D asked for raisins and apples in his oatmeal, so I obliged. Porridge isn't my favourite thing, but I have worked out a cooking method for oatmeal which is slightly unorthodox, but which I like. I add three cups of cold water to 1 cup of slow cook oats, bring it to a boil, and simmer until it thickens, about fifteen minutes. This creates a smooth, creamy texture, which I prefer to the more grainy approach of adding your oats to a smaller volume of boiling water (the recommended water to oat ratio in most cookbooks is 2:1). Critics of my approach might say the resulting oatmeal is too gooey, but I won't apologize, because that's the way I like it, and my kids like it too. (Delicious Breakfast Number One)
Anyway, I ended up with about a cup and a half of leftover oatmeal, and I was loathe to toss it. I've been trying my hand at bread-making lately, and so did an internet search for leftover oatmeal bread. Alton Brown didn't let me down! I made some adjustments to his recipe, however, using butter instead of oil and honey instead of agave syrup. I love learning the science behind bread-making—as long as I have some kind of fat and some kind of sugar, it will turn out just fine!
I was also appreciating having my handy-dandy Salter kitchen scale, which makes measuring by weight for baking super easy. I use it all the time.
Anyway, the bread turned out beautifully, and we enjoyed it simply sliced and buttered, alongside some fresh fruit, the next morning for breakfast. (Delicious Breakfast Number Two)
The next morning, with the bread a little over a day old, we opted for French toast. Another kid favourite! I sliced up some of my dad's home-cured bacon to go along with it. Breakfast was very quiet that morning, with my kids each inhaling an entire slice of French toast. The oatmeal bread, which was very light and fluffy, took on a creamy texture when dipped in the egg mixture and cooked on the griddle. The slight sweetness from the apples and raisins (which were ground into nothing during the dough mixing process, but added a nice aroma and touch of sweet to the bread) reminded me of a cruller doughnut. But not quite as unhealthy. (Delicious Breakfast Number Three)
My Preferred French Toast Batter
3 eggs, beaten until frothy
3/4 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1/4 t. salt
3 T. raw sugar
Mix all ingredients together and stir until sugar and salt are dissolved. Dip bread slices in the mixture, and cook slowly on a hot, buttered griddle until browned on each side.
So, one pot of porridge, one loaf of bread, three delicious breakfasts, and, most satisfying for me, no waste!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
I have been searching for a replacement to my favourite white flour chocolate chip cookies for a very long time. I had a lesson in irony recently, because I have purchased whole grain cookbooks as part of this search, and been disappointed again and again. Then I read a few foodie blogs and found out there is one recipe that 'everyone' is talking about. And guess what—all it is, more or less, is my original favourite white flour recipe, with whole wheat flour swapped for white!!
All these years and all this time looking, and the solution was right under my nose.
You can check out other bloggers' thoughts on these cookies, and link to the recipe, here.
I have to write a couple of qualifiers, though. Molly Rosenburg, of Orangette fame, likes that the original recipe by Kim Boyce starts with cold butter. She recommends cutting it into small cubes, so that it will cream properly. This is supposedly to keep the cookies from spreading too far.
When I decided to try this recipe, I had already softened the butter, because, well, that's what you do when you're going to make cookies. And I was a little grumpy about the instructions, because there is a time and a place for fussy baking, and cookies just aren't it. I sometimes steer clear of cookie recipes that require me to refrigerate the dough overnight, because when I get the cookie urge, it's strong and sudden, and will not wait for 24 hours.
So I just used my softened butter like I usually would, and didn't bother refrigerating the dough, just made the cookies after mixing. The only change, other than the flour, from my earlier favourite recipe, is the use of kosher salt. I really enjoy this little change, because the salt doesn't quite dissolve, and the cookies have a bit of the salty-sweet aspect that is so popular these days (and which I love). These cookies turned out crispy-chewy, with the exact texture and flavour I've been looking for. Eureka!
It's also nice to know that if I hadn't softened my butter, and was hit with a cookie craving, I could still make it work with the cutting-into-small-pieces approach.
I'm so happy to have found the ultimate whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe, but it would have been nice to have known about it earlier in my search. Hmph.
P.S. to my readers, I'm so sorry for my long silence. My paid work has been picking up quite substantially, and between juggling childcare and meeting deadlines, everyone in our family has had some sort of illness in the past while, and I've been recovering from an infection that knocked me down for all of February. I've got to work some blog time into my schedule somehow, without sacrificing sleep. I'll work on it! Don't give up on me!
All these years and all this time looking, and the solution was right under my nose.
You can check out other bloggers' thoughts on these cookies, and link to the recipe, here.
I have to write a couple of qualifiers, though. Molly Rosenburg, of Orangette fame, likes that the original recipe by Kim Boyce starts with cold butter. She recommends cutting it into small cubes, so that it will cream properly. This is supposedly to keep the cookies from spreading too far.
When I decided to try this recipe, I had already softened the butter, because, well, that's what you do when you're going to make cookies. And I was a little grumpy about the instructions, because there is a time and a place for fussy baking, and cookies just aren't it. I sometimes steer clear of cookie recipes that require me to refrigerate the dough overnight, because when I get the cookie urge, it's strong and sudden, and will not wait for 24 hours.
So I just used my softened butter like I usually would, and didn't bother refrigerating the dough, just made the cookies after mixing. The only change, other than the flour, from my earlier favourite recipe, is the use of kosher salt. I really enjoy this little change, because the salt doesn't quite dissolve, and the cookies have a bit of the salty-sweet aspect that is so popular these days (and which I love). These cookies turned out crispy-chewy, with the exact texture and flavour I've been looking for. Eureka!
It's also nice to know that if I hadn't softened my butter, and was hit with a cookie craving, I could still make it work with the cutting-into-small-pieces approach.
I'm so happy to have found the ultimate whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe, but it would have been nice to have known about it earlier in my search. Hmph.
P.S. to my readers, I'm so sorry for my long silence. My paid work has been picking up quite substantially, and between juggling childcare and meeting deadlines, everyone in our family has had some sort of illness in the past while, and I've been recovering from an infection that knocked me down for all of February. I've got to work some blog time into my schedule somehow, without sacrificing sleep. I'll work on it! Don't give up on me!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
New Years Preparation
We have two (possibly three) busy days ahead of us, first, my husband's delayed family Christmas is tomorrow. We will be spending the day at his brother's place, opening gifts, eating (more) turkey and drinking wine. I don't have to bring anything, but I will be bringing wine, chocolates, cookies and butter tarts (my mom sent me home with some wonderful things after Christmas, including a container of her most excellent pie crust, ready to be rolled and turned into a pie. I made some of it into tourtiere, which we've been eating for the last two days, and the rest of it has become butter tarts). Speaking of tourtiere, it may have something to do with my kids' French heritage, but I have to say they go crazy for meat pies.
I will be posting soon on the amazing array of food and ingredients that I have been gifted in the past while, but in the meantime I will say briefly that the other thing that I might be bringing to the party tomorrow is fresh, homemade goat cheese, because I became the bemused owner of 68L (give or take) of frozen goat's milk over the holiday.
Following Second Christmas is New Year's Eve, which also happens to be my birthday. We have started a tradition among our friends, and named it "Breeders' New Year": we invite all of our friends who have young children (and they invite some of their friends too) to come over, bring the kids, some food and wine, and have a chaotic but enjoyable New Year's Eve party which usually wraps up around 9PM.
I am blessed with several foodie friends, who will be bringing wonderful things to grace our table. For my own contribution I have settled on:
Ricotta and spinach empanadas (using the remainder of the empanada pastry in my freezer, and the freshly made goat cheese, which is very similar to ricotta)
Pork sausage with bacon and figs (from Pine View Farms), served with a fig and red wine dipping/spooning sauce (this recipe will be adapted from this recipe for spiced chorizo and figs, which we have made and enjoyed many times)
Beet Tartare from Mark Bittman's Food Matters
Marie's Rosemary Nut Crackers from Whitewater Cooks at Home
Blue Cheese and Pear Crostini
I also just bottled some apple brandy and creme de cassis, and I will be offering up my fruit brandies alongside sparkling wine for some delicious locally flavoured kir royales. (Kirs and kir royales are my favourite festive drink: just grab your favourite sparkling wine, fill up a champagne flute and finish with a tiny splash of cassis, cherry brandy, pomegranate juice, or whatever suits your fancy.)
And for any of you who need more ideas for a simple foodie New Year, a good friend sent me this link to an L.A. Times article. Some good stuff here!
I will be posting soon on the amazing array of food and ingredients that I have been gifted in the past while, but in the meantime I will say briefly that the other thing that I might be bringing to the party tomorrow is fresh, homemade goat cheese, because I became the bemused owner of 68L (give or take) of frozen goat's milk over the holiday.
Following Second Christmas is New Year's Eve, which also happens to be my birthday. We have started a tradition among our friends, and named it "Breeders' New Year": we invite all of our friends who have young children (and they invite some of their friends too) to come over, bring the kids, some food and wine, and have a chaotic but enjoyable New Year's Eve party which usually wraps up around 9PM.
I am blessed with several foodie friends, who will be bringing wonderful things to grace our table. For my own contribution I have settled on:
Ricotta and spinach empanadas (using the remainder of the empanada pastry in my freezer, and the freshly made goat cheese, which is very similar to ricotta)
Pork sausage with bacon and figs (from Pine View Farms), served with a fig and red wine dipping/spooning sauce (this recipe will be adapted from this recipe for spiced chorizo and figs, which we have made and enjoyed many times)
Beet Tartare from Mark Bittman's Food Matters
Marie's Rosemary Nut Crackers from Whitewater Cooks at Home
Blue Cheese and Pear Crostini
I also just bottled some apple brandy and creme de cassis, and I will be offering up my fruit brandies alongside sparkling wine for some delicious locally flavoured kir royales. (Kirs and kir royales are my favourite festive drink: just grab your favourite sparkling wine, fill up a champagne flute and finish with a tiny splash of cassis, cherry brandy, pomegranate juice, or whatever suits your fancy.)
And for any of you who need more ideas for a simple foodie New Year, a good friend sent me this link to an L.A. Times article. Some good stuff here!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Bake Sale Success, A Bit of Travel, ABC Cookies
I apologize for my long absence; two weeks ago, I was wrapped up in a preschool fundraiser that included a bake sale, which I was preparing for. My husband also hurt his back (happily, it is already much improved). I had a full weekend of workshops and other events. Then my kids had a stomach bug. Then I spent the long weekend traveling to Vernon, BC to visit my sister and her new baby. In brief, let me share the few foodie adventures I've managed to fit in as I fly through life at warp speed.
I found the two cupcake recipes I made for the bakesale, from Martha Stewart's Cupcake book, on a blog devoted to making all of the cupcakes in Martha Stewart'a Cupcake book, and another one devoted to making cupcakes. Handy!
Cookies and cream cheesecakes
Chai tea mini-cupcakes with condensed milk frosting
Thanks to Way More than 52 Cupcakes and Holly's 101 Cupcake Challenge for reminding me that I really need to take photos and post them on my blog. Gorgeous photos on these sites.
I also made Chewy Oatmeal Cookies from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking for wrapping individually and selling.
I'm happy to say that all my baking sold, and the majority of it sold to the preschool executive before the bakesale had even officially opened. I'd say the chai tea cupcakes were a bit dry, but I think that has to do with a cake philosophy that aims for "fine crumb" which is is usually less moist and dense, and therefore...well, dry. My family prefers moist cakes, at the expense of fine crumb.
On my brief trip to Vernon, I spent some time with friends in Kelowna, who rescued me from the airport while my sister was trapped on the Coquihalla. We stopped in at Hoang Gia Vietnamese restaurant and picked up fabulous Pho (the real thing with rare beef and tripe!), as well as a grilled meat/vegetable wrap-your-own fresh roll dish that was super yummy.
Today, glad to be home and spending time with my own kids (nieces and nephews are nice and all, and the new baby is absolutely precious, but they just aren't the same as my very own), I remembered that D got a baby gift of alphabet cookie cutters, which we have not yet used. I decided to bake cookies with him this afternoon, and it was quite a hit. He was happy and helpful, and only a bit messy, and I got a much better sense of how many letters he recognizes and how fascinated he is with the idea of spelling his name. I was worried that leaving the dough to chill for a half-hour would test his patience, but we simply read a story while we waited, and he was just fine with it.
Here is a nice whole-grain cookie recipe for rolling, cutting and decorating. Not too sweet, so it can take some icing. Our cookies weren't very big, and D was ready to just eat them by the time we had cut and baked them, so ours didn't get decorated. A different project for another day.
Chewy Oatmeal Decorating Cookies. Enjoy!
I found the two cupcake recipes I made for the bakesale, from Martha Stewart's Cupcake book, on a blog devoted to making all of the cupcakes in Martha Stewart'a Cupcake book, and another one devoted to making cupcakes. Handy!
Cookies and cream cheesecakes
Chai tea mini-cupcakes with condensed milk frosting
Thanks to Way More than 52 Cupcakes and Holly's 101 Cupcake Challenge for reminding me that I really need to take photos and post them on my blog. Gorgeous photos on these sites.
I also made Chewy Oatmeal Cookies from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking for wrapping individually and selling.
I'm happy to say that all my baking sold, and the majority of it sold to the preschool executive before the bakesale had even officially opened. I'd say the chai tea cupcakes were a bit dry, but I think that has to do with a cake philosophy that aims for "fine crumb" which is is usually less moist and dense, and therefore...well, dry. My family prefers moist cakes, at the expense of fine crumb.
On my brief trip to Vernon, I spent some time with friends in Kelowna, who rescued me from the airport while my sister was trapped on the Coquihalla. We stopped in at Hoang Gia Vietnamese restaurant and picked up fabulous Pho (the real thing with rare beef and tripe!), as well as a grilled meat/vegetable wrap-your-own fresh roll dish that was super yummy.
Today, glad to be home and spending time with my own kids (nieces and nephews are nice and all, and the new baby is absolutely precious, but they just aren't the same as my very own), I remembered that D got a baby gift of alphabet cookie cutters, which we have not yet used. I decided to bake cookies with him this afternoon, and it was quite a hit. He was happy and helpful, and only a bit messy, and I got a much better sense of how many letters he recognizes and how fascinated he is with the idea of spelling his name. I was worried that leaving the dough to chill for a half-hour would test his patience, but we simply read a story while we waited, and he was just fine with it.
Here is a nice whole-grain cookie recipe for rolling, cutting and decorating. Not too sweet, so it can take some icing. Our cookies weren't very big, and D was ready to just eat them by the time we had cut and baked them, so ours didn't get decorated. A different project for another day.
Chewy Oatmeal Decorating Cookies. Enjoy!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Halloween Dilemmas
It still has not been agreed upon what we will hand out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. We are not against candy per se, but we also don't like to buy into rampant commercialism either. Last year was a compromise. I found some Kernels popcorn bags, and bought a few, and when those ran out we offered raisins. Raisins didn't elicit particularly enthusiastic responses from our ghoulish guests.
What I really wish is that people weren't so paranoid about homemade and unwrapped gifts. The whole 'razor in the apple' fiasco really ramped up purchased, pre-packaged Halloween treats, now didn't they? How convenient for the makers of those pre-packaged Halloween treats. (Oops, my husband's conspiracy theory tendencies are rubbing off on me.) I've been trying to figure out a way around that, like putting my address on a sticker on a popcorn ball, for example, in an effort to reassure parents that I'm not trying to poison their children. But there are obviously inherent flaws in that approach as well. The days are counting down, and no satisfactory solution has been reached. Help!
Then there's the preschool party. We've been asked to bring something, and I wanted it to be at least slightly thematic, since I'm a compulsive themer, but I didn't have a lot of time or inclination to do anything over the top. They are three- and four-year olds, after all. They aren't going to care THAT much.
A quick internet search found this: Martha Stewart's Goblin Flatbreads. Perfect! Nut free, healthy and low-key enough to please the teacher who likes to encourage people not to go overboard, using pizza dough that was already in my freezer, and I think (hope) the kids will enjoy it, as long as they're not too freaked out by the little ghosties. I'll let you know!
What I really wish is that people weren't so paranoid about homemade and unwrapped gifts. The whole 'razor in the apple' fiasco really ramped up purchased, pre-packaged Halloween treats, now didn't they? How convenient for the makers of those pre-packaged Halloween treats. (Oops, my husband's conspiracy theory tendencies are rubbing off on me.) I've been trying to figure out a way around that, like putting my address on a sticker on a popcorn ball, for example, in an effort to reassure parents that I'm not trying to poison their children. But there are obviously inherent flaws in that approach as well. The days are counting down, and no satisfactory solution has been reached. Help!
Then there's the preschool party. We've been asked to bring something, and I wanted it to be at least slightly thematic, since I'm a compulsive themer, but I didn't have a lot of time or inclination to do anything over the top. They are three- and four-year olds, after all. They aren't going to care THAT much.
A quick internet search found this: Martha Stewart's Goblin Flatbreads. Perfect! Nut free, healthy and low-key enough to please the teacher who likes to encourage people not to go overboard, using pizza dough that was already in my freezer, and I think (hope) the kids will enjoy it, as long as they're not too freaked out by the little ghosties. I'll let you know!
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Yummy Soup Supper
Relying entirely on www.canadianliving.com for dinner tonight:
Montebello Beet Soup
Brie, Apple and Walnut Phyllo Triangles (phyllo pastry has been languishing in my fridge, so I found a way to use it as well as the mountain of apples I haven't had time to process)
I'll let you know how it goes!
Montebello Beet Soup
Brie, Apple and Walnut Phyllo Triangles (phyllo pastry has been languishing in my fridge, so I found a way to use it as well as the mountain of apples I haven't had time to process)
I'll let you know how it goes!
Monday, October 3, 2011
Two Dinners in One
I have been remiss in writing for the past few days, due to intense busyness on all fronts: work, family, life in general. The good news is, our kitchen backsplash has been tiled, and therefore I am quickly running out of excuses not to post photos of the finished renovation. Coming soon! As soon as the grout is completed! Promise.
In the meantime, I wanted to share a dinner menu that offers the added bonus that you can toss leftovers all together in one pot, add some chicken broth, and have amazing soup the next day. This has many layer of kid-friendliness as well, since the fish is baked separately from the sauce. Fussy kids (if they eat fish) can have plain fish and rice, while everyone else can ladle on the sauce.
Ling Cod with Tomato and Coconut Curry
(from Whitewater Cooks at Home)
4 ling cod fillets (about 200g each)
1/2 c. canola oil
12 kaffir lime leaves (I buy a bag of fresh kaffir lime leaves at Eastern Market and then keep them in the freezer)
1/2 t. fenugreek seeds (I just had fenugreek powder)
2 T. minced garlic
1 finely chopped onion
4 medium tomatoes, diced
1 T. ground cumin
1 T. ground coriander
1/2 t. turmeric
1 t. salt
1/2 t. cayenne pepper (I went easy on the cayenne to make it more kid-friendly)
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 t. cloves
1 can coconut milk (14 oz)
1 c. fresh cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Heat oil in medium sized pot for 1 minute. Add kaffir lime leaves and fenugreek seeds and allow them to sizzle for 30 seconds. Leaves should shrivel a bit. Add garlic and sautee 3 to 4 minutes (if you use fenugreek powder like I did, hold off on adding it until you add the garlic. I also found the garlic browned pretty fast, so didn't cook for the full 3 minutes.) Add onions and saute until light brown, about 10 minutes.
Stir in the tomatoes, cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt, cayenne, cinnamon stick and cloves. Continue cooking for about 10 minutes, or unti lthe tomatoes have reduced a bit. Add the coconut milk. Bring to a boil. Cover, turn heat down to medium low and simmer for about 20 minutes.
Place cod on a baking tray and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes, or until it is starting to flake. Serve fish with sauce over top, garnish with cilantro.
To round off this meal, I made basmati rice (just white this time, for the sake of time, since dinner preparations got started late) with about 10 cardamom seeds tossed in, as well as a pat of butter.
For vegetables, I had one last little eggplant left over from an impulse buy at Costco (we never buy eggplant, but I couldn't resist, because they were so cute), so I found this eggplant and cabbage salad recipe. I also found an excellent web resource, Ashbury's Aubergines, for what to do with eggplant. Over 3000 recipes!
While the curry has a lot of ingredients, it would have been fast to put together, had I lined up my tomatoes ahead of time. Instead, I went on a wild goose chase/comedy of errors kind of adventure trying to find my husband and the boys who were sent to get tomatoes from my neighbour, except then they disappeared, and there were no tomatoes to be seen. So after that 20 minute delay I had located the tomatoes and could finish the dish. Dinner was quite late that night. The boys quite enjoyed the meal (and we loved it!), with baby G being open even to the cabbage and eggplant.
Curried Fish Soup
We ended up with a few fish fillets left over from our large package of ling cod (a generous gift from a friend who had great luck on a west coast fishing trip this summer), as well as 2 cups of curry sauce, rice and some of the vegetables. On Sunday, I played volleyball from 3-6, so tasked my husband with throwing all the leftovers (fish, sauce, rice and cabbage/eggplant) in a pot, adding some chicken stock from the freezer, seasoning it and calling it soup. The results were amazing. And again, Baby G gobbled it up. It reminded me a bit of seafood laksa, and would have been perfect over vermicelli noodles. Instead, we just enjoyed it with the rice added to the soup, and I spiced it up a bit with Sambal Oelek. Afterwards, I thanked my husband for dinner, and he scoffed. "It's not like I did anything. I just tossed a bunch of stuff in a pot and added fish sauce." There's a bit leftover still today, and I'm looking forward to lunch time! When you start with good ingredients, it doesn't take much to make excellent food.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Meal Plan #14: Tail end of summer
Autumn literally rode in on a wind this evening, with the temperature dropping 10 degrees in a couple of hours, and a rainstorm ending our week-long heat wave. I'm wavering between disappointment and relief, because I was loving the bonus hot days, but was actually running out of hot weather meal ideas (well, that's not really true. It was more like I had mentally started preparing for cooler weather, and then had to shift gears back into hot weather mode, which was hard to do).
Yesterday when I served D some pasta (a kid-friendly recipe that puts zucchini to good use), he announced that he didn't want that; he wanted pizza. So tonight I decided to do pizza on the grill, since it was too hot to use the oven. By 5:30pm, the temperature was plummeting, and we could have used the oven, but I was already committed. The pizzas were simple, but delicious—homemade pesto as a base, and then sliced tomatoes and bocconcini laid over top. D had a great time helping me roll out the pizza crust and messing around with the dough, which makes me think that an afternoon of making buns that he helps me shape might be a really enjoyable activity. I'll tack it to my to-do list and try to remember to take photos.
Here is the remainder of the week's meal plan, which is a concerted effort to use up a long list of seasonal ingredients. Although I realized, after I had made the plan and done my grocery shopping, that I have a gallon pail of ripe tomatoes sitting on my counter, and I neglected to put them to use in any meaningful way. I have an abundance of chicken stock at the moment, so perhaps I will be making them into soup...
Monday
Grilled pork chops (my favourite seasoning for good quality chops from happy pigs is to do a quick cure in the morning, sprinkling them with generous amounts of kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, a tiny pinch of allspice and some crushed bay leaf. So simple, but that's all that is required when you eat the meat of healthy, happy animals. Thanks to Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook for this perfect recipe)
Roasted beet salad with beet greens and feta (I mentioned in my last post that I am always looking for the 'best' of everything. So far, I haven't been able to top this beet recipe for simplicity and flavour. This is a standard summer dish at our house, and I have shared it with countless friends and family members who have tried it and then asked for the recipe)
Baked spaghetti squash (simply done, cut in half, seeded, baked cut side down for about 40 minutes, served with farm butter and sea salt)
Tuesday
Meat and grain loaf (The recipe, from Mark Bittman's Food Matters, has been posted on the blog "Simple Food. Healthy Life". I've chosen the recipe primarily because it uses a large amount of spinach, which is one of the things I have to use up this week)
Grilled patty pan squash
Fresh tomatoes
Wednesday (my husband is away for two nights at a conference. I have cleared my schedule of all other stresses so that I can be a happy and calm mom for my boys for those two days. I'm grateful to have the luxury to do that, but at the same time, I will still be doing my best to keep the cooking simple)
Teriyaki noodles with broccoli and edamame (also from Food Matters—you'll note the original recipe calls for asparagus, but the asparagus at the store came from Peru. I figured I'd opt for broccoli that had been grown a little closer to home)
Thursday
Hubby still away, so I'm thinking I'll just plan for leftovers, of which there should be plenty. If I can find a sitter, I may also have to go to a preschool executive meeting that evening, so limiting the amount of prep and dishwashing is probably a wise coping strategy.
Friday
My husband is back, but not until right at dinner time, so I'm thinking of doing something simple and popular: our chicken wing/sweet potato oven-fry/veggie sticks and dip supper. And probably a beer. Or some more rosé
.
Speaking of my 'quest for the best', I have just made my all-time favourite muffins, which are a perfect option for this time of year, since the recipe calls for large quantities of grated zucchini, carrots and apples, all of which are in ample supply right now. These morning glory muffins, sourced from a bed and breakfast's website, have to be one of the most requested recipes I make. My kids, my family, my volleyball team, all either want me to bring the muffins or share the recipe or both (I have occasionally been persona non grata at volleyball tournaments when I neglect to bring a bag or two of these muffins.) They have also been fantastic sellers at bakesales and fundraisers. I thought D was a huge fan of muffins in general, but it turns out that his concept of 'muffin' equals these particular muffins. All others are at risk of rejection. Try them—and let me know if they fulfill your own 'quest for the best'.
Yesterday when I served D some pasta (a kid-friendly recipe that puts zucchini to good use), he announced that he didn't want that; he wanted pizza. So tonight I decided to do pizza on the grill, since it was too hot to use the oven. By 5:30pm, the temperature was plummeting, and we could have used the oven, but I was already committed. The pizzas were simple, but delicious—homemade pesto as a base, and then sliced tomatoes and bocconcini laid over top. D had a great time helping me roll out the pizza crust and messing around with the dough, which makes me think that an afternoon of making buns that he helps me shape might be a really enjoyable activity. I'll tack it to my to-do list and try to remember to take photos.
Here is the remainder of the week's meal plan, which is a concerted effort to use up a long list of seasonal ingredients. Although I realized, after I had made the plan and done my grocery shopping, that I have a gallon pail of ripe tomatoes sitting on my counter, and I neglected to put them to use in any meaningful way. I have an abundance of chicken stock at the moment, so perhaps I will be making them into soup...
Monday
Grilled pork chops (my favourite seasoning for good quality chops from happy pigs is to do a quick cure in the morning, sprinkling them with generous amounts of kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, a tiny pinch of allspice and some crushed bay leaf. So simple, but that's all that is required when you eat the meat of healthy, happy animals. Thanks to Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook for this perfect recipe)
Roasted beet salad with beet greens and feta (I mentioned in my last post that I am always looking for the 'best' of everything. So far, I haven't been able to top this beet recipe for simplicity and flavour. This is a standard summer dish at our house, and I have shared it with countless friends and family members who have tried it and then asked for the recipe)
Baked spaghetti squash (simply done, cut in half, seeded, baked cut side down for about 40 minutes, served with farm butter and sea salt)
Tuesday
Meat and grain loaf (The recipe, from Mark Bittman's Food Matters, has been posted on the blog "Simple Food. Healthy Life". I've chosen the recipe primarily because it uses a large amount of spinach, which is one of the things I have to use up this week)
Grilled patty pan squash
Fresh tomatoes
Wednesday (my husband is away for two nights at a conference. I have cleared my schedule of all other stresses so that I can be a happy and calm mom for my boys for those two days. I'm grateful to have the luxury to do that, but at the same time, I will still be doing my best to keep the cooking simple)
Teriyaki noodles with broccoli and edamame (also from Food Matters—you'll note the original recipe calls for asparagus, but the asparagus at the store came from Peru. I figured I'd opt for broccoli that had been grown a little closer to home)
Thursday
Hubby still away, so I'm thinking I'll just plan for leftovers, of which there should be plenty. If I can find a sitter, I may also have to go to a preschool executive meeting that evening, so limiting the amount of prep and dishwashing is probably a wise coping strategy.
Friday
My husband is back, but not until right at dinner time, so I'm thinking of doing something simple and popular: our chicken wing/sweet potato oven-fry/veggie sticks and dip supper. And probably a beer. Or some more rosé
.
Speaking of my 'quest for the best', I have just made my all-time favourite muffins, which are a perfect option for this time of year, since the recipe calls for large quantities of grated zucchini, carrots and apples, all of which are in ample supply right now. These morning glory muffins, sourced from a bed and breakfast's website, have to be one of the most requested recipes I make. My kids, my family, my volleyball team, all either want me to bring the muffins or share the recipe or both (I have occasionally been persona non grata at volleyball tournaments when I neglect to bring a bag or two of these muffins.) They have also been fantastic sellers at bakesales and fundraisers. I thought D was a huge fan of muffins in general, but it turns out that his concept of 'muffin' equals these particular muffins. All others are at risk of rejection. Try them—and let me know if they fulfill your own 'quest for the best'.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Liqueur-making Party a Success
Tonight we hosted hubby's colleagues to toast a success in their department and to help people out with processing the abundance of apples out there. The easiest transformation of apples I have found is to make liqueur, and the recipe is dead easy. I did a demonstration for our guests, making a batch and answering questions as we sampled liqueurs from previous years.
Here's my recipe:
Clean and coarsely chop apples. No need to peel, stem or core.
Measure as you chop: for every quart (4 cups) apples, you'll need 1 cup sugar and 3/4 cup vodka or brandy (your choice). Place all ingredients in a large jar or bowl (I like to use 4L pickle jars). Mix together and shake or turn occasionally to dissolve sugar (this may take a few days to dissolve completely).
Store in a cool place for 6 weeks. Once the six weeks is up, strain liquid, discard solids, and pour liqueur into sterilized bottles. Let age for another three weeks before using. Enjoy!
If you're interested in other liqueur making recipes, check out this awesome resource: http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs.htm
I made little skewers of Italian sausage meatballs, smoked cheddar and apple wedges as well as fried sage leaves to dip in a liqueur-spiked applesauce. The fried sage leaves are always a hit. I'll have to post a photo when I make them again—this time, I was busy preparing the food right up until guests arrived, and didn't think about photos until the sage was all gone. I just fry it in a generous amount of olive oil for about two minutes, and then sprinkle with sea salt. The applesauce made a nice sweet/salty combo.
Also: for the record, I love doing these kinds of workshops. Anyone interested in doing one should just let me know.
Here's my recipe:
Clean and coarsely chop apples. No need to peel, stem or core.
Measure as you chop: for every quart (4 cups) apples, you'll need 1 cup sugar and 3/4 cup vodka or brandy (your choice). Place all ingredients in a large jar or bowl (I like to use 4L pickle jars). Mix together and shake or turn occasionally to dissolve sugar (this may take a few days to dissolve completely).
Store in a cool place for 6 weeks. Once the six weeks is up, strain liquid, discard solids, and pour liqueur into sterilized bottles. Let age for another three weeks before using. Enjoy!
If you're interested in other liqueur making recipes, check out this awesome resource: http://www.guntheranderson.com/liqueurs.htm
I made little skewers of Italian sausage meatballs, smoked cheddar and apple wedges as well as fried sage leaves to dip in a liqueur-spiked applesauce. The fried sage leaves are always a hit. I'll have to post a photo when I make them again—this time, I was busy preparing the food right up until guests arrived, and didn't think about photos until the sage was all gone. I just fry it in a generous amount of olive oil for about two minutes, and then sprinkle with sea salt. The applesauce made a nice sweet/salty combo.
Also: for the record, I love doing these kinds of workshops. Anyone interested in doing one should just let me know.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Home at Last!!
Oh the many things to be thankful for:
It's finally truly summer!
We're back in our house!
My kitchen is awesome! ...although, sitting at about 85% complete.
I can't unpack everything into my new kitchen just yet, so we're still sort of camping out in the space, but at least we're home and moving in the direction of completion. I got confirmation that my horribly delayed sink has finally shipped, so it is also in motion. I would have been able to unpack all my stuff if I hadn't insisted that my 39" upper cabinets have four shelves instead of the usual three. What is the use of having extra tall cabinets if you don't have any more surface area for storage than in average cabinets?? Our cabinet guy went away to cut more shelves.
In spite of all that, we are in love with our new space. No photos just yet, because we haven't quite made it to "after". I will be sure to post them when everything is 100% complete.
In the meantime, our first night back was Canada Day, and I served up a simple celebratory meal of grilled steak, corn on the cob, roast baby potatoes, grilled asparagus, and spinach and strawberry salad with sugar pecans for a couple of friends who had offered to help with the restocking of the kitchen. It was a nice way to break in the space. I tracked down the salad with my new foodnetwork.ca app, which I've been enjoying. It sort of eases the sting of being excluded from the epicurious app because I don't have an iPhone...
Now that the heat has turned up a bit, I'm gung ho to dust off my favourite summertime recipes. Last night we had chicken lettuce wraps and one of my favourite summer salads, cucumber watermelon salad with hoisin-lime dressing. While planning for a week of warm weather, I checked off several other recipes that will resurface over the next couple months of summer: Vietnamese salad rolls, ziti with grilled sausage and gazpacho sauce, and gazpacho, to name a few. I have it on my to-do list to use my turkey fryer this summer for traditional southern fried chicken as well, in case any of you were becoming concerned that my cooking was becoming overly healthy.
My husband's first request when I asked him for summer cooking ideas was, "Hunza wraps!" This was a golden discovery a few years ago, and we have made them every summer since. I originally found it on line, but can no longer locate the site. It's a perfect, easy, healthy, delicious no-cook meal for the dog days of summer:
Hunza Wraps
2 T. lemon juice
1 lb. (or one package) cubed tofu
3 T. red miso (or whatever miso you have on hand)
1/2 c. warm water
3/4 c. tahini
In a large bowl, sprinkle lemon juice over the tofu. Dissolve the miso in the warm water, then blend with the tahini. I use a hand blender, which is quick and easy.
Mix into the miso mixture:
1 1/2 t. garlic powder
2 T. dried dill
1 T. balsamic vinegar
2 T. toasted sesame seeds
Add the miso mixture to the tofu and toss.
Spread generously on a tortilla. Add sprouts, green onions, lettuce and black olives, and wrap.
We have taken to pre-mixing the tofu and sauce and taking this with us on camping trips. They're so quick and easy to throw together while you're setting up camp and getting the fire going. And so, so satisfying. And vegan! I'm always pleasantly surprised when vegan recipes turn out delicious and satisfying as well as healthy.
D enjoyed hunza wraps last year. This year, apparently, he has decided he doesn't like tofu. I think the heat might be affecting his appetite, or perhaps he's getting to an age where he is becoming more fussy. He's kind of funny—today at lunch I made an Asian iced tea packet and D announced that it was bitter. I tasted his drink, and it was bitter. His was in a smaller glass and therefore steeped stronger than the one I made for myself. Is it normal for a two year old to identify flavours like "bitter"?
Baby G on the other hand, has become a bottomless pit regarding food in the last few weeks. He packed away most of half of a wrap (except the black olives—he gave them a go, but then shuddered and spit them out), and later had a third of a cup of yogurt before bed. Here's hoping this helps him sleep through the night.
So this week's meal plan goes something like this:
Monday
Greek salad with warmed herb vinaigrette in pita pockets
Tuesday
Grilled skewered chicken hearts (that's right, I've got chicken hearts burning a hole in my freezer, and they're going on the grill!)
Soba noodle and veggie saute
Wednesday
Italian bread salad
Thursday
Crispy-skinned salmon with salsa verde rice from Ross Dobson's Kitchen Seasons (can't wait to put all my beautiful herbs to work in this one!)
I only got as far as Thursday, because I suspect there will be more entertaining on the horizon. I figure I'll leave the planning of Friday's meal until I know who is going to share it with us.
It's finally truly summer!
We're back in our house!
My kitchen is awesome! ...although, sitting at about 85% complete.
I can't unpack everything into my new kitchen just yet, so we're still sort of camping out in the space, but at least we're home and moving in the direction of completion. I got confirmation that my horribly delayed sink has finally shipped, so it is also in motion. I would have been able to unpack all my stuff if I hadn't insisted that my 39" upper cabinets have four shelves instead of the usual three. What is the use of having extra tall cabinets if you don't have any more surface area for storage than in average cabinets?? Our cabinet guy went away to cut more shelves.
In spite of all that, we are in love with our new space. No photos just yet, because we haven't quite made it to "after". I will be sure to post them when everything is 100% complete.
In the meantime, our first night back was Canada Day, and I served up a simple celebratory meal of grilled steak, corn on the cob, roast baby potatoes, grilled asparagus, and spinach and strawberry salad with sugar pecans for a couple of friends who had offered to help with the restocking of the kitchen. It was a nice way to break in the space. I tracked down the salad with my new foodnetwork.ca app, which I've been enjoying. It sort of eases the sting of being excluded from the epicurious app because I don't have an iPhone...
Now that the heat has turned up a bit, I'm gung ho to dust off my favourite summertime recipes. Last night we had chicken lettuce wraps and one of my favourite summer salads, cucumber watermelon salad with hoisin-lime dressing. While planning for a week of warm weather, I checked off several other recipes that will resurface over the next couple months of summer: Vietnamese salad rolls, ziti with grilled sausage and gazpacho sauce, and gazpacho, to name a few. I have it on my to-do list to use my turkey fryer this summer for traditional southern fried chicken as well, in case any of you were becoming concerned that my cooking was becoming overly healthy.
My husband's first request when I asked him for summer cooking ideas was, "Hunza wraps!" This was a golden discovery a few years ago, and we have made them every summer since. I originally found it on line, but can no longer locate the site. It's a perfect, easy, healthy, delicious no-cook meal for the dog days of summer:
Hunza Wraps
2 T. lemon juice
1 lb. (or one package) cubed tofu
3 T. red miso (or whatever miso you have on hand)
1/2 c. warm water
3/4 c. tahini
In a large bowl, sprinkle lemon juice over the tofu. Dissolve the miso in the warm water, then blend with the tahini. I use a hand blender, which is quick and easy.
Mix into the miso mixture:
1 1/2 t. garlic powder
2 T. dried dill
1 T. balsamic vinegar
2 T. toasted sesame seeds
Add the miso mixture to the tofu and toss.
Spread generously on a tortilla. Add sprouts, green onions, lettuce and black olives, and wrap.
We have taken to pre-mixing the tofu and sauce and taking this with us on camping trips. They're so quick and easy to throw together while you're setting up camp and getting the fire going. And so, so satisfying. And vegan! I'm always pleasantly surprised when vegan recipes turn out delicious and satisfying as well as healthy.
D enjoyed hunza wraps last year. This year, apparently, he has decided he doesn't like tofu. I think the heat might be affecting his appetite, or perhaps he's getting to an age where he is becoming more fussy. He's kind of funny—today at lunch I made an Asian iced tea packet and D announced that it was bitter. I tasted his drink, and it was bitter. His was in a smaller glass and therefore steeped stronger than the one I made for myself. Is it normal for a two year old to identify flavours like "bitter"?
Baby G on the other hand, has become a bottomless pit regarding food in the last few weeks. He packed away most of half of a wrap (except the black olives—he gave them a go, but then shuddered and spit them out), and later had a third of a cup of yogurt before bed. Here's hoping this helps him sleep through the night.
So this week's meal plan goes something like this:
Monday
Greek salad with warmed herb vinaigrette in pita pockets
Tuesday
Grilled skewered chicken hearts (that's right, I've got chicken hearts burning a hole in my freezer, and they're going on the grill!)
Soba noodle and veggie saute
Wednesday
Italian bread salad
Thursday
Crispy-skinned salmon with salsa verde rice from Ross Dobson's Kitchen Seasons (can't wait to put all my beautiful herbs to work in this one!)
I only got as far as Thursday, because I suspect there will be more entertaining on the horizon. I figure I'll leave the planning of Friday's meal until I know who is going to share it with us.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
From the Mouths of Babes
"Mom, are there any cupcakes around?"
This, at breakfast, from a boy not yet three. Good reason to pull out Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook once we're reinstalled in our new kitchen! I just discovered that you don't even need the cookbook—a surprising number of her cupcake recipes are posted on her website! Can't believe I've never looked at her website before...
P.S. Garden is (mostly) planted!
P.P.S. I'm either really excited or really over tired. Every sentence in this post ended in an exclamation point. One of many signs that I should go directly to bed.
This, at breakfast, from a boy not yet three. Good reason to pull out Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook once we're reinstalled in our new kitchen! I just discovered that you don't even need the cookbook—a surprising number of her cupcake recipes are posted on her website! Can't believe I've never looked at her website before...
P.S. Garden is (mostly) planted!
P.P.S. I'm either really excited or really over tired. Every sentence in this post ended in an exclamation point. One of many signs that I should go directly to bed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)