Riverside Kitchen

A Little Behind

2011-11-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

I'm so thankful for my cousin buying me the slow cooker for my birthday. I already want more in different sizes so I can expand my newly growing repertoire. I've only done two dishes so far, mostly to money being tight these last two weeks and not being able to do my monthly stock up on meat products from Frigs.

Growing up I was never that into pork products, aside from bacon and pork tenderloin. I usually found Ham too salty and pork chops too tough and I just never really tasted anything like pulled pork until I was in my 20's. The first time I really remember having it was the summer of 2009 in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. Ryan and I were on vacation and staying with my dad's cousins and their neighbours invited us all for dinner one night. They had an amazing ceramic cooker called The Big Green Egg. The lid on that thing was so heavy I could barely lift it. They'd had tons of pork shoulder cooking since early that morning and was amazing. With homemade coleslaw and Serrano pepper hot sauce we piled our buns high and enjoyed the spicy spicy sandwiches with some premium beers. I dream of one day owning a Big Green Egg. Since then I've only made pulled pork a couple of times, and while it's always good, it's just not the same as my first earth-shattering experience.

Aside from the pulled pork, I've used the slow cooker to do up a nice little ham last weekend. I was a bit doubtful about the amount of apple cider vinegar the recipe I used called for, it was probably the best ham I've ever had. With 6 hours in the cooker, some green beans, and mashed sweet and creamer potatoes, it was one of the easiest meals I've made in ages.

And the final pork product that I've recently come back around to: pork chops. Growing up I don't think my mom ever brined our pork chops, and I always found them too tough and dry and just not very exciting. The world of brining has opened my eyes. Never again will I cook up a chop that hasn't been brined. Not only is the meat much more tender, but anything with ACV, honey, and mustard can't go wrong with pork chops.

So tonight my niece and a friend will be joining us for dinner of pork chops with honey glazed roasted tomatoes, green beans with lemon, sunflower seeds, garlic and butter, and mashed taters. So with no new recipes to offer, I'll leave it there and will hopefully return with something new in the next week.

Oh yeah, my mustard greens are looking amazing already!

Surprise!

2011-10-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

Not exactly a week, but I've been busy since the last post. I'll have a longer one to follow in the next couple of days with some photos of my new endeavours.

First of all, the Kefir took a few runs to get it right. The first time I let it sit too long; the second time I didn't stir it enough; the third time it seemed just about right and then I went to bed and completely forgot about putting it in the fridge. But finally the fourth time I seemed to find that 7 hours, and hourly stirring after 2 hours is how I like it. I'm not a milk drinker to begin with, so I'm getting my fill with daily morning smoothies.

And last Monday I drove out to Sage Garden Herbs and purchased T5 grow lights, fertilizer, soil, and seeds. I came home, cleared some space on a shelf in the kitchen, drilled the lights on, made some makeshift seedling planters, and set everything up. This is the first time I've ever had a garden on my own so I'm taking it slow. Right now I've just got basil, catnip, oregano, endive, mustard greens, and lettuce. I'll see how those go and I may add more to the mix down the line. About a week after planting the mustard greens and endive are well on their way and sprouting up.

And finally, I was given a slow cooker for my birthday this year and I'd been wanting to try slow cooker pulled pork for ages. So I picked up a 4.5lb pork shoulder roast from Frigs and at 9AM on Saturday I woke up, made the sauce, and put it in for about 10 hours. I wasn't totally crazy about the sauce recipe I used, but either than that, it came out great. Some friends came over to share the food which was nicely capped off with sparkler cones from Sargent Sundae.

Now that Autumn is really in full force here, I'm looking forward to getting cooking with lots of root veggies, and soups, and stews. Time to start keeping warm.

Thanksgiving and Fresh Starts

2011-10-10T17:23:00.000-07:00

As usual, months have gone by with feeling guilty for not updating the blog, and thinking about how I need to update the blog, and putting off updating the blog. But as all my travels for the year are complete, including Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, UK, and various parts of Europe, and the summer has officially come to a close, I'm finding myself with a bit more free time and the motivation to really get back into the kitchen.

I'll keep it simple for my first post in 6 months. Oct 1st was my 26th birthday and I spent it in Toronto with my three best friends having a great birthday weekend and eating lots of delicious Toronto eats. I arrived home on Friday, and Saturday my parents had the family over for a feast of the usual; turkey, stuffing, veggies, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and pecan pie. We had a break on Sunday but Monday we were out at Ryan's aunts for our 2nd feast; all the usual plus ham that Ryan can never get enough of.

Ryan's aunt is a great cook and a fellow foody - although far more experienced than I. Ages ago she started up a kefir culture that she's kept going and has offered us many times. In my usual procrastin-atory fashion, I kept putting it off until she managed to get it into my hands today.

So, using some of her grains, I've got my own kefir finally on it's way. For those who don't know, kefir is a cultured and microbialrich food that is amazing for our bodies. With beneficial yeast and bacteria, it has antibiotic properties. Using kefir grains and good quality milk, you mix them together, allow it to culture for 12-48 hours, then stick it in your fridge and use it as a type of milk product or to make other dairy products like yogurt, creme freche, cream cheese, or cream. Every time a batch is finished, you strain the grains, put the kefir liquid in a fresh jar in the fridge, and re-culture another batch of milk with the grains in a new jar. You either need to immediately re-use the grains or store them in the fridge or freezer.
*If you plan to start making you're own kefir, please seek out more exact instructions such as http://www.kefir.org/kefir_manual.htm

Aside from just thinking about getting things moving here again in blogland, I've also been slowly collecting new and wonderful kitchen toys - some hand me downs, but I'm not complaining. And finally, I'm hoping that within the week I'll have the majority of my supplies purchased for starting my indoor garden - my birthday present from my folks. This will be the first time I've ever attempted an indoor set-up so I'm expecting a slow start and plan to begin with some easy herbs and hopefully move up to a salsa and salad garden. Hopefully in my next post I can show off my new set up.

And Happy Thanksgiving to all the Canadians!

2011-03-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

One summer when I was working as a camp counsellor at Camp Briardale, a camp for kids with diabetes, I had the most adorable, petite, squeeky-voiced little 7 year old in my cabin. She was a very sweet kid who was obviously nervous about being away from home for a week for the first time but I admired her ability to try anything new.

At diabetes camp, the kids are required to write down what they're eating before they go up to get their meals. The reason being that type 1 diabetics (mostly) count carbohydrates and give themselves a corresponding ratio of insulin. Whatever it was we were eating one particular night, my little camper assumed she wouldn't like. But on her meal planner she'd written "Try it!". And she did - and she didn't like it. But when I asked her about it she replied, "my mom told me to try everything once because I might find out I like it". Where most kids balk at the idea of trying new foods, she fully embraced it - even if it meant putting something in her mouth she ended up not liking.

I try to take this philosophy in my food life too. All my life there's been a few foods I have never liked - mushrooms, milk, raw peppers, shellfish - and tomatoes. Over the years I've occasionally eaten one of these foods to test myself. Tomatoes have probably been most successfully introduced into my diet. I've learned that I still don't really like raw tomatoes, especially by themselves. But I've also learned I LOVE chunky salsa, the occasional bruscetta, and a great many dishes with tomatoes mixed in.

And so I'm attempting to get a little more adventurous with those foods I've typically left off the menu. Monday was one of those adventurous days. I recently picked up some centre cut pork chops from Frigs and decided to whip 'em up for Monday dinner. While we cook a lot of pork in this kitchen, pork chops aren't something I'm terribly familiar with. Growing up, I was never a big fan of the tough meat and it seemed pretty...welll...boring (sorry mom!). Recently I've been reading about the wonders of brining and decided that I might as well give it a go.

Using a recipe from Alton Brown's cookbook, I whipped up a brine. While I was mixing it the vinegar burned my eyes so much I was weeping and I accidentally used coarse salt instead of kosher and the entire apartment smelled like the vinegar - so to say the least, I was a bit nervous about entrusting my pork to this brine but I figured, "what the hell", and let the chops sit for 2 hours before cooking. After that, I basically raided the fridge for whatever looked tasty, fresh, and colourful.

Goat Cheese Honey-Glazed Pork Chops

2 bone-in pork chops (I used centre cut)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp oregano

2 red potatoes, chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 small sweet potato, peeled and chopped into bite-sized pieces

the juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper for taste

2 tbsp goat cheese (I added parsley and basil to mine)

4 -6 slices honey-glazed tomatoes (recipe below)

*The brine recipe I used was included in a recipe for stuffed pork - I halfed the brine and omitted the rest of the recipe.

Preheat your oven to 400. After brining your pork, rinse and then pat dry your chops with a paper towel. In a bowl, combine all ingredients until potatoes and pork are well covered. On a baking sheet or dish, put all the potatoes and place the pork chops in top. Cook for 40 minutes and check - the pork should be at 170. Mine was cooked perfectly after 40 minutes.

Honey-Glazed Tomatoes

1/4 cup butter

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp brown sugar

a pinch of salt

1/2 to 1 whole tomato, sliced thinly

Melt your butter in a medium saucepan at about medium heat. Add the honey, sugar, and salt and stir. Turn the heat down slightly and add the tomato slices. Put the lid on and let them cook for 2-4 minutes, flip, and cook another 2-4 minutes. You should still have lots of liquid left in the pan.

Final Assembly

When you're ready to serve, place the pork chop on the plate and spread 1/2 tbsp of goat cheese over top. Place the honey-glazed tomatoes on top of the pork, and drizzle the leftover glaze over the chops and/or potatoes.

Not my best photo, but I was starving. Ryan says this may be the best meal I've ever made. :) Served with garlic green beans and toasted pine nuts and fried apples.

Pea Soup

2011-01-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

Since I've been on a continuous pantry-raid for the last two weeks, I've finally made some new dishes with some of the ingredients I've been meaning to use...since I bought them months and months and months ago. Seeing as how it's winter in Winnipeg and we've settled into some pretty chilly temperatures, hearty soups have been on my mind a lot.

Pea soup is one of my favourite soups but one that I had never made before. There are few soups that make me think of staying cozy in Winnipeg more than pea soup. Maybe it's because the taste is so homey or maybe it's because it always makes me think of the Festival Du Voyageur (kicking off in just over two weeks) and their Pea Soup contest - whatever the reason, it's always been one of my comfort foods.

So finally, after buying dried split peas last winter and storing them safely in our ice box (not the freezer but the literal original ice box we use as a cupboard in our kitchen) I pulled them out last week and decided to try my hand at my first ever pea soup. Now I know traditionally ham and pea soup go hand in hand, but to be honest, I've never been a fan of this. I took the much less traditional route of using chicken stock - because I had a bunch homemade in my freezer - but you can use any type of stock you want. I actually ran out of chicken stock and had to use a bit of a veggie bouillon cube but it all worked out.

Split Pea Soup

2 cups dried split peas
2 carrots, diced
2 celery stocks, diced
1 small-med onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 quarts stock (chicken, veggie)
1 tbsp thyme
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onions and celery and saute until translucent and soft. Add garlic, stir for 1-2 minutes without browning. Add carrots, peas, thyme, stock, and salt and pepper to taste (I had forgotten to salt my stock when I made it so I had to use a lot of salt - add a bit and taste and adjust as necessary). Bring stock to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Simmer for 40-60 minutes, until veggies and peas are soft.

Now, I'm one of those who says that pea soup MUST be blended, thick, and creamy. I'm always slightly disappointed when I order a pea soup that hasn't been blended as a last step and instead is more of a broth pea soup. Luckily for me, I was given a handy-dandy immersion blender for Christmas! Once my soup was cooked I just immersion-blended it to my consistency and let it sit another 10 minutes.

If you don't have an immersion blender you can go one of 3 ways here:
1) Potato masher - won't be as smooth but gives you more consistency.
2) Let the soup cool (very important!) and put it in either a counter-top blender or a food processor.
3) Skip the blending and keep it as a more brothy pea soup (blasphemy!)

This soup lasted us all through the week and made about...6 servings. Frankly, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did because it was divine.

Triumphant Return

2011-01-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

As you can probably guess I decided to take an informal break from blogging for a few months. The main reason was personal stress and really needing to take some time for myself, and only for myself. Things have been pretty much normalized in my life for the last month or two but it's really only in the last few weeks that I've felt worthy of returning to the blogsphere. Between personal reasons, balancing two positions at work with no regular hours, and a very busy December of visiting, snacking, and preparing for the holidays, I just couldn't get into the kitchen more than one night a week.

But now I'm officially working one position, I have a regular weekly work schedule, and I'm feeling oh-so-inspired in the kitchen and at home. Lately I've started re-prioritizing food and overall healthy living. I think when Ryan and I moved in together and I started talking about the ways I wanted to eat and how I wanted to keep moving away from pre-packaged foods, toxins, and chemicals and closer to an organic/local/sustainable life he didn't exactly know what to think. Now he's definitely feeling a lot more comfortable with the way we live and to be honest, I think he gets a bit excited about it all too, even if he wouldn't admit it.

Here's some of my recent initiatives:

1) Sticking to our food budget no matter what. In May we're taking a trip overseas so finances are a little tight. We stick to a strict $100 a week food budget but when we need to do a big stock up (TP, cat litter, cat food, vinegar, milk, eggs, cheese, meat, etc) it's pretty easy to go over budget. In the past we've been pretty loose with this budget but now we're sticking to it as closely as we can and really watching our pennies. Of course, this has turned into a fun personal challenge for me. We only have $30 to last us until Feb 4th so I've been having fun going through our cupboards being as imaginative as possible. Which brings me to my next initiative.

2) As little food waste as possible. This sounds pretty basic, I know, but it takes practice to figure out how to use all the little leftovers that end up in the fridge. I know composting is all fine and dandy but I'd rather see my food get eaten instead of thrown into the bin. Maintaining as little food waste as possible also means being extremely conscious of what ingredients we have in the kitchen. Growing up, our cupboards were always stocked and while it made it easy to think of something to make, it also meant a lot of stuff sat in the cupboard for months or years without being touched. Partially due to our small cupboard space and partially due to my insistence on using what we have (hopefully we won't be experiencing an Apocalypse soon) we're moving through a lot of dried foods that I purchased last winter and then just let sit there.

Cooking to my ingredients is a lot of fun for me - I love to improvise in the kitchen, which is one of the reasons it's difficult for me to post recipes some times. Often I have leftover dips, sauces, or dressings that need to be used up fairly quickly. I feel like planning strategically is a skill that has really developed in the year+ that I moved out of my folks place. The way I'm able to throw ingredients together now is such a difference and I have to say I feel pretty proud about the whole thing.

3) Composting. As I mentioned before, composting is great - if you have a place to drop it off. For the past year+ I've been collecting or compost in the window during the winter and in our freezer during the summer. I've been dropping it off at my parents place because they have 3 or 4 large composters in their backyard - but they're starting to get pretty full at this point.

I'm happy to report that my workplace has started composting through a company in my city. Because they're an industrial composting site, they're able to accept things that a normal backyard composter wouldn't be able to handle - things like meat, bones, dairy products. I work in a very small workplace so the giant bin we were given is barely half full when they pick it up every week so I consulted with other staff and now I'll be dropping our compost in their once a week. I'm still trying to get used to keeping virtually all our food scraps.

4) Reducing toxins, plastics, and chemicals in our food and life. I admit, the various plastic-free blogs have caught my interest in a big way. A few off the top of my head:

http://myplasticfreelife.com/
http://plasticmanners.wordpress.com/
http://www.lifewithoutplasticblog.com/

But it's not just reducing my plastic that I'm concerned with, it's also reducing the toxins in my everyday routine. I've also been spending a lot of time exploring The David Suzuki Foundation site.

I've already been trying to do this for quite a while. In my own routine, I usually use a mixture of honey and yogurt to wash my face and when it's not -35 and super dry, I like to use coconut oil as a moisturizer. I also use Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil Soap as my face wash too.

For cleaning we really only using baking soda, vinegar, water, and occasionally bleach. For clothes we've been using a "environmentally friendly" detergent (whatever that means) and for dishes we use regular old dish soap. For ages I've been wanting to try Soap Nuts but never remembered while I was out. Ryan's sister gave me a small sample bag for Christmas and we tested them out a few weeks ago. So far, we love 'em. I like them because there's no scent, they get our clothes clean, and they come out nice and soft without that starchy feeling. Ryan was extremely skeptical but he's behind them now - we picked up a large bag of soap nuts to last us a while.

The best part about soap nuts (besides the fact that they're actually berries)? Once they're used they can be boiled to make an multi-purpose cleaning solution, and after that they can be composted! The nuts can be used multiple times so we feel that they were a good deal. Right now we're collecting the used ones to make the cleaner.

5) Re-commitment to organic and/or local food. This was easier last year because we could split our FOOD Box with our friends. Since they're not in the city anymore, we decided it wasn't practical to get the box by ourselves. Up until a few weeks ago, I was being pretty lazy with where we were getting our food. After doing some research, we've settled into doing most of our fresh shopping from Organic Planet Worker Co-Op. They're very small, and while there is a much larger organic food store closer to us, I've found that Organic Planet tends to have fresher and better quality produce.

So that's what's been happening around here. Other little projects are constantly in the back of my mind but I'm trying to take things one step at a time right now and work within my limits. I love doing research about topics of all kinds so I'm basically doing a lot of reading, blogging, and networking right now. But I'm looking forward to sharing what's happening in the kitchen in 2011.

Out and About: Hermanos in Winnipeg

2010-08-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

August has been a busy month for dinner's and lunches out. My summers are usually packed with friend or family meet-ups at a nice patio or restaurant. Ryan and I have also decided to try and go to new restaurants almost every time we go out (we made an exception for Stella's though, because it's cheap, close, and we both LOVE it). So far we've only been to a few new places but we're really enjoying it. I've discovered a lot of places I didn't know existed and a few hidden gems. Next on my list is Saaadal Kherys Somali Restaurant on 164 Isabel Street. But that's for later.

This August has been particularly restaurant packed because of Ciao Magazine's Taste the World. In hindsight, I really should have posted this at the beginning of August, rather than on the last day so no one else can take part in it. I managed to take part in 3 menu's and all were excellent. I'm going to spend a couple of posts talking about this promotion (as well as others from Ciao), and the recent new restaurants we've visited - although not all Ciao inspired.

Last week I invited my mom and Nana out for lunch. We browsed the menu selection on the website and narrowed it down to a couple before deciding on Hermanos Restaurant and Wine Bar. Hermanos is located in Winnipeg's Theatre District. Had it been a nicer day we were planning on going to The Forks but it turned out to be rather chilly. However, Hermanos' close proximity to The Forks and the walkway on Waterfront Drive make it a nice date spot, in my opinion.

As it turned out, I had actually been to 179 Bannatyne when it was an East Indian restaurant. The atmosphere is really lovely, with a classic look of exposed brick walls, dark red walls, and black chairs and booths. They boast "South American cuisine at the most reasonable prices" and suggest communal meals, sharing tapas and main dishes together. Looking at the menu, that sounded like a fabulous suggestion for dinner out with friends, but my Nana, mom, and I decided to do our own individual lunches.

Despite choosing this restaurant for their Ciao $10 lunch menu, only my mom ended up getting the Ciao special of Salpicoa , a traditional Brazilian chicken salad with chicken breast, fire roasted corn, hearts of palm, peas, shredded carrots, garlic, onions, mayo and bacon served with fresh house baked bread, tomato and greens. I'm not really a fan of "chicken salads" most of the time but my mom loved it. I can't speak much to it because shamefully, I didn't even taste it.

My Nana decided on the Bianco Mejillones (mussels). Served with cachaca, cilantro oil, lime, garlic butter, cream, and bread, it was a simple but delicious dish. I have to admit, I didn't taste her mussels either. They looked and smelled fantastic, but mussels are something I haven't conquered yet. The idea of them is a little too weird but my Nana loved them. She practically licked her plate clean, first eating every single mussel and then sopping up leftover sauce with her bread. For $12 a pound we thought they were priced very reasonably.

Finally, I decided on a nice Tapas dish of Grilled Ribeye Skewers served with 4 skewers, 3 small dishes of bacon and port buttered mushrooms, a roasted veggie and oil salsa (not listed on the menu), and carmelized onion and black pepper aioli with homemade potato chips. I go in and out of stages where I like red meat. Lately I've been into it but a few weeks ago we picked up some steaks that I was really looking forward to. They ended up being the toughest most tasteless steaks I've ever eaten. So when I saw the grilled ribeye skewers at Hermanos a few days later I wanted something that would fill my red meat void. Oh...my...god...they were exactly what I was looking for and cooked medium rare, just the way I like it. The mushrooms, roasted veggie mix, and aioli were all fantastic and the chips came out crispy and crunchy and fresh.

The only leftovers we came away with was a bit of my mom's dish she couldn't manage to finish. We all want to go back at some point, but I think both my mom and I want to experience the dinner menu with a larger group. I like that Hermanos also offers options for 2-3 people and has a fairly diverse menu. All in all, I'll definitely be making a stop here again. For the 3 of us, lunch ended up being just over $50, after drinks, tax, and tips.

Coming up soon: Fusion Grill, La Bomba, Lovey's, Sydney's

Sick Day Soups: Chickpea, Kidney Bean, Parsley Soup

2010-08-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

Here in Winnipeg there's a small local chain of restaurants called Stella's. Stella's could very well be my favourite place to grab a bite. They have a big menu but they do a Quiche of the Day and two soups and I almost always end up getting the soup and salad because they always sound delicious. I don't think I've ever been disappointed.

A couple of months ago they were featuring a chickpea parsley soup that was delicious but also seemed pretty re-creatable. Today I was having some bloodsugar issues which generally makes me feel pretty under-the-weather for the whole day. My appetite hasn't been great and I was really craving a quick, easy soup. I looked up a couple of recipes but none of them sounded right so I just winged it.

Chickpea Kidney Bean Parsley Soup

1 can chickpeas, drained
1 can kidney beans, drained
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 cups veggie broth
juice of half a lemon
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

In a medium pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Saute onions and garlic until soft. Add chickpeas, kidney beans, parsley, veggie broth, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for 20-30 minutes. Use a potato masher, food processor, or blender to mix depending on how thick you want the soup. I used a potato masher and it turned out nicely.

This was the perfect meal for a sick day. I know it's only August 10th and extremely hot and humid in Winnipeg, but this already feels kind of like a fall meal. Eeep! August is flying!

Back to Routine with a Classic: Potato Salad

2010-08-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm back! June and most of July were very stressful and very busy for me. Luckily from July 20th to August 3rd I was on vacation doing a road trip with Ryan and some friends from Winnipeg - Minneapolis - Chicago - Windsor -Toronto - various provincial campgrounds throughout HWY 17 in Northern Ontario. It was a well deserved break and we got to enjoy some great meals along the way too.

At Chino Latino's in Uptown in Minneapolis. Ryan making silly faces with the remnants of his enchilada.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Giordano's.

Turkey smokies, asparagus, and new potatoes over the campfire on the shores of Lake Superior.

Before our vacation, I had little time or desire to be in the kitchen but now that things have settled down and I'm back to work and my regular routine I've been feeling excited to get into the kitchen again. We got back into the city on July 31st and had a picnic to go to on August 2nd. Now, up until recently I have never liked potato salad. Last year I experimented with a vinaigrette potato salad and found it was alright. A few weeks ago Ryan's aunt made a really nice potato salad that was more along the lines of my taste though. And I recalled Jenn at The Whole Kitchen posting a few different potato salad recipes (which I stole some helpful hints from), so I took all of them into consideration and put together a pretty damn good potato salad. We picked up groceries at The Forks and they had local red potatoes too and fresh local dill and I got to work for the BBQ food. I've come to keeping a jar of the dressing in the fridge most of the time now and just boiling up a bunch of potatoes (whole) in advance to snack on this throughout the week.

A mid-afternoon snack of potato salad with pumkin seeds, honey almonds, gluten free crackers and Tall Grass Prairie Jam, local wild blueberries, green grapes, and cheese from Fenton's.

Mustard Dill Potato Salad

3lbs small red potatoes
1 cup celery, chopped
1/3-1/2 cup toasted sunflower seeds (or pumpkin seeds, or toasted hemp, etc)

Dressing

1/4 cup mayo
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped (or less if you aren't so dill inclined)
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 cup fresh chives, chopped
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
juice of half a lemon
2 1/2 tbsp grainy mustard (experimenting with others is tasty too but this is my favourite so far)
pepper to taste, I didn't find this needed salt

Put washed, whole potatoes in a large pot of cold water. Bring to a boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Then turn off heat and let potatoes sit fowhr 30 minutes for smaller potatoes, and 35-40 for larger sized ones. Drain, cool, and cut into bite sized pieces - I know some people remove the skins but I think they belong in the salad. Or alternatively, put whole potatoes in fridge and save for use later in the week. Cut up when you're ready to eat it.

Combine dressing ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Either use immediately or put in a container in the fridge for use later in the week. When ready to serve, toss chopped potatoes and celery together. Add dressing and toss - I find I sometimes have a little left over but I like a very light dressing. Before serving, sprinkle the sunflower (flax, hemp, pumpkin, etc) seeds over top. The crunchy seeds are really nice mixed in.

Hiatus

2010-07-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already guessed, I'll be taking (and have already) a few weeks off from blogging. June was insane in my personal life both mentally and physically and I'm away most of July and won't be in the kitchen much except while I'm preparing picnic and road trip snacks. I'll return in early August. I have a lot to post about. :)

F.O.O.D. Wednesday: Picnic and BBQ Season!

2010-06-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

I have to apologize for my frequent absences lately. I having been feeling great for the past few weeks and more than anything my exhaustion has been keeping me from cooking and blogging. I started seeing a Naturopathic doctor a few weeks ago and had some diagnostic testing done to try and get to the bottom of some of my health issues, including:

general fatigue and exhaustion
headaches 3-5 times a week (tension, migraine, or sinus)
getting physically sick if I get less than 7 hours of sleep 2 nights in a row
ongoing GI issues
needing about 9-11 hours of sleep a night to feel well rested
colds once every 2-3 weeks that last 24-48 hours
feeling so tired and/or sick that I need to take a day off every 2-3 weeks.

The diagnostic test told me I'm allergic to eggs (no surprise there, I get violently ill when I eat them alone but seem to be okay if they're in something else) and soy (this was a surprise). The test is actually pointing to a possible parasite which was really not what I was expecting. I'm seeing my GP on Monday for further testing and to hopefully get a real answer after almost 2 years of this.

But on to happier things. Today I picked up the last food box that we'll share with Shawna and her husband. Shawna will be away next week and then we'll all be away for most of July so there was no point in them continuing with the box. We'll actually only be getting 3 more small sized boxes ourselves. Come July 7th we'll be away for the Winnipeg Folk Festival and then on the 13th we'll be hitting the road for the West Coast. When we return we likely won't start getting the box again until November when the Farmer's Market closes.

Speaking of the Farmer's Market, Ryan and I went out to the opening day in St. Norbert. There wasn't much in the way of produce except for rhubarb, herbs, and lettuce but plenty of folks were selling their wares. Ryan's mom was kind enough to buy us a piece of creamed butter fudge, peanut butter and vanilla, from what I'm pretty sure was Graham's Groves. Oh...my...god...it was the best fudge I've ever had by miles. I'm hoping to make a quick stop in on Saturday and pick up some more and see what else looks good. Last year I'd wanted to get a piece of framed coloured glass but for some reason we didn't end up buying one - so we stopped by Three Wise Crafts: Rustic Charm and picked up some blue stained glass. We hung it in the middle of our living room windows. The owner of the kiosk, Nester Gylywoychuk, saw that I really liked a particular colour of glass but the frame was too large - he said he would look around to see what he could do about getting a smaller piece.

And of course, even though I haven't been cooking a lot, I have been cooking. Unfortunately it looks like it's going to be a wet summer - but the days where the rain has left us alone have been beautiful, sunny, and not too full of mosquito's yet. Today especially is beautiful, clear, and hot - but of course I'm working until 7pm. Tonight we'll be cooking up a top sirloin with some 'taters, salad, and maybe asparagus and green beans that came in today's Fresh Option Box.

But this tasty meal was from a week or two ago already. For Christmas my older brother and niece gave us a countertop grill and I love it. I cooked the home fries in the oven, left the husk on the corn, and cooked the bison burger from Frigs and the corn on the grill at the same time. The whole thing took less than 20 minutes and was a very tasty meal.

Here's hoping that I'll feel up to more regular posting in the next few weeks!

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen...I'll Leave

2010-06-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm working three evenings a week, dinner between Wed-Fri is usually something I've thrown together far in advance. It's so nice when I get to come home and have someone else do all the food-stuff for me. On Thursday I woke up early, got out of the house at 9AM and had some time to kill before I headed to the office.

More and more we're getting into the habit of really letting our food supply run down before we re-stock. I'm finding that we're throwing less away and using what's in our fridge and freezer faster. Things don't end up sitting there for months and for the most part, everything is still reasonably fresh. We ran out of meat products last week, except for some frozen salami, so I used my extra morning time to drive out to Frigs. $70 later our freezer and fridge are re-stocked with sirloin steak, bison burgers, elk smokies, sausages, bison jerky, a chicken, and pork tenderloin.

A lot of people I speak with aren't very familiar with pork tenderloin. I would say aside from pork buttons, it's the most common meat choice at our house. It has virtally no fat, is extremely tender, cooks relatively quickly, is really versatile, and tastes fantastic. After I picked up our meat and quickly stopped at home to put it away, I whipped up our favourite pork marinade and put it in a freezer bag with the tenderloin to marinade all day. When I got to work I emailed Ryan instructions on when and how to cook the meat, asparagus, and fried apples.

Ryan was busy in the kitchen when I arrived home at 7:30PM. I have a bad habit of trying to take over the kitchen when someone else is cooking in it. After I accidentally burned the fried apples and pears I excused myself, set the table, and let Ryan finish up. The burned apples were rescued and turned out fine, the meat was perfect, the asparagus was nicely roasted and a bit crispy (my favourite!) and he even looked up how make mashed potatoes, so we had some very satisfying mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.

F.O.O.D. Wednesday: Easy Stir Fry

2010-05-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

Ah, Wednesday. Every Wednesday morning I drop Ryan off at work and then zip over to Fresh Option to pick up our box. This week we got a nice, typical mix of food. Y'know, the usual stuff - carrots, broccoli, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.

Getting all our produce at once means we have to be strategic with how we use and store it. We've had a lot of problems with veggies going mushy or soft and rubbery in the fridge. I've read this is because too much moisture escapes from the food. I've also seen a lot of different solutions to try and combat this problem and we settled on trying tin foil. I'd actually never heard of storing produce in tin foil but countless sites on the 'net told me it was the way to go.

And it's true! We started doing this not too long after we signed up with Fresh Option and it still surprises me how long it makes food last. Last Wednesday we got a container of spinach. I love spinach but we didn't get a chance to use much of it over the week. By last Thursday it was already starting to turn, only a day after picking it up. My mom's solution to this problem used to be lining the containers with paper towel. I however, washed up all the spinach, rinsed it off, and wrapped it tightly in some tin foil. Even if there's moisture on the leaves, they somehow take forever to turn. I checked to make sure the spinach was still usable this morning and it looks as fresh as it did a week ago. So if you're having issues with your produce going bad too quickly, try using some tin foil and see how it goes.

Speaking of tin foil, I was keeping some carrots, bok coy, and peppers wrapped up and decided to get rid of the leftovers last night. It was a tasty endeavour.

Easy Stir Fry

1/2 head broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup snow peas, cut in 1/2 or thirds
1/2 cup shredded red cabbage
1 bunch bok choy, stocks julienned, leaves sliced thinly
1/4 cup sliced water chestnuts
1 small onion, sliced thickly
2 carrots, chopped or julienned
1 green pepper, thickly sliced
1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced
1/2-1/4 soya sauce, gluten free
2 tbsp oyster sauce, gluten free
2 tbsp peanut oil
optional meat, tofu, fish, etc - I used the last of our leftover beef roast

In a wok or large frying pan heat your oil to about medium. If using meat, add now. If raw, cook fully before adding veggies. I used leftovers so I just heated the meat for a minute or two. Add garlic and onion, sauteing until the onions start to turn translucent. Add soy sauce and oyster sauce and stir. Add the rest of your veggies and stir well. Once well coated, turn the heat down to simmer and cover for 10 minutes. In the meantime, whip up some rice or quinoa, serve the stir fry on top and enjoy!

This was a really easy, basic thing I threw together yesterday but Ryan really loved it. I wasn't even planning to post the recipe but I figured it was so easy and maybe someone out there needs an easy stir fry recipe.

Tonight I'm looking forward to stopping off at The Forks to pick up some sun dried and kalamata olives as well as some feta cheese from Fenton's. We still have leftover spinach from last week and I picked up some lettuce so I'm thinking about a nice greek salad with grilled chicken breast. We also got strawberries again this week! Last time the strawberries tasted amazing. Maybe I'll pick up some whipping cream and we can just have strawberries and whipped cream for dessert.

I also STILL haven't figured out gardening stuff either. I let it slip by the wayside and now it's THE long weekend - I mean the one where everyone plants their gardens. I could have done it weeks ago but that's what happens when you procrastinate. I'll have an update soon though!

F.O.O.D. Wednesdays

2010-05-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Now that my routine is getting more normal I had some time over the weekend to do some cooking. I've been fairly busy in the kitchen and feeling more inspired again. In the last week I've:

broken down a chicken, and froze all but one breast that we ate last week

made 18 cups of chicken stock that I've been freezing, giving away, and using too

made the new salsa

used 6 or 7 cups of stock to make my lemon rice soup

made pancakes

and last night cooked a standing prime rib roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, salad, and fiddleheads

I don't know about everywhere else, but Winnipeg has had some not-so-great weather for the last week or two. All the rain has made everything beautifully green and trees are flowering but it's so hard to motivate yourself to do anything when it's so gray out. I spent most of my time running around between work and my volunteer position and then coming home and crashing in front of the TV watching episodes of The Wire, 30 Rock, and Weeds. Very productive. But the weekend is supposed to lovely! It's supposed to be +14 today and they're hoping for mid-twenties by Sunday. There's something about the shining sun that just motivates me. I even went for a run yesterday after a much-too-long-hiatus.

I've also, again, been eating out a lot more. Since I'm realizing that I'm quite a busy person I've been trying to make more lunch or dinner dates. On Monday I took my mom out to Viva, our very favourite Vietnamese restaurant that I know I've mentioned. I think I've been there once a month since November. They have the best spring rolls I've ever had. We don't like to deal with the crowds on Mother's Day so I saw her on Saturday and took her out on Monday and we spent the afternoon hanging out and shopping together. Yesterday my friend Aimee came and picked me up from work to eat at Mondragon. I can't get enough of that Southern Fried Tofu sandwich, gluten-free of course.

Tonight we're going to enjoy some leftover hot roast beef sandwiches and maybe a spinach salad. Between the leftover produce from last week, and the goodies we I picked up today I'm thinking a nice stir fry needs to be cooked up. We've got bok choy, snow peas, broccoli, beef, broccoli sprouts, peppers, carrots, and celery.

Drive By Post: Avocado Olive Tomato Salsa

2010-05-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

I love making salsa. It's so easy and you can throw pretty much anything in there and come out with a tasty dip. We recently enjoyed some taco's so I whipped up some salsa in my food processor. Besides salsa, I also love olives. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of putting olives in my salsa but mmmmm....this is probably the best salsa I've made. I always like to keep a variety of olives on hand and the taste of all of them mixed together was delicious. I seem to have a sensitivity to tomatoes so I cut the down where ever I can.

Avocado Olive Tomato Salsa

1 avacado
3 small fresh or canned roma tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped onion
6 kalamata olives
6 black olives
6 sun dried olives
2 chopped basil leaves, fresh
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Put all ingredients in food processor or blender and mix. Adjust seasoning to taste, serve with chips, veggies, taco's, whatever, and enjoy!

Taco's are one of my favourite ways to use up leftover veggies. I used red chard leaves instead of lettuce and fried the chard stock with the ground beef/pork to hide it in as well. We don't buy sour cream very often because it just ends up going bad so plain yogurt works as a nice substitute too.

Things should actually be leveling out in my life in the next week or two. I started my new job and my work and volunteering schedules have finally normalized. Yay! I'm hoping that means I can get into the kitchen more because I feel like my life has been way too much work, a little too much rest, and not nearly enough play.

I'm excited for dinner tomorrow. Standing rib roast, fresh salad, and fiddleheads! I love fiddleheads, they were a surprise this week. I apologize to Shawna and Dylan because I was greedy and took them all, but I gave them extra fruit and veggies!

F.O.O.D. Wednesdays: Life is BUSY

2010-04-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Here we again, another Wednesday. And look, I'm actually posting F.O.O.D. Wednesday on a Wednesday! Aren't you impressed? I realized I don't really have a theme for my weekly wednesday post. I figured I would have more to see about our weekly veggie pick up, but Wednesdays are another day that I don't often end up cooking. For now, I'm going to treat it as a way to spread some news about some interesting food related articles or newsbites I've come across. I've got some good ones for today.

I have been very lazy in the kitchen lately. It's been a busy week with Heather, one of my bestest friends, visiting and with Ryan and I buying a new car. Mostly we've been living on leftovers, junk food, eating out, my mom's food, or quinoa cooked up in a variety of ways. It's pretty atypical of my food habits but it's been fun.

Speaking of eating out, check out the word about Winnipeg's newest burger joint. They're called Boon (located where Common Ground formerly was on Maryland). Not only are they a vegetarian burger joint that will serve 8-10 themed burgers, but they're going to be gluten free (still unsure if that means all their food will be gluten free or if the patties will be gluten free and they'll have the option of gluten free buns)! It's supposed to be up and running in June and I'm really excited to try it out. It's within walking or biking distance and is just the kind of thing I've been craving. I didn't eat fast food very often before I went gluten free so it wasn't a big deal to give it up, but in the summer it's nice to at least have the option of going out and getting a burger and fries from "fast food" type diner and not have to worry about my health.

Here's another interesting link to the Chickens for Winnipeggers group on Facebook. The group appeared in an oddly timely manner since urban chickens are something I've been thinking about a lot more. It's not a possibility now, seeing as how we live in an apartment with no balcony and we also like being lazy in our mid-twenties. But this is something I could see myself doing in the future. Even though my naturopath recently told me she strongly suspects I have an egg allergy (I really hope I don't, I love scrambled eggs!) I think it would be a great endeavour.

Finally, you might be wanting an update on my garden. I have yet to make a move on actually starting it because I got stuck on the logistics of it. I'm confused about what method I should try to use since we get no direct sunlight. Right now I'm thinking of a mix between herbs that don't need much light in the windows, a very small basic window farm, and some shelves and artificial lighting for some easy veggies. I didn't really know where to turn though to get the kind of help or information I want. But then I took the bus last week and less than a 10 minute walk from our apartment is an indoor gardening place! So I plan to stop in there by the end of the week and get some advice. I just need some direction from someone more experienced. I think this little project is going to cost me a few dollars but to be able to grow some of our own food, totally worth it.

A Visual of Riverside

2010-04-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

For a few weeks now I've been wanting to show off my workspace and kitchen but I've just been too unmotivated to tidy up the increasing clutter on the kitchen table and make sure all the dishes are away and there's no mess. But the longer sunny days have been making me want to do something more with my time for a while. So finally I dragged out my old Nikon D40 and got to work.

Behold the kitchen as a whole! It's a long galley style kitchen but the odd lack of counter space and old fashioned sink make it appear we have more room than we do. It's the worst when Ryan and I are both stuck in that space between the counter and the stove. But since I'm usually the only one in the room and we're both on the dishes pretty quickly the counter size doesn't really phase me too much.

Check out this sink. I have to scrub it with Comet Bleach about twice a week because it stains really badly. It looks lovely when it's all clean and sparkly. We both appreciate that room for the dish rack is right on the sink and isn't really stealing any extra counter space.

Here is the multipurpose shelf. This actually acts as a pretty decent counter when we need it. In fact, so does the radiator so long as you put one of the big cutting boards on it. I brought this shelf from my room at home and it worked out really well in the kitchen. We have a ridiculous amount of appliances all over the kitchen and I have to use a separate gluten free toaster from Ryan so mine is the white one.

One "breakfast nook" or whatever you want to call it. I bought this table when I was still living at home and dying to make my room feel less bedroomy and more let's-pretend-I-don't-still-live-at-home. It's a great little bar table with four stools and we actually eat breakfast there fairly often in the morning, listening to good ole' CBC. I'm actually surprised I haven't talked about CBC more often. Ryan is a total CBC Radio 1 convert. We listen to it all the time, in the car - me more than him, but still. He'll turn it on when I'm not even around now.

Out compost corner. My mom kept one of these containers under her kitchen sink but I didn't think it would fit in our windows. I picked one up anyway and it fits just perfect. It doesn't give off a smell really and it keeps thing tidy. When the bag is full I just wrap it up and stick it in the other windowsill until I can drop it off at my folks place.

We live in a building that was built in 1931 so we even have an ice chest. But we use it as the pantry for snacks and potatoes and onions and oils.

And lastly, my funky new mixing bowls. I love these things. The 3 largest sizes have nice grips on the bottom so I can finally use my hand mixer without the bowl going crazy.

That's it for now. Ryan and I were busy buying a new car this weekend!

F.O.O.D. Wednesdays - A Day Late

2010-04-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

Once again, I'm late on my FOOD Wednesday post. I usually pick up our produce box first thing in the morning but yesterday was an unusual work day so Ryan picked it up before he went to work and I didn't even get to see the box until around 10 last night.

I'm really impressed with how the Fresh Option folks seem to spread out their boxes each week. What I mean is, one week we'll often have a lot of big bulky veggies that I often don't get to use within a week - last week we had swiss chard, 1/2 purple cabbage, broccoli, potatoes, etc. If I have a busy week it's a lot more difficult to use up those ingredients, especially because the chard is more like two veggies (the stalk and the leaves). But those big bulky boxes are usually spaced out well. This week we got more broccoli and a carrot and some smaller root veggies which last longer and are often easier to use. We also got basil! Beautiful, beautiful basil! Basil is probably one of my most favourite herbs to use. It goes with so many different types of foods, it makes amazing dressings, and tastes surprisingly nice on fresh fruit (by the way, fruit is never an issue with the fresh option box because who doesn't love fresh fruit?! We get a good amount of bananas, apples, oranges, pears, grapefruits, mango's, kiwi's, and lemons usually).

I've mentioned before that the Fresh Option box is good because it forces me to cook and eat foods I might not consider buying. There are some foods I've learned I'm just not crazy about and some I've learned I might not be crazy about but I can hide them pretty well in a lot of other foods. I have yet to find a recipe I like that really features swiss chard. It's often used as an add-in but never gets to be the main attraction. I've been searching through blogs to find something that will stand out.

But last night I went for the good ole' "hide it" option. Taco's are pretty common in our home. They're quick, easy, and deeeeelicious. I cooked up some ground beef/pork from frigs and chopped up 6 or 7 stalks of swiss chard. I pulled the leaves off and cleaned them for later use. After the meat was cooked through I added the chard, some taco salt, and let it simmer together for 15-20 minutes while I got my cheese, olives, yogurt (we were out of sour cream), and cabbage (we were also out of lettuce). The 'hidden' chard was surprisingly delicious. It gave the taco's a bit more of an earthy flavour but it didn't overpower the other tastes going on. The cabbage was pretty tasty too. I didn't take a picture because I was ravenously hungry by the time I ate this, but the purple cabbage made it look very pretty.

Last week we also got some really nice fresh dill in the box. I had meant to use it in the mashed potatoes I made last weekend but I forgot we even had it. It was in the same package as the chard, so I decided to break out the dehydrator again. I'm very happy to say, we're had the dehydrator for less than a week and I've already used it twice. I spread the dill out on the trays and popped it in at 115F. In about 4 hours I had a nice jar full of dried dill, kept separate from the store bought stuff because it's more special.

Food Dehydrator

2010-04-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

My Excalibur 2500 food dehydrator arrived last week! I had been considering going with a larger model but I'm glad I didn't because it is big. I found a spot for it on top of our fridge yesterday (we only have three 3-pronged plugs in our apartment despite having 4 rooms with plugs). It was delivered to my folks place and I picked it up on Friday. Now, I spent a good amount of cash on this thing so I intend to get my money's worth out of it. As it turns out, I had a lot of free time yesterday.

On March 31st we returned our cable box so we could cancel our cable but when I got home we still had cable in the spare room. We just decided to wait it out and see if got charged for it. I guess our company turns it off mid-month. On Thursday we had cable before I left for work and when I got home it had been disconnected...except for the weather channel, Discovery, and CNN...weird.

Anyway, now that we really have no TV, except for what's downloaded, I have a bit more free time to fill. Yesterday I went on a cleaning frenzy around the apartment; folding laundry, separating laundry, cleaning the bathroom, sweeping the floors, preparing dinner, re-organizing the kitchen, and trying out a dehydrator recipe.

I did a bit of research online and it seemed like fruit leather would be the easiest thing to try out first. I through a couple of cups of frozen berries and 2.5 bananas in my blender with a tbsp or two of honey and pureed. And that was it. The dehydrator comes with special sheets to make things like fruit leather on so I poured it onto the sheet and spread around. I could tell I had spread it a little thinly, but since it was my first time dehydrating ever, I was pretty pleased with it.

The National Centre for Home Food Preservation (recommended by Well Preserved - Thanks!) told me it would take anywhere from 6-8 hours to dehydrate but the book that came with it said 4-6. I just decided to check it every hour and ended up right at the 6 hour mark. The leather came out great. It's nice and tangy and a lot more tart than something like a Fruit-to-Go. I rolled it up in plastic wrap and have it in the fridge and it'll be a tasty snack all week.

I was actually really impressed with how easy the dehydrator was to use. I read the whole instruction booklet and then read up on the NCHFP and felt pretty confident. I had advice on how to position the door and how to make sure everything with situated in the right place. It was easy to check in and see how the food was doing and the fan wasn't too loud. The temperature control is a really nice feature and I'm glad I didn't go with a cheaper model.

So, that's the first experimentation with the dehydrator. Over the next week I'll probably be trying out some different types of leathers and I'm hoping to do a jerky. I'm not sure what kind of fruit or veggies we'll end up drying yet. We don't have too much extra to work with this week, but The Forks Market sells food that's teetering on being unusable in big bulk bags for 1 or 2 dollars. I'm going to keep my eyes open for the type of food they have. Last week they had cheap, slightly over-ripe strawberries, which would have been great for a leather. Hopefully I can get use out of my machine at least once a week. I'll keep you posted!

*I know, I didn't post a F.O.O.D. Wednesday post this week. I had plans Wednesday night and completely forgot to take a picture of our box. Oops! As consolation, here's last night's dinner made with some of our box items (kale, chard, onion, garlic, sweet potatoes, potatoes) and ribs from Frigs (recipe from Great Tastes of Manitoba - but it was a bit bland - BBQ sauce is my own).

The Downside of Baking

2010-04-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

Monday was one of those days that just flew by. I started work at 8, worked until around 1 and then took a break for an hour and a half and biked to the library to check out a gardening book, and then went back to work till 5. By the time I finished work I was starving. Ryan and I were both home yesterday evening so I asked him to start dinner while I was finishing work.

A lot of the time it's just me by myself in the kitchen. I like cooking alone. A lot of times I don't even think to turn on the radio. I find cooking and washing dishes almost meditative. I like keeping my hands and brain occupied. But sometimes that can get boring or lonely. It was a nice change to be cooking in the kitchen together.

We went with a very summery meal yesterday. Last week at Frigs we picked up some bison burgers. I'd been craving one all weekend and yesterday we took out our tiny countertop grill - which really is tiny, it fit two patties exactly and that was it. I love those grills. We have a giant one that my older brother and niece got us, and this mini one that my folks got us. We just pre-heated for 5 minutes and then the burgers were both cooked in less than 15 minutes from frozen.

When I got home Ryan had already taken care of the oven fries and we tossed them in for 30 minutes. Earlier in the day I'd made up a batch of naked quinoa so I grabbed that out of the fridge, threw in the snap peas we'd gotten with our Fresh Option box this week, and added some balsamic dressing, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, paprika, and feta cheese. Mmmm....simple, but delicious.

While I made up the couscous, Ryan got all the condiments and cut up some cheese, kale, onions, etc for his burger. We had no buns so he had his on toast but I just had mine naked. Yum yum yum, this was a really satisfying meal and is making me look forward more and more to summer. There are a lot of BBQ pits in little parks dotted all around this area of the city so I'm looking forward to the day when it's warm enough that we can grab a frisbee, my hammock chair, some friends, and good eats on a lazy, sunny, afternoon.

You may have noticed this entry is called the downside of baking. After dinner Ryan and I both felt like something sweet but our home is empty of junk food. So I walked into the kitchen and thought "...butter and sugar...that's about all I have....what can I make with butter and sugar?" Naturally I turned to Four Chickens blog.

I scoured through some recipes before settling on gluten free donuts! You'll have to go to her blog to get the recipe, but these were faaaaantastic. And surprisingly easy. I took out all the ingredients, threw them into a bowl, mixed, added flour, mixed, and then refrigerated. Once the dough was cooled I heated some oil and got to work shaping the donuts. Jeanne recommends using cutters to make your donut shapes but I found this didn't really work well. Instead I opted to pull off a chunk of dough, roll it into a thick, but not too thick, snake, and then mold it into a small mini-donut ring. I molded them and then, very smartly otherwise we might have eaten them all, stuck 8 mini donuts in the freezer. Then you carefully place them in the hot oil and watch over as they cook. I mixed some brown sugar and cinnamon and sprinkled it on top of the finished donuts. I think these will be making frequent appearances in our kitchen.

Back to our Roots

2010-04-11T22:06:00.000-07:00

I've referred to my very favourite cookbook a number of times here. I would actually probably call this more of a lifestyle book as opposed to a cookbook. I discovered Nourishing Traditions through an online friend. At first glance, it looks a little far out and accusatory and is sub-titled "The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and Diet Dictocrats". That being said, this book contains a wealth of knowledge.

The first part is laid out more like a textbook than a cookbook with each section separated into fats, proteins, minerals, enzymes, etc and goes into depth explaining how each works in your body. This was really valuable to me. I don't like to prescribe to anything without first understanding it. This book broke down how my own body works in such an easy to follow way. I can understand a lot of the metabolic processes that are happening and that gives me a lot more power over my own health. Sometimes Ryan will ask me a question about the difference between certain fats or why coconut oil is good for you or any odd thing and I'll whip out the book and look it up.

The second half of the book is laid out by main ingredient more than anything. It starts out with basics; real basics like butter, kefir, cream cheese, etc. She has a whole chapter on laco-fermented foods and their health benefits. Later it moves on to different kinds of meats, including fish, game meats, poultry, ground meat, plus more and then vegetables. The vegetable section is often really helpful when we get our Fresh Option box each week. If there's something new I'll flip to the vegetable's section and see if there are any good recipes. Another thing I love about this book is that the sidebar will explain interesting facts and nutritional information about the food featured in the recipes.

This book also talks a bit about how the grains we're encouraged to eat today are worlds away from the grains we were eating hundreds of years ago. I think this is something really important to remember when we're talking about the prevalence of certain diseases, like celiac. The grains we eat today are grown so differently and are processed in such a totally different way you can hardly make a comparison between them and the ones humans ate in the past. There's a chapter on properly soaking grains and some different recipes to use them in. Following that, there's a chapter on baking with alternative grains. I haven't had much of an opportunity to try these recipes out yet but I've heard good things from online communities. There's even a legumes section that also talks about how to properly prepare beans by soaking them too.

All in all, there are so many different sections in this book I'm still making my way through most of them. There are 12 chapters, each containing a number of sections within each chapter. The recipes are usually fantastic, creative, and there's extra facts given in the sidebars. It's got an index for information and a separate one for recipes and a huge resource section in the back. If you're interested in a cookbook like this, I would suggest checking out this website, the Weston A. Price Foundation, which the author of the book runs.

There are so many reasons I use this book (right down to a measurement conversion chart in the back), it's such an amazing wealth of information. Do you have a cookbook bible that you turn to again and again? Share your secrets!

F.O.O.D. Wednesday: Spring is in the Air

2010-04-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

In an effort to make sure I'm posting a little more regularly, since I have more free time now, I decided I would try and make at least one theme post day a week. Wednesday seemed like a logical choice because it's when we pick up our weekly F.O.O.D. box. I even started this post on Monday to make sure I would be good this week and get it out on Wednesday, but then I had some extra evening training and volunteer shifts this week so once again it got pushed back a bit. Better late than never!

Since we've now been using Fresh Option for a few months I think now is a good time for a bit of a review of how it's gone. Overall, we're really happy with it. We know we're paying a little bit more for our food but we also know we can afford the slightly extra expense to know exactly where our food is coming from and sometimes even who it's coming from. It also gives us an opportunity to really get to explore cooking new and different kinds of foods we wouldn't have picked up before. I don't think I ever would have bought eggplant or leeks. Even though I've discovered and I don't think I like eggplant on it's own, it's great in spaghetti sauce. And I managed to throw together a pretty tasty leek soup a couple of weeks back.

This week I'm excited to see Kale again. I think we've only had it once so far but I felt like I didn't play around with it enough. My mom makes this delicious dish she's altered many times using a bit of a cream sauce, sometimes mushroom soup, quinoa, and spinach leaves that she bakes like a casserole. I had some leftovers I wanted to try and get rid of today so I came up with a similar type of dish. I had about two cups of risotto, some quinoa, carrots, radishes, garlic, and kale and mixed that all together. I put a bunch of torn up kale on top and then added a bit of a creamy roux I'd created (with Ryan's help) and baked it for 15-20 minutes. It was pretty tasty. I broiled it at the end to give the kale on tip a bit of crispyness. It was a rich dish so we just had pork buttons and fried apples and pears. Mmmm...we love pork buttons in this house.

I feel very privileged to have the time, money, and enthusiasm to get back to knowing where exactly my food is coming from. We already know that once the farmer's market is in full swing we won't be using Fresh Option but even though next fall Shawna and Dylan will be off living their lives in Leeds, UK we'll probably still get the smaller sized Fresh Option box (unless we find someone who wants to split the medium, which reduces the cost by about $10 for 4 people).

It's been a good eye opener to start paying more attention to where all our foods are coming from. I don't know if Ryan really has any idea what he's in for. I have a lot of exciting idea's that I'll finally get to try out in the coming months and I'm hoping that we can continue our journey on the more sustainable, local, organic and homemade food products. My dehydrator should be here any day now!

Windowsill Gardening and Cadbury Cream Eggs

2010-04-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

Now that the weather has turned and the snow is gone I'm thinking more and more about gardening. Determined not to let our lack of balcony or outdoor space deter me, I had already been planning to use our huge windowsills. Our building was built in 1931 and if the windows aren't original they must be pretty damn close. There are three panes of movable windows on a sash/pulley system but we only leave the inside window closed and there's a screen on the outside - which means we have about 6-8 inches of big wide windowsills that can fit a decent sized window box, planter, or container - we keep our compost box in one of the kitchen windowsills already. We also have multiples windows in almost every room which gives us...9 windowsills total to work with.

After doing some research I'm pretty excited to get started on this project. We have windows on two sides of our building but unfortunately one set faces east and one north, giving us no direct sunlight. It actually gets pretty bright during the day but not enough for most plants to grow. I'm planning to head down to Sage Garden Herbs to have a look at some artificial lights and get some advice on the best plants to try out. Sage Garden Herbs happens to have a great article about indoor gardening that answered a lot of my questions.

At this point I'm not sure exactly what I want to grow. I know I'm going to do a variety of herbs and also salad greens but I'd like to try some more challenging things as well. I know I'll have to experiment to see what works but I came across a great resource that I'm hoping to pick up at the library or bookstore (depending on how much I look the book when I actually get my hands on it). McGee and Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruit, and Edible Flowers has great reviews and a few mentions around the blogsphere. According to the reviews and product info, this book has some really in depth info about all kinds of produce and the best growing conditions for each. I love books that are full of information so I'm hoping it lives up to my expectations.

I have so many toys that I want to buy right now. Spring is a good season for inspiration. After researching dehydrators for a while I finally decided on a model and purchased it online. I went for the Excalibur 2500 model - this brand had the best reviews on the web and I found a Canadian retailer that offered free shipping and got a decent deal. It's supposed to arrive pretty quickly so I'm excited to get to play around with it. I already have some neat ideas collected from different blogs. I'm looking forward to making some posts about it. I have to admit I'm really excited at the prospect of making my own jerky. Now that I'm gluten free it can be hard to find jerky that uses a wheat free soya or teryaki sauce.

Speaking of other new toys, my new food procesor should be arriving any day. I talked to my mom who said that as far as she knows the compay is just going to give me a new one. Woo! It was my fault I broke it but their fault for selling us a product that you can't replace because "it's only sold in Canada". The new model they're sending me is going to be replaceable if need be, although I'm hoping I can make it last more than 6 months this time.

Either than getting excited about things I could buy and things that are heading my way in the mail, I haven't really been doing all that much cooking...except for one Easter treat that I kind of regret discovering because they're so easy. A couple of weeks ago I was craving a Cadbury's Cream Egg, as I do because I love them. But I didn't feel like going to buy one so I googled "cadbuy cream egg recipe" and came across some idea's. I ended up basically using this recipe but with a few changes. I mean, you can't make these things without using Cadbury's chocolate - that's the best part! I halved the original recipe too because I got about 20 smaller eggs out of it. I found that if you did the eggs too big they were just too much cream and not enough chocolate.

Homemade Cadbury Cream Eggs

1/8 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1-1 1/2 cup icing sugar, to your taste
2 milk chocolate cadbury chocolate bars
1 dark chocoalte cadbury chocolate bar

Mix together butter, honey, vanilla, salt, and sugar. I found this was easier to do by hand. I went by how it felt to get to a proper consistancy. Not too runny but not too stiff (the worst thing ever is to get a cream egg from the store only to find that the chocolate has a hole in it and the gooey part has gone all hard).

Take the mixture and put it in the fridge for 1-2 hours or freezer for 30-60 minutes if you're in a hurry (like I was). Take the mixture out and shape it into little eggs and spread on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Once they're all shaped, pop them back into the fridge or freezer for the same amount of time as before.

At this point, you can start melting your chocolate in a bowl. I use a metal bowl inside a small pot with boiling water so the chocolate doesn't burn. Once the chocolate is melted and the eggs are well formed, take a spoon or two and drop each egg in the chocolate making sure it's well covered. I used the spoons to let the egg roll off back onto the cookie sheet. Once you've coated all the eggs return to the freezer for another 30-60 minutes. Re-melt your chocolate and re-coat every egg up to 3 times. I only did this twice and found that it was enough. Return the eggs for the fridge or freezer for at least 1-2 hours to properly set. Then enjoy your eggs!

*If you're feeling less lazy than I was you can also be creative and make a yellow yolk as described in this recipe. I just didn't feel like it was worth it and everyone at the potluck I brought these to thought they tasted awesome without.

Mishaps in the Kitchen

2010-03-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

About two months ago my food processor that my parents gave me for my birthday in October suffered it's demise. The actual motor was fine but human error did the bowl in. I was making something on the stove and turned on the wrong element. This happened on the day I made a whole bunch of stuff including the hazelnut spread and hummus. For some reason I had the processor on the stove and put it down on an element thinking it was off. When I lifted the bowl up the bottom stuck to the hot element and long, glue-gun like pieces of plastic stuck from the element to the bowl. I had melted off all the plastic catches on the bottom and there was no way it would fit back onto the base.

Since it was less than 6 months old I called the company to order a replacement bowl. This is where it got a little weird. They told me to call the local supplier in Winnipeg (just a few blocks away as luck would have it). So I called and explained and the man who answered said he would have to call me back. A couple of hours later I got a call from a somewhat bewildered sounding fellow. He said, in a kind of disbelieving tone, that because this particular food processor model was made only for Canada (it was purchased in a special set from Costco) they couldn't replace it. Weird. I told my mom was happened and she was not satisfied - being the purchaser of the processor - so she talked to Costco, then the processor company, and then they finally put her back in touch with the Winnipeg supplier too. They thought it was completely bizarre and have never been told they couldn't replace something because it was "only made for Canada" so they made a few more phone calls.

Anyway, long story short, the supplier was very helpful and because my mom is very neat and tidy with her receipts, I was able to bring in the whole food processor with receipt and they're going to send me a replacement. No one mentioned how much this is going to cost...I never expected anything for free, I just wanted to buy my new bowl and be on my way. The man at the supplier said that the company is replacing it and he'll call me when it's in - I'm hoping maybe everyone forgot it was my own damn fault and they'll only charge me for shipping or something like that.

But the point of the story is, that I haven't wanted to make certain recipes without my trusty food processor. I brought it in on Tuesday so I'm hoping the shiny new one will be in within the next two weeks.

My other recent kitchen mishap was on Thursday night. I had seen an interesting recipe by Alton Brown to make "pasta" with eggplant. I never know what to do with eggplant when we get it in the box. I think I have to face the fact that I just don't like eggplant, except mixed in with spaghetti sauce or something. I decided to try this out though, by modifying things. In the end the dish consisted of eggplant and zucchini "noodles", roasted cauliflower, red chard stock, green onion, carrot, spices, and goat yogurt. The taste was...not good. I didn't want to waste all those veggies though so when I went to bed on Thursday night I was thinking of creative ways to save it. SOUP! I had two leeks in the fridge and since I've never cooked leeks before a cream of leek and veggie soup sounded good.

So Friday morning I chopped up the two leeks, a potato, and grabbed the rest of the veggies from my "pasta" mistake and combined them with four cups of fresh chicken stock I'd made last week. My plan at this point was to make a roux but we were out of milk, so I put the pot of soup on a low simmer and ran out to take care of some grocery shopping - this was around 12. I didn't get back to the soup until around 4. In three batches I blended the soup in the blender to make it smoother. I finally made a roux with 5 tbsp of butter, 5 tbsp flour, and 3 cups of milk. Just before adding it to the soup I tasted the soup and prayed the roux would fix things. It needed a little more bite so I added old cheddar and Olde English Cheese. I threw in a bit more salt and pepper and let it sit for a few minutes and they came back to taste it. It was amazing, just the right mix of veggies, not too thick, not too much cheese. It all came together beautifully.

I don't have a recipe for this soup because it was a save but check out everything that ended up going into it veggie-wise (plus homemade butter, stock, and GF flour, milk, and spices):

1/2 eggplant
1 zucchini
1 carrot
1/2 head cauliflower
1 green onion
5 red chard stocks
2 leeks
1 potato
4 radishes
1/4 of a red pepper
1/4 of a yellow pepper

I would not have been happy if I had to throw all of that out. Instead we have a lot of soup. I threw some in a large container and put it in the fridge and took 3 single serving size tupperware containers and put it in the freezer. This is great for lunch at work on days when I don't have time to grab anything else. You just let it defrost through the morning and microwave it when you're ready to eat it.

The moral of this post is that even mishaps can turn into new food processors and delicious soups if you put in the effort. :D

Now that my training is complete I have lots of new post ideas and I'm hoping to make a much more regular appearance from now on. The gardening season is approaching!

Mittens keeps a lookout for bugs...perhaps so she can snack.

Quinoa

2010-03-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

I know. I'm long overdue for a new post. The good news is my busy month is almost finished. I've been doing a regular work week plus Saturday counselling training from 9-5 for the last two Saturdays. Home cooked meals worthy of posting have been few and far between.

The weather in Winnipeg has been phenomenal. It dipped a little cooler on Friday and Saturday but yesterday it started warming up again. Ryan and I took a long walk all afternoon along the waterfront and then stopped at The Forks to pick up some local honey, some sun-dried olives, and pork buttons - oh right, and some delicious fudge. We haven't had time to go to Frigs during the week so The Forks market is the next best (and closest!) thing. I had lots of choices for veggies because we got some great items in the box this week and we doubled our oranges, bananas and apples and it turned out to be the perfect amount.

As soon as we walked in the door after our day out I was ready to get started. We were both starving. I made a quick rub for the pork buttons and popped them in the oven at 350 and put the timer on for 40 minutes. While they started to cook I got the side dishes ready. I ended up roasting a bunch of veggies, sticking them in the oven on a staggered time-line so everything would be finished at once. My parents had me over for a turkey dinner on Friday and my mom gave me all the cranberry sauce. We had one granny smith apple left so I fried up the apple and tossed in the cranberry sauce to go with the pork. It was very tasty.

All day long I had this great idea for a side dish that would also get rid of a few pesky leftovers. Luckily, it turned out delicious. It was another pantry raid recipe but I would make it again the very same way.

Roasted Veggie Quinoa

3-5 red chard stalks, leaves and chard separated - stalks chopped into 1 inch pieces
1/4 of a butternut squash, cubed with rind cut off
8-10 asparagus spears, chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 garlic clove
3 green onions, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 pinch nutmeg
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup feta or goat cheese
1/2 can of chickpeas (or more if you like chickpeas)

Preheat oven to 375. Take your chopped chard, squash, asparagus, green onions, and garlic and mix in a bowl with olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, chili powder, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Mix well and ensure all veggies are well coated. On a baking sheet place only the squash and put in the oven for 30-35 minutes. When 15-20 minutes remain add remaining ingredients and roast together.

While your veggies roast, take 1 cup of water and 1/2 cup of quinoa and bring to a boil. Let simmer for 15 minutes until the liquid has been absorbed. Remove from heat, fluff with a fork and add set aside red chard leaves torn up into bite size pieces. Mix around and let sit 5 minutes.

When roasted veggies are finished, combine in a large bowl with the quinoa and chard leaves and add the chickpeas. Add 1/4 cup of crumbled feta cheese and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and mix well.

The last two weeks also gave me some great veggies to use for chicken stock. I tossed in cabbage, celery, squash, onions, garlic, green onions. When Ryan and I walked in from work yesterday after it had been on the stove all day it smelled like delicious chicken soup. I'm going to have to make some tasty in the next couple of days.

Ode to Potatoes

2010-03-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

I knew March was going to be a busy month and it definitely has been. I usually do most of my cooking between Thursday and Sunday because I'm busy all day and evening during the week. But I haven't really had much time. On Saturday I had a soccer game in the evening, on Sunday I went out for my Nana's 92nd birthday, on Monday I had my training course, and on Tuesday I had soccer again. So we have surplus veggies again, but I'll get through them. I picked up our F.O.O.D. Box today and because I've been so busy I didn't have time look online ahead of time to see what we were getting. Because it's so nice out I was able to leave it in the trunk while I worked (I usually take it in with me) and didn't see what was in it until I brought it home.

The things in the bags are endive, butternut squash, green beans, and lettuce. This was exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping for this week so it was a pleasant surprise. Yum yum yum.

Overnight my insulin pump wasn't working properly and I woke up with a very high bloodsugar and just generally felt queezy. Even though my bloodsugar has been back to normal for hours when I wake up really high I haven't had a chance to catch it early (because I'm asleep) and it really takes me out for the day. I haven't felt like eating much all day except a smoothie, some soup, and potatoes!

This blog is still pretty new so you may not yet know that I looooooooooooooooooooove potatoes, in pretty much all their forms. You can do so much with them and they're so easy if you have a bit of time. They're good for you and full of vitamin C and B, potassium, calcium, and iron. I almost never peel potatoes anymore because the skin is not only delicious, but is also excellent for you. Not to mention the sweet potato, which is high in betacarotene. But that's another post I think.

Even though I'm feeling kind of queezy still I was starving when I came home. So I made something that woudn't be ready for 35 minutes. I turned to good ole' oven fries, probably my new favourite way to eat potatoes. This is a pretty basic recipe, but give me a break, I'm sickly!

Spicy Curry Oven Fries
*Single serving

2 potatoes (I used red chieftan potatoes from our box)
1.5 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp chili flakes
a pinch of chili powder for an extra kick

Preheat oven to 400. Chop potatoes into small wedges, about 8 wedges per potato. In a large bowl mix all ingredients and toss until potatoes are well covered and spices are well mixed. Since the potatoes should already have a coating of oil, you don't need to oil your baking sheet. Place potatoes skin side down (so the wedges are standing) in rows. Bake for approximately 35 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Enjoy with some honey dill sauce. If you want a recipe for honey dill here's an easy one. Take mayo, honey, and dry dill. Mix together until it tastes the way you want it too. Yay, you're done!

Back to the grind now.

Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Spaghetti Sauce and Twice Baked Potato

2010-03-02T15:32:00.001-08:00

As usual, I've been extremely busy. Somehow when we get our food box it always seems like sooooo much food to use in a short period of time but we always manage to get through pretty much everything each week. Since the last time I wrote I've been busy as usual with work and my counselling training and I've also accepted a new counselling position at work. I'll be split between two positions of coordinating and counselling and I'm pretty excited about it but I'm not exactly sure when I'll be starting. It also means not a lot of cooking has been going on.

When I was offered the job on Friday, Ryan and I went out to celebrate at our favourite Vietnamese Restaurant, Viva. I probably go there at least once a month, especially now that it's pretty close to our apartment. I always order the exact same thing; rice noodles with charbroiled pork and a chopped up spring roll on top - amazing and so simple.

Then on Friday we ended up going to The Keg. My aunt and uncle sent me a $50 gift card for Christmas and we never seemed to find the time to go use it so we had a bit of a "date night". Well, sort of. We walked to The Forks to buy some loose tea (mmmmm....organic peppermint!) from Human Bean and some sun-dried olives from Fentons - the reason I buy the olives from Fentons? They're only .89 for 100g. I was standing behind someone at Superstore today who bought a small container from the olive bar and paid just as much as I did for 350g of olives. Then we walked to the downtown Keg for dinner, which was very nice. The manager actually came over after I ordered to assure me the food I ordered was safe so I was impressed with that. We shared a spinach salad and I got a baked potato and sirloin and it was tasty. I only eat red meat once every couple of months...not because I don't like it but I sort of forget about it. It was a nice treat anyway. And after we walked home through the park by the river and then we watched Love Actually because Ryan had never seen it and I felt like something light. It was a nice relaxing evening for once.

On Sunday I went for an 11km x-country ski with my older brother at Sandilands Provincial Forest and didn't get home until 7:30 and Ryan was out for dinner at his grandpa's so no cooking again. I was so tired I just got Ryan to pick me up a bag of chips and that's what I had for dinner (with cream cheese on the side...mmm...healthy!) But yesterday I was feeling like using up some of the veggies in the fridge. I have a few different go-to recipes to use up everything in there but I felt like spaghetti yesterday. I literally go through my cupboards and see what veggies need to be used and toss 'em in. So here's my "recipe".

Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Spaghetti Sauce

2lbs ground meat (I used a mix of beef and pork from Frigs)
1/2 onion, chopped (F.O.O.D. Box)
2 carrots, 1 sliced or you can use a mandolyn, 1 shredded (I just used a peeler) (F.O.O.D)
6 red chard stalks and leaves, stalks chopped and leaves torn into small pieces (F.O.O.D.)
1/2 can chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 tomato (F.O.O.D.)
1 can tomato paste
1 cup beef (or other) broth (I had none in the freezer so I used oxo powder)
1 handful fresh parsley (F.O.O.D.)
1 tsp each, paprika, coriander, salt, pepper, chili powder, red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf

In a large pan or pot cook the ground meat until no longer raw on med-low heat. You can remove the juices but I like to leave them in. Add the onions and garlic and cook until the onions are transluscent and fragrant then add everything else. Stir until it's all well mixed and then let it simmer for at least 30 minutes. I prefer letting it sit for an hour so the sauce reduces a bit and gets thicker, plus it gives a chance for the taste to really come out. And you're done!

This makes a good amount of sauce. I think we had about 3 cups leftover (but there are only two of us) so I always stick about two cups in the freezer and I have the other bit in the fridge since it makes an easy lunch. We pretty much only eat our spaghetti sauce one way - baked. I used sweet potato and buckweat soba noodles which only have to be cooked for 3 minutes and taste exactly like wheat flour noodles. I turned the oven to 350 and sprinkled on the asiago cheese that we picked up at Fentons a few weeks ago on top. Popped it in the oven for 10 minutes, and then put the broiler on high. Keep a very close eye at this point, it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to have a nice cripsy cheesy top like so:

Lastly, I was just feeling plain lazy today and I was starving when I got home from work but didn't really want to make something with effort. I had a snack to tide me over but I decided to go for a good ole' potato. I love potatoes. They're so easy. I went for a twice baked potato with the last of the asiago cheese on top. This is a pretty basic recipe that's easy and is really good comfort food.

Twice Baked Potato - Single Serving

1 russet potato
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp butter
1 tbsp milk
2 tbsp chives
2 pieces bacon, cooked and smashed into bits
1 tbsp sour cream
2-3 tbsp shredded asiago cheese
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Preheat the oven to 350. Wash your potato and pour the oil (I used olive) and cover potato. Bake for 1 - 1 hour 15 minutes. When finished baking split potato down the middle and use a big spoon to scoop the potato out of the skin and put it in a separate bowl. Try not to break the skin when you're doing this. Add the butter, chives, 1/2 the bacon bits (I like to put the rest on top after it comes out of the oven), milk, sour cream, 1-2 tbsp of asiago cheese, salt, and pepper and mash or mix with a fork. Spoon the mashed mixture back into the skin and fold it mostly closed. Sprinkle on extra cheese to your liking and bake for 10 minutes and then broil on high for 2-5 minutes, watching carefully. Let cool and enjoy!

Nom, nom, nom...worth the wait. It was devoured quickly.

Crusty Olive Boule and Dehydrated Food

2010-02-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

Behold, my first (successful) loaf of gluten free bread! I had seen this recipe on Gluten Free Girl and the Chef's blog recently and it looked delicious. Last week Jenn posted her own success and photo's of the bread on The Whole Kitchen and I decided I would try my hand at it today. This was only my second time making bread ever, gluten bread included. My last loaf was really really dense and it was my first time working with yeast. It still tasted pretty good and I ate the entire thing, but I knew I needed to look up some bread making tips, particularly gluten free bread making tips.

The recipe makes two loaves and the dough is good in the fridge for up to 7 days so I baked one tonight and I'm saving the second to pop in on Thursday or Friday. This will probably be my go-to bread recipe from now on and I'm already thinking about little adjustments I can make. The salty vinegar taste of the kalamata olives gives the bread a sourdough taste and made me remember how much I love sourdough bread. Apparently I'm not the only one because I just stumbled upon the Art of Gluten-free Sourdough. I'll definitely be revisiting this idea.

Ryan and I are trying to be really budget conscious now. Last month we decided to try and stick to an $80 a week grocery budget. Very tight (and didn't include our F.O.O.D. box) and a little too tight to realistically live on. We've upped the total weekly budget to $123, including the box. Using Gail Vaz-Oxlade's ingenious approach, we keep our grocery money in a jar, each putting in $50 a week. Even though I really make an effort to use as much as I can before things go bad, depending on the perishables we have on hand, sometimes we still end up putting a fair bit in the garbage or compost.

The fact that we live in an apartment and have a small than average fridge means we have virtually no freezer space to store frozen perishables. More and more I'm becoming fascinated with different ways of perserving food. As I've said before, I'm really interested in canning but collecting all the materias needed is going to take me a while and be fairly expensive so I'm thinking I'll collect the things I need a little at a time, maybe buying a piece every month.

In the meantime I've been thinking about food dehydration a lot more. I've always really liked dried fruit and jerky - jerky is one thing that I often can't eat anymore because many types of jerky use soya sauce or teryaki sauce, both of which often contain wheat. I got interested in food dehydration last summer when I was planning some backcountry camping trips. A lot of people will just pick up a package of dehydrated food to bring on these trips, then you add water to rehydrate when you're ready to eat it. There's no reason why you can't just make these meals at home yourself for a much more reasonable price.

I was excited to be able to dry dehydrating food in the oven when we moved into the apartment until I discovered you can't set the temperature below 170 - something that has caused me aggravation more than once so far. But after browsing Amazon.com I realized I could purchase a good quality dehydrator for less than $100. I'm going to do a little more research but once I've decided on a model I'm pretty sure I'll purchase one within the next couple of weeks.

I just discovered a great new blog called Well Preserved that has me excited about trying out some new things that hadn't occured to me before, like a few of the following here:

Dehydrated onions and carrots
Dehydrated orange slices
Dehydrated lime and lemon zest
Dehydrated lemons
Dehydrated pineapple and apple

Beginning around early July, we aren't planning on signing up for the F.O.O.D. box. At that point the St. Norbert Farmer's Market will be open and we'll likely do most of our weekly shopping there, meat included. The F.O.O.D. box is great because now I'm at the point where I'll see what we'll be getting, make a list of the most perishable items, and then make a list of possible recipes to throw together. This has meant we've been able to use almost all our items without throwing anything away for the past two weeks. The farmers market will mean I won't have the ability to plan my meals as easily but it will give me the freedom to try even more variety and to bulk up on items for (hopefully!) canning and (hopefully!) drying.

Now that seeds are starting to appear at some local grocery stores too, I'm looking forward to getting a few pots to fill our windows. These old apartment windows are great for plants because there's more than enough room between the outside screen and the inside window pane - having fresh herbs again will be fantastic. The Forks has a decent variety but why pay when I could get them for free?

Now that February is almost over and we're about to enter March, I can just about feel spring just around the corner. Winnipeg is still a long way off from "warm" but I'm getting excited about having more time (a training course I'm in ends at the end of March) and longer days to enjoy the local flavours, sights, and sounds.

Guest Post: Making Butter with My Mom

2010-02-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

My mom has been making her own butter for a couple of years now. She still buys butter, but if there's a sale on whipping cream she's all over it. A few weeks ago she made 46 pounds of butter. That's right: 46 pounds. I asked her to write me a guest blog post about her butter making experiences and she finally sent it along the other day. Right now I have 6 blocks of her frozen butter sitting in my freezer. Butter lasts us a long time in this house so we're set for the next couple of months at least.

Adventures in Butter Making by Jo

I am finally writing about my adventures in butter making. Last year in January, after the rush of Christmas, I was grocery shopping and noticed the store was clearing out cartons of whipping cream - a litre or quart for $1. The expiry date was only 2-3 days away though. This was a ridiculously low price and I knew from past experimentation that I could make about 12 ounces or 340 grams of butter from a litre of whipping cream, hence a pound of butter could be made for $1.25. This is an amazing buy for fresh whipped butter.

This year the same store was clearing out their cartons of whipping cream again but the Beatrice brand had a $.75 coupon on the side of the cartons. I bought 27 litres of cream for $27 and took them home. I poured them into 4 litre plastic milk jugs I had saved (I was preparing for this mass making of butter before Christmas when I first spotted the cream coupons). I then cleaned the cartons, cut out the coupons, and went back to the store for more cream. Coupons in hand, I purchased another 27 litres of cream for $.25 a piece (if you're keeping track, that's $.25 for a pound of butter).

We had a lot of people ask why we were buying so much cream. I told people I was making it into butter and I was slightly insane. The cream is close to its sell-by date - actually sometimes I think I'm pretty close to my sell-by date too (I digree - Erin, you know I do this all the time you must have expected it!!!). Anyway, it needs to be whipped into cream, which you could also freeze and use next time you need whipping cream, or it needs to be whipped into butter. Just so you know, whipping cream cannot be frozen unless it is whipped into whipped cream or butter.

Whipped 8-10 pounds of butter, as I made last year, takes a bit of time. But I have to admit that whipping 46 pounds of butter is not for the faint-hearted. In fact, my granddaughter, Amaya, was asking me towards the end of my two and a half days of whipping when I would finally stop. But 46 pounds of butter in the freezer will last us almost a year so I think it was worth it and everyone likes the delicate, creamy taste of fresh butter.

Homemade Butter Making Method

1 litre whipping cream
1/2-3/4 tsp salt for salted butter OR omit for unsalted butter
hand held or stand mixer

I use a large stand mixer that holds a litre of cream. I add the salt (or omit for unsalted) and mix on medium speed. If you mix too quickly in the beginning you'll just have a big mess so start slow and increase the speed as it mixes.

It will reach the usual whipped cream stage but you need to go past this point. It will get thicker and separate out from the buttermilk or whey, and will magically turn a pale yellow colour. I whip at a lower speed at this point because as it completely separates it can make a watery mess and surprisingly splash you in the face.

I then put the butter in a wire sieve with a bowl underneath to catch the buttermilk and let it sit while I start the next litre of whipping cream. The butter needs to have as much of the buttermilk squeezed out as possible. After trying a number of methods, I opted for what Julia Child always said and I used my impeccably clean hands.

I weighed the butter out into 340 gram portion sizes, wrapped it in parchment paper molded into bricks, put serveral portions in a freezer bag, and tucked them in the freezer. I also froze about 8 litres of buttermilk, which is nothing like the store bought variety and has a much milder flavour. (*Erin says: I use it to make whey - I'll post more about whey a little later).

Try making a small amount sometime, I think you will like the flavour. As I said, whipping up this much is a lot of work and I have become slightly posessive about my hoard of butter. But honestly, the end result was very satisfying both in taste and price and Amaya was happy when I finally turned off the mixer.

-Mum

Canning

2010-02-16T14:50:00.000-08:00

Being that it's the middle of February in Winnipeg, it's not exactly ideal canning season. Canning, preserving, and fermenting foods has fascinated me for a while now. For the last couple of years I've thought that I would like to try my hand at canning and jamming but once again, since I was living at home I never took it anywhere.

Home canned foods will forever and always remind me of my grandma. When I was growing up my grandma lived close by in a cute little bungalow (with carpet in the kitchen and bathroom...ew) with a giant backyard. Like a typical Ukrainian-Canadian woman who grew up on a farm, my grandma always maintained a giant garden which she paid me and my older brother to help her keep it going. I don't remember where she kept her glass jars full of carefully canned food, but I always remember there being cans of different sorts of foods sitting around. I can even remember the writing on the labels. I think she would write the name and date on a small piece of paper and then put multiple layers of tape over top.

My dad and grandma...must be early-mid 60's.

Unfortunately my grandma moved out of her house over 10 years ago now, when I was barely a teenager. Back then I wasn't too concerned with asking her about her amazing cooking, and her huge garden, and all the skills she grew up learning. On August 1st, 2006 my grandma passed away and I always wish I could have shared some of that with her.

I would be lying if I said my interest in canning, jamming, and preserving wasn't partly a tribute to my wonderful grandma but it also seems like a natural progression in my ever-growing whole food, sustainable living life. My parents have some experience with canning but either than dill and mustard pickles, no one I know does it on an ongoing basis with different veggies, fruits, and jams.

One of the downsides to being so young when my grandma moved out of her house is that I was never able to go through all the neat things she had stored away in her house. Her basement was full of bowling trophies (one of which sits in our living room now), paintings and pictures from many years past, and a lot of nooks and crannies where interesting little treasures were stored - like a giant popsicle stick house. The picture above was actually taken in the same basement. She had a "laundry chute" (a hole with a door in her bedroom closet) and I remembering lying down on the floor with my head through the whole and I found a bunch of my grandpa's old tools hidden on top of a vent.

But I digress. The point is, I don't have any canning equipment. I don't even have a pot big enough right now. I don't have a candy thermometer, I don't have a jar rack, I've got nothing. But I do have a library card! Since it isn't ideal canning season anyway, I'm taking this opportunity to bone up on anything canning related so that when I begin, hopefully this summer, I'll have a vague idea of what I'm doing.

In the meantime, if you have any websites, info, or tips to share please do so in the comments! So far I've been religiously following Tigress in a Jam, Tigress in a Pickle, and Canning Across America.

Sweet Potato Hummus

2010-02-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

FGWRC's Women's Night of Culture was last Thursday and it was fantastic. We had a great turn out at The Park Theatre and despite a few hitch's here and there, everything went really well. I even won a draw prize that had some very nice treats inside, including a 10-class pass to a near-by yoga studio and Great Tastes of Manitoba: Celebrating Delicious, Local Food put out by Food Manitoba. I haven't had a chance to use it yet but it's put together beautifully and looks like it will be fun to use. One of the great things about the layout of this book is that the cover is hard, but rather than a traditional book binding, it's bound with coil on the inside so you can lay it down flat without the pages flipping around.

This weeks box, picked up on Wednesday - before splitting with our box buddies (who have decided to stay in for a bit longer).

As usual, my cooking plans changed when I came down with a really bad cold that had me mostly bedridden on Friday. I've felt better the last couple of days - better being out of my housecoat and not sleeping for two hours in the afternoon - but still not great. I've been wanting to get outside and have some fun but I'm just not feeling up to it, so today I had a cooking day.

Hazelnut spread in the jars, Honey Spice Almonds (both from The Whole Kitchen), Sweet Potato Hummus, and Root Veggie Red Curry Soup (sweet potato, carrots, onion, garlic, kale, red pepper, broccoli, cauliflower).

I've been wanting to make homemade hazelnut spread for years but just never got around to it. We picked up some hazelnuts at the bulk store and I whipped it up in the food processor today. It was really really easy and tastes amazing. I've been making the Honey Spiced Almonds frequently since Jenn posted them. They're delicious and a great snack. They don't have any added oil, just a touch of honey and spice.

The sweet potato hummus was inspired by the one sold at Grass Roots Prairie Kitchen. We've picked it up a few times from The Forks but when sweet potatoes came in our Fresh Option Box this week I figured I'd give it a go. I think mine was probably less sweet potatoe-y and definitely more spicy but I really liked the way it came out. A touch of sweetness and nutmeg mixed in with the regular delicious hummus taste.

Sweet Potato Hummus

1 can chickpeas, drained
1 small sweet potato or 1/2 a medium/large (ours were quite small)
3-4 cloves garlic, depending on taste
2 tsp lemon juice
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp tahini paste
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350. Peel and chop sweet potato into cubes and toss with a sprinkle of olive oil on cookie sheet. Roast for 15-20 minutes until tender. Let cool thoroughly when finished.

In a food processor or blender place all ingredients. Make sure sweet potato has cooled down enough. Turn on blender or processor until ingredients are well blended. I actually like pretty chunky hummus so I would even use a potato masher if I had to. Serve with veggies, pita chips, or for those of us eating gluten free, corn tortilla chips.

I had planned on posting a recipe for the soup, but it needs perfecting still. I think part of the problem is that I don't have good red curry. There's an asian grocery store right near my office so I think I'll stop in some time and pick up a quality red curry paste. It isn't spicy at all and just doesn't taste right. By the time I tried to make this soup I also had less sweet potatoes left than I had planned on using. It still tastes good but it needs more.

And lastly, our V-day dinner from last night.

Local MB sirloin tip roast beef from The Forks, gluten free yorkshire pudding, homemade gluten free gravy, sweet, yukon, and red chieftan potato mash, and lightly steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and kale tossed in salt, pepper, and butter.

Like The Carver's Knife, The Forks meat shop seems to focus mostly on local rather than additive free/humanely treated. But I had been too sick to go to Frigs like I had planned so this was the next best thing. I've never cooked yorkshire pudding or roast beef before but it went pretty well for the first time. I screwed up the yorkshire's a bit and they burned on the bottom and were too dense but still tasted just as good. The potatoes were fantastic again - I love the extra sweet potato taste. All in all, fantastic.

For dessert we had two gluten free cakes from Goodies bakery. I don't know about other people, but when I order chocolate cake at a restaurant I have this vision in my head of what it should taste like and I always feel like I'm left disappointed. But the cake from Goodies, despite being gluten free, is the best chocolate cake I've ever had. I urge you to give the GF diamond chocolate cake a try if you ever stop in.

Happy snacking!

Tropical Fruit Salad

2010-02-09T19:34:00.000-08:00

So far this week has been one of those great weeks where I feel really productive and accomplished. Work is very busy because we're having our fundraiser on Thursday night - so I'm using this opportunity for some shameless self promotion. If you happen to be in Winnipeg and you're looking for something fun to do on Thursday night you should head down to The Park Theatre on Osborne for Fort Garry Women's Resource Centre's Women's Night of Culture.

And now on to food. So it seems Shawna and Dylan have decided to opt out of the Fresh Option box from now on. The small box works out to $16/person so we decided to switch to the small and continue starting next week. I'm really loving the set up. This week I managed to use every single thing in the box except tomatoes. Our box partners decided not to get the box for a variety of reasons, one of which was they found some of the ingredients went bad before they got to use them.

This was a bit of a problem for the first two weeks for us but this week I realized I had to prioritize my vegetable use. I made sure to make salads first with the spinach and lettuce, use the celery for chicken stock, etc. This week I've been keeping an eye on what we're getting via the website and thinking about what I want to use first and how I want to use it. I already know I'm doing Thai Coconut Red Curry Soup with the broccoli and cauliflower on Friday or Saturday and I'm planning to use the kale tomorrow, but I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with it. Most of the other produce can last just fine for a while longer.

This method of centering our meals around our produce is also making grocery store shopping cheaper and more efficient. Either than onions, garlic, and extra bananas we don't buy anything that's not already in the produce box. So all we need to buy from the store is the ingredients for the planned upcoming major meals, regular kitchen staples, and the usual stock up items like canned goods and nuts and beans and all that kind of stuff. Ryan and I are trying to be very budget conscious so we can save up for some good vacations.

Today was a good cooking day too. I'm trying to constantly improve my eating...more natural, less processed. The more I do this, the better my health gets and I love it! I had a really tasty little snack for lunch.

That's monterey jack cheese, gouda, feta, kalamata olives, raw almonds, and a pear.

I didn't used to be a fish person but for the last year or two I've been really trying to get myself to eat more. I have never eaten salmon...except from a can, and even that was probably 20 years ago. Ryan really likes salmon so my mom gave us a couple of frozen salmon steaks. Always eager to try something new, I decided to cook them up tonight. Recently Ryan and I caught an episode of Good Eats where Alton cooked up three different types of salmon. I went with his Broiled Salmon with Citrus Glaze and once again, he didn't fail.

Pre-broiling while they marinated.

I think I really should have halved the recipe for the rub but it all worked out in the end. I forgot to take a picture after they were cooked but the brown sugar came out black and hard, but then I just peeled off the black part and underneath was a lovely glaze. Because I didn't know how it was supposed to taste I made Ryan taste it first and tell me if it was good. He said he'd never really had sweet salmon before but he really liked it. Everyone told me salmon tasted really fishy, I guess as far as fish taste goes, but I didn't find it fishy at all. It was really nice and the glaze was delicious. Because the only veggies we had left were tomatoes (which I didn't use) and 1/2 an onion I just made a basic risotto with Jamie Oliver's recipe. This is my go-to risotto recipe and it's delicious everytime. Yesterday I made 10 cups of chicken stock so I was able to use about 4.5 in the risotto.

For dessert I decided I wanted to get rid of the last of our fruit because we get a new box tomorrow. I threw all the fruit together and then was inspired by the tropical aspect and came up with this.

Tropical Fruit Salad
*Serves 2

1 red anjou pear, cubed
1 green pair, cubed
1/2 mango, cubed
1 small grapefruit, cubed
1 kiwi, cubed
1/4 cup coconut milk
1-2 tbsp honey, to taste

Toss all ingredients in a bowl, mix, and enjoy!

I'm on a bit of a coconut milk kick lately since dairy has been giving me some issues. I've tweaked my smoothie recipe by using 1/3 cup coconut milk instead of regular milk, omitting the coconut oil, and using 1 cup of pineapple (I used canned) and 1/3 cup of fruit. I like my smoothies very thick hence the use of less liquid in this version. It was really fantastic, and I bet it would go great with a bit of Malibu. :D

Potato and Squash Mash

2010-02-04T16:26:00.001-08:00

In my search for what to do with all the beets from our Fresh Option box I happened upon this post on livejournal. I wasn't down with the raw part, but I followed a series of links that brought me to some other recipes that had pan fried versions. That sounded more up my alley so I ran with inspiration.

Beautiful. This was my first opportunity to use the shredder disk on my food processor and it was so easy. I shredded 3 small beets and 1/2 a small sweet potato - a cheese grater would work fine to shred the beets, just a little slower*. I combined that with an onion, a can of chickpeas and some flour and spices. I don't have an exact recipe to post yet because I feel like it still needs to be perfected. I used a little too much flour but otherwise these tasted divine. I didn't have any good gluten free sandwich bread around so I just had a breadless sandwich with some mayo, mustard, spinach, and cheese plus green beans, butter and garlic. Once I've played with this a bit more I'll be sure to post exact measurements. This recipe ended up making about 10 patties and I put a bunch in the freezer so I can just fry or bake them when I want to.

When we stopped at The Carver's Knife last week we picked up a small free range frozen chicken. I haven't cooked a whole chicken before but I looked up a few recipes and threw together one delicious, juicy roast chicken. I also made gravy for the first time too. I wanted to take pictures of the rest of our meal but the camera battery died in the process.

Ryan made the salad in the background and I put together a delicious veggie mash. The chicken was your run of the mill roast chicken with some balsamic vinegar broiled on top. The mash was fantastic so I've decided to share that recipe for today. It was a good way to use a nice variety of veggies too - we got only half an acorn squash in the box because the other half was rotten and they substituted extra potatoes. Plus it went great with the gravy.

Potato Squash Mash
*Note: 3-4 servings - you may want to increase the amounts for larger portions*

1/2 a sweet potato, peeled and cubed
2 small russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 yukon gold potato, peeled and cubed
1/2 acorn squash
2 tsp salt (or more to taste)
1 tsp pepper (or more to taste)
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1/4 - 1/2 cup of milk

Preheat your oven to 350. Put 1 tbsp of oil on a cookie sheet and place acorn squash cut side down. Put in oven for 30-40 minutes or until tender. Remove when finished and let cool.

Meanwhile, place the potatoes and sweet potato in a pot of water with 1 tsp of salt. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for about 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Once squash is cool enough to handle take a large spoon and scoop out the flesh straight into the potatoes. Add the milk, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper and start mashing. Adjust seasonings to your taste.

Ryan is apprehensive when it comes to squash and when I thought of making this last night he didn't seem too keen but he loved it. It had such a fresh, slightly sweet taste. I can't figure out why people don't have squash mash or puree more.

This week's Fresh Option Box gave us some great variety of food. I've noticed that sometimes we don't get exactly what the website tells us we'll be getting but I think it's because certain deliveries aren't up to par so they substitute in with something else. We weren't expecting red pears, an extra lettuce, spinach or a yellow pepper but we got all of them. So far we've used up some spinach, lettuce, radishes, and a granny smith apple in tonight's salad plus the acorn squash, potatoes, and one of the carrots. I think we're eating even better because it's like a challenge to finish everything before it goes bad and before our next pick up. It's a lot of fun experimenting with the foods I wouldn't necessarily buy if I was shopping for myself.

The Carver's Knife, Coconut Basmati Rice, and Berry Ice Cream

2010-01-30T08:12:00.000-08:00

Ryan surprised me earlier this week by bringing me home some of my favourite flowers - daisies. They look very summery in front of our living room window. Considering our apartment gets no direct sunlight, I'm impressed they're still looking so nice.

After being sick last week, my parents had us over for dinner on Saturday. And what did we have? Fondue! It was a bit perilous, as 7 people trying to dip raw meat into hot oil can be, but we had fun. I'm bugging my mom to do a couple of guest blog posts.

We decided to switch from a bi-weekly produce box to the weekly option this week. So on Wednesday I picked up our second box. Because there was a big snowstorm here on Monday, some of our items didn't get through so we ended up with extra beets and lettuce and no carrots this week. We're trying not to buy any produce from the grocery stores and stick only to the box and so far that's working fairly well. Here's what this weeks box looked like, pre-splitting for Shawna and Dylan.

From Monday-Wednesday I don't usually cook too much because either both or one of us is out for the evening. But on Thursday when I got home from work I knew I wanted some real food so I whipped this up.

Bison smokies that are from the past summers farmers market, and roasted sweet potato, beets, potatoes, and onions. Not very green but very tasty. We've been getting lots of beets in the box and I'm never really sure what to do with them but Shawna mentioned she loves them roasted. They were good but I think I have to experiment a little more. The only other time I really have beets is julienned in a salad.

Yesterday we also ventured out to The Carver's Knife. They had lots of great products and I picked up a frozen chicken to cook later, but we both agreed that we prefered Frigs. I liked that at Frigs they would tell you on most of the packaging where the meet was from, if it was made in store, and that it didn't include any gluten, dairy, hormones or anti-biotics and all deli meat was made in store. They also had a really nice selection of fresh bison, while The Carver's Knife only had frozen. The Carver's Knife seemed to focus a lot more on "local" while Frigs seems to focus a lot more on "local, natural". Since the prices are fairly on par, I think we'll probably do most of our shopping at Frigs when it comes to meat.

But we didn't come away empty handed. We bought pork buttons, pork tenderloin, a chicken, and some deli meat. We had some of the pork buttons last night. Ryan's mom gave him a tasty sweet bbq sauce so I just smothered the pork buttons in that and put them in the oven at 375 for 35 minutes.

I took this opportunity to use up some of our fresh veggies and fruits. I love having fried apples with pretty much any meal so I added pears and red chard stalk and fried them up in butter and coconut oil with cinnamon and nutmeg (and a bit of brown sugar). They were tasty but I'm still figuring out what do with red chard. And lastly, coconut basmati rice.

Coconut Basmati Rice

1 cup basmati rice, rinsed serveral times in cold water to remove starch
1-2 tbsp butter
1 1/4-1 3/4 cups coconut milk (depending on how hard or soft you want your rice)
1/3 cup craisins
1/4 cup honey spiced almonds or raw almonds
leaves of 2-3 chard stalks or fresh spinach

1) In a large saucepan or pot melt the butter or low-medium heat and add rice, stirring for 2 minutes.
2) Add coconut milk and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to low and cook, covered, undisturbed for about 20 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, let stand for 5 minutes, and fluff with a fork. Add chard or spinach, almonds, and craisins and mix. Cover and let sit for 2-3 minutes before serving.

And because it's been a whole week since a post, I'll also give you my current favourite ice cream recipe. The inspiration from the post definitely came from The Whole Kitchen's Peach Ginger ice Cream recipe. I like really tart flavours and I'm trying to reduce my white sugar intake so I played around until I came up with this winner.

Mixed Berry Coconut Ice Cream

1 can coconut milk
2.5 cups frozen berries (I used blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp ginger
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Put all ingredients except the ginger in a blender and mix well. Jenn suggests chilling the mixture thoroughly before putting in your ice cream maker, but because I used frozen berries and the mixture was still quite thick, I just put it straight into my ice cream maker.

Pour the mixture into the ice cream mixer base and add the grated ginger as it mixes. Let run for as long as your mixer should take (usually 30-40 minutes) and put in a container in the freezer. This stuff doesn't last long in our house. It's tart, fresh, and tastes amazingly creamy. A nice reminder of summer.

Fruit Smoothie

2010-01-23T11:22:00.001-08:00

I've really been wanting to post the last few days but I've been sick. In fact, I've spent the last two days in my pj's. I had all these grand plans for the next post because Shawna, her husband, Ryan and I all decided we wanted to try out Fresh Option Organic Delivery (F.O.O.D). Except instead of getting it delivered I decided I would just pick it up on Wednesday mornings because I'm often in the area and we save $3.

I picked up the first box on Wednesday (I wanted to take a picture of everything in it but I didn't bring my camera with me) and got to meet a few of the folks who work at F.O.O.D. Everyone was really nice and they had some good recipes and organic/local food literature that they kindly offered. I had to wait a few minutes while they finished assembling the box and then I was off, all my produce groceries in tow. By Wednesday I was already feeling sick so I divided up the box as evenly as I could (for example, I gave them the avocado and lemon because I had some at home and took the roma tomato). I ended up doing it at work and dropping their stuff off later that night. When I got home I just wanted to put everything away and totally forgot about taking a picture. Then we started eating it and now a picture of 1/4 of the food that was originally in the box just doesn't seem as impressive. But if you want to know what we ate/are eating you can just have a look at this week's box on the website.

So far, I've been really happy with all the food. It's nice knowing that some of it is local and all of it is organic - and it's also a bit of a challenge thinking up how to use some of the more unusual foods. In the next two days, when I'm hopefully feeling better, I'm planning a stir fry, salt and vinegar cucumber slices, and salsa. Because this is the first time using this service, we decided to try it bi-weekly. It's costing us $47 a week (or bi-weekly for us) which, because Ryan and I split the bills, works out to 11.75 a week per person. I don't know how Shawna and Dylan are finding using up the produce, but I think I could definitely do once a week instead. Further discussions will follow I'm sure.

Either than my excitement about our F.O.O.D. box, I haven't really had much to post because cooking turns into a chore when I'm sick. I keep boxes of Knorr soup in the house just for when I'm sick and that's what I ate yesterday. Soup and potato chips. I still don't feel like cooking today so even though I'm still feeling sick, when my mom invited us to dinner it sounded like a pretty decent deal. However, I did make one thing today. My fruit smoothie! I have this almost every weekday morning before work because it's an easy way to get in some milk and fruit at the start of my day. It's also great for when I'm feeling queezy and sick because it's almost a meal in itself. It's really thick, smooth, and creamy and best of all, no need to add sugar or juice.

Fruit Smoothie

1/2 banana
1 cup frozen fruit (I like frozen berries but anything you like will do)
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp coconut oil for taste and nutrition (optional)
1 tbsp unpasturized honey

Put all ingredients in a blender (if you have a cheaper blender you may want to defrost the frozen fruit for a while - I just put it in totally frozen). Pulse until well blended, then blend for 30 seconds to 1 minute until completely smooth. Grab a straw and enjoy!

Good Intentions

2010-01-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

I had every intention of posting the last two days but life is busy. The weekend kept me busy with a soccer game and then my niece stayed the night with us. We watched The Last Unicorn and I made us some popcorn. We don't have an air popper or a microwave (not that I would want to eat the congealed slime that passes for "butter" in microwave popcorn) so I always make it on the stove. I don't think people realize how easy it is. I'm not going to bother posting a recipe because if you just go buy a bag of popcorn kernels you can read how to do it on the back. Make sure to use a lid that fits well though. On my second or third date with Ryan I was making popcorn in my mom's wok with a lid that didn't ft. A hot, oily kernel jumped down my low-cut top and badly burned me. That was a year and a half ago and I still have a scar.

We had no such mishaps on Friday though. My niece, Amaya, got up at a decent time on Saturday and she helped me make Gluten Free Pancakes, recipe courtesy of Four Chickens - my go-to place for all things gluten free baking. We also used the handy grill that Amaya and her dad got us for Christmas to cook up some of the bacon we got at Frigs. It was all delicious. I threw some frozen berries in a pan with 1/2 a tbsp of sugar and slowly heated it on the stove and I always have Honey Butter on my pancakes now instead of syrup - it's also local.

After breakfast we went skating on the river behind the apartment and were served free hot chocolate by volunteers from the Festival du'Voyageur and free kettle corn too. It was a good day.

After Amaya left it was back to more cooking. We'd already decided we were going to have a nice dinner and cook up the sirloin steak we picked up at Frigs. I always feel like I eat a decent amount of red meat but I realized this is actually the first meal I've made with red meat since we moved here. I always marinade my steak the same way - about 1/4 cup soy sauce (gluten free - I like the China Lily brand), the juice of half a lemon, and 2 tbsp olive oil and anywhere from all day to 1/2 hour is fine. I had assumed I would cook the sirloin on the countertop grill but then I started looking up sirloin steak recipes. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Alton Brown, but I love him - he always has the answer I'm looking for - Sirloin Steak Recipe. I've heard of cooking steak under a broiler before, but never like this. But be warned, open all your windows because the steak will blacken (which is good) and the fire alarm went off in our place. I had to get Ryan to stand by it waving a towel for 5 minutes while it finished cooking.

I also picked up some green beans and just did them up simply - boiled 'em for 5 minutes - I like them crunchy - and then put them in a frying pan on med-low with a chopped up garlic clove and enough butter to cover 'em. I also did my salad. This is probably my favourite salad and the one I make the most. Ryan loves it too.

The whole meal was delicious. The steak was perfectly cooked and tasted just like it had been bbq'd and it wasn't too heavy at all with all the greans. And doesn't it look pretty? I'm sure there are hundreds of versions of this salad but this is mine.

Apple Walnut Goat Cheese Salad

mixed green lettuce, enough for a salad - I did enough for two
1/4 cup craisins
1/4 cup candied walnuts (I was out, so I used sugared almonds in this one - I'll post a recipe another time)
3 radishes, sliced thinly
1 apple, cored and cubed
1/4 cup goat cheese, crumbled

Dressing

1/4 cup olive oil
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp basil - I used dried, but in the summer fresh is the best

Mix all dressing ingredients with a spoon, or put in a jar and shake to mix. Combine all salad ingredients, add your desired amount of dressing, and toss. Put any leftover dressing in the fridge for later. I'll also say that you should really make the dressing to your taste - this is the ratio I like but you might like to change it up. Also, the longer you let it sit the better it will taste so make up enough for a few batches.

I'm excited for the next post but I'm not going to tell you why yet.

Frigs Natural Meats and Veggie Stock

2010-01-15T19:20:00.000-08:00

When The Tallest Poppy first opened I read they got all their meat from a place called Frigs Natural Meats & More. At the time I really wanted to go but it was a bit far from my parents house and I didn't really want to go spend money on groceries while I lived there. I had completely forgotten about it until recently.

So today Ryan and I went on an expidition to East St. Paul to visit Frigs. I have to say, I was extremely impressed. Not only did they have a fabulous selection of Manitoban food that was nitrate, wheat, soy, and milk additive free, but the prices were pretty much on par with a big chain grocery store. We ended up leaving with $45 of merchandise including sirloin beef steak, beef and pork breakfast sausage, in-store made bacon, ground pork and beef, bison garlic sausage, and bison salami - plus organic extra virgin coconut oil that smells like coconut cookies and organic veggie broth cubes, which I like to keep on hand for a pinch. The staff was very nice too and we've already decided the Frigs will be our go-to meat place all year round. I was hoping to get a frozen local chicken but unfortunatlely they're out for the season so I'm considering getting a turkey at some point in the next few weeks instead. Stay tuned.

There are a lot of reasons that it's important to me to eat locally, organically, and chemical and hormone free. Firstly, my health. Starting about a 1-1.5 years ago I realized that I had a lot of stomach issues. It was something that came on so slowely that I didn't even realize until I was pretty sick to my stomach almost every day for 5 months between May-September 2009. My doctor and I suspected celiac disease but after some botched tests, we didn't have a conclusive answer. Part of the problem with diagnosing celiac disease is that you need to eat at least 2 pieces of bread every day for at least 2 months to get an accurate blood test result. Then you usually need to have a biopsy, but if you stop eating gluten then the results will all come back negatively. On September 3rd I decided enough was enough and I was going to cut all gluten from my diet. Frustratingly, it wasn't until near the end of October that I really started to feel better. Among other sensitities, I have to be careful with eggs, dairy, and any processed foods - I'll just say they make my tummy very angry.

Secondly, I do not like the idea of putting chemicals, hormones, or ill-treated animals in my body. I love Gordon Ramsey's show, "The F Word" because it shows how he raises his animals, cares for them with respect, and they are slaughtered humanely and with care. I feel that if I can't even watch an animal on TV be slaughtered this way, I probably shouldn't be eating meat. Because I believe in a more traditional diet I feel that for myself and my body, meat should be a part of my diet but I completely respect the choice to be a vegetarian - I actually was one myself a few years ago.

Thirdly, eating locally means I know exactly where my food has come from, how far it's travelled, and everything from what it was fed to how it was prepared. I'll be talking more about this in one of my next posts but related more to fruits and veggies.

Even though this post has been mostly meat related, I wanted to leave you with a vegetable broth recipe. To be honest, I rarely make veggie broth because I love the taste of chicken broth but both are extremely easy.

How to make Veggie Broth
A couple of notes on this recipe:

you really can use pretty much any veggies you have lying around, another great way to use up leftovers or anything thats going bad in your fridge.
this article suggests keeping the skin on carrots and root veggies. There's tons of nutritional value in this part of the veggies but make sure you wash them really well to get off any dirt, and if you don't know where they're coming from, to get off any possible chemicals or pesticides.
when you're finished, let it cool and then throw it in a tupperwear or sealable container and store in the freezer. Use for soups, gravies, sauces, etc.

Since I don't have any of my own recipes to share today, I thought I'd share what we had for dinner tonight.

Gluten free bread, bison salami from Frigs, mayo, mustard, spinach, dark chocolate, and mini mandarins. Gluten free bread is nothing like regular bread but I actually really enjoy it, just in a different way. This is Kinnikinnick Foods brands. It was a nice early, energizing meal before my 6:30PM soccer game.

Ryan had rye toast, extra old cheddar cheese, free run eggs, fried onions, and bison salami. Mmmmm....

Lemon Rice Soup

2010-01-14T16:28:00.000-08:00

One of the things I worried about when we moved into our apartment was composting. A few years ago my mom and I attended a composting workshop at The Conservatory. My mom was an instant convert. Every year the city has a sale on compost bins and equipment and she bought four giant bins. You might think that's overkill, but my parents yard is huge with lots of gardening space and my family goes through a fair amount of food even though my older brother and I don't live at home anymore. For the last two or three years my mom and I have also created a new garden space in the yard for veggies. I love growing our own veggies in our own compost, there's an extra sense of accomplishment. Not to mention that the amount of garbage that was going out of the house was drastically reduced.

So for the first two or three weeks Ryan and I were living in the new place I was genuinly stressed about throwing out all that compostable food because we had no where to put it. We don't have a balcony and I would even hang a bucket outside our windows but there are screens on them we can't remove. I had completely forgotten that you can easily freeze compostable food and put it in the bin later - a fact I was reminded of when someone mentioned they do this in the winter. So I bought a 1.5 litre tupperware container and some small sized compostable bags from Dollarama - yes, they sell compostable bags at Dollarama. We keep it in the freezer and when the bag is full I take it out, tie it, and put it in the back of the freezer. I go to my folks once every week or two so I just throw them in a plastic bag and dumb them in the compost bins when I visit.

So if you're an apartment dweller who has no room to compost, consider if you have the freezer space and know anyway with a compost bin. It seems like we have half as much garbage to take out since we started composting two months ago.

Moving on, today I have a recipe to share. I was wondering what I should make for my first post so I figured I'd go back to an oldie but a goodie. I came up with this conconcotion a few years ago when I was searching for a good substitute for a Lemon Rice Chicken Soup from a local Greek restaurant. I think this tastes 10 times better. I usually use chicken stock to make it, but I omit any actual chicken because I just don't really like chicken pieces in my soup. I know, call me crazy.

This recipe is ridiculously easy and a great way to use up any celery, carrots, or various other veggies you may have lying around. For instance, tonight I had half a potato on hand so I grated it and threw it in. It's pretty impossible to screw this up because you really just need to make it to your taste. Some people might find the pairings of herbs odd but I love the taste they create.

Lemon Rice Soup

2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 small-medium yellow onion
1 clove garlic
2 tblsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp basil
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp oregano
juice of 1-2 lemons, depending on taste
1/2 cup rice
6 cups chicken or veggie stock*

1) In a large pot saute celery, carrots, potato, onion, and garlic in olive oil until onions soften.
2) Add the 6 cups of stock, salt, pepper, basil, parsley, oregano, juice of 1-2 lemons, and 1/2 a cup rice. Bring to a boil, cover, and let simmer for 20-30 minutes. Adjust seasoning to your taste and enjoy!

*I usually like to use homemade chicken stock or veggie stock, but I often use broth cubes or broth or stock in a carton when I don' thave any homemade on hand. Easy to do in a pinch.

A New Beginning

2010-01-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

I really truly never thought I would have a blog. I've tried to run one before on the topic of feminism, human rights, etc. But sadly, I found it was just too hard to maintain. I've always enjoyed writing but once my degree was finished in Spring 2008, it kind-of-maybe slipped by the wayside.

But then Ryan and I moved in together in November! I've always loved to cook but when I lived with my folks I didn't have nearly as much opportunity - the reason being, my mother also loves to cook, and it's kind of hard to resistant free, delicious, home-cooked meals when she's been cooking them all your life. I'm sure kitchens were far from Ryan's mind when we were apartment hunting, but I was taking careful note in each of the places we viewed. Since we've already decided our apartment is as awesome as could be, it follows that the kitchen in this apartment was also the nicest in all the ones we viewed. It's not huge, but it is a long galley kitchen, which means there's enough room for a small bar table and an extra shelf for all our fancy appliances. It does however, have almost no counter space. But the counter space hasn't deterred me. Luckily cooking for two means that you don't usually need much counter space anyway.

This happy little kitchen in this happy little apartment is the inspiration for the name of this blog - Riverside Kitchen. While my kitchen window may not overlook the river (in fact it overlooks a street and an apartment building across said street) but our apartment building does. I'll be honest, when I dreamed of moving out, I dreamed of living downtown, close to all things I consider 'cool' and 'trendy' and easy acess to the river and riverwalk means I always get in lots of running, biking, skating, and skiing. Thus, I decided Riverside Kitchen was the perfect name.

I'm sorry to say I don't have a recipe or even a picture of food to go along with this first post. Unfortunately I have to leave for work in twenty minutes and I'm not even dressed yet. But I will say that even though this is mainly going to be a food blog I also want it to reflect (parts of) my life, my thoughts, and my opinions so I hope that some posts will delve into my food politics (whole, natural, traditional, organic, free-range) and probably my feminist and human rights politics. Plus sillyness with friends, family, and no doubt my partner, Ryan.