Hiatus

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.