Family favourites (old and new)
Tonight my daughter asked me if we could get carrot soup from Burgoo (a local chain in Vancouver known for their soups and stews). Since it was rainy and I was feeling lazy I said sure. Little did I know they had taken it off …
Chickpea hummus is great on sandwiches instead of mayo or you can use it as a dip for veggies, tortilla chips or with pita bread. You will need: 2, 19 oz (540 mL) cans of chickpeas drained and rinsed well (allow to drain again before …
I say blindfolded because these are so easy you can almost make them with your eyes closed – I take no responsibility for missing digits if you try it though. Frozen fries are full of crap (read the bag sometime, it’s horrifying what they can do to a normally nutritious spud) and much more expensive than a bag of good ol’ Russets or Yukon gold potatoes. Try to get them organic and local if you can…or not.
You will need:
6-8 medium potatoes scrubbed and unpeeled (I do peel or cut off any gnarly bits and I take out any potato “eyes”)
1-2 Tbsps olive oil
Sea salt and pepper to taste (or a couple tsps of dried seasoning mix of your choice…pretty much anything goes)
Yield 4-6 as a side (or 1 if it’s me).
You can also make these with yams or sweet potatoes.
The wonderful Emma Mileva is the wife of my colleague (the also wonderful) Jordan Milev, Creative Director at Skunkworks Creative Group Inc. Not only is Emma in the middle of finishing her Ph.D in Linguistics at SFU, she is constantly sending Jordan to work with …
Fonda Bloy is an amazing dance instructor and choreographer. She is also the mom of Oliver, who at the time I first posted this recipe, was a very energetic 3-year old who is big on snap peas…red peppers…not so much. This is Fonda’s favorite salad …
This year my kids went off to their Auntie and Uncle’s for a big Thanksgiving feast so I was off the hook for cooking a turkey (insert cartwheel here). However, for Thanksgiving Monday they requested…meatloaf. My daughter “the mostly vegetarian” will eat very few meat things…chicken strips (sometimes) and, wait for it,…meatloaf. Yes, I know you can’t get much meatier than meatloaf but there you have it. My son “the carnivore” is also a meatloaf fan. My recipe is a big cheat because I use dry onion soup mix but I rarely have had left overs so I will share it.
1 c. bread crumbs (I like Pastene Italian but you can make your own)
1 egg lightly beaten (not shaken or stirred ha)
1/2 envelope of dry onion soup mix (I like Lipton’s)
1/4 c. milk
1/2 c. of your favourite BBQ sauce or good ol’ Ketchup
1 lb ground beef (preferably organic)
1/4 lb ground pork (see above)
Grated cheddar (optional)
This year I used a muffin tin to make mini-meat loaves. If you use a muffin tin, grease the cups before you pack in the meatloaf mix, increase the oven temperature to 375 F and reduce cooking time to 30-40 minutes. The downside to the individual portion approach is that it’s a royal pain to dig the mini loaves out (and they are NOT very photogenic, thus the reason for the shot of my highly photogenic Yorkshire Puddings). Next time it’s the tried and true loaf pan.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings…at our house it’s 6.
I served them with mashed yams, asparagus (which I destroyed in the microwave…next time I will just steam it), Chatelaine’s bread stuffing and Yorkshire pudding. I usually make my Mom’s stuffing recipe but thought I’d try something new this year. Big mistake. It was good…but you should never mess with nostalgia. First thing my daughter said was, “There’s a weird spice in the stuffing.” That would be the Thyme or the fennel bulb (I had left the sage out because I hate the stuff). Otherwise, it’s a pretty decent recipe in my humble opinion and uses far less butter than my Mom’s artery buster stuffing (MABS) which uses 1 full cup and then some. I did add the fennel to the onion, celery and garlic mixture but I think it was actually a nice complement. Next time I’ll sneak it into MABS and see if she notices.
I hadn’t made Yorkshire pudding for years and the photo is the result I got from a recipe I found here. The Youtube video from The Spruce was also useful (thanks!). The equal parts turned out to be 4 eggs to 1 c. milk and 1 c. flour. I used my Kitchenaid and then put the works in the fridge for a couple hours.
Because it’s Thanksgiving I also made Cranberry Sauce…my kids love it and it’s super easy to make.
Thanksgiving always reminds me of cooking with family friends. I grew up in Ontario where the fall weather intensifies the wonderful smells from a Thanksgiving kitchen. Back in the day, we always had people over to cook (many hands and all that). One memorable Thanksgiving, cooking a turkey with cheese cloth was all the rage. You were supposed to cover the bird with cheese cloth soaked in butter and baste the be-geezus out of it as you went. This particular year they (meaning the adults…I think I was about 10) decided to try it out. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any cheese cloth. We did, however, have a box of those lovely pink and blue J Cloths (remember those). They sort of looked like cheese cloth so someone (who shall remain nameless…not me) came up with the brilliant idea to use those instead. It worked like a charm. Except…the bird came out bright pink. Then someone got the idea to actually read the J Cloth box and discovered that besides red dye number whatever it was, the bloody things are full of cleaning chemicals – yum, yum. I actually can’t remember what we ended up eating instead…but it wasn’t turkey that year.
I met Tracie Willis at my first “Mom and Tots” group. She had twin boys. After that I stopped whining (well maybe not totally). Tracie lived about 8 blocks from my house and was the one person I could count on to be up at …
Yesterday I decided to try out Katie Bishop’s “The best and easiest tomato pasta sauce,” from her excellent cookbook Slow Cooking. Easy Slow Cooker Recipes. I bought the book for the Vietnamese Pho Broth recipe (which is exceptional by the way) but today was not …
When I was about 7 we moved from the city to the country and like every good back-to-the-land hippie family my parents and their friends planted gardens. In our garden my parents planted 6 hills of zucchini (just in case the first 5 didn’t take). For anyone who knows anything about how prolific zucchinis are you may commence rolling on the ground laughing hysterically now. Back then vegetarian cookbooks were a little thin on the ground and my poor parents had no idea you should eat zucchini’s when they are small not the size of cave man clubs. We had so much zucchini we couldn’t give them away (besides that everyone else already had too much zucchini and were trying to do precisely the same thing). In fact, we took to leaving them on people’s porches in the dead of night just to be rid of them. However, we lived in an area with “real” farmers and they caught on pretty quick. This meant they left their dogs out at night (these were “real” farm dogs…the kind that bite)…so the zucchini stealth bombing tactics were abandonned and we contented ourselves with making loaf after loaf (after loaf) of zucchini bread. Zucchini bread and muffins are about the only thing you can do with gargantuan zucchinis. Based on the assumption you will be sensible and go for the small to medium sized variety here is a good recipe for you.
The photo shows both Zucchini Hummus (top left) and regular old chickpea hummus (I’ll post the recipe for that one another time). The healthy divet in the Zucchini Hummus is down to me…I have to say it is really, really good. It’s lighter than the chickpea version. The red stuff on top is Sumac (the spice not the poison…don’t mix them up). You can get ground Sumac (pronounced soo-MAH-kee – learned something new today as I’ve been running around calling it soo-Mak) at any place that sells a good selection of Greek or Middle Eastern herbs and spices. It adds an extra lemony tang that is quite nice. For more about Sumac click here.
Note: This recipe comes courtesy of my friend Krystyna Williamson who has just finished harvesting her garden and graciously answered the call I put out for good eats. Thank you Kiki!
Krystyna says:
Having lived in the Middle East for several years, I appreciate a good hummus recipe. This one calls for zucchini instead of chickpeas and it is absolutely outstanding! A recipe in Matt Amsden’s book RAWvolution, Gourmet Living Cuisine, inspired it.
You will need:
5-6 cups of zucchini, skinned and diced, (about 2 large zucchini)
¾ cup raw sesame tahini
½ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic
2 tsp Celtic sea salt or Himalayan Salt
chili powder
Remove skins from zucchini, chop coarsely and place in a high-speed blender. (Reserve skins for soups and smoothies.) Peel garlic cloves and cut in half. Add remaining ingredients to blender and blend until thick and smooth. Spoon hummus into a large serving bowl using a rubber spatula. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of chili powder if desired.
*Recipe is easy to half, and it keeps well for 5-7 days, refrigerated.
Breakfast cookies…sounds like a bad idea right? Not so in this case. Just as every day should start out with a good breakfast I thought I’d start this blog with a breakfast fuel recipe. Sadly, I have never been a big breakfast eater (aside from …