Seattle!

Today I'm off to Seattle for a few days to visit my good friend Jodi. I was there over Christmas and New Years and had a fantastic time, and I know I'll have a fantastic time this trip, too. I also know the food will be amazing because Jodi is a ridiculously good cook and gourmand, and she has a Bradley smoker on her balcony she is not afraid to use!

This is the bourbon and orange marinated hickory smoked chicken she made on New Years Day:

This was so good you'd pay top dollar for it in a fancy restaurant, I swear.

Jodi is also famous for cookie breakfasts...(yes, we ate this for breakfast - several days in a row)...


...And epic turkey dinners with enough food to feed an army (there were two of us). The turkey she brined overnight - look at the colour it has!


I'll save the fondu photos for another time because I don't want anyone damaging any keyboards out there with all the drool I'm sure these photos are creating.

And of course, there is Starbucks in Seattle! This is the original, across from Pike Place Market. I snapped some photos but didn't go because there was always a huge line-up out the door! Luckily, on the walking route to Jodi's from Pike Place, there are plenty of Starbucks to choose from and they didn't have line-ups!

The West Coast adventure continues. And...I'm also going to Seattle again in April!

Magazine Monday (on Tuesday, not to mention a record!) #68: Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake

Of course, just as I start getting back into the swing of things, I go away for a few days, but there will be lots to post here when I get back.

Anyway, I managed another magazine recipe for the week, which is a record: two in seven days is not the norm, as we all know. In fact, it's two in four days to be precise. Well, it was Canadian Thanksgiving here on the weekend so I made a nice dessert to take to a friend's for dinner on Sunday night, and since I have a ton of pumpkin in my freezer, and there was a special pumpkin section in the Oct. 2010 issue of Canadian Living, I just had to take advantage of all these planets aligning for me.

The recipe for the Pumpkin Pecan Bundt Cake I made is here.

OMG - this was so fantastic I barely have words. It was a huge hit, and I even had enough left over from Sunday night's dinner to serve my dad for dessert at our own little Thanksgiving celebration last night. He doesn't like pumpkin that much and even he loved it! This cake was really moist and flavourful, and the crunch of the pecans was wonderful. It was perfectly spiced. I didn't make the rum glaze, but instead served this with some sweetened whipped cream and some caramel sauce I've had hanging out in my fridge for ages. It was perfect!

Definitely a keeper!

Thanksgiving Rundown

This year it was just Dad and me because my brother & SIL were visiting family in another province. But, just because there were only two of us, we did not simplify anything and had the full-on, slap-up Thanksgiving turkey dinner we wanted. On the menu:

• turkey breast roast (my dad hates everything about turkey except the white meat, so he only buys turkey breast roasts and usually has 3 or 4 of them in his freezer at any given time) roasted with double smoked bacon & sausages made by a local butcher
• potato cakes made with garlic & Parmesan cheese; a departure for us, but this is an old dish my grandmother used to make apparently
• stuffing, gravy, yams (only dad eats yams)
• Brussels Sprouts sauteed with bacon & pinenuts & topped with Parmesan (made by yours truly)
• and for dessert, Bakewell Tart, also made by yours truly

Here is a nice collage I made of the meal:Everything was delicious! The recipe for the Brussels is basically this one from this post, only I used regular bacon instead of pancetta, and I topped the dish with Parmesan cheese.

As for the dessert, Bakewell Tart, my dad has been nagging me for this for a long time, and I finally gave in for this special occasion. He was so thrilled and so impressed and as soon as he bit into it, he said, "This is it!" I don't know why I put him off on this so long, because it was ridiculously easy to make. Alas, I'm not going to post the recipe because I want to use it for my next Bread 'n Molasses article, so you'll have to wait until January! But here is another collage:The cool thing about this year's Thanksgiving is that we're getting two of them in the family! When my brother & SIL get back from their trip, we're having another turkey dinner! This will be later this week, and I'll be making two dishes for it, too. Those recipes I will definitely share, so stay tuned!

I hope my Canadian readers are having a great long weekend!

Full Flickr set is here.

Kamloops Trip, Food Edition, Part 3

On Sunday, after a breakfast of homemade egg mcmuffins made by S, my dad picked me up and drove me down the highway to my friend Anita's place. She has a ranch style home on a large property in the countryside just beyond Kamloops. I actually lived there for a few weeks when I first left my husband in May 2005, but hadn't visited since about spring of 2006. Lots of changes, but this one was the most impressive for me:This is their brand new fridge/freezer combo: freezer on the left, fridge on the right. Isn't it amazing? Trust me, it's even more impressive in real person! I was continually drooling over this the whole time I was there!

For dinner, Richard made a Mexican dish of yummy rice, sauted peppers, BBQ chicken with lime and cumin, and sliced avocado. It was excellent, and Richard is an amazing cook.On Monday, Anita and I went into Salmon Arm to run some errands and visit Gort's Gouda. This is a really cool cheese factory on a farm and you can walk around and visit the cows and sheep, sample the wide variety of gouda on offer, and have an actual tour of the factory. We visited the animals and sampled some cheese but we didn't have the tour. I actually used to live not far from here and often went to Gort's, and I can honestly say that they make superb cheese. Apart from gouda, they also make quark, different sheep cheeses, fresh cheese curds, sheep's feta and other stuff.

There were lots of animals to see. Visitors can wander around the barn where the cows, calves, sheep, and lambs live - and who doesn't love calves and lambs? There were plenty of babies to see! The St. Croix sheep herd had many lambs, and of course they were so cute. Also, there were lots of calves, which were also very cute. Many of the animals are pretty friendly and would come up to use to be stroked or to suck on our fingers, and while I'm not a fan of animal phlegm all over my hands, I was OK with it because I always pack hand sanitizer with me. Lambs make me smile...Calves make me smile...Gouda makes me smile...I bought a small round of Italian-flavoured gouda, since the one with red pepper and cumin that I usually get wasn't available.

For dinner that night, Richard was away working, so Anita and I slapped a couple of steaks on the BBQ, made a Caesar salad, and I had a baked potato. Yum!
And who else ate well during my stay? Anita's neigbour's llamas, of course! He keeps a herd of sheep and as they graze in the back 40, he has the llamas there to protect them. Llamas love snacks - especially alfalfa and carrots, and Anita always has some on hand. The sheep are shy and don't take well to hand feeding, but the llamas got right in there! In fact, they are known to hang around the back gate waiting to be fed.

And that about sums up the food angle of my trip!

For more about my adventures, you can read this post.

Valentine's Cookies

So I caved into societal pressure and got all Valentines-y this week. No, I didn't buy chocolate (that comes after Saturday when the chocolates go on sale everywhere). I decided to make heart-shaped cookies. Call me crazy. I even spent a whole 99 cents on a heart-shaped cookie cutter! Go me!

The recipe I used was the Cocoa Sugar Cookies from Canadian Living. You may recall that I used this recipe at Christmas, when I made these cookies. It was a very smart move for me to purchase red and white sprinkles at Christmas time because they can also be used at Valentine's Day. Again, go me!

For the icing, I had a bunch of cream cheese icing (recipe here) left over from my brother's grad cake, which I made last April (icing freezes well, though this got a little lumpy upon thawing). What can I say? I don't like throwing things away! In the end, I got unpretty but quite delicious cookies to share with my family this weekend.

Enjoy!

Solstice Feast

I am very pleased to report that Sunday's Solstice feast was a humungous hit with those who attended! As a reminder, here's the menu:

Chicken stuffed with goat cheese & sundried tomatoes and wrapped in prosciutto Caramelized Onion & Brie Bread Pudding
Brussels Sprouts sauteed with pancetta & pine nuts
Green Beans
Salad
Tres Leches Cake

This was actually a very easy meal to put together, and the results were stunning! Apart from the bread pudding, here is the complete rundown.

First of all, the chicken. I used boneless, skinless chicken breasts and for the stuffing used1 package of peppercorn goat cheese and to that I added about 6 or so chopped sundried tomatoes. I mixed it all together in a small bowl, then cut a slit in the centre, thickest part of the chicken breasts. Each breast got about 1 tbsp of stuffing. Then, each breast was wrapped in a thin slice of prosciutto and secured with a toothpick. I baked them at 350F for about 40 minutes.

Everyone loved the chicken, which was pretty tasty, I must say. My dad even gave me a wonderful compliment by saying that it tasted like something a fancy restaurant would serve and charge a lot of money for - which was so nice to hear and the highlight of my evening!

I made this recipe up off the cuff and was a little curious about how it would turn out, if the prosciutto would shrink lots or burn, but in the end it turned out fabulously and I'll definitely keep this around.



I also made up the brussels sprouts recipe I used. I love Brussels and I realize they're not everyone's cup of tea. I wanted to do something new and exciting with them because I usually steam them and that's pretty boring. So is a cheese sauce, really. So, I came up with this simple idea.

2lbs Brussels, trimmed and sliced thinly
2 thick (1/2") slices pancetta, diced
1/3 cup pine nuts
2 tbsp olive oil

In a large skillet, fry the pancetta until nice and crisp. Add the pine nuts, and stir until they're just slighly toasted. Add the sprouts and oil and saute until tender and bright green. Voila!

This dish was also a hit, and I even manage to convert one of my diners who previously disliked Brussels sprouts to a new fan. I'd never used pancetta before in any cooking, and I was expecting it to render off way more fat than it actually did. That's what necessitated the addition of some olive oil - the pan was virtually dry when it came time to add the sprouts. The sweetness of the sprouts contrasted well with the saltiness of the pancetta, and the pine nuts added flavour and crunch. Go me! I'm on a roll!

As for the green beans and salad, there's nothing terribly special or important about them, so let's move on to dessert, which was Tres Leches Cake.

I believe I first heard about this South American dessert by doing one of those memes, either this one or this one. I had never had it or even heard of it before, and as I did some research on it, I was really intrigued. The Solstice was a good opportunity to try it out on some discerning eaters. I got the recipe for it from here. Basically, you bake a cake, poke holes in it, then glaze it with a glaze made from three types of milk; the cake soaks up all the glaze, you throw some whipped cream and fruit on top, and there you go.

I made the cake part on Saturday, and it was easy enough, though it did have a lot of eggs in it. I poked holes in it as directed when it came out of the oven. When I put the glaze together, however, I became a little concerned: there was about 5 cups of the stuff and I wasn't sure if I'd followed the recipe correctly because that seemed like an awful lot of liquid for the cake to take on. But, I persisted and followed through. And eventually, the cake soaked up all the liquid in about half an hour or so, so I put it in the fridge overnight.

To serve, I decided to use blueberries I'd bought and frozen at the end of the summer to make a sauce. My brother is a blueberry fiend and he was pretty happy about my choice. Again, I winged the recipe for the sauce, but it's very simple:

3 cups blueberries
zest & juice of 1 lemon
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 tbsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp cold water

Bring the first four ingredients to boil in a medium saucepan, then simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the cornstarch/water mixture and let the sauce bubble until thickened. Set aside to cool slightly or allow it go completely cold, depending on what you're going to do with it. In my case, I wanted it room temperature for the cake, which I also served with whipped cream (I didn't ice the cake with whipped cream because I did anticipate having leftovers and whipped cream doesn't do well left around for a long time).

Everyone totally enjoyed this, but we all agreed that it was very rich. I was back and forth about how I felt about it: I wasn't keen on the texture of the cake, but the flavour was good. The sauce was excellent. The novelty of it was pretty cool and it was a good experiment. I think if I were to do this again, I might find a different recipe that had a lighter cake and less glaze.

So there you have it. It was a spectacular meal and everyone left the table very, very full but very, very happy.

I have two more big meals coming up this week, three if you count Christmas Day breakfast. I'm looking forward to them!

Solo Thanksgiving

Life with a mood disorder is always quick to change. I was going to go to the family dinner tonight at my SIL's parents' place, but at the last minute bailed because I wasn't feeling up to it. I am also in hormone hell right now, so I opted for a feast for one. I went to my local overpriced grocery store and bought a roasting chicken, some nugget potatoes, and some snacky things. I also bought the ingredients for a dessert I've been wanting to make for a long time.

My dinner was very simple as you can see, but I did enjoy the chips & dip I munched on this afternoon as I watched a movie, and though my fare was plain and easy to make, I am stuffed and satisfied.

As for the dessert, it was also simple and easy to prepare, but man was it good! About a year ago, I came across this recipe for Pumpkin Bread Pudding in the Oct. 2007 issue of Bon Appetit, and I cut it out and saved it in my recipe binder. I made a loaf of pumpkin bread earlier this week (post and recipe upcoming - stay tuned) and had 3/4 cup leftover canned pumpkin. The pudding recipe called for exactly that amount of pumpkin, and the rest of the ingredients I either had on hand or were cheap and easy to find - this is bread pudding after all.

It certainly smelled wonderful as it baked, and it looked beautiful when I took it out of the oven. After letting it cool for a while as I did my dishes, I finally dug in. And...It was totally awesome! Rich, very rich, but to die for! Definitely a keeper recipe - and I can't believe I waited all this time to make it. Unfortunately, I don't come from a bread pudding-loving family, so I'm not sure how it would go over with the crowd, but I was impressed. It also gave me another idea: pumpkin French toast! I can just see - and taste - it now!

To all my Canadian friends and readers, have a happy Thanksgiving!