Saturday Laugh

Via ICHC.

Pumpkin Time!

Good old LOGS (local overpriced grocery store) actually had a decent deal of for once in a blue freakin' moon: pumpkins for 19 cents/lb. For $2.53 I got these beauties:I spent yesterday roasting them up, pureeing the meat, and freezing the pumpkin in one and two cup portions. I got exactly 14 cups of pumpkin puree from these two pumpkins! Woo-hoo!I also saved all the seeds and roasted them, in addition to the seeds my roommate gave me when she emptied out the pumpkin she bought for Halloween. I decided to have some fun with the spices Palidor sent me in her care package recently. I made three different kinds of roasted pumpkin seeds (always a favourite snack of mine at this time of year!): curry flavour, using the curry powder Palidor's dad uses; Chinese Five Spice; and just plain salted.The curry ones smelled absolutely out of this world! They needed some help in the flavour department, however. I think these would be good on a salad or as a garnish. I can tell you, though, that I am so looking forward to making a real curry with this powder because the aroma blew me away. The Five Spice were OK...They also needed a bit of help. I think, in retrospect, I should have added some sugar to them. The salted ones were great!

Thanks again, Palidor!!!

Have a great Halloween everyone!

Lunch at Max & Irma's

Again last week, Dad and I journeyed to Nelson to take advantage of some sales at Save-on Foods, and once again we had lunch. We decided upon a restaurant we'd enjoyed in the past but hadn't been to very recently, Max & Irma's.

They have a great menu featuring sandwiches, wraps, salads, and wood-fired pizzas. The last time I was there I had a great sandwich called the Italian Club: pancetta, lemon & herb chicken, Asiago cheese, lettuce & tomato, and garlic mayo. It was amazing!

After taking a while to decide, on this most recent occasion I fancied something light because I was already thinking ahead to dessert! The list was on the board in front of me and it had so many yummy things on it that I knew I couldn't resist, so I wanted to watch it with my entree. I opted for the Chicken Club Wrap, and Dad went for the Italian Club. Both sandwiches came with house side salad and corn chips. We both enjoyed our choices very much!Now, onto dessert. There was tiramisu, there was blueberry peach cobbler, there were some other things, but the one that caught my eye was the chocolate cherry cheesecake! I looked forward to this all during lunch and it was worth the wait! It was so excellent - full of black cherries and big chunks of actual milk chocolate bar, with a thick chocolate cookie crust. It was to die for! My dad had the flourless chocolate espresso torte and he thought it was amazing.Another winning restaurant in Nelson, BC!

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #21: Chicken & Pesto Pizza

Before I get to the main part of this post, I have something to say. I am going to be making my posts short & light for the coming while because I'm planning on doing my own version of NaNoWriMo next month; you can read about my amendments & reasoning behind them here. Obviously, I still have to eat, so I'll still be posting regularly, but my posts will be shorter than usual and I might be spending less time going around to visit you all. I'm trying to schedule as many posts to publish for me automatically as I can. So, if you don't hear from me as much, it's not that I don't love y'all! I just want to focus on this other goal for a month and see how it goes. Wish me luck!

OK...Onto today's topic...

I had a hankering for pizza the other day. I also had some leftover chicken from my spatchocking experience in the freezer, and I needed to find a way to use a decent chunk of my boring pesto. I've used pesto instead of pizza sauce before and it works really well. I got some naan from the grocery store, and I was set!

Super easy, super quick, really delicious!

Chicken & Pesto Pizza with Olives

1 piece of flat bread - naan, or pita, or whatever
pesto sauce
leftover chicken, cubed
1 slice of Black Forest ham, chopped
mozzarella cheese, shredded
pitted Kalamata olives

Assemble & bake until browned & bubbly.

Enjoy!

Puzzle Time

Last week at work a dessert was sitting on the counter when I arrived. It looked like a vanilla cake with chocolate chips in it. It was decorated with pink & white icing. I was stoked! I love it when residents drop off goodies and I get to sample other peoples' desserts!

As I went through my tasks, the dessert sat next to me. I began to look at it closer... Those were no chocolate chips and that was no cake. Instead, what I seemed to be seeing was as pudding with raisins in it.

The maker of this dessert is Italian and no one seems to remember to ask her what exactly this is.

When I had a break and could taste it, it was very boozy - lots of rum in it, I believe. And it had the texture of unbaked cake batter. What I think it was, however, was lady fingers soaked in booze and mixed with...something...Vanilla custard? Whipped cream & custard? Some combination thereof?

I have no idea, but here's a picture:

So, we have the following elements:

• booze - rum, I think
• raisins
• possibly lady fingers - or some cookies or cake or something, soaked
• custard - maybe

Does this ring any bells for anyone? I never see this resident and the cook is always too busy to remember to ask! If you know, leave me a comment. Thanks!

Magazine Monday #53: Sangria Chicken

My roommate is in a line of work in which she receives a lot of gifts at holiday times, and last summer she was given a whole bunch of wines. One bottle she opened and didn't drink so she gave it to me. It was a cabernet sauvignon. I don't drink wine at all, but I do enjoy cooking with it! And there was a recipe from the March 2009 issue of Gourmet for Sangria Chicken that really tickled my fancy, and now I had the means to try it out!

The recipe is here.

This was a fabulous recipe! It was super quick and easy to make, and very, very tasty. A definite keeper!

Cookbook Review: A Year in Lucy's Kitchen

Am I a bad Canadian if I admit I'd never heard of Lucy Waverman before I got this book? Because, honestly, I didn't have a clue who she was and had to do some research in order to figure out that she's actually pretty well-known in certain Canadian circles. Lucy is a prominent Canadian food columnist and food writer, and she's famous for her articles in both The Globe and Mail (one of Canada's national newspapers) and the LCBO's Food & Drink Magazine.

OK, I'm in BC. I neither read The Globe and Mail nor have access to the Liquor Control Board of ONTARIO's periodical. Sue me!

It doesn't matter because Lucy's new cookbook, A Year in Lucy's Kitchen, has made me fan!

We are all surely familiar now with seasonal eating, but Lucy actually takes the concept further and provides recipes & menus on a monthly basis, using local, seasonal ingredients appropriate to each particular month. I really enjoyed this approach, not only because the recipes were broken down even further from seasonal to monthly, but this made for a much more interesting structure for a cookbook. While I do love cookbooks, don't get me wrong, as a writer (with a degree in creative writing), I often get bored with the structure of your average cookbook: appetizers, soups, salads, main courses, veggies & side dishes, desserts. Etc. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading a mystery novel I already know the resolution for. In the case of A Year in Lucy's Kitchen, I was delighted with her approach to the structure of the book and it made it a much more interesting read for me.

The chapters, one for each month, do indeed focus on seasonal fresh ingredients, and with the added bonus of simple, easy-to-use menus for great meals that are quick and delicious. What I also loved about this cookbook was the variety in cuisines: Thai, Indian, Chinese, Jewish - to name a few. I love cookbooks with varied themes!

As for the recipes, they are great! They are not fussy, not complicated, and don't involve huge lists of ingredients. I made two recipes: Spinach, Apple, and Avocado Salad on page 273 (substituting romaine lettuce for the spinach, and cashews for almonds, as that's what I had on hand) and the Plum Pizza on page 208 (substituting apples for plums as I don't like plums). In the case of the salad, it had nice, refreshing dressing I'll definitely use again. As for the Plum Pizza, which was more along the lines of an apple tart in my case (I'll do an upcoming post on this soon), it was spectacularly simple and delicious, and something I'll definitely do again.

I have bookmarked over a dozen recipes to try from this book, and I can't wait! A total recommend!

Saturday Laugh & Awards

Via ICHC.

A couple of my favourite food bloggers have bestowed me with some awards!

Palidor of Crazy Asian Gal awarded me with this friendship award. Thank you, Palidor! You rock! In return, I'd like to pass this on to my great friend Pierce of Life in the Slow Lane at Squirrel Head Manor. Pierce also rocks!



Nat of Girls Are Made Of... gave me this lovely loyalty award. Thank you, Nat! You yourself are one rocking food blogger! I'd like to pass this one on to Cathy of Accountants Can Cook? Cathy is one of my daily "must reads" and I love her humour and no-nonsense style. What does Cathy do, everyone? Yeah, you guessed it, she ROCKS!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Sexy Marbling

I made a ton of cookies at work the other day, chocolate chip and Dad's. For some strange reason, the Dad's cookies spread a lot; this happens from time to time and it's a real mystery to me and the other staff who make them. Everyone has had a similar experience. We make the exact same recipe, yet sometimes they spread a lot. Such is the life of a baker.















I also made a marble cake. I haven't done a lot of marbled cakes in my life, but it's kind of fun!When I took it out of the oven, Cook said, "Wow, that's sexy!""Sexy?" I've never had anyone say that about anything I've made! I was really happy.

Alas, the cake required icing...

Ah well. The picture is all I need.

Cooking with Kylie: "Mum's Stir-fried Chicken Fillets"

Oh, how I am loving this series I'm doing! I can't get enough of this cookbook, and think I'll take a look on Amazon to see what else Kylie has published, because she's awesome!

Here is another simple recipe from Simple Chinese Cooking that was delicious. I didn't use chicken fillets, but rather I used some chicken breasts because that's what I had on hand. I also didn't use any chilli as the recipe calls for because I don't like them; I used some orange bell pepper instead. The original recipe also calls for stock, but I didn't need any more liquid so I didn't use it. Kylie describes this as one of her mum's "no-nonsense dishes."

Stir-friend Chicken, à la Kylie's mum (adapted by me from "Mum's Stir-fried Chicken Fillets on page 81 of Simple Chinese Cooking)

For the marinade:

1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp finely grated ginger
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 2cm slices

Combine chicken with marinade ingredients and set aside to marinate for about half an hour.

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 medium white onion, sliced
3 spring onions, trimmed & cut into 10cm lengths
1 tbsp sake
1/2 orange bell pepper, finely sliced

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok until surface appears to shimmer. Add chicken and marinade & stir-fry until cooked. Remove from wok & set aside.

Add 1 tbsp oil to wok & stir-fry onion, pepper, & spring onion for 1 minute. Add chicken and stir-fry for another minute.

I served mine with rice.

Again, yummy, simple, and quick. Again, a winner from Kylie!

Restaurant Review: Funky Mexican Monkey

Last week, Dad and I took another trip to Nelson, and after deciding on one place to go for lunch, we ended up going somewhere completely different on a whim. This new eatery in Nelson, Funky Mexican Monkey, was on our walk to the other place we were going to, but it looked cool from the outside and we decided to give it a try.This location used to house a very excellent restaurant called Kas, but alas, Kas has closed shop and instead we have here a small burger joint that also sells Mexican food. Some of the links on the site aren't working, but if you go here and scroll down, you'll be able to find the entire menu.

The inside is small, a tad cramped, but on the cozy side, complete with a huge collage of monkey photos and even a tree covered with stuffed monkeys. The menu looked good and it was hard to decide on what to get, but I was in a burger mood. The menu states that all burgers are served with "a heaping amount of hand-cut fries" so I was pretty stoked about that. I chose the Funky Monkey Burger, which was essentially a cheese burger that had the addition of a homemade pineapple relish. My dad started out with the Azteca soup, which is a spicy, brothy soup topped with tortilla chips, guacamole, lettuce, cheese, and sour cream - touted by the sign out front to be the local critics' choice for "best soup in Nelson." Dad thought it was really good. He followed up the Portobello Burger, which came topped with Swiss Cheese, roasted red pepper, sauteed red o onions, sliced avocado, and spring mix. He loved it.
The fries were totally excellent and probably the best fries I've had in a long time!

This lunch for two came to about $30. Totally a recommended eatery if you're ever in the Nelson area. Next time, I intend to try out the Mexican food!

Garden Bounty 2009: Lemon Balm

I do love herbs. I have always wanted a herb garden, and I even had a dream of becoming a herbalist and herbal healer back when I was much younger. Culinary herbs are more my bag now, and this year I grew cilantro (let's not go there, OK?), basil (and we all know how well that turned out, don't we?), chives (which did nothing - I think I planted them too close to the neighbouring peony and they didn't get enough sun) and something wonderful called lemon balm.

Part of the mint family, lemon balm gives off a wonderful, lemony scent. I was surprised to find seeds for this at my local purveyor of cheap gardening crap, Wally World, and when I did, I was delighted and didn't hesitate to purchase a package.

Again, I made a huge error when I planted the seeds: I misjudged how large the neighbouring plants would grow. In this case, the neighbouring plants were my bean plants, and if you recall, these were so out of control and I got so many beans I couldn't give them all away - and I froze nearly 3lbs. This is a big problem for me; I have no concept of spacing when it comes to my garden. It doesn't help that the garden itself is small and narrow, and as such I do take some care in where I plant things. But I feel the need to utilize the space as best I can and this has led to some errors in judgment - like with the chives. And this was the case with the lemon balm.

The seeds took forever to sprout and I didn't see any growth poke through my soil for weeks. They have a longer germination time, as I read on the seed package, but even so, these didn't start showing any signs of action for a long time after I expected them to. In the meantime, the wax bean plants took off as if they were on steroids (I used nothing on them, I swear!) and before long, the lemon balm was living in the shadow of the lush bean leaves. As a result, I got a very poor, very small, very stunted crop. When I yanked the bean plants at the end of August, which was when they started to dry up and stop producing (it was almost a relief, I was so overwhelmed with beans), I thought the lemon balm would have a fighting chance. How wrong I was; it never had a chance. Early frosts, blahx3, and I got next to nothing. I was disappointed and annoyed with myself.
I did get a very small amount, and I had to pick them and do something with them just so I could feel slightly less disappointed and annoyed. I decided to make some cookies. Initially, I thought I would make shortbread with lemon balm, but the idea evolved and I got over-ambitious. I also got a shitty result.

I won't even post the recipe because it's an adaptation I made and since it was just an abject failure I don't even want to spend the time typing it out. It was my own fault; I should have known better than to do what I did and I have no on to blame but myself.

So, what did I do with the cookies? I took them to my brother & SIL's place for our family dinner and left them there! Jem is like Mikey; he'll eat anything!

Magazine Monday #53: Pancakes!

Our MM hostess, Ivonne of Creampuffs in Venice, commented recently that I should be on Canadian Living's payroll, since my MM posts predominantly come from Canadian Living Magazine. And you'll probably see even more CL recipes on here, now that Gourmet is defunct.

So, what's on the menu for today's MM? Well, how about pancakes? I made this recipe from the July 2009 issue of Canadian Living: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes (without the compote included in the recipe - I'd rather have maple syrup, thank you very much). Instead of blueberries, I used some of my locally-foraged huckleberries.

These were delicious - light and airy and cakey. Perfect! The recipe made way more that one lone coyote could eat on her own, so I took the leftovers to my brother, who gladly ate them up.

A recipe for the "keeper" file for sure!

Saturday Laugh

Thanks to Palidor!!!!

Once again, the thoughtfulness and generosity of my blogging community humbles me.

Today, I received a wonderful box from Palidor, author of Crazy Asian Gal. The box was bursting full of 13 different spices, including star anise, whole cardamom, and Palidor's dad's curry powder. Many are spices I cannot get where I am or are so exotic I couldn't afford them at all. Some, like the macha powder, I'd never heard of! Also in the box were some gourmet hot chocolate mixes and some Halloween candies. My office smells wonderful!

Palidor, thank you so much! I am very much looking forward to using these spices in different ways, and learning how to cook with them. The oncoming winter requires lots of hot chocolate, so those are going to be very nice when the cold weather hits.

You are so very kind, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate this gift!