marmalade magic

So maybe you're like me and when you think of marmalade you think of this strange bitter jelly eaten by old ladies at tea time. That pretty much sums up what I thought of it and I never really knew what to do with it. Well enter a great savoury recipe to change my opinion and colour me a marmalade lover. This orange ginger beef was easy and just over the top flavourful and loaded with gingery goodness. Also, I'm sure since the marmalade I used was homemade by my neighbour Brittainy that it just made things that much yummier. I swear, the next time I've got a cold, this dinner is gonna be what heals me. It just tasted like a big bowl of healthy.


Ingredients
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
1 blade simmering steak, boneless, about 1 pound or .5 kg
2 onions, chopped
1 knob ginger, rinsed well, unpeeled, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons of Soy sauce
1x10 ounce can of beef stock
1 cup of orange marmalade
1 cup of orange juice
1 tablespoon of five-spice powder (optional)
1 bunch of cilantro
1 bag of baby spinach
1 cup of bean sprouts
1 bunch of green onions, chopped

• Preheat the pot over a medium high heat then add the oil. Sear the steak on both sides until evenly browned. Add the onions and ginger and stir for a few minutes until lightly browned. If the pan starts to burn, add a splash of water and continue…
• Add the soy sauce, orange juice, marmalade, beef stock and five-spice powder. Rinse the cilantro well then thinly chop the root end of the bunch, add to the pot. Reserve the leaves. Bring all the ingredients to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover with a tight fitting lid and continue simmering until tender, about 1 hour.
• When the meat is tender enough, break it into smaller chunks. Split the spinach and bean sprouts evenly between four bowls. Stir the green onions into the broth then ladle into each bowl. Top with a sprinkling of the reserved cilantro leaves. Enjoy!

turkey and leek pie

Marc made this for dinner tonight - Turkey and Leek Pie courtesy of Jamie Oliver. So delicious and pretty much Christmas in a dish. The only thing that would have made it better was if we had the leftover stuffing to toss in there as well. I think while Marc is at work tomorrow I will secretly make another pan of it and eat it all myself before he gets home.

weekend round-up

Well not only am I coming off my weekend but I'm also coming off a weeks vacation so that would explain the lack of blogging etc. As is my norm, when I'm on vacation I tend to vacation from everything -- internet included. That means no blogging, no blog reading, no celebrity gossip perusing, very minimal email checking -- everything. The tech check-out is one of my favourite parts of being on vacation -- no hard feelings though blogland!!

Spent my week off staying pretty low-key but not really by choice. Been hit pretty hard by some third trimester nausea (which is super common but I had no idea was coming) which unfortunately laid me up on and off during the days. Not to mention it was crazy hot this week and I'm just getting too ginormous to be able to handle this heat very well. Anyway, it was still a good week off but was also a prime example of why I hate taking time off by myself and when I have nothing to do -- I just end up sitting around fussing with tiny things feeling like I'm getting nothing done. Sigh...

Anyway we kicked off my last weekend of freedom by a last minute fancy dinner at Ristorante Verdicchio. What a treat! Especially when it was so unexpected! We even got serenaded by the resident guitar and accordion players -- when they saw my giant belly they started playing a lullaby for us. It was really sweet. We're trying to take advantage of this remaining time alone before the baby comes and time is running out!!

Saturday most of our day was taken up with the most mundane errand EVER!! All I need is a double curtain rod for the nursery -- I don't want it to be black, it has to be deep enough to accommodate the depth of the original window casings in our house, and I'd like it not to be like every other piece of drapery hardware you see everywhere. After all, it is a nursery so why not find something unique right? Well apparently not. Every single double rod we found (when we found one at all that is) were either black or silver, too shallow and butt ugly. So after scouring the city for hours we came home with nothing at all. Grumble....

Came home from our fruitless errand and drowned our sorrows in a yummy dinner. Marc wrapped up some chicken in some bacon and tossed it on the BBQ along with some grilled sweet potatoes and some roasted corn on the cob. It totally helped to forget the frustration of the day.

Sunday we spent most of the day in the nursery attempting to put it in some kind of order. As it stood before, all of our mountain of baby stuff was "stored" on our guest bed as Marc still had woodwork to finish up in the nursery. Well with houseguests coming this weekend (for my baby shower -- EEP!) it pretty much dictated that we start moving stuff over. We moved around furniture, folded mountains of tiny clothes and blankets and just generally tried to make sense of things. Not sure if we totally accomplished that but at least the room is starting to look like maybe a baby might live there. And our houseguests won't have to fight their way to the bed in the guestroom. So that's a bonus too.

Took a break to visit the farmers market where we scored some perfect sweet plums and sugar pears -- perfection! Hit home in time for Marc to get in some gardening (farewell lettuce garden -- thanks for a great summer!!) then I made us a simple pasta dinner with a shredded zucchini and tomato sauce. Yum!!

Monday turned into a day of organizing -- organizing of epic proportions! What started as a conversation about how we hate this dilapidated lazy susan in our kitchen ended in a total kitchen re-org. The lazy susan is now totally abandoned (thank you god!) and everything has been moved around to places that make 100% more sense. Silly but I feel more productive in that kitchen already. Rewarded all our hard work with Marc's homemade grilled burgers and some ginger ice cream. Now I'm so tired I can't even see straight. Gonna hit my pj's and watch Mad Men and spend some quality time with my pillow.

Back to work tomorrow -- thanks for the long weekend love!!!!

sloppy joes

So with every pregnancy comes strange cravings and mine, while there hasn't been anything ridiculous like ice cream and pickles, I am finding myself wanting foods I never usually eat. Like hotdogs for instance. Normally I never eat hotdogs -- I don't like them, I don't agree with them on a moral level, I just generally think they're despicable. This pregnancy I've had 2, one of which I bought on the street. Go figure.

Sloppy joes is another one. Last week brought a viscious sloppy joe craving and I remembered seeing what looked like a delicious recipe in that Ellie Krieger "Foods You Crave" cookbook that I have and happen to love (blogged about in the past here and here). So out came the book and out come some pretty damn good sloppy joes -- and healthy to boot!

I highly recommend this recipe if you're looking for some childhood comfort food that's also easier on the waistline.

Recipe here!

weekend round-up

Well it was the Canada Day long weekend (not technically but yes if you were smart enough to take the Friday off) so there were lots of good times/good food/good naps to be had if you knew where to look!

Thursday being Canada Day I was found where I can be found every year and that's the annual Canada Day multi-cultural food fair (after a nice morning hike with Sadie of course). We noshed on some African stew, some Korean dumplings and some Filipino noodles and veggies and topped it off with a gigantic homemade ice cream sammich. Followed that by an afternoon of sunny patio drinks with some friends and you've got yourself a pretty decent mid-week holiday!

Friday I was off solo (Marc being one of those silly folk who did not take the day off) so after my morning conservation area visit with Sadie (again!) we hung about the house being domestic and trying to shake the pregnancy dizzies I seemed to be saddled with most of the day. Evening saw us having dinner with friends Ben and Fran (Ben's in town all week working on his next short film) and their Aussie pal Christina. A very detailed dinner conversation focused solely on ice cream sent us careening to the nearest gelato place post-dinner and thankfully we made it there with mere moments to spare before they closed up shop for the night. Summer night gelato might be the best summer idea ever.

Saturday was the beginning of our crazy heat wave. And by crazy I mean crazy. Way too hot for this gal and her baby belly to be sure!! Thankfully, Marc had early morning blueberry picking plans so he brought Sadie along with him into the bush thus tiring her out for the rest of the day. And he came back with 4 litres of berries after only 2 hours of picking! These blueberries are mostly destined to become perserved blueberries in brandy for the winter but the rest of them have been ending up in my new daily smoothie routine and some even ended up in our dinner that night -- Marc made a pretty delicious blueberry balsamic BBQ sauce concoction!

Sunday guess what? Still way too hot for this mama-to-be but a last minute invite by some friends to join them at the shady, breezy conservation area with the pooches and kidlets proved to be a nice reprieve from the stifling heat of the "city." Jeniva has a lovely Portugese water dog and a brand new 5 month old Chihuahua named Lupita that is just the cutest thing. Watching Sadie eyeball Lupita was pretty adorable I gotta say. The end of Sadie's snout is the same size as Lupita's whole face!! Anyway, Sadie decided that that day was her day to finally learn to swim and as she launched herself off a dock you could see her re-thinking her plan for sure. The thing with Sadie is that she'll happily go into the water but when she can't touch she begins flailing her front feet like she's fighting her way out of hot lava while her back legs do nothing at all and she sinks like a furry black stone. This time, after really giving herself no other option, she flailed her front feet like crazy and slowly, verrrrry slooooowly, made it back to shore, soaked and terrified, but on shore. Oh Sadie, a Labrador you are not....

Here's a pic of Sadie before she decided to launch herself off the dock. Back when she was having fun with the whole swimming thing.

So all in all, a pretty great weekend if not a little on the warm side. Boo to back to work!!

happy canada day!

Hope everyone is as happy as this guy is on Canada Day!! Mine is going pretty darn great if I do say so myself! Bit of a lay around this morning with Marc which has been pretty rare these days considering usually by the time morning rolls around my bladder is well-past "explosion" mode. Followed that by a great morning hike with Sadie where she managed to get good and muddy then washed off nice and clean in the lake, back home to freshen up and walk downtown for our annual multi-cultural food fair (where we stuffed my patriotic face full of African stew, Korean dumplings, Filipino fried noodles and veggies and a very Canadian giant ice cream sammich), then on to sunny patio drinks with some friends, home for a quick nap then off to do my annual Canada Day edition of Hot Bunny Radio.

Phew....

manchego with honey brown butter sauce

A few weeks ago some friends of ours hosted a tapas dinner party and each guest was responsible for bringing one tapas course along with a matched wine. This afternoon as we noshed on a giant wedge of Manchego I was reminded that I never blogged about my contribution to the party! I was super pressed for time that day and didn't have any time to prepare any meat etc so off to the Fromagerie Elgin to procure a huge piece of Manchego. On the food network website I found this insane recipe for Manchego with Honey Brown Butter Sauce that was possibly the easiest thing I've ever made that packed the most flavourful punch. Make this for a dinner party and I swear people will be foaming at the mouth. I ended up cutting the cheese into little pieces instead of pouring the sauce over the whole wedge only because I thought it'd be easier (and less sticky) for people to manage.

weekend round-up

Well this weekend brought my last weekend of holidays (for a bit anyway) so we had to make sure and say farewell on a high note. Started my Friday bright and early by taking Sadie out to the conservation area for a big hike and a swim -- all by 9am too I might add! Laid low Friday night cuz we were both pretty wiped so we feasted on a dinner of fancy cheeses and sundried tomato hummus. Yum!

Saturday we were out and about early with Sadie again only this time we shared the bush with all the anti-dog people in town it seemed. My favourite was the couple pushing a baby in a stroller (who had their own dog too I might add) who told us both times we ran into them, that they didn't want Sadie anywhere near the baby, despite the fact that Sadie showed zero interest at all in their precious baby. I mean, if she'd been rushing the stroller or something I'd totally get it but she wasn't even aware they had a baby at all. Perhaps they should've paid more attention to their own dog that was straining and pulling on their leash? Or if you're so worried about dogs around your baby, how about you don't bring your baby to a place where dogs are always running off leash? And the best part was that her husband, who was the one pushing the stoller, was totally chill about the whole thing and was all smiley and stuff while his crazy wife was telling everyone with a dog to keep them away from the baby. Jeepers...

Spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of some errands (new insurance deal = boring!) and getting ready for the 2nd annual Savour The Street event put on my our local restaurant association. We went last year for the inaugural event and had such a good time that we had to head down again this year. Basically they close down a street downtown, lay out one big long table that seats 250 people, and a pile of the local restaurants provide a course each. You eat all night under the sunset and there's music and even a loot bag! I'll go just about anywhere if I'm gonna get a loot bag! Last year we went alone but this year we went with 3 other couple friends of ours and did it up in style. Rolled ourselves home with the biggest, fullest bellies ever.

Sunday brought the unfortunate reality that I have to go back to work tomorrow so that meant doing buckets of laundry before the evening rains came. Sadie thankfully avoided any of the anti-dog folk by spending a good chunk of her day in the bush with Marc picking blueberries. I bowed out as picking blueberries likely the last thing I want to be doing right now at more than 7 months pregnant. My sense of balance is pretty much non-existent these days so I think I would've spent more time falling into the bushes than doing any picking. Thankfully I married a champion blueberry picker so he came home with a giant overflowing container full of deliciousness. The plan for these berries you ask? Some will be smoothie ingredients for sure, some will be muffins and the rest are destined to spend the fall in a big container of brandy getting all boozy and delicious.

Tonight I'm spending the evening with some pasta and my super yummy homemade garlic bread and the premiere of the new season of Entourage. I'm really hoping this season isn't as supremely shit-tastic as the last one was. At least someone over at HBO finally realized that Vince needed to cut his AWFUL hair....

peanut butter tahini cookies

Could it be? Two of my favourite things in one cookie AND it's delicious?? Peanut Butter Tahini Cookies courtesy of My Diary of a Foodie. Yes please!

summer no bake lasagna

Saw this Summer Lasagna over at Framed and it's going on my "to try" list for sure! Especially on one of those nights when it's so hot the thought of cooking makes you want to cry? This lasagna requires no baking! And nothing is better in the summer than fresh tomatoes and zucchini with a little fresh ricotta thrown into the mix. Talk about a bit of summer heaven on a plate!

Click here for the full recipe!

pudding

Not that I would ever turn down pudding but quite frankly this pregnancy is making me crave pudding on a minute-to-minute basis. From fancy homemade pudding to the kind straight of the tiny little rectangular box -- I takes what I's can get. Here are a few making me drool...

Butterscotch Pudding courtesy of Eggbeater

Split Level Pudding courtesy of Sassafras Cafe

Vegan Chocolate Pudding courtesy of The Kitchy Kitchen

Chocolate Pot de Creme courtesy of The Urban Baker

Banana pudding courtesy of Freeing My Martha

roasted broccoli

Saw this recipe for roasted broccoli over at The Amateur Gourmet and I couldn't get home fast enough to make it. Turns out it's actually Ina Garten's recipe (which explains the insane deliciousness of it). If you're like me you likely have your tried and true way of making broccoli and while I'm certainly not abandoning that method any time soon (cuz it's super yummy) this is certainly a nice change. I never think to roast broccoli until caramelized and turns out it's also a great use for broccoli that may be a bit past it's prime since it doesn't matter how crisp it is if you're just gonna roast it at a high temperature.

This recipe is super worth the try -- it's dead simple and tasty beyond tasty.

Click here for the how-to!!

blood orange tart

Dear somebody: If this Blood Orange tart were to magically show up on a plate in front of me I would kiss you right on the mouth.


*Recipe via the mouth-wateringly amazing Lottie & Doof

english muffins

Those of you who know me know that 98% of the time I have the exact same thing for breakfast every day. A glass of milk and a toasted english muffin with peanut butter. Well since Christmas my grocery store has been completely out of my preferred brand. I've been making due with other less-satisfying brands but when I saw this on The Kitchn today I thought hmmm....if I made my own english muffins then I would never have to worry about running out!

Who knew they were so ridiculously easy to make???

le creuset = l'amour

This year Santa brought me a Le Creuset braising pot. No word of a lie, this pot is changing the way we cook things in our kitchen. I love it so much I'd use it to scramble and egg if Marc wouldn't roll his eyes at me for doing it. Browning meat has never been so exciting and wonderful. Kitchen nerds? Yup....

what I did on my christmas vacation: french food dinner party

Our friends Mike and Jocelyn hosted an insane French food dinner party over the holidays -- basically they assign courses, email you the recipe and then you all gather to cook and eat. I love this style of dinner party -- it's kind of like a jacked up potluck. We started eating at 6pm and finished about 2am. This party was epic.

Here's the night in a nutshell. A nutshell complete with recipes:

Began the night with a lovely aperitif courtesy of our friend Sean -- a sparkling French wine mixed with Cassis. I could have had about 10 of these.

Following the pre-dinner drinks we were treated to a Pissaladiere courtesy of Miss Gomm -- a delicious little tart of buckets of caramelized onions, olives and anchovies.

Post Pissaladiere it was time for the mushroom soup from Les Halles that our chefs Sylvia and Randy confessed was essentially made of pureed mushrooms and tons of butter. It was like velvet in a bowl.

Following the soup was Moules Normande, another insane recipe from Les Halles.

It started like this, with a gigantic pot of mussels, a plate of mushrooms and two enormous pots of bacon.

See? ENORMOUS POTS OF BACON.

Then to the enormous pots of bacon he added apples and an entire container of cream.

Then enter the giant pot of mussels. People were fainting from anticipation.

After the mussels, we ate something that I will not soon forget -- a chicken liver salad with hot bacon dressing and croutons. Sounds innocent enough until you watch it get made. Basically a meat salad served with bacon fat drizzled over the top of it!!! My heart almost stopped eating this salad.

Here's Dan beginning the process. He cooked the bacon pieces ahead of time and here he is putting the bacon fat from that cooking back into the pan to cook the bacon in a second time.

This salad will go down in history as the most delicious and likely unhealthy salad in the history of salads.

At this point in the night it's about 1am and what's better to do at 1am than eat cassoulet??? Man, eating a giant bowl full of beans, duck conflit, pork belly and pork sausage at 1am is an art I have not yet mastered.

Here's Mike with the hero dish of the night that they spent days, literally days, preparing. Delicious.

Our course was the dessert course and by that time we'd actually had some excess food casualties. There were good efforts made by all but the sheer volume and richness of the food proved too much for some party-goers. Alas we have no pictures of our delicious pear clafouti but take my word for it when I say it was light and fluffy and delicious.

This night was epic on every level and I'm not even joking when I say that the next day I could literally smell the butter oozing from my pores.

I recommend re-creating this entire menu yourselves. Just start eating earlier in the day.

Oh and at the end of the night Mike impressed us all with his table clearing skills. Very impressive.

tea-infused hot chocolate?

Why didn't I think of this??? Popping a ginger tea bag into my famous homemade hot chocolate?? Delish...

*via The Kitchn*

white wonderland with jonathan adler

The Kitchn did a great post the other day featuring all lovely white kitchen gifts from Jonathan Adler. Talk about a post after my own heart! These are my faves:Bottle Stoppers: $18. Available in either Squirrel, Fish, Elephant or Bird. Honestly, so cute!!

Whale Pitcher: for $95. Big City Kelly showed me this not too long ago and I died. If I could pour my milk out of this every day, my day could only be great!

Napkin Rings: $18, available in Fish, Owl, Rabbit and Snail. Totally affordable and totally adorable.

Darjeeling Teapot: for $110. While it's undeniably adorable, I would never spend $110 on a teapot.

adopt an olive tree

I really like this idea -- adopt an olive tree in Italy and in the spring you get all the oil harvested from your tree!! So that's 2 litres of spring oil then you get 2 tins of infused oil in the fall. Now at $150, that's some pricey oil but man, I bet it's worth every penny!

weekend round-up

Can I still do a weekend round-up on a Wednesday?? Darn right you can when you're just coming off a 5 day weekend! Wuh-hoo!!Things started off as both a blessing and a curse. The curse part? The weekend was planned fully around the much-anticipated visit of my cousin Kaili and her family but unfortunately they all fell victim to the flu and had to cancel last minute!!!! HUGE curse to the weekend as I think we were both counting the seconds until the visit. The blessing part? That did leave me with a whole Friday off of work during which I really didn't do a whole lot. Well, that's not true really -- I ran some errands, spent some time hanging out at my fave coffee joint with pals, made a yummy Indian dinner and took Sadie on a really lovely and yet rainy afternoon hike. Here's some pretty pics of the greenbelt that runs behind my house about a block away.Well this is obviously super cute Sadie enjoying the mud.

Like honestly, as if this is so close to my house downtown

One of my favourite fall things in my 'hood - when the leaves are so thick you can't tell the lawn from the road.

Later on Friday we headed over to Cosmic Dave's Vinyl Emporium for the Ox CD release party. They've got a new EP coming out called Burnout and they're heading out on tour so out into the rain we went in support!!

Saturday brought Halloween fun! First though, out early in the morning for a bush hike before the rains came and a trip to the Farmer's Market to pick out some pumpkins! Then home for warm coffee and breakfast and then -- elbow deep in pumpkin insides!!! Me, I love carving pumpkins and I think Marc has been sucked into the fun along with me.

Here's my pic - idea courtesy of Martha Stewart of course. Stupidly easy, bigtime cool factor.

And here's Marc's pumpkin -- much more labour intensive but all worth it for the after-effect. The kids were in love with it.

And here's more Sadie - having a hard time picking her fave. I was just happy she didn't eat all my rubber rats...

We spent the rest of the day cooking (slow-cooked beef stew served over gooey parmigiana polenta - perfect rainy day food) and setting up the rest of the decorations and then watched cheesy horror movies and handed out candy. My fave costumes of the night had to be the group of teens dressed as Pac-man, Ms Pacman and the little ghosts who told me they were "bringin' back the 80's" and then the wee little toddler dressed as a crocodile who, once he saw Sadie, just stood in the doorway staring at her not saying a word. His dad had to come and get him. 100% adorable...

Sunday, not too much of anything else outside of another great bush hike on a new trail with some friends and some new doggy friends for Sadie. Came home with a dog that was soaking wet, muddy, smelling like bog and full of burrs. Basically we came home with the happiest dog ever....