Food Week: Vegetarian Dish

We aren't vegetarian but we eat a lot of veg. dishes. A new one to me and definitely a favorite from first bite is an Italian recipe I posted a while back. It is a lasagna style dish that uses eggplant instead of noodles. Click here to get to my recipe.

I just couldn't let myself off the hook with two posts in a row linked to a recipe already out there...so I decided to add what I had for lunch too! I made up the recipe and I have to say it was delicious!! It is a warm spinach and beet salad which was perfect on the snow stormy day!


Ingredients:

312 g of Spinach
5 small beets
Heaping handful of pecans
1 tbsp of Olive Oil
2 pinches of salt
Presedent's Choice Fig Balsamic Vinegar
Goat Cheese

I put the whole beets (skin and all) into a pot of water and boiled them until the were done (prick with fork). I peeled the beets while they were still warm with my hands under cold running water. The peel actually just slides off! Then I sliced them. I then put the olive oil and salt in a pan, heated then sauteed the spinach and pecans until the spinach was wilted. I made a bed of the spinach mixture in a bowl and added the sliced beets. I then splashed on some vinegar (the fig on is much milder than regular balsamic but either will do) and topped with goat cheese. I am sure you could even make this with kale!! It was tasty and made lunch for at least 2 people.

Check out other participants' veg recipes here.

Food Week: Dinner

One of my favorite things to make for dinner is mushroom risotto. Its creamy goodness always has a spot on my plate!!!

This is definitely odd since I have just started liking mushrooms this passed year. It is pretty simple but there are a lot of steps and my fav. recipe is not on paper and easier to follow if I just give you the link. This is an awesome website, it has LOTS of recipes and each has its own video, which is very helpful for obscure cooking terms like "beat eggs until fluffy"...when you are new at cooking even this can be obscure! I know I wasn't sure what it meant when I started cooking and baking for real...by this I mean from scratch!

Enjoy!!!

Food Week - Lunch

One of my favorites things about lunch food is cooking a huge batch on Sunday and having it for the week. This week I chose Chili. It is simple and hearty on these last few days (rather weeks...but we won't think about that) of winter. Here is mine all packed up and ready for tomorrow! (ps: I never put anything hot into plastic...nor do I heat it up in plastic...I just can't afford to switch to glass right now... and all my jars are in the freezer)


I don't really have a recipe and it changes slightly everytime depending on what I have on hand (gotta love simple and flexible!). So here is what I did this time.

Chop one large onion and fry it in the bottom of the pot until golden in some olive oil. Just before the onion is done throw in two finely chopped cloves of garlic. Then add 1 lb of ground beef (this is optional). I get this delicious local beef that is grass-fed free range and it is very lean and tastes devine!! The I add salt and pepper to taste and about a table spoon of chili powder and fry for about a minute. Then I add 2 large cans of crushed tomatoes then I fill one of the cans with water and add that. Then I threw in a can of corn, around 200g of each of dry red kidney beans, black beans and navy beans. I also add another 2 tablespoons of chili powder. Then I bring it to a boil and let simmer for at least 1.5 hours. Add salt, pepper and chili powder to taste. I like it spicy so I also add cyanne pepper. Check your pot every 15 mins to stir and see if it needs more water, the beans take up a lot of juice so if it looks too dry add some. In the end it makes a delicious and thick chili, none of this soupy stuff. All in all it makes lunch for the two of us for 5 days and one dinner.

Check out what everyone else has on for lunch here!

Food Week - Breakfast

Hi all!

I am participating in Food Week that is being hosted by Sherrie over at Frenchy's Finds. The first installment is a simple breakfast recipe. So here is our old stand by.

Cut up a whole banana add 1.5 cups of blueberries (I have a whole freezer full of Nova Scotia wild blueberries), 4 dollops of plain yogurt a large pinch of flax seed and almost a handful of almonds (I LOVE ALMONDS!). To top it all off a nice drizzle of maple syrup. Easy, fast and healthy. You can use any fruit, I usually try to use what is in season or what I have in the freezer...with the exception of the banana of course. ;)

Here is a list of all the food week participants if you want to check out all the yumminess or if you want to join in!

Happy Monday!

Workshops and Cheesecake.

I have been quite silent lately and with good reason. I have been crazily preparing for two upcoming workshops that I feel are really important and deserve my full attention...not to mention Diego's b-day and Love day thrown in there!!!

Luckily, I found some time to bake Diego a cake. He absolutely loves lemon meringue pie and cheesecake so I thought I would combine the two and make him a lemon cheesecake! I used this recipe and lets just say I wish it looked like the photo but it tasted like heaven! I actually took a photo but can't find it! :( So I borrowed this one from a blog called cherrapeno that looks amazing!

So I promise that I will post about what I have been preparing for these workshops and let you in on what I actually do as a marine biologist very soon. I have been finding some really interesting stuff in my data and gathering a lot of neat information from the literature which of course I will share with you in time. In the mean time, less computer for me since I am on it all day....incidentally food week will be great since I will be making all the simplest recipes I have between now and leaving next week!!!

Ciao for now!

A Pleasant Surprise!

So, I have been collecting orchids for the past year. All of them I bought when their flowers were in full bloom except one. I bought it at an orchid show for $15 bucks with the reassurance from the seller that this was a big bloomer with gorgeous flowers. My patience and careful care have paid off...LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS!!!
It is called Epidendrum Green Hornet and is a hybrid of Epidendrum cochleatum (the Black Orchid from Belize) x Epidendrum lancifolium (a fragrant species from Mexico). It is definitely my favorite because it is so unique and has a mild pleasant fragrance! It's not something you would easily find outside of an orchid show! I think I will have to go back this year to flesh out my collection with some more varieties! All of my other orchids are also putting out flower stalks!!! I will definitely post them as they bloom.

Also bringing flowery happiness to my home...two more of my Christmas cacti are blooming!!
This white one is in my kitchen and the beige one is in my bathroom (sorry I didn't invest as much in these pics as I did with the orchid...).
I have one last cactus left to bloom, it is a nice fuschia colour. I can't wait! I have also been cross fertilizing them all. I am hoping that by next year the berries will fall off and I can get some babies started. It'll be cool to see what flower colours come out of the mixes! Once large enough they will make nice gifts (like in 2 years...now that's planning!). Let's hope they are fairly easy to germinate!

Flowers spell happiness on the cold wintery days.

Yipee!! Snow!!!

Diego and I went tobogganing on Citadel Hill last night in the thick of the snow storm! We didn't bring the camera for fear it might get busted on our runs down the hill on our bellies!! We were alone for the first 40 mins or so and just as we were contemplating going for a beer and snack at Freemans (excellent pizza place on Quinpool RD) a gang of teens showed up. So after a final couple of runs we headed off for our beer. Lets just say, we were covered head to toe with snow and Diego's beard...totally white! They didn't turn us away at the door though! : )

It is beautiful and sunny here today. The calm after the storm. Everything is melting. I saw these 3 crows out my window this morning, although "warm" they are all puffed up. It is amazing that they can survive outside in the minus double digits! No wonder down jackets are so warm!

Enjoy your Sunday! : )