Lamb and Sausage Cassolette

This was a very delicious dinner Sara and I combined our strengths on. She made a delicious lamb cassolette with sausage and beans, a bunch or red wine and some herbs. To soak up the sauce I made Spätzle.

Cooking With Pooh

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.........POOH HAHAHHAHAHA

Fruits of the Harvest Con't

Besides a couple of sprigs of dill and parsley, this is what we harvested from our balcony garden. A handful of unripe cherry tomatoes, shameful I know!

Chilli Vinegar

This is one of my favourite things to put on just about anything and as an ingredient in sauces or chilli. Really simple to make. I took an old Frank's Hot Sauce bottle put in some chopped garlic, chillies and some pepper corns and filled the bottle with white vinegar, in about 20 minute you get a very flavourful vinegar, the longer you let it sit the hotter it will get. I like give my humus a couple of squirts to spice it up.

Flowerless Chocolate Cake

Sara's flowerless chocolate cake, who ever thinks it isn't possible to make good gluten free eats has to try this. It actually tasted just like the torte they serve at the Monkland Tavern. I definitely need to get my hands on some raspberry coulis to go with this cake.

RIBSRIBSRIBSRIBS

Organic beef ribs and Sara's family's secret sauce can't even remember what we ate with them that night, the ribs really stole show.

Pumpkin Pie Face

Nothing too special about these babies, pumpkin pie mush and some store bought tart shells. The thing that took them to the next level was the homemade rum raisins and maple whipped cream on top. The rum raisins are so easy: jar+rum+raisins. Add them to cookies, whatever, always takes it up a notch.

Mochi

Mochi is a fun little snack to make, at least the way we did it. It comes in a hard solid brick that you cut or rip apart. It's made from pounded rice and puffs up and gets crunchy when you bake it. We ate it with coriander chutney, some chile and soya sauce. You can buy this stuff in most health food stores.

Floss Everyday

Being the white half of a "mixed relationship" means you occasionally or often get to cross cultural lines and experience the deliciousness that comes from exotic places. Sara's family is just as Canadian as the next person if not more immigrating from Malaysia about 30 years ago. Every year her mom takes a trip back to visit family and this year brought me a sweet pair of counterfeit Ray-Bans and a scrumptious little treasure called pork floss. It's a perfect balance of sweet and salty. I ate it, the whole jar as was but my google search seems to indicate it's pretty popular on toast or cooked into noodle dishes and spring rolls. After you get over the WTF factor it's a pretty tasty snack and you'll enjoy flossing with this stuff everyday.

Fruits of the Harvest

I may make myself sound like a no-lifer but one of the highlights of late September and October was heading north on 14th Ave up to the Cameron orchard. Not really an orchard but a Saskatoon berry and apple tree in Gordon and Penny's (Sara's dad & mom's) yard. In exchange for a little help picking fruit and cleaning up the yard we were greased with enough apples and berries to keep us well nourished in the crumble and apple sauce universe. Sara's gluten free apple Saskatoon berry crumble is amazing and I have been named the apple sauce king of the household.

Shrimp and Fennel Linguini

We had Sara's parents over for dinner and I decided to make one of my favourite flavour combinations, shrimp and fennel. Usually I'd flambé the shrimp in Sambuca but this time didn't think it would go over well with her mom and dad. The fresh linguini was a little starchy, but all the other ingredients were fantastic and I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed it or at least pretended to like it.

Niagara on the Lake

If your love food and wine and have never been, time to start thinking about it. In August Sara and I took a vacation to Ontario and spent a couple of days in Niagara on the Lake. Besides the grimy tourist trap of Niagara Falls, Niagara on the lake is an experience not to be missed.

Fresh road side pie for breakfast.

It was easy to fill this case. The wine tour was a lot of fun, make sure to take a DD.
One of the awesome things we ate, organic beef burger with some good old Canadian back bacon, the fries were fries. It was hot that day.

You're Baking Me Crazy!

There's nothing like taking those pasta shells and stuffing them with cheese, bacon, mushrooms, and more cheese, covering them with sauce and baking them. The presentation on this one is pretty rough but it was a super delicious meal.

Back and Hungrier Than Ever

It's been a few months since we've posted, our apologies to our fans. We've been cooking up a storm and will make sure to be more punctual and current with our postings. To get things rolling again, here are a couple of picks of a crumble pie I made, surely will wet the palate. It's good to be back - Andrew

Breakfast and Balconies

We finally had some great weather for the weekend in Calgary this past weekend perfect for a lazy breakfast on the balcony. It started with a large pot of coffee and a quick stop at the grocery store while Sara walked her dog. We made omelets Mediterranean style with red peppers, tomatoes, feta cheese, olives and fresh spinach I grew on said balcony.

Double Baked Sweet Potatoes

Baked the sweet potato then hollowed them out. Mashed them up and added loads of butter, ginger, and raisins then threw them back into the oven to let them bake for a little while longer.

Vogglio D'Pizza

Vogglio D'Pizza considers themselves the best pizza in town, they're right! We ordered a regular crust pizza with tomatoes, fresh basil, feta cheese, green and black olives. The crust was perfect the ingredients fresh and delicious, couldn't have asked for a better pie. Oh! there's mushrooms on there too.

Dinner's Ready HONEY

This is our honey inspired meal. The onions, flowered those tear jerkers and drowned them in honey and butter and baked them until yum.
The pasta is quinoa with some oyster mushrooms, honey, butter, a little moutard, and green onions, it was good, loved the pasta shape more than anything because it reminds me of speitzle.

Bubble Tea!!!

DIY bubble tea fun and cheap to make. DO IT!!!! DO IT NOW!!

Portobello Mushroom Sandwiches

These sandwiches were awesome and really easy to make. The best part I think was the pumpkin, sunflower, and flax seed medley we put on the bun. With some roasted red peppers, avocado, onion, cucumber and a paprika, sun-dried tomato mayo delicious. The side was a chick pea, yellow bean salad. Sara said the sandwich was the best thing she ever ate. The best thing I ever ate was the giant plate of brownie points I had after that one.

Long Weekend BBQ-ing

It wouldn't have been a complete long weekend with out a BBQ. Last night Sara's parents invited us over to enjoy some beef satay and ribs with them. We were lured over in the afternoon to help skewer beef but arrived to find everything was ready to go. According to Sara's mom and dad a long weekend is not only incomplete without a BBQ but also has to include some work in the garden. We were put to work planting flowers and tomatoes, I had a great time and felt good knowing that Gordon and Penny trust me in their coveted garden.
The Food and company were amazing!

Japan-easy

Making rolls and tempura seems like a daunting task but the only advice we ended up needing was from the clerk at the liquor store who told us we should drink the sake we selected chilled.



Rolls with a combo of avocado/sesame seeds/green onions/mango/ cucumber/tempura/carrots and sweet potato/ purple yam tempura

Sesame Tofu

Sara finally made the tofu dish she had been talking about for a while. It was great! Definitely a pro with this one. She put these long slices of ginger and garlic in with the bok choy and some oyster sauce. The tofu was perfect. We probably shouldn't eat tofu so often, there are studies that show un-fermented soy products can mess with hormones in both women and men but this is for sure a special treat I'll look forward to enjoying every once in a while.

Potato Pancakes

Potato pancakes are a universal human food. It seems every culture enjoys a tradition of grating up potato, mushing it together and frying it.
I most commonly associate them with Eastern European culture where they're called latkes and the oil used to cook them is significant during the Jewish Hanukkah festival.
Wikipedia said they're the national dish of Belarus, I'm thinking of making them my dish of breakfast. With a bit of sour cream there aren't too many better ways to start a Saturday.