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.

Going Veggie

This book is seriously starting to jeopardize our lives as people who enjoy meat. I hope we can become more selective omnivores and find happy healthy animals to eat.
I don't want to go into the details and sound preachy about the factory farm/fishery industry or anything, just sharing a book that is changing our perspective and a starting point in making our diet healthier.

Patak's Vindaloo Curry Paste

Didn't have a lot of time the other night to prepare a meal so I stopped by the Safeway and picked up a jar of Patak's. Quickly sauteed some onions, threw in some tomatoes and the curry. I added corn, potatoes, and tons on chick peas. We ate it some brown rice like usual. Quick, easy, and delicious.

Sara's Amazing Pasta

Last week Sara threw this pasta dish together using linguini, garlic, sundried tomatoes, basil, pumpkin seeds, parmesan and mushrooms. Looked like it was pretty simple to put together but the result was awesome, a new favourite. Last night she made it again but added kale, soooo good.

Dumplings

We packed these babies with ground pork, button mushrooms, cabbage, shrimp, Chinese sausage, and green onions. Served up with a little fish sauce and chili, delish!! I'm pretty proud of our effort on this one although they didn't stand up to Sara's Mom's dumplings, now those are something to write home about.

Breakfast Time

Weekend breakfasts are the best. You have lots of time to relax and prepare a great meal. I've never been confident poaching eggs but the benny's actually turned out great. The crepes were delicious but we could feel our waist bands expanding with every bite.


Crepes stuffed with berries and topped with vanilla ice cream and a blueberry/maple whiskey syrup.

Egg Plant Parmesan

We were sitting around getting our daily fix of food t.v. when a delicious eggplant parmesan popped up on the screen. Being a little over confident I told Sara it's totally easy to make and I could do it no problem. Never having made it before I thought I might have put my foot in my mouth. Turns out it is super easy to make. I found a pretty basic recipe and made a few adjustments I decided to use rice flour rather than wheat to bread the eggplant.

Leek and Sweet Potato Soup

This soup was super easy to make. I think Sara had seen it on a cooking show and we tried it based on what she could remember. We chopped up a bunch of leeks, sauteed them for a few minutes, added a bit of sea salt and garlic. When they were soft, added a little ginger the chopped up sweet potatoes, some chicken stock and water. Left it to cook for about 1/2hr- 45 min., pureed it and voila, good eats!!

We served it up with a quinoa salad, yum!

Broth Brothers: Warming hearts...one bowl at a time

Soup Sisters and Broth Brothers is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to providing comfort to women, children and youth through the making, sharing and donating of soup.

Founded in March 2009 by Calgarian Sharon Hapton, Soup Sisters support women’s shelters across the country with the very simple and heartfelt gesture of providing home made soup.

Broth Brothers, launched in the fall of 2009, supports The Doorway, youth in transition from street culture into mainstream society. By providing them with nourishing and nurturing soup, Broth Brothers lets these young people know that we care for them and believe in their potential.

On March 20th Sara and I were a part of a monthly Broth Brothers event. Sara helped make a delicious mushroom cream soup and I helped make a sweet potato and corn.

Quinoa: Gold of the Incas

Quinoa isn't usually a common ingredient in most Canadian kitchens including mine. Regarded as a grain, quinoa is actually related to leafy green veggies like swiss chard and spinach. Over the past few months we've been experimenting with the stuff and have found any combination of quinoa, veggies, and seeds makes a darn good salad to accompany a meal or standing alone. Quinoa is super healthy and loaded with protein. When cooked it has a couscous texture, fluffy, creamy and slightly crunchy.



The salad in the pictures is quinoa with celery, pumpkin seeds, green onions, tomatoes, grated carrots, ginger, chick peas, and some olive oil.

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