Tag Archives: Food

Not Everything I Do Turns Out Awesome

Posted by on May 5, 2011 4 comments
AND IT WAS TURRIBLE, TURRY!

Well, I talk a good game about liking to bullshit my way through recipes, dancing to the beat of my own drum, et cetera. Usually it works out very well. Other times I create serious culinary disasters. This is one of those times.

I stumbled across an entry recently on a really super blog – whatsonmyplate.net. This is quickly becoming my favourite foodie blog. The author, Tonya, is a fantastic photographer (I love love love photos of food!) and I love her ideas and recipes. One in particular piqued my interest – homemade mustard! It seemed ridiculously easy. Soak mustard seeds in vinegar, then plunk ‘em in the food processor with some salt and some sugar. Next thing you know I’m as sexy as the Barefoot Contessa and I’ve got my own show on the Slice Network. Right? No, Jennie, that’s bullshit. But anyway, I decided to give it a go. Read more »

Póg mo thóin!

Posted by on March 17, 2011 1 comment

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Do you have any Irish in you? I’ve got some – my great-grandfather, Leslie Griffin, was Irish! He was a Home Child – orphaned as a wee lad and sent to England by his uncle to live in a Bernardo Home, and later shipped to Canada as an indentured farm labourer.

Now this year, I am still recuperating from a nasty bout of influenza, so I doubt I’ll be drinking any green beer tonight. However, I am thinking of recreating a delicious pseudo-Irish meal that I first prepared three years ago: Guinness Fondue!

Cheese and Guinness Fondue
Serves 6-8. Recipe Source: Food.com

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs cheddar cheese, grated
  • 1/2 pint Guinness stout
  • 6 -8 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • salt & pepper, to taste
  • cayenne pepper, to taste
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • bread, chunks for dipping

    • Directions:

    Well, the directions in the REAL recipe say you should melt the cheese first and add the rest ofthe ingredients after, but that sounded dumb to me, so I made up my own rules, because that’s how I roll.

    I guess I could have used any old beer, but Saint Patrick himself spoke to me in a dream and said, “Hey stupid! Use Guinness!” So I did:

    Yummmmmm Beer.

    I heated the beer, Worcestershire and spices to a simmer, then added this lovely Kerrygold Dubliner Irish Cheddar:

    You haven't lived until you've had Dubliner cheese.

    I heated and stirred until the fondue thickened slightly.

    I still wear that same ring on that same thumb!

    That’s pretty much it! If you’re fancy enough (or enough of a HIPPIE) to actually have a fondue set in your house, you could put it in that and do it the real way, but I’m ghetto so I just used some bowls and a platter.

    The recipe said to serve with bread, but that sounded boring, so I prepared ALL SORTS OF STUFF to go with our Cheese and Guinness fondue:

    Potatoes, brocolli, kielbasa, mushrooms, carrots and apples.

    There you have it, folks! An Irish twist on a Swiss classic.

    Éirinn go Brách!

    Blueberry Almond Muffins For The Carb Conscious

    Posted by on January 16, 2011 2 comments

    So check it out. Ten pounds in two weeks is no fluke.  I am workin’ on my fitness (again LOL) and as always, my weapon of choice is a low carb diet combined with mega awesome exercise.  But we’re not going to talk about the exercise part today because I have a cold and it’s Saturday so that would be lame.

    There are a lot of reasons I like low carb: you get to eat lots of red meat, eggs, cheese, butter, seafood, vegetables, nuts, olives, and peanut butter. You’re allowed mayo, salad dressings, olive oil, bacon (mmmmmmm bacon), and avocados. Lunch and dinner are easy.

    But breakfast is kinda hard.

    Sure, you can have all the bacon and eggs you want, but I don’t always have time to do a big fry-up on weekday mornings, and buying a full breakfast at the cafe in my office building can get expensive. So I need something healthy, loaded with protein, and portable.

    Enter these low carb blueberry muffins.

    I basically Googled a recipe and tweaked it like a tweaker, which is my standard Modus Operandi. I used some unflavoured protein powder I had in the cupboard from back when I was a gym rat (which was a short-lived lifestyle that I quickly abandoned the day I was able to squeeze my wedding gown up over my thunder thighs) and my lovely French Vanilla Sugar Free Da Vinci syrup, which is calorie, fat and carb free, and is sweetened with Splenda, not aspartame! (Wish I could get used to the taste of Stevia but that shit’s nasty, sorry.)

    I really enjoyed these. They were small and dense, and didn’t rise too too much, but they were just the right sweetness and two of them filled my belly up nicely. These will make a wonderful weekday breakfast. I might experiment with future batches by adding hemp hearts, flax seeds, and maybe taking out the berries, adding pecans and replacing the 1/2 cup of vanilla syrup listed below with a combination of cold strong coffee and Kaluha-flavoured Da Vinci syrup. Mmmm.

    Blueberry Almond Muffins For The Carb Conscious
    Per muffin: 77 calories, 4g fat, 2g digestible (net) carbs, 8g protein

    3/4 cup protein powder (2.5 scoops)
    1/2 cup ground almonds (almond meal)
    1 packet Splenda
    1/2 tsp baking powder
    1/4 tsp salt
    1 egg
    2 tbsp cream
    1/2 cup Da Vinci syrup
    2 tbsp melted butter
    1/2 container blueberries (3oz)
    1/3 cup slivered almonds

    Mix it all up, sprinkle with slivered almonds, pour into greased muffin tin, bake at 400° for 15 minutes. DEVOUR OM NOM NOM

    White Bean and Spinach Soup

    Posted by on December 30, 2010 3 comments

    om nom nom

    A while back, I got a real craving for white bean and spinach soup. Not sure why – I’d never even had white beans before.

    My purchase of a can of white beans coincided with the purchase of my new iPhone and I thought, let’s take this thing out for a spin. And so, may I present: white bean and spinach soup. My soup is loosely based on a yummy-looking recipe over at Aggie’s Kitchen. Thanks for the inspiration, Aggie! Read more »