Salad; Brownies

Salad.


More salad.


More.


Also. After work this past week I've been working on this Great Project called Chopped Fruits And Nuts.

Tonight I added half a cup of these to a batch of Furbacher Brownies, one of the first recipes I've tested from the book of family recipes I'm working on.


The book will be comprised of some Czech, some Trinidadian, and all Furbacherian recipes; the optimistic release date is Christmas 2011. Anyway.


It all begins here with this batch of brownies. (Food styling by Jay)

Just some salad and oatmeal

Salad. Also oatmeal.

Salad; Echinacea

For dinner tonight: salad and echinacea. Because I still can't tell if I'm sick, or if I just have allergies. I've skipped the best part of the weekend, but I'll get to that tomorrow. (Or the next day.)

Pizza Town

Another night, another pizza slice. This one from Pizza Town at Tinseltown. Ingredients unknown. Fancy Hipstamatic camerawork by Janos Sitar

Spinach & Cheddar Omelette

I made an omelette for dinner: two eggs, salt & pepper; baby spinach, cheddar and Louisiana hot sauce.

Nachos Solo

This is what it looks like when I eat nachos with company. Pictured above: what it looks like when I eat them alone.


[not completely alone]

Some Food

• leftover spinach & strawberry salad from lunch
• crackers & cheese
• midnight slice of Uncle Fatih's pizza

Nacho Picnic

INDOOR NACHO PICNIC! Prepared by Jay while I napped.
(Thanks Jay.)

Holy Shed

Apollo Ghost Burgers at Holy Shed, the (second to) last, epic show at Chris-a-riffic's shed.


Some of my very favourite local artists played, including Rose Melberg, Lost Lovers Brigade, Apollo Ghosts, Aunts & Uncles, Ryan from Collapsing Opposites, and The Magician (featuring "The Gates of Like"). I also had a chance to discover some new favourites: Shawn Mrazek, Lakefield, Boy Voyage and Friendship and the Fawn.


Later I dove into a box full of free samosas.

Pizza; Wraps

It was the first time I got pizza at Uncle Fatih's and actually just sat there on the patio and ate it, rather than than eating while walking.


Later, some salmon & cream cheese wraps at a (w)rap party.

Leftover Stew

2-day-old stew tastes much better than fresh stew. The flavours have hereby co-mingled.

Salad

I ate salad. Saallaaaaad. Broccoli slaw, cucumbers, red cabbage, red peppers, grape tomatos, and "salad crunchy mix" from Kin's on Davie. Blue cheese dressing.

Cookbookyssey #8: The Australian Women's Weekly Stew

The Australian Women's Weekly Stew: Braises & Casseroles
edited by Pamela Clark
© 2008 ACP Books

There are a dozen or so dog-eared pages in this book of recipes that I've been wanting to try: Spanish-style chicken; one pot spiced chicken, pumpkin & rice; chicken, leek & bacon casserole; Mexican chicken stew; chicken; olive & lemon tagine... basically there are a lot of attractive chicken recipes. But I defrosted my freezer yesterday and had to make something with the frozen pork loin, so I made my way to the section on pigs.

Pork Ragu with Pappardelle

2 x 5 cm-thick (750 g) pork scotch steaks
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp olive oil
20 g butter
1 medium leek, sliced thinly
1 medium fennel, sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
500 g pappardelle pasta
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup green olives
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fennel fronds

Preheat oven to 320°F. Heat chicken stock on the stovetop in a flameproof baking dish.

Toss pork in flour. Sear it in a frying pan with the oil and butter, and then set aside.


Cook leek, fennel and garlic in the same pan until softened. Add wine (I used dry vermouth); bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer until wine is almost evaporated.

Pour mixture in with chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Add pork, cover, and cook in oven for about 2 hours (I did 1 1/2), turning halfway through. Cool slightly and tear the pork into small pieces.


Meanwhile, cook pasta in large saucepan of boiling, salted water until just tender. Drain. (In the spirit of using up what I already have and not spending money, I substituted farfalle (ie. bow-tie pasta) for pappardelle.)


Stir balsamic and olives in with the pork and sauce; add pasta and toss gently to combine. Serve sprinkled with fennel fronds.


I thought this dish would taste more fennelly. But somewhere in the one and a half hours of slow cooking, the flavour almost completely disappeared.

In the end, the stew was ok, but a little dry. I guess I would use more stock and less pasta, and probably the right pasta, next time. I also think it needs to sit for a while or something once the olives and balsamic are added, so that the flavours can blend a little more.

I still have faith in this book and will take on some of those chicken recipes one day; they after all are "triple tested: for your success every time". Maybe this stew was just a successful dry stew.

Camping: Day Two

We started day two with a hike down to the river.


Where we observed some nature.

The five minute hike back was pretty strenuous, so it was time to eat. Friends showed up with bread, cheese, dip, wine and a baby. We ate all their food while staring at the baby, then went to the beach.


Afterwards we returned for more food: veggies and dip. The veggies were fine but even better was smothering a bag of Tandoori chips in the dip. Next up, an appetizer of two different cheeses, while we waited for our cheese fondue to heat.


I made a giant salad, but by the time it was ready, so was the fondue. So everyone forgot about it.


Including me.


Fonduuuuuuuuueeee!


Janos had materialized earlier and with him came the aforementioned cheese appetizers, Vancouver Island beer, Pinot Noir, and Oreos. So we decided to try making SmOreos: unscrewing them to make a toasted gourmet marshmallow cookie sandwich.


This was fairly successful. And messy.


To quote Setareh: "YAAAAAAAAYYYY CAMPING"

Camping: Day One

This view provided the backdrop for our culinary adventures in the woods last weekend. We arrived at the Golden Ears campground on Friday in time to put up our tents and get started with dinner.


Setareh provided a delicious homemade quinoa salad to start. Note the boxed wine in the background on the far left. It was the equivalent of 5 1/3 bottles of wine, for around $30. And it tasted not bad.


Mauve, who is a power-camper of sorts, came equipped with this fancy propane stove, to cook up our fusilli with four cheese sauce.


Our esteemed fellow campers draining the pasta in the woods.


Jesse brought these gourmet marshmallows -- strawberry and espresso flavours. I've always wondered what the point of gourmet marshmallows was, and now I know.


I love toasting marshmallows over the fire but even for those who don't, THESE ARE AMAZING. They taste a million times more delicious than regular toasted marshmallows.

Roasted Chickpeas & Bok Choy with Peanut Sauce

I steamed the rest of the bok choy tonight and ate it with roasted chickpeas and Trader Joe's Satay Peanut Sauce.


I roasted the chickpeas for about 20 minutes at 400°F in a cast iron skillet, with olive oil, sliced garlic, chopped ginger, salt and pepper and a few bay leaves. The peanut sauce was more like a paste, so I mixed in some milk to creamyify it.

Seared Tofu & Bok Choy with Coconut Ginger Lime Sauce

I made another recipe from Eric Akis's Everyone Can Cook Midweek Meals last night: Pan-Seared Tofu with Bok Choy and Curry Sauce. My intention was to work my way through my cookbook collection, one recipe per book because I have so many, but the recipes in this book are so quick and easy that I keep returning to it.


I'd post the recipe but I might be in danger of eventually republishing the whole book via my blog, so I'll just say that the sauce was coconut milk-based (low-fat worked well in this case), featuring lime juice, grated ginger, and red Thai curry paste. We also added a bit of this Granville Island Ginger Beer.


It felt really good to eat healthy after a weekend of binging.

McDonald's!

Camping updates to come later, since I used someone else's camera all weekend and don't have photos yet. Suffice it to say, I was camping with a group of girls who make cookbooks for a living, so. We ate very well. We basically just ate most of the time. I think I gained about five pounds. To ensure this, I dined at McDonald's in Richmond on Sunday night: one Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal.