Tips | Winter Salad

Eating seasonally and locally doesn't mean no salad in the winter! We can get hot house lettuce here and I top it with homegrown sprouts, grated raw beets and feta. With a green tea vinegrette tonight. The raw beets are sooo good on it, nice and crunchy and sweet.

I hear that some people get local hot house peppers in the winter. Our hot house peppers come from Mexico. Seriously? Can anyone explain that to me? Grocery stores are a mystery to me.

Recipes | Warming Winter Vegetable Soup

If you are going to eat seasonally in this part of the world, it's best to try and love root vegetables. There's a wonderful variety and I'm been experimenting with all the ones I can get my hands on. This recipe came about when I came home with celeriac and didn't really know what to do with it. It has a mild celeryish flavour which is nice in soups when celery stalks are out of season.

This recipe is vaguely based off of Jane Spice's Spicy Parsnip Soup. It was my starting point at least.



Ingredients:
Carrots - 2 large or three medium
Parsnips - also 2 large or three smaller
1 medium Celeriac (also called celery root)
Olive Oil
1 large shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp whole coriander or 1/2 tsp ground*
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 quart (1 litre) chicken or vegetable broth.
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Peel and cube veggies. (cut the bottom of the celeriac off first if it's too tendrilly)

2) With a slosh of oil in the saucepan cook the shallot for a couple minutes until starting to go transparent. Add garlic and spices and cook for a minute or so until fragrant. **



3) Add vegetables and broth to pot and simmer until veggies are soft.



4) Puree or mash (I use an emersion blender). Salt and pepper to taste.

5) Enjoy! So good with biscuits or fresh bread. Serves 4.



* I really like whole coriander for some reason. I like the little pods. I grind them with the other spices with a mortar and pestle before I throw them in.



** I totally forgot to do this step this time around. I just chucked the shallots/garlic and spices in with the broth. Still very yummy.

Experiments | Paneer/Ricotta/Day Cheese?

So today I made cheese. As I was a cheese making virgin I started with what is apparently the easiest cheese in the world. Which is pretend Ricotta. Apparently (and I know this from all the blog posts I've scouring to learn how to do this) real ricotta is made from the whey after you make mozza. I did not make mozza, so this is made out of straight milk.

Here's some excellent blog posts about how to make it:

Homemade goat milk ricotta by Kittbo (this is what I followed. Only I didn't milk a goat first.)

The Garden of Eating (hee hee) has excellent photos in her explaination.

Discovering Ricotta over at Bitten got me started on all this.

I used 2 litres of whole milk and two cups of buttermilk. That made maybe 2 cups of cheese. It really is as easy as they say, and really is that yummy. I will be making this from now on whenever a recipe calls for ricotta or cottage cheese.

We just ate half of it with jam. Mmmmm

Tips | fun rice in the cooker

Tonight for dinner? Szechuan beef and beans over rice.

We don't eat white rice anymore. I tried to let it down easy and only have it for "emergencies" But it turns out that I had a lot of them and would just eat the white rice and never have time to make brown. So I just stopped buying it. And now I have to remember or else I just don't get rice. It's working out well.

I like to buy one bag of Lundberg Farms organic brown jasmine (so much yummier than brown long grain) and a small bag of Shaol Lake wild rice and mix them. It's more fun than straight brown.

I use the rice cooker and I've found that it needs a bit more water than white rice does, otherwise it turns out extra...chewy. I usually cook up 1 1/2 scoops of rice and fill it up to the 2 scoop line with water. So if it were stove top that would be 1/2 cups of rice to 4 cups water. And a bit of salt of course. It take a bit under 45 min I think (I'll time it for you next time I make some). This mix is fantastic in everything I use rice for.

Have fun with rice! Ditch the overprocessed whiteness! Save it for sushi.

Recipes | Breakfast Shake

This is what I have for breakfast most mornings. I am so not a morning person. In fact it's pretty useless to try and have a conversation with me if I've been awake for less than an hour. A fact my husband is slowly realizing (you know...it's only been six years...). So making or eating food that early? Crazy talk. My tummy isn't awake enough yet. Yet somehow...it's still hungry.

I lived off slimfast chocolate royal shakes for 5 years, by the way. Then I decided to stop eating processed food. Then I decided to stop eating bananas (because really? They're not from here. Also, I want them to not become extinct). And everyone knows fruit shakes need bananas, right? Wrong. I know there are a million and one ways to make shakes and that really no one needs a recipe, but this is what I do:

In my magic bullet cup I add:

Maybe a half cup of yogurt. Usually Island Farms Raspberry. It's my favourite so I always have it around. Vanilla is good too. It has to have some milkfat to it and it has to be sweetened.

A handful of frozen fruit. This brings me almost 3/4 of the way up the cup. I froze peaches, raspberries and strawberries this summer and just ran out (boo!). So I'm buying frozen canadian strawberries at the moment. The frozenness is key here. This is what makes it nice and cold and nice and thick. So you don't miss the banana.

Fill it up with milk. I just upgraded to 1%. Will it make me fat? Only time will tell.

That's it. No extra sugar. Sometimes I add a splash of vanilla.

Blend. Best enjoyed with a straw.

Also, I did this before I got the Magic Bullet. But I always over-measured and ended up with a lot of shake.

Inspirations | Eleni's NYC

Look at these sugar cookies by Eleni's NYC! I thought I was a half decent cookie decorator but obviously...there are levels I was unaware of.





(via Black*Eiffel)

Hi!

Welcome to my new blog! Cleverly disguised as an old blog by my moving posts from my other blog over. My food posts were threatening to take over my creative life blog. And my Twitter. And Facebook. Also I talk about food all day at work.

Clearly it was time to start a foodie blog.

My set-up is not the best for taking photos inside. In winter. At night. But so be it, you guys will just have to bear with me until more money/spring comes my way.

Blame Kait, she wanted to know how I live off root vegetables.