Family favourites (old and new)
Nutella (aka chocolate hazlenut spread) is a big hit at my house. We all love it but I don’t love some of the ingredients so I went looking for a homemade alternative. I ended up settling on a combination of Elsie + Emma’s A Beautiful …
My Mom makes excellent crepes. Light, crispy edges and just a hit of cinnamon. Warning: the “skinny” has nothing to do with calories because they need butter to make them tender. Don’t use margarine…please just don’t. The secret to these delicious crepes is a smooth …
My son the carnivore is heading off to boarding school on Tuesday so I thought this warm steak salad would be a good way to feed him a steak and get some extra veggies into him…also since my daughter “the mostly vegetarian” had already eaten dinner it was a chance to eat red meat with out the, “ewww that’s disgusting” look.
280 g steak marinaded the way you like.
Make the salad and the dressing first but don’t dress the salad until you are ready to plate up.
2 carrots grated
1/2 English cucumber sliced thin
2 plum tomatoes quartered and chopped in chunks
1 avocado cut in chunks
1 bunch of organic hearts of romaine lettuce torn into bite size pieces
I used my Cuisinart to make the dressing but before I did that I used the grater and slicer disks to do the carrots and cucumber.
I used Giada de Laurentis’ Red Wine Vinaigrette but decreased the salt to 1 tsp.
1/2 c red wine vinegar
3 tbps lemon juice
2 tsps honey
1 tsp rock salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 c olive oil
Put all the ingredients except the olive oil in your Cuisinart (or blender). With the speed on low, slowly drizzle in the olive oil.
I thought about grilling the steak but I’m forever over cooking it so I followed the pan frying directions from BBCgoodfood.com. Click to view the Youtube video. The 3 minutes per side suggestion worked out perfectly for medium rare. Make sure you let the steak rest before slicing.
Dress your salad with the red wine vinegrette to your taste and put a good sized bed of salad down on a dinner plate. Grind a bit more fresh pepper and salt over top. Slice the steak into 1/4″ ribbons and arranged over top of the salad. Serve. This would have gone very well with roasted new potatoes with rosemary and garlic.
Serves 2.
This recipe comes courtesy of my friend and fellow dance Mom Linda. Our daughters had a very successful year dancing together this past season and aside from some great dance memories, we got Linda to share her apple sauce recipe which my daughter insists is …
This is a super easy recipe for roasted new potatoes. If they are out of season just cube larger potatoes into 1/2″ chunks. Ingredients: 1 lb of new potatoes (President’s Choice often has small 1 – 1.5 lb bags of red or yellow new potatoes) …
My friend Laura gave me a lovely bunch of Red Swiss Chard from her garden today. After mucking about this afternoon doing the usual mundane Sunday chores I suddenly realized I was ravenous. I opened the fridge and there was the bag of chard so I thought I’d look up a recipe and do something with it. I’m a huge collard greens fan so I wanted something along those lines. What I found was a super easy sautee with garlic and red pepper flakes from the Food Network.
Note: Chard is considered one of the nutrient dense super foods. Click to read “What are superfoods?” on Livescience.com. This article has a good list of foods you can easily work into your diet without breaking the bank or having to go a grocery store safari to find them.
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic sliced
a pinch of red pepper flakes (I don’t like it super hot)
1 bunch of swiss chard, washed and dried
Kosher salt
Red wine vinegar to finish.
Wash and dry the chard, remove stems (chop), then rough chop the leaves (I just cut them in 1″ ribbons).
In a big cast iron pan (or whatever large frying pan you have handy), heat the oil and add the garlic and the red pepper flakes. Sautee until the garlic browns. Remove the garlic. Add the stems and sautee for 4 minutes, add the leaves and continue sauteeing until the leaves wilt. Remove to a bowl and give it a liberal splash of red wine vineger…eat. It’s awesome.
I can see this being a really good accompaniment to fish or shrimp. It’s nice and tangy.
Here’s another yummy quinoa salad for a summer supper. Ingredients: 1 c. quinoa 1 1/2 c. water 1/2 tsp salt Juice and zest of 1 lemon Equal amount olive oil to lemon juice 1 clove garlic Salt and pepper to taste 12 marzano tomatoes cut …
I thought it might be time for a summer dinner salad so here’s a variation of the Layered Orzo Salad in Company’s Coming Meal Salads that adds chicken for protein and substitutes delicious Bulgarian feta (hat tip to Jordan and Emma) instead of bocconcini cheese. …
I went to the Friends of Southland’s Heritage Farm Market this weekend and was delighted to find (among other things) the loveliest looking garlic scapes. Actually, they look like green onions having a bad hair day or a bit like SideShow Bob’s hair…except green. However, once you taste them…you will think they look lovely too. My friend Desi introduced me to them last year…she just sauteed them up in a bit of butter with salt and pepper…heaven.
This year my friend Paula suggested making garlic scape pesto. So I did. I found the same recipe repeated all over the place but they seem to originate from Dorie Greenspan’s blog: In the Kitchen and on the Road with Dorie. They also all called for toasted almond slivers. I am saving those for biscotti so I used ground almonds instead. Feel free to be a purest and follow Dorie’s recipe…she is after all a rather famous cook and cook book author…I am not. Well not yet anyway. I haven’t decided what to be when I grow up.
10 garlic scapes with bulbs removed and rough chopped
1/3 c. parmesan or romano (add more cheese if you like it)
1/3 c. ground almonds
1/2 c. olive oil
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Whiz up the scapes, half the cheese, almonds and half the olive oil to get the scapes to texture. Add the remaining cheese and olive oil until you get the texture you want. This is not an exact science…make it the way you like it. My version is below.
Cook up some pasta (any old kind will do) and toss. Add in chopped tomatoes and peppers for colour (or don’t…your call). Eat. I decided to try it plain the first time. Wooooweee garlicky and yummy. Note: if you don’t like garlic don’t make this.
I also have to say that the fresh Southlands Farms goat cheese is really, really…really good. Just had some on a cream cracker…ok maybe I had three. Awesome.
My favourite thing at the Cactus Club is their Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowl. Recently, I tried a Dragon Bowl at Brown’s with tofu instead of chicken and it was equally delicious so I thought to myself…self…it’s time to figure out how they make that. So, …