Family favourites (old and new)
I first made this for my colleagues at Skunkworks Creative Group Inc., thus the name. It works best with a hefty pasta like rotini, fusilli, penne or cavatappi. You will need: 2 c. pasta of your choice 1 bag of baby spinach or arugula (washed …
Tonight my daughter asked me if we could get carrot soup from Burgoo (a local chain in Vancouver known for their soups and stews). Since it was rainy and I was feeling lazy I said sure. Little did I know they had taken it off …
Chickpea hummus is great on sandwiches instead of mayo or you can use it as a dip for veggies, tortilla chips or with pita bread.
You will need:
2, 19 oz (540 mL) cans of chickpeas drained and rinsed well (allow to drain again before using)
1/2 c. tahini (sesame paste). My friend Jordan hates tahini and makes his with yogurt instead and it turns out just fine. You can find tahini at pretty much any grocery store these days…it should be close to the peanut butter.
1/3 c. warm water
1/3 c. olive oil
Juice of 2 – 3 lemons
3 or more garlic cloves peeled and chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin seed (I toast the seeds first in a dry pan and then grind it with a mortar and pestal or you can just use the pre-ground kind)
Fresh ground black pepper
This makes a good sized batch.
I say blindfolded because these are so easy you can almost make them with your eyes closed – I take no responsibility for missing digits if you try it though. Frozen fries are full of crap (read the bag sometime, it’s horrifying what they can …
The wonderful Emma Mileva is the wife of my colleague (the also wonderful) Jordan Milev, Creative Director at Skunkworks Creative Group Inc. Not only is Emma in the middle of finishing her Ph.D in Linguistics at SFU, she is constantly sending Jordan to work with …
Fonda Bloy is an amazing dance instructor and choreographer. She is also the mom of Oliver, who at the time I first posted this recipe, was a very energetic 3-year old who is big on snap peas…red peppers…not so much.
This is Fonda’s favorite salad because it doesn’t have any lettuce in it. She says the dressing is also amazing in stir fry. You can keep it vegetarian by adding tofu for extra protein or add prawns, chicken, beef if you don’t care about eating things with faces. Do prawns have faces? I don’t know but they are delicious.
Tip: the longer this sits the better it gets!!
Mix the dressing and the veggies in a bowl and enjoy.
Fonda says this is super filling and great to pack as lunch or dinner. I’m thinking you could stir fry it and put it over rice or Diamond egg noodles.
This year my kids went off to their Auntie and Uncle’s for a big Thanksgiving feast so I was off the hook for cooking a turkey (insert cartwheel here). However, for Thanksgiving Monday they requested…meatloaf. My daughter “the mostly vegetarian” will eat very few meat …
I met Tracie Willis at my first “Mom and Tots” group. She had twin boys. After that I stopped whining (well maybe not totally). Tracie lived about 8 blocks from my house and was the one person I could count on to be up at …
Yesterday I decided to try out Katie Bishop’s “The best and easiest tomato pasta sauce,” from her excellent cookbook Slow Cooking. Easy Slow Cooker Recipes. I bought the book for the Vietnamese Pho Broth recipe (which is exceptional by the way) but today was not a Pho day. I did end up changing the recipe a bit because in my haste to get the stuff in the Crockpot and back to my book I opened one too many cans of tomatoes so it became a double batch experiment. Further, I had no red wine in the house (not because I drank it all either) and I “hab a code” so I put in a full bulb’s worth of garlic cloves. That should help kill anything that ails me and a few vampires to boot…Hallowe’en is coming after all. The sauce is very tasty but a bit watery. However, it will be great for lasagne and I can always add a tablespoon of tomato paste before I use it.
You will need:
A Crockpot (Don’t have one you say? It’s worth the $40 or so just to make Carolina BBQ pork – I’ll post my version of that yummy treat when I make it next)
2 28 oz tins of chopped tomatoes (I had one chopped with spices and one plain old plum tomato can so I just mashed them up with a potato masher – works like a charm)
1 large onion peeled and diced
garlic cloves from one whole garlic bulb peeled and pressed (into the Crockpot – why dirty more dishes than you have to)
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp sea salt
2 Tbsp caster sugar (I used berry sugar…almost the same diff)
200 ml red wine (I just used 1 Tbsp of red wine vinegar – I assumed it was for a bit of tangy flavour)
120 ml olive oil (I used plain ol’ No Frills olive oil…all this extra virgin this and cold pressed that makes no never mind in a dish like this so save it for something where it matters)
Put all the ingredients and half the olive oil into the slow cooker and mix well. Set the cooker to low and cook for 8 hours. Season to your taste and stir in the remaining olive oil.
Next time I do this I think I’ll add some shredded carrot.
Note: In hindsight I remembered Jamie Oliver’s tip to leave the tomatoes whole while they cook down to avoid the bitterness of the seeds. This didn’t seem to hurt this sauce but next time I won’t bother mashing them up.
Yield: 6 cups
To make a simple and flavourful Chicken Cacciatore using this sauce:
When I was about 7 we moved from the city to the country and like every good back-to-the-land hippie family my parents and their friends planted gardens. In our garden my parents planted 6 hills of zucchini (just in case the first 5 didn’t take). …