Greek Quinoa Salad

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"Kwin-noah?"  - Me

I think I may officially be the last person to join in the craze, and so all I have to say is, "Is this bandwagon headed to the quinoa store please?"  Whole grain, healthy, gluten free, and it has been named one of the most complete foods in existence...no big deal!

And, did you know that this supergrain is actually not a grain at all, but a seed that is part of the spinach family?  I know that because I looked it up.

It's light, it's fluffy, it's fun (ok, maybe I'm pushing it?!), and it's my new favourite thing to cook with.  Keen-wah.

I threw this Greek Quinoa Salad together for dinner for The Hubby and me last week, and served it alongside a sundried tomato and basil marinated chicken breast.  The salad kept in the fridge for 4-5 days, and was awesome for lunches at work last week.  My hatred of leftovers is passionate, but this salad actually seemed to improve as the days passed.

Very Berry Muffins

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It's officially SPRRRRIIIIINNNG!!  The sun is shining (after having snow at our house three out of seven days this week, but who's counting?), flowers are poking their heads out of the ground (which makes me feel like I should be out there gardening instead of typing this!), and...well, Spring muffins are baking in the oven?!  Yes they are!  Quadruple berry muffins in fact.

You guys.  These muffins.  They are soooo tasty and full of berry goodness...you're going to love them.  Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries.  Perfect.      

Some tips:  I used whole berries for this recipe rather than chopping each berry into smaller pieces.  If you're doing the same, make sure that you use muffin liners which will help to keep the berry trapped in with the rest of the muffin when you are removing it from the tin after baking.  Once they cool in the muffin liner, there will be no fear of the side or bottom of your muffin coming off because it's more berry than muffin. That's right, more berry than muffin.  Also, if you are using frozen berries, throw them into the muffin mixture in their frozen state rather than thawing them first.  This will ensure that your muffin mix doesn't turn purple.

Crispy Chicken with Green Curry Sauce

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Something you should know about me is that I have an unhealthy obsession with cookbooks.  I love them.  I want more of them.  I need them.  I'm a cookbook hoarder.

Ask The Hubby, there probably isn't any night of the week that while we are sitting watching TV I am not flipping through the tattered, stained pages of any given cookbook.  If you and I are talking on the phone, and I end the sentence with the word potato instead of whatever you were expecting, you know what I was really doing while we were chatting.  I usually even have a cookbook on the passenger seat of my car so that I can sneak a peek at a red light on my long drive home from work.  And what makes it worse is the suffocating feeling that even if I cooked one new thing every day for the rest of my life, I would never ever be able to make all of the recipes that are out there in all of the cookbooks!  It's bad.  I'm an addict.

So, imagine how excited I was on Christmas Eve when I got to open my stocking from my mother-in-law (yes, I am 30 years old and still get a stocking from both my mom and my mom-in-law, and I LOVE it!), and inside was a brand new copy of Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes!  So many new recipes and pretty pictures and yummy things!!!  Pure bliss!

So, I decided to finally put the Meals In Minutes concept to a test this past Friday.  A whole delicious meal in just a few minutes?!  Um, yes please.  With my new cookbook on the car seat beside me, I decided during my commute home from work that Crispy Chicken with Green Curry Sauce was going to be the object of my affection that day.

Off to the grocery store I went.  The recipe called for some ingredients that I have never cooked with before, namely lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves.  The lemongrass part wasn't hard to find, but after going to two grocery stores and having a few awkward conversations with the 17-year old produce department employees about what I was trying to buy ("Lime leaves?"), I opted out of the optional lime leaves.

Then I had a stroke of genius!  Since it was only 6pm on a Friday night, and since this meal was literally only going to take me a few minutes to construct, maybe The Hubby and I should invite some friends over for dinner and cards!  The Hubby's brother and his fiance were totally in.  Sweet...last minute dinner plans!

Tomato and Italian Sausage Risotto

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I made a delicious dinner last night.  The Hubby said it was the best thing he has eaten in 2012!  Thank you Martha Stewart, you saucy domestic goddess you!

Risotto always seemed like one of those unconquerable meals that I could only order in a restaurant.  Like...what is that stuff?  But I made it last year for the first time, and it was EASY!  Lots of stirring and monitoring, but still pretty darn easy!  So, I decided to try it again last night...this time with a tomato-based version (healthier? maybe. probably), and it was delish.

There is a bunch of spinach in this recipe (like actually a spinach bunch of spinach!), so if you feel like skipping a side vegetable, you will still have your vegetable quota covered.  I usually have all of these ingredients on hand, so it was a breeze to make for a hearty weeknight meal to help combat these cold nights that still lurk.

Vegetarian Black Bean Chili

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I absolutely love this recipe. Conversely, The Hubby won't even try it. Something to do with his hatred for cilantro and lime.

I have come to realize that cilantro is really one of those love or hate foods. If you like it, you LOVE it, and want more more more (or is that just me?), but if you don't like it you HATE it and can detect its presence even when it is barely there. I am always amazed at how different one person's food tastes can be compared to another's. How is it that I never crave chocolate, and some people would die without it? Or that I luck out by being someone who has a love of black jellybeans while others will eat around them? Or that some people will gloop ketchup onto everything from potatoes to eggs to Kraft Dinner, while others will only eat these foods plan?

One of the weirdest things that I heard about cilantro in my waitressing days was that customers wanted it left off of their plate because it tastes like soap. Soap? Huh?

Is it weird that this still looks delicious to me?

Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese

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Happy Valentine's Day!

After a brief hiatus while I was off getting eye surgery, I'm back! The upside to eye surgery (besides the seeing without contact lenses part, which is amazing) is that I think I may have even lost a few pounds! I was so sensitive to light after the surgery (as in I wore my sunglasses at night a la Corey Hart...except if Corey Hart wore them inside with all the lights off and blinds drawn, and the sunglasses were blublockers) that looking into the bright refrigerator was almost impossible. Winning!

"...cuz you got it made with the guy in shades, oh no"

I actually did make a couple of recipes while I was off, but accidentally deleted the photos of some (just in case you are wondering, doing this was a similar feeling to typing a really long email, and then accidentally hitting a mystery button on the keyboard that deletes everything you wrote), and didn't take photos of the others. I also made a halibut recipe that was so-so, which made me wonder whether I should be:


a) only posting about stuff that we really liked, or 
b) throwing caution to the wind, posting about everything regardless of how it turns out, and giving honest reviews. 


I will have to debate this over the next few days, but I'm leaning towards posting about all of my kitchen misadventures so that I can keep track of what I've made and liked or disliked. I would love to hear what you think!?

Back to the matter at hand...who doesn't love a homemade mac n' cheese? Om nom nom nom. My mom handed me this Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese recipe from Chatelaine magazine the other day, and it looked great so I wanted to give it a whirl. Butternut squash in combination with pasta seems to be really popular lately at restaurants...the creaminess of the butternut squash really adds to the richness and creaminess of the pasta sauce.

Best-Ever Banana Bread!

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Seriously, hands down, the BEST banana bread recipe known to man. Known to man! I've been eating this banana bread since I was a little girl when my mom would (and still does!) make it. I remember coming home after school to the smell of this baking in the house.

Disgusting

The secret to this moist, delicious, your-taste-buds-are-going-to-love-you bread is six disgusting, mushy, over-ripe, frozen then thawed, bananas (see grotesque picture to the right).


Now, I am a person who prefers a banana when the colour of the peel still has a little green in it (or preferably a lot of green), so the thought of these bananas actually revolts me. Call us snobs, but both The Hubby and I will not eat bananas that have started to brown, even a little bit. But, that just means that we end up with a freezer-full of bananas, which just so happens to be ideal circumstances for making delicious banana bread. Regular yellow bananas with just a bit of brown that have never seen the inside of a freezer just don't seem to yield the same moist result.

Broccoli and Aged Cheddar Soup

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I love making soup.  There's just something about a lovely smelling soup simmering away on the stove on a frosty winter evening that makes me smile. This is a recipe that I've never made before, but I decided to give it a try for dinner last night. As you will see in my review below, the soup came out a bit thinner than I was expecting (I was thinking it would be about the same consistency as a chowder), but through some stroke of refrigerator magic it seemed to thicken up in the fridge overnight and was super delicious for lunch today.

Oh, and...

Super Helpful Tip: Make sure that when you buy cheese for this recipe you only buy one cup, not eight cups because that's what you wrote down on your shopping list by mistake (not that anyone would ever do that...haha! Ahem. Cough). Enjoy!

Onion Goggles!

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Check out these snazzy spectacles!! I wish I knew about these goggles years ago, but just recently picked up a pair after a recommendation from a friend (thanks S.C!), and have been enjoying tear-free cooking ever since!

Here is the science behind it all: When onions are cut, an enzyme called sulfoxide lyase and sulfuric compounds are released from the broken cells. When exposed to air, they react with one another to form a vapour. As this vapour evaporates, it irritates our eyes (and causes me to cry). Chemical weaponry at its best!! Before these goggles, as soon as I sliced into an onion, the vicious army of vapours would enact their powerful defense mechanism, seeping out of the onion with the sole mission to find the shortest possible route to my eyes and attack. Since using these, I haven't shed a tear! The foam seal on the frames protects your eyes from the vapours sneaking in.

I picked up my pair for $29.95 at Cookworks...I know, a little on the steep side, but in my opinion you can't put a price on the pleasure of an onion slicing and dicing experience, all while wearing an accessory that is both extremely comfortable, and obviously very stylish. They are also available at Bed Bath and Beyond.

Megan's Review: Get these!! (Or if you want to save the money, apparently the same goal can be achieved by putting an onion in the freezer for 15 minutes before slicing it.) These are also a great gift idea for the chef who has everything. Life changing!

Herb and Parmesan-Crusted Pork Tenderloin

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We always seem to have at least one or two pork tenderloins in our freezer, usually because Save-On Foods constantly has 'Buy One, Get One' events that we are suckers for! Seriously, The Hubby and I have issues when it comes to Save-On Foods. Many of the conversations that we have are about which cashier we had (was it the funny Chinese lady who gets stranger every time we see her), and how many bonus points we collected that day. If we are shopping alone, we come home and debrief on what amazing deal we picked up that day, and whether or not it was a good points day. Sad. So, recently they had pork tenderloin BOGO again (you save like $16!), and of course we picked a couple up.

I took one of the frozen pork tenderloins out of my freezer on Sunday night, and then chose a recipe after work yesterday that wouldn't require me to go to the store for any ingredients...Herb and Parmesan-Crusted Pork Tenderloin it was! 

Chicken Parmesan

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Chicky Chicky Parm Parm! What to make for a Sunday dinner when the parents are coming over? Tonight it was Chicken Parmesan with Caesar salad, garlic bread, and broccoli. Delicious!! Some recipes skip the step of frying the chicken before putting in the oven, either to simplify the recipe or to make it more healthy, but the flavour and crispiness that it gives was my favourite part! Rather than making my own marinara sauce, I used a couple of jars of store-bought spaghetti sauce to speed up the prep time.

Caesar Salad

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This is my go-to Caesar salad recipe, to be enjoyed with everything from burgers to lasagna to steak. Tonight we ate it as an accompaniment to Chicken Parmesan. I tend to go a little crazy on the garlic in my Caesar salads, but the actual recipe calls for 1 clove...free free to add an extra clove like I do!

Minestrone Soup

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This is the ultimate hearty vegetable soup. This recipe has a lot of ingredients, but don't let this intimidate you from either a budget or time perspective. The soup's total ingredient cost was less than $20, and total vegetable slicing and dicing time was about 20 minutes. I must mention that I'm really starting to notice a trend, because all three recipe posts to this blog have had alcohol in them!! This soup will be great for lunches for The Hubby and me this week. Serve with a chunk of bread for a filling meal.

Egg Nog Supreme

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Note: 'Supreme' means boozy! Egg nog is one of my favourite things about Christmas. I first made this Egg Nog Supreme recipe last Christmas, and what wasn't slurped up on Christmas Eve by my family was quickly spooned into our Christmas morning coffee. This year I made it as a punch to serve at our New Years Eve party, and crossed my fingers in hopes that everyone wasn't completely sick of egg nog already. Turns out that if you put booze into anything, our friends will drink it (and that's one of the things we love about them most)! Here is the recipe...it's definitely a must try!! Enjoy!

Privacy Policy

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