Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Wintersoup!

So winter is here!
By my book anyways. When the leaves are all off, and the lawn mowing has stopped: its winter. Which means lean times for me. I love my winter soup because its cheap and easy. Each veggie costs about a dollar, so for ten dollars, I have at least a week of soup to eat!

I always make a base, and I always seem to make a really oniony base. I could learn a different kind, but it keeps me from getting the colds and flu's.




That's my base frying! I start with garlic, ginger, shallots, onions, and leeks, and I fry them in a little oil and water, til the onions go clear.


There's my slow cooker, it's almost overflowing!
Then I put the base in a pot with about 4 litres of water, and chicken broth powder (I'm totally not organized enough to make real chicken broth!), plus all the veggies I decided I wanted in there. This round is: potato, sweet potato, yam, cabbage, celery, carrot, and a whack of baby bok choy cos it was on sale. In the end I found it a little bland, so I added a chicken rice soup mix that I got at Shoppers for the right spice. Turn slow cooker to four hours hi.



I had this Butternut squash that I nearly forgot, so I sliced it in half, scooped out the seeds, an roasted it on a tray in the oven. I put half in after the soup was cooked, when I pieced the soup into batches to freeze or fridge. The other half of the squash is going into black bean burritos instead of rice!

I love soup!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Crispy Chicken Wings in the Actifry

Here is the recipe. This was the first time that we used the Actifry. We liked these chicken wings but I think we want to try a dry rub next time. We kept them in for 45 minutes - 10 minutes longer than the recipe suggested. We didn't have an egg so we added more water. We worried about cleaning the machine but it washed up easy. I dipped my wings in Frank's Red Hot Buffalo sauce.






Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Auntie Mary's Irish Stew

Auntie Mary was good enough to send her recipe for Irish stew! This recipe fills the crock pot!! Really fills it!! (We even googled... can crock pots boil over...it didn't.. phew!!) Thanks for sharing a family recipe Auntie Mary!!
Here are the list of ingredients from Auntie Mary's e-mail:
This stew ain't got nothing on Auntie Mary's stew!!
I told ya it was FULL!
After all day cooking!!


Signapore Noodles

Jonny found an awesome new blog for cooking - this one is called Budget Bytes. Here is the recipe that we followed: Click HERE

The Singapore noodles at the Yaletown Brew Pub inspired us to try and make our own.
Here is the picture of the ingrediants I took shopping with us:
Here are our ingredients all chopped up:
Jonny had a wok and a frying pan going!
Mmmm... I really like these noodles :-D
OK.. it doesn't look too good in this picture but it is one of our favourites!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Slow Cooker Pork Stew

THIS is the recipe that we used for our slow cooker pork stew. Jonny made this one all by himself too. This was simple to prepare and simple to cook. It was very filling - hearty!

Before 
After
Pre-stomach!

Chicken Salsa Burritos

This is the recipe that Jonny used to make the chicken for our burritos. We were trying to make our own Mondos - Taco del Mar style. I think we succeeded because we ate a lot of them this weekend. We used refried pinto beans instead of normal beans and they were tasty and fluffy and cheaper.

Jonny took the chicken out and pulled it with a fork then put it back in the sauce to simmer. 
We added refried pinto beans, rice(long grain brown), lettuce, cheese, and hot sauce to the chicken. We tried both whole wheat and flour tortillas - large! 
Delish!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Slow Cooker Carnitas

Jonathan and I made CARNITAS in the slow cooker this morning. Jonathan found an awesome blog where a woman used her slow cooker everyday for a year and blogged it. This blog is going to be our new resource for slow cooker meals.

 These are the ingredients
 It was pretty simple to prepare for the slow cooker. We doubled the meat, salt, garlic, and cumin but we didn't anticipate doubling the meat so we didn't have a second lime and orange.
 This is what it looked like after cooking all day in the slow cooker. It smelled GOOD!
 Jonathan pulled the pork with a fork!
 More pork and pulling with a fork!
 We decided to eat ours like Mondo Burritos from Taco del Mar. We added rice, lettuce, cheese, refried beans, sour cream, and Valentina sauce.

The verdict: We will make them again! YUM!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Awesome Easy Pad Thai

PAD THAI!!!

Here is the link, since I can't seem to load it up onto this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dIc3HwGgdo


A couple notes:

a. apologies for the camera work. I used Lukes cam, and its tiny, and takes me a sec to get used to.

b. It's not terribly clear on the directions, here they are written out:



soak the tamarind in 2 tbsp of water overnight, or whenever you remember

before cooking, add the 4 tbsps of fish sauce, 4 tbsps sugar, and the chili flakes (I used Sambal) to the tamarind mush.

I also like to squeeze half of the 1 lime into the sauce mix, then the other half over the finished product.



With a little oil, cook the meat that is cut into strips in a big pot.

Everything will be added in on top of this, so the big pot is important.

Add in the chopped onion, and garlic, and cook for 4 or 5 minutes, until onion is a bit clear.

To this, add the half a loaf of extra firm tofu, chopped in little sticks, and the mushy sauce mixture.

Remove from heat, the sugar in the sauce can burn.



Add 1/2 pack of rice noodles to boiling water for 2 minutes.

Transfer them into the sauce/meat/tofo mix and stir the sauce through over heat.

Make a space in the bottom and crack the egg in, mixing it up as it cooks.

Then add the green onions, bean sprouts, and peanuts, and squeeze the other half of the lime over it.



c. check out my new stove!