Vegetable Tempura

So, I usually love to plan my meals and all, but let's be honest - sometimes you just need to use up what you have in the fridge.  I like to do a sort of weekly clean-out and it doesn't always make for the most impressive of meals.  This weekend I had a bunch of veggie leftovers, so I bought a box of Tempura flour, thawed out some shrimp, and went to town making a pile of Japanese Tempura!  You may had this battered and fried dish at a sushi restaurant before, but homemade is definately just as good, not to mention (from how I figured it out) about 1/8th of the cost. 

**oops!  I snapped this picture after the family had already "dug in!"  Better than nothing, right?

Vegetable and Shrimp Tempura

Assorted vegetables (I used carrots, eggplant, zucchini, sweet potato, red pepper, snap peas, broccoli) cut into pieces (kind of the size you would use in a veggie tray) or thinly sliced (1/4") for carrots, eggplant, sweet potato.
Shrimp (uncooked, peeled, tail-on, thawed)
1 box Tempura batter mix (I got this in the asian section at Safeway for about $2.50)
Canola Oil

*I served these with PC brand Tempura Dipping Sauce.  I diluted it slightly with water.  My husband commented that it had a nice gingery flavour.

Mix tempura flour with amount of water required on box.  Add water if needed to achieve a nice thick but liquid batter good for coating.  Keep this cold (I contained the batter in a bowl and placed it within a larger bowl of ice).  Heat about an inch of oil in a large pot.  Dip veggies and shrimp into batter, letting excess drip off.  Drop into the hot oil.  Do not crowd the pot.  Rotate as they cook and test with a fork after a minute or two to check if they are done.  Pull out with a fork and place on a paper-towel lined plate.  Keep frying until all your batter is used up, or until you have no more veggies and shrimp to dip.  Serve on a large platter with Tempura Sauce for dipping (see *note above).

Yesterday's Lunch

So, my husband loves a hearty, filling lunch on Sundays when he comes home from work.  However, I still like to keep it healthy.  Here's a pic of yesterday's lunch.  Homemade falafels with salad!  It was SO delish!

I just kind of threw in what I had for the salad.  Spinach, garden tomatoes, cucumber, feta, red onion, fresh dill, and a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Seemed to be good enough for a hungry man!

Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies

Sometimes in the fall I get the uncontrollable urge to bake something gingery!  I have a few ginger treats that are on regular fall rotation at our house.

These cookies are a great twist on your plain ginger cookie.  They are slightly more chewy over crisp and of course, there is the addition of chocolate chips!   I often will use chocolate chunks as a substitute, or maybe some nice, dark, 60% chocolate chips (which I can't even eat, but I feel like other people love 'em!).

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

This recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart.  Makes about 2 dozen.

• 7 oz. good quality semi-sweet chocolate or chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• 1/2 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup unsulfured molasses
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Directions

1. Grease 2 baking sheets. Chop chocolate into 1/4-inch chunks; set aside. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cocoa.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and grated ginger until whitened, about 4 minutes. Add brown sugar; beat until combined. Add molasses; beat until combined.  Add egg; beat until combined.
3. In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in 1 1/2 teaspoons boiling water. Beat half of flour mixture into butter mixture. Beat in baking-soda mixture, then remaining half of flour mixture. Mix in chocolate; Refridgerate mixture for 2 hours or more.
4. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Roll dough into 1 1/2- inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar.  Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets.  Bake until the surfaces crack slightly, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

made-from-scratch Oreo Cookies

This is one of my go-to kid-friendly treats for holidays.  They are definately appropriate for any day, but I love that you can customize the filling colour to fit with a holiday (ie. pink for Valentine's day, red and green for Christmas, etc).  Today I did orange for Halloween.  The fact that they are easy to transport to school functions is a plus as well!

In my opinion, these are better than the "real thing," because well, they are the real thing!  Here is the recipe!

made-from-scratch Oreo Cookies

For the chocolate cookies:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons room-temperature, unsalted butter
2 large eggs

For the filling:
1 cup unsalted butter
3-4 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 tsp heavy cream
desired food colouring or gel dye

Method
1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While on low speed, add the butter, and then the eggs. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart.  Bake for about 9 minutes, until cookies look a little crackly on the top
4. To make the filling, place butter in mixing bowl and at low speed, gradually beat in the icing sugar one cup at a time.  Add a little cream and vanilla.  Add more cream or icing sugar if necessary to achieve desired consistency.  Whip at med-high speed until icing is nice and fluffy. (Optional: Blend in a tiny bit of gel dye until you reach the desired color.)
6. To assemble the cookies, put some icing in a freezer bag and snip off a corner.  Pipe tablespoon-size blobs of cicing into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the icing. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with icing.

Egg "McFunks"

This homemade version of the popular fast-food breakfast sandwich is a favourite breakfast of my whole family.  Sometimes, I just crave a savory breakfast instead of something sweet or fruity, and this option, which I usually serve with hashbrowns and a fruit smoothie, really hits the spot.  The credit for this idea goes to my mother-in-law, who has been making these for breakfast at the lake as long as I have known her and longer.

I have made these the night before, then heated them up in my panini press or oven in the morning.  I have also heard you can freeze something like this (individually, for convenience), but I have never done it myself.

**In this recipe, I bake my eggs in a giant muffin tin.  If you do not have one, you can fry the eggs in a pan instead and then add them into the sandwich.


Egg McFunks

6 whole wheat english muffins
6 nice thick slices of good cheddar cheese
9 slices of bacon cut in half, or a little bit of shaved ham, or omit meat
6 eggs

Grease one giant muffin tin (one that makes 6 muffins), or 6 - 4" ramekins.  One at a time, crack eggs into a mug or glass measuring cup and beat SLIGHTLY, just until yolk is broken, then pour into muffin tin until each hole is filled with an egg. Add a pinch of salt and a crack of pepper to each egg. Bake about 15 minutes at 350F or until eggs are set.  Let cool slightly.
Cook bacon (I do mine in the oven), or warm ham in a pan on stovetop if using.
Cut open english muffins. 
On one side of the muffins, layer cheese, ham/bacon if using, and top each with a baked egg and the other half of the muffin.  Warm them on a baking sheet in the oven, or in a panini grill until cheese is melted and muffin is toasty. 

Maybe serve with hashbrowns and a smoothy for a good breakfast or in my house, this flies as lunch too!  Yum!
Also, please excuse my photography skills!  I am working on it!

Turkey Curry Soup

So, how many turkey sandwiches can you eat?  I cooked a large turkey on Thursday night, and while I do love a good turkey sandwich (maybe with some avocado and sprouts, or some cranberry sauce and provolone, yum!!), I can only eat so many!  My family would also tire of that pretty quikly - in fact "one member in particular" cannot stand the "leftover-second-day-poultry-taste" that chicken and turkey apparently have.  So, I generally have to be quite creative with my poultry leftovers.

This soup recipe is not only the best use of turkey leftovers I have ever found, it might actually be the best soup recipe I have ever cooked.  So, obviously worth sharing on here!  So, while most of you have likely already used up your turkey leftovers (as I said, I only cooked mine on Thursday), you should definately bank this recipe for next year.  Or, if you chopped up some turkey and threw it in the freezer because you are out of ideas, this soup is the perfect thing to use it for!

Turkey Curry Soup

1/2 cup butter (it's part of the roux base and it makes a really big pot, so don't freak out at the butter content!)
2 onions, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1/3 cup flour
1 TBSP curry powder
6 cups turkey, chicken, or vegetable stock (I obviously used turkey, since I had the carcass lying around)
2 cups potatoes, chopped
4 cups turkey
6 cups fresh spinach
2 - 400ml cans light coconut milk (could use half and half or even whole milk)
1 tsp sage

Melt butter and saute onions, celery and carrots until onions are translucent.  Add flour and curry powder and stir around for about 2 minutes.  Add stock and potatoes.  Let simmer and cook until potatoes are tender.  Add turkey, sage, and spinach, cooking until spinach has wilted.  Stir in cocout milk and reheat.

*I have not tried freezing this soup, but in my experience with soups containing coconut milk, they DO NOT freeze well.  I would not recommend freezing this soup.

Oatmeal and Tuesday Breakfasts

So I've decided I want to make a post about breakfast each week! Breakfast is a big deal in our house. My kids have always gone to bed pretty early, so by the time breakfast rolls around again, they are starving! Also, now that our oldest is in grade one, he needs to last until lunch without food. So breakfast at our house needs to be quick, hearty, healthy and tasty!
Oatmeal is my FAVOURITE breakfast ever! I make 2 main oatmeal recipes in our house, and I will list both below. One of my favourite things about oatmeal is that it allows for endless topping choices. My kids also love this about oatmeal. I will often give them each a little dish of diced apples and a little dish of raisins for them to add to their oatmeal themselves - they LOVE this! I will list some of our favourite toppings below as well.

BASIC STOVETOP OATMEAL
At first I thought making oatmeal on the stove as opposed to the boiling water packets was not worth the effort. But if you look on the back of those packets (namely the sugar content, or even the sodium content of the unsweetened packets), you realize you can't afford to not put in the effort! I save the packets for when I need to bring breakfast on a road trip, or for at the lake - they are good for some things!
So, this is my basic stovetop oatmeal recipe - it only takes a few minutes (will boil before you even finish cleaning out the dishwasher!), and you can vary it endlessly depending on your mood!


Makes 4 servings

2/3 cup oats (old-fashioned, or 3-5 minute oats)
2/3 cup milk, any variety, even almond, soy or coconut
1 cup water
*1 sliced banana
*2 TBSP chia seeds
*1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Stir all ingredients together in a pot on medium heat. Once this boils, cook until oats are soft and liquid is absorbed (about 3 minutes).
*I often add one sliced banana into the pot. When it starts to boil, I "whip" the banana into the mixture.
*The chia seeds are optional, but they add a nutty taste and make things nice and fluffy!
*If you like vanilla, you will love this addition. Add after cooking.

Tasty Toppings:
Cottage Cheese (fold in immediately after cooking)
Nut Butter (any variety, Sunbutter is delish also!)
Toasted nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc)
Maple Syrup
Chopped apples (can be added before or after cooking)
Raisins (can be added before or after cooking)
Cinnamon
Vanilla yogurt
Leftover fruit salad
Canned Peaches and their juice
Toasted Coconut

What do you top your oatmeal with? Leave me a comment about it!

BAKED OATMEAL
This is a dish we were served at Wilderness Edge Resort in Pinawa, MB this summer at a family reunion. And guess what? They give away their recipe! Boy, am I glad about that - saves me all the tinkering in my kitchen. Sometimes it pays to ask (my mom did!)!

6 cups oatmeal (3 cups large flake, 3 cups quick cooking is ideal)
3 cups milk
4 eggs
1 cup oil (I use olive oil)
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup sugar (I use only 1/2 cup)

Stir all ingredients together and pour into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Cut into servings and serve with warm milk, cinnamon, and raisins.
My favourite thing about this recipe is that it freezes well. I freeze this in individual portions and take them out the night before we want to eat them. This is my husband's favourite breakfast on a weekday morning and it's so easy!

Pumpkin Muffins

These are muffins a dear friend brought me after we had our second child. They took us our for dinner and brought along an ice cream pail full of these muffins. As nice as it was to get out for an adult dinner, let me tell you, the REAL treat was the muffins. They are simply delish and simply, well, simple! Of course, I asked for the recipe. I often "doctor" it a little bit to make it healthier - I will outline my most common changes at the end.
My kids often eat these for a quick breakfast, accompanied by yogurt, fruit, and a glass of milk to make it a good meal!

Pumpkin Muffins:
2 cups pumpkin puree
1 cup sugar
1 cup olive oil
4 eggs
Mix first four ingredients and then add:
2 cups flour
1 cup bran
½ tsp salt
3 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp each baking powder and baking soda

Fold in 1 cup chocolate chips if desired. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes.

*I will often sub 3/4 local honey or agave for the sugar
*I will often sub 1/2 cup of applesauce for 1/2 of the oil
*I often make these entirely with spelt flour or at least 1/2 whole wheat or spelt
*Oh, and I've never made them WITHOUT the chocolate chips. I mean, who would do that??

Pumpkin Scones

This is one of my favourite pumpkin recipes. They are perfect for fall with a warm cup of tea! They are also best eaten the day they are made.

Pumpkin Scones:
2 cups all-purpose flour
7 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
6 Tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
3 Tablespoons half-and-half
1 large egg

Sugar Glaze Ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons whole milk

Spiced Glaze Ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons whole milk
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 pinch ginger
1 pinch ground cloves

Scones Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Lightly grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper.
3. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices in a large mixing bowl.
4. With a fork, pastry knife, or food processor, cut butter into the dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly and no chunks of butter remain. Set aside.
5. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk pumpkin, half and half, and egg.
6. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Form the dough into a ball.
7. Pat out dough onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a 1-inch thick rectangle (about 9 inches long and 3 inches wide).
8. Use a large knife to slice the dough into three equal portions. Cut diagonally to produce 6 triangular slices of dough.
9. Place on prepared baking sheet from step 2.
10. Bake for 14–16 minutes until scones turn light brown.
11. Place on wire rack to cool.

Sugar Glaze Directions:
1. Mix the powdered sugar and 2 Tablespoon milk together until smooth.
2. Brush glaze over the top of each cooled scone.

Spiced Glaze Directions:
1. As sugar glaze firms, combine the spiced icing ingredients.
2. Use whisk to drizzle over each scone and allow to dry before serving.

Makes 18 scones

Cooking Videos

So I have been doing some cooking "webisodes" in cooperation with Academy Florists for their e-newsletter and viral media promotion. Basically, they are used to show how to make flowers a part of your every day life; I've been "hosting" the cooking segment that is supposed to tie in with the flowers. They've called it "Food, Flowers, and Fun." The first webisode was a little lengthy (25 mins!!), but we've trimmed it down the second time around (7 mins), and I have no doubt they are going to keep getting better!
I still can't stand to watch myself on video though! But I have no problem if anyone else wants to check them out - so I will post them here.

Recipes to follow!

"Roasting a Pumpkin" video
"2 Fresh Salsas" video