by ·6 Comments

Did I post about this meal yet? I think I forgot.

I made this healthier malai kofta a while ago and it was really yummy. It’s basically balls made of paneer (Indian cheese) and shredded potato, plus some spices, in a creamy tomato sauce. We ate it over rice, which you can’t see in the picture. Usually you would deep fry the balls, but for this recipe you just bake them. They crisped up nice in the oven and were really really tasty. I didn’t put raisins in because I don’t like raisins that much. I ended up just mixing the cashews right in with the other ingredients because it was too hard to seal them in the inside of the balls. The sauce was really nice, probably thanks to the evaporated milk. As usual, I only added the spices I already had.

A+, would cook again!!

by ·2 Comments

I made sushi last week. My best ever!! Mine had salmon, avocado, cucumber and yam. OM NOM NOM. We bought a mondo bag of sushi rice so I guess there will be a lot more homemade sushi in the near future. :)

Rosemarie came over yesterday. I made a chicken pot pie while she did some school work. I used all fresh veggies, but I did not make the crust since we don’t have a food processor to make dough. Anyway I used a Pillsbury crust that came rolled up (not frozen), and it was quite nice. I followed this recipe, more or less.

I also made two mini ones to freeze for later. :D

I also made a rainbow cake last week. Cake mixes were on sale at No Frills for 99 cents so I grabbed a box of French Vanilla. I dyed the batter all different colours in separate bowls and then just drizzled them randomly into the pan. I made my own icing but didn’t have enough icing sugar (HOLY COW icing uses A LOT of sugar!!!) so it was a bit runny…. but it kinda soaked into the cake and that was actually delicious. I topped the cake with rainbow chocolate chips because I am 5.

Mmmmmm cake.

I also tried Budget Bytes Summer Vegetable Tian. In the winter. Yep. It was tasty, like of all of her recipes. I think her blog might be my favourite food blog of them all! It’s all about making nice food on a budget (duh). Anyway I put slices of potato, sweet potato, tomato, zucchini, and eggplant, with lots of herbs, and a little cheese on top.

Other food success stories without pictures:

Mirza Ghasemi, a Persian eggplant dish with TONS O’ GARLIC. Verrrry tasty, just don’t breathe on anyone after. We ate it with rice. I really liked this dish, the flavour was different than everything else I cook. I recommend trying this one if you like eggplant a lot like we do.

Jalapeno Popper Quiche, turned out great. Next time I would add a lot more jalapenos.

Savoury Fruit Stuffing. Bit late for this I suppose, but I forgot to post it. This is the stuffing I made at Thanksgiving. It was SO GOOD. OK as usual I changed things: not as much onion as it said, veggie stock powder + rosemary + thyme instead of the herbs it said (didn’t have sage), and no orange peel.

Oven-fried onion rings. I had major trouble getting anything to stick on to the onions, but the parts that did were SUPER crunchy and delicious

by ·3 Comments

Sigh, I really wanted to take pictures of our apartment/art today but it’s really grey and gross outside and that means our apartment is extra extra dark inside. It’s already very dark on a normal day, so now it’s like a cave. The lack of light may be my biggest complaint about this place. I really like all the big trees and flowers and plants around our building, but bye bye sunlight.

Instead I will leave you with two Katrina recipes.

Katrina’s Modified NY Times Cookies

My new go-to cookie recipe. The recipe is a bit picky, but you should have seen the original! I simplified it in a few different ways and think that these are still REALLY good, and quite a bit easier. You do have to plan ahead for them though, as they need to sit in the refrigerator for 3+ hours. They’re worth it though!

I like this recipe because the cookies turn out soft and chewy, and they don’t spread as much as Fannie Farmer cookies. I guess they look pretty humongous in the picture above but they’re not! Our oven is really tiny, we even had to buy a new smaller baking pan because the old one couldn’t fit. You can see that our silicone mat is too big now. :(

Yield: 50 cookies! This recipe can be halved fairly easily.

Time: 15 minutes of prep, 3+ hours of waiting! 15 minutes baking time.

INGREDIENTS

  • 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp course salt
  • 1 1/4 cups butter
  • 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
  • 1 cup + 2 tbsp white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • chocolate chips/disks (white, milk, semi-sweet etc), skor pieces, as many as you prefer

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and course salt. Set aside.
  2. In a separate bowl cream together the butter and sugars. I don’t have a mixer so I soften the butter a bit in the microwave.
  3. Stir in the eggs and vanilla.
  4. Add in the flour mixture. I do it in several phases to minimize mess, since this recipe makes quite a lot of dough.
  5. Add in your chocolates chips/disks and candy pieces
  6. Cover the top of the bowl and put it in the fridge for 3-4 hours.
  7. Preheat oven to 350º F. Pry of chunks of dough and roll into 1″ diameter balls and bake for 15 minutes.

—————————

Ummmm… Mexican THING

This monstrosity is what happens when it is my turn to cook. Hehe.

Layered from bottom to top: diced tomatoes, tortilla, black beans, tortilla, cheese, chipotle peppers and sauce, diced tomato, tortilla, cheese, green onions, and two eggs cracked on top. Basically whatever you ingredients you like.

Bake for 20 minutes. Top with a bit of sour cream and some sliced avocado.

by ·0 Comments

Since I last updated:

  • Scott updated his blog (link over there on the right –>)
  • I took public transit to Ikea, something I hope never to have to do again (ow my arms)
  • Painted two of three paintings (sneak peek there –>)
  • Had some friends over to warm our house
  • Baked cookies (new recipe, delicious), made guacamole (yum as usual), bloomin cheese bread (ok), and whipped black beans (not so great)
  • Killed Rosemarie’s computer (oops)
  • Watched lots of movies and TV
  • Played Dominion (I won, as usual) and Agricola (I lost, as usual)
  • I won the Jorna family footy tips competition

by ·7 Comments

We’ve done a lot over the last few days! Unfortunately I don’t have many good photos because I keep forgetting to put my memory card back into my camera. MEGA DOH.

Friday Scott got his gross tooth pulled. This is a good thing. I made him a room temperature vegetable madras rice smoothy for dinner.

On Saturday I dragged Scott into the city to get a free pair of pants. Roots was having a promo where if you brought in an old pair of pants for charity they would give you a free pairs of pants. We got in line right at noon, in the blazing sun. Only then did I overhear that you actually have to take off your old pants in the STORE WINDOW. Bahaha. I asked him if he still wanted to do it and he agreed. It was pretty funny. An hour later, he walked away with a very nice new pair of khakis worth $75! I took a picture but I’ll leave that for Scott to decide if he wants it posted.

Later that day we went to a baseball game. This is instance #1 where I brought the camera, but no memory card. It was a work event for Scott so we got to eat and sit in the BBQ area. The best part was the free popcorn. Other than that I was pretty bored. I really don’t like baseball. I had no idea where to look or what was happening or if I should cheer or boo when anything happened without looking at the scoreboard. So you’re constantly looking all over the place and missing things. I would rather watch football than baseball.

They had a fireworks show at the end that was pretty good. They went for QUANTITY and had so many of the same fireworks going off at the same time that I laughed out loud.

On Sunday I baked bread. This time turned out much better than last time. I used this recipe. Those onions fell off as soon as you touched them though.

We had yummy roasted zuchini and eggplant sandwiches, with mozarella and tomato and ham.

Yesterday we went to the PNE after work, but I’ll make it into its own post because this is long enough!!