Month: August 2011

  • Thank you Jamie Oliver

    What a great day it was when we learned to make this delicious tomato salad from a Jamie Oliver cookbook! The farmer’s markets (or if you’re lucky, your back yards) are full of them now. Of course we’ve made it often enough we keep adapting it, so it’s not exactly as it was. In this case […]

  • Goodness Can Come from a Can

    We made this tasty dish earlier in the week: Salmon Pasta Pesto Toss. It all started with some basil and walnut pesto, made from basil we grew here on our urban farm. So many good things to make! We cooked some whole grain pasta from Better Bulk. In the meantime, we tossed some veggies together […]

  • Chop Chop! (Pork, of Course)

    It’s true. Alfresco dining days are disappearing. But while we can, we’ll keep enjoying the backyard dining opportunities. We grilled a regular grocery store Ontario pork chop (from Valu-Mart, down the street). It would be nice to do butcher shop chops every day, but it’s hard on the budget, so we do that as often […]

  • Steak and Red Potato Garlic Smash

    Yesterday we were at Fermentations to bottle some lovely Malbec. As we often do, we ducked next door to pick up something good from The Friendly Butcher. As always, we were spoiled for choice and almost couldn’t figure out what to do! But we settled on these delicious, tender steaks. Grilled just right (rare, thanks)…we […]

  • Eat More Vegetables!

    We love veggies. But one of the things we learned when we lost weight was: eat less, move more. The second thing we learned was: eat more fibre. And finally: eat veggies with everything. So we’re always looking for ways to tuck in a few more vegetable servings. Take the humble tuna sandwich, for example. […]

  • We Say Chickpea, You Say Garbanzo

    No matter what they’re called, they make fantastic hummus. We cooked these chickpeas ourselves and stored them in the freezer until they were needed. They have a fresh taste that you just can’t quite get in the canned ones, and they’re much lower in sodium. To make the hummus, in a food processor, mince a clove […]

  • You Can't Beat This Drum!

    Friday we popped into Hooked on Queen Street to see what they had on offer. As usual there was a tremendous selection, making it difficult to choose. The photo doesn’t do it justice – I’m no expert with phone photography, but we settled on these tasty Red Drum fillets from Nova Scotia. Pan-fried in a […]

  • It's Raining Bread. No, it's Raining: Bread.

    When you’re stuck inside and the weather is cooling, it’s a great time to bake bread. Our bread-baking definitely falls off in the summertime, so we relish the cool wet days that occasionally appear. We made this batch of spelt-buckwheat loaves on Friday. One has pumpkin seeds throughout, and on top; the rest are plain. […]

  • Fingerling Out What to Do with these Potatoes

    We found these delicious fingerling potatoes at the market, tiny and golden. But how to cook them? Since we had plans to put a chicken on to roast, we decided maximizing our use of the oven was a fine idea. After rubbing the little fellows with some olive oil, we put them on a parchment-lined […]

  • Cool as a Cucumber

    Last week I tweeted about the cucumber watermelon salad we were making – some folks wanted a recipe. It’s not much of a recipe, really, but here it is: Peel some English cucumber and cut into thick chunks. Cube some watermelon about the same size, and remove the seeds. Place these in a bowl. In […]