30 pounds lighter... it's all in the three P's......

I can't believe how long it's been since I've blogged. However, I have a really good reason. I have been busy getting fit and losing 30lbs(me on the right at my first 5K), and totally changing the way I eat, cook and think about food. Of course I still make my banana cake and my chocolate chip cookies every now and again and for special occasions, but I'm also the proud owner of at least 15 new recipes for lentils. I haven't made them all yet, but my favourite is the Warm Lentil Salad, which I eat for lunch at least 3 times a week and I'll bring to you next post!!

So I'm all about the three P's right now, planning, portions and performance (or exercise!).

I have become and exerciser and a calorie counter and a nutrition junkie, and have discovered a lot of new food, new ways to cook and new ways to eat and enjoy life in the process. I have started to run, something I thought I would never do, let alone enjoy, and it has been great.

I have also suffered an injury in the last month, which has totaly ground me to a halt, and given me lots of time to think, which has been a good thing. I'll be discussing all these things in the days to come, and I'm really looking forward to it an also getting some feed back from everyone!!

Hiatus

I realised today after making 3 batches of these, that I need to take an official hiatus from my blog, probably until February. I just don't have the time at the moment to give it the attention it deserves. I'm sure I will be back with a vengeance in February! See you then!

Not Much Going on In My Kitchen

Since I last blogged I've been away for two weekends, one to Baltimore, and one to New York, so I've done more eating than cooking. Also, I have to be truthful, I just haven't made anything decent for ages, so I've been totally unmotivated to blog. With Thanksgiving days away, I'll be making a couple of new things so I'll be able to update.

Thanksgiving totally crept up on me this year. I can't believe it's on Thursday and then it will be December!!!

Cranberry Bread

The new Everyday Food arrived this week and thankfully there were lots of things in there to try. The first recipe that caught my eye was for Cranberry Bread, so I whipped some up this afternoon. It was really easy and it tastes great. The cranberries are really tart and it's delicious, with just enough sweetness from the cake part to counteract it.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more for pan
2 cups flour
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon slat
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
1 bag (12oz) cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and flour a 9x 5 inch loaf pan, 8 cup capacity, and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside in a medium bowl, combine butter egg and milk. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and whisk to combine. Fold in cranberries.

Pour better into prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in centre of loaf comes out clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Transfer pan to a wire rack; let bread cool 30 mins. Invert onto rack, then immediately turn right side up and let cool completely.

I also picked up a copy of Ina Garten's new book Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, which Costco has for $18.89. Amazon has it for $21.00, so if you are near a Costco, it's a bargain!! I just had a quick look through and there are some lovely things in there.

Tomorrow of course is Halloween, so hopefully my kids will get lots of Milky Way's and I'll be able to help eat them!!

Black Bottom Cupcakes

I think it's important to talk about the tragedies as well as the triumphs, so I'm going to share my Black Bottom Cupcakes experience with you. This was the recipe that caught my eye more than once when I was thumbing through the Crazy About Cupcakes book, so I decided to try them today.

Firstly, I would like to mention that this is the strangest cake batter that I have ever made. Secondly, I would like to mention that they only turned out OK. Edible, but nothing to rave about. This could have something to do with the fact that I used Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers(I always have them on hand in case I need to whip up an ice box cake) which were too big for the cupcake , so I broke them up and lay them on the bottom of the cupcake paper. And I also used regular sized choc chips. Of course the bits of broken up cookie floated to the top when I put the batter in and didn't stay on the bottom like they were supposed to. I imagine that one of the cookie halves of an Oreo would have worked well for this recipe.

The batter was really runny. And in the recipe it calls it "chocolate batter" but there is no chocolate in it, except for the cookie. Weird. Oh, and I also used whipped cream cheese, because I didn't have a block of it.

Also the recipe calls for 24 cookies, so I thought it made 2 doz cupcakes. It doesn't. If you want to give these a try, just make 12 and use more batter in the 12, I think they would turn out better.

24 round chocolate cookies
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
One 8oz package cream cheese, at room temperature
1 large egg
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325F. Insert liners into a medium cupcake pan, or grease the pan.Place a chocolate cookie in the bottom of each liner or pan.

In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup of the sugar, the oil, and the water until blended. Stir in the vinegar and vanilla.

In a separate medium bowl mix together flour, baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt.

Add all the dry mixture to the wet mixture and beat until incorporated. Set Aside.

In a medium bowl, beat together the cream cheese, egg, and the remaining sugar and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Fill cupcake liners or pan half full with the chocolate batter. Top with a heaping tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25-30 mins or until the edges of the cupcakes are puffed but the centers look moist. Cool cupcakes in the pan.

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches!!!

I'm a couple of days late, but better late than never! Foodbuzz Publisher Community has officially launched. Foodbuzz was nice enough to ask me in January to become one of their Featured Publishers, so I've had a really good time being part of that community and finding lots of new food blogs to read, and I've also put up a few restaurant reviews myself. So please, if you are not already familiar with FoodBuzz, check it out. You can just click on any of the three buttons on the right.

To celebrate the launch, I recieved a fantastic apron and a nice green spatula (my son took this photo)

 

I'm attempting a Butternut Squash, Rosemary and Ricotta Pizza tonight, so I'll let you know how that goes!

New Books!

I got a couple of new books this week (thank you Catherine)and one of them is Crazy About Cupcakes. I haven't made anything from it yet, but I will. It has really good ideas for every single occasion you could possibly think of and some really fantastic cupcake flavours. So I promise to try something from there soon.


The other book I have is The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook: Recipes from the Classic Cookie to Mocha Chip Meringue Cake,and I did make something from there this weekend.


These are called Chocolate-chip Filled Melting Moments. The Melting Moment is actually an Australian cookie, and this recipe has a nice twist to it with the creamy choc chip middle. I actually put too many choc chips in my filling and the cookies didn't stick together as much as I would have liked. The recipe also says to use about 1 tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball for each cookie. These cookies really spread, so I would use about 1 teaspoon of dough, and you will get a much better sized cookie to make the cookie sandwiches.

Here is the recipe over at Erin Cooks. Judging by her photos she did a much better job than me getting the size right for the cookies.

ps. They were delicious.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins

My latest thing before buying new recipe books that look good on Amazon, is to borrow them from my library. Luckily I have a fantastic local library, so I'm able to do this for almost any cookbook. I recently borrowed "More from Magnolia" Recipes from the World-Famous Bakery. I'm sort of disappointed with the book because there are hardly any pictures in it!! I have to have pictures!! More often than not that is what inspires me to make the dish or the cake or cookies. I think that's why I love Ina so much, she has photos of 99% of her recipes. I thought most of the the stuff was sort of ordinary, and without pictures to inspire me I didn't think I was going to make anything, until the Raspberry Cream Cheese Breakfast Buns caught my eye.

I thought they turned out well. The original recipe is for 9 large muffins, but I just made them in the size of regular muffins, because I know no one would eat a whole large muffin. The recipe made 2 dozen regular muffins.

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
8oz package cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

1/2 cup raspberry preserves

Confectioner's sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and lightly flour 9 large muffin cups or 24 regular muffins. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter and sugar until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the dry ingredients in two parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Drop 3 small dollops (about a teaspoonful each) of raspberry preserves onto the top of each bun and, using the tip of a sharp knife, swirl the preserves into the batter, forming a decorative pattern.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (regular muffins - 22 mins), or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the bun comes out clean.

Allow the buns to cool for about 30 minutes before sprinkling with confectioners sugar and serving.

I also think these would probably be delicious with a slight touch of lemon, and I'm going to add some next time I make them, to see how it turns out.

One Dish Dinners!

Hands up if you are happy with the new October Everyday Food. I am!! The Spicy Coconut Chicken Casserole looks fantastic, and I'm going to do that next Monday, and the Spinach and Prosciutto Lasagna also looks good. Martha doesn't have these recipes on-line, so I'll put them up when I've made them next week. There is also a nice section on slow cooker meals. I absolutely have to get a slow cooker and try some of these, which also look good for freezing.

I will be posting a menu plan for next week!!

Chicken, Asparagus Puree and Potato Rosti

As promised,I made my first dish from Donna Hay Modern Classics 1 on Sunday. It was actually a side dish, and simple, but it's a start!I made it to go with a chicken and asparagus dish that I found on the Sydney Morning Herald Cuisine Section. They have a lot of fabulous recipes, but you do have to do conversions from metric.

The recipe is chicken with pureed asparagus. The puree was absolutely delicious, and I used water in my recipe instead of chicken stock, so I can only imagine how much better it would be with chicken stock. I pan fried the chicken in a small amount of olive oil, and steamed the asparagus spears.

1lb green asparagus, woody ends snapped off
1 tblspn butter
1 medium brown onion, finely sliced
4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
salt
ground white pepper
3/4 cup water or stock
4 chicken breasts, trimmed and skin removed

Puree

Cut 4 cm long spears from asparagus top and reserve. Finely chop remaining stems. Melt butter in a small saucepan then add onion, 2 garlic cloves, season and cook gently until soft, about 15 minutes. Add asparagus stems and stock then simmer until asparagus is soft, about 10-15 minutes. Blend to a smooth puree with a stick or bar blender, keep warm.

Serves 4

Potato Rosti

4 roasting potatoes.
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons thyme leaves
kosher salt and cracked pepper

Preheat the oven to 400F. Using a sharp vegetable peeler, but the potato into long, thin strips. Toss the potato strips with the oil, Parmesan, thyme, salt and pepper. Place the mixture in six piles on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

I also threw in some carrot for good measure. I think it turned out well, and I'll definitely be making this whole meal again!

Blogging Funk

I think I'm over my blogging funk. It's been such a whirlwind lately, I haven't done any menu planning, or made anything even slightly interesting at all, until this weekend.

Last weekend I had another birthday - my daughter turned six, I made the fairy cupcakes and decorated them with pale "fairy pink" icing and some lovely multi-coloured Cachous that my mother brought me from Australia.

I made 72 cupcakes one night, because I had to have enough for the party and then enough for her whole class the next day and some left-overs for us.





Fairy Cakes - makes 12 (obviously I made lots of batches!)

½ cup unsalted butter, softened
7 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs
¾ cup self-rising flour
½ teaspoon vanilla extract ( I used 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to make them very vanilla) 2-3 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 400F

Put all ingredients except milk in the food processor, and process until smooth. Pulse while adding milk down the funnel, to make a soft dropping consistency.

Spoon mixture into cupcake papers and try to fill each cup equally.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the fairy cakes are cooked and golden on top.

Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

For the icing I just used powdered sugar and water. I used about 2 cups powdered sugar and then added water gradually until I got the right consistency to ice with. I coloured it with a tiny dot of the pink concentrated colour

Barefoot Bloggers

Sadly, I'm going to be dropping out of the Barefoot Bloggers because twice a month is too much for me, especially when I'm not all that motivated to cook the selection. It just comes around too quickly. I liked doing it and I think it's a great idea, but I've decided it's just not for me.

Anyway, in it's place I've decided to work my way through Donna Hay's Modern Classics,and I'll be putting up something from Donna this week!

Wii Anyone?

My son turned eight last week, and he's obsessed with playing the Wii and he requested a birthday cake in the shape of a Wii, and we finally settled on a cake like a Wii Remote.

I just made a simple chocolate rolled cake (here is the recipe) and then I used a Wilton Buttercream Frosting mixture because I wanted a really good consistency to work with on the rolled cake. The icing was actually delicious, I wasn't expecting it to be at all. And then I coloured some icing blue and used that for the accents.

He loved it and I think it is actually recognisable as a Wii Remote

School Has Started!!

Yay - I put their smiling faces on the bus at 7:40 in the morning and they go off to a fulfilling day of learning!! So I'm finally getting the chance to update this blog of mine.

First of all, we had a great time in Vancouver. We did A LOT of eating, and there was tons to choose from. Lots of Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Crepe restaurants and coffee.

We had lunch one date at Hons Wun Tun House which was really good, and lunch another day at a Crepe Cafe, and I had a delicious Spinach and Feta Crepe. The kids had sugar and butter crepes and thought they were great!

As well as eating we did some sightseeing, we went to Capilano Suspension Bridge,and walked around Stanley Park, and even went swimming at the public pool there, although it was way to cold for me. It was only 76 outside with a brisk breeze and the water was FREEZING, but the kids went in.





And in Seattle on the way home we had dinner at Ivar's Acres of Clams. The service was great and so was the food, although the weather and the traffic are totally miserable in Seattle.

Vancouver.

We are off to Vancouver tomorrow until Monday, so hopefully I'll have some beautiful photos to share when I get back. I also plan on eating a lot while I'm there, and I'll have some food photos and stories as well.

Barefoot Bloggers:Panzanella

The first recipe for Barefoot Bloggers for August was Panzanella from the Barefoot Parties book. I never would have made this in a pink fit, but I'm glad I did now. It is delicious!!! I had some for lunch, but I'm sure it will taste better later when all the flavours have had time to develop. I did leave out the capers and the red bell pepper. The recipe has red and yellow peppers and I don't really care for them normally, so I just chose yellow for the added colour and put it in. I only had white wine vinegar, and I didn't want to buy a whole bottle of champagne vinegar, so I just used the white wine vinegar, as that was the closest.

Here is the recipe

I'm actually going to use the rest of it for dinner tonight. I'm roasting a chicken, so and I'm also going to do roast vegetables, but there will be a choice of roast vegetables or the Panzanella to go with the chicken. Yum.

Meringue Sandwich Cookies with White Chocolate Raspberry Filling

My friend Lisa "Pierogie Fingers" came over today and we made these meringue cookies together.

We had a recipe that Lisa found on a blog and it looked great, but the first batch didn't turn out the way we anticipated and they were too "eggy", so we made up our own recipe for the meringue and they turned out much better. Lisa piped perfect little round of meringue and then it was my turn and all mine were the shape of Hershey Kisses, which isn't that good for cookie sandwiches, but they still taste good.

Lisa's perfect piping!

Recipe:

3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sugar

1/4 cup heavy cream
4oz white chocolate
2 tablespoons raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment,
whip the egg whites to a peak, gradually add the
sugar and keep whipping until the peaks are stiff.

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip with the batter and pipe small rounds onto parchment paper baking sheets,or you could spoon them on if you are not that good with the piping bag, they will turn out just as well .

Bake for 15 minutes, then let sit out for while you mix up the filling.

Filling

Heat the cream until hot. Drop the chocolate and jam into the cream and stir until all are melted
and come together. Let cool until firm enough to pipe or spoon onto the meringue shells. I refrigerated mine to make it harden quicker and it's also easier to spread.

Where Have I Been?

In the basement watching the Olympics on my HD TV!!! It's just like being there. I'm loving it (while hating NBC's coverage - but that's a whole other post)

Since we returned from our beach weekend, I didn't really cook anything spectacular or do much of anything. So I'm deathly boring this past week.

Beef Stroganoff

I just made Elle's Beef Stroganoff and Marc has declared it best dish ever in the world and wants me to make 5 gallons of it, so he can eat it every night. So, therefore, Highly Recommended!!! Thanks Elle!

I'll be out of town until Sunday, we are going to the beach, so hopefully I'll have some lovely beach photos next week.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Mercifully, my 7yr old decided that he would finally get his hair cut this week, and let's face it, he's had crazy boy hair since school ended. And I only had to bribe him with a chocolate donut.