I have good intentions, I swear! It’s this darn wedding. It consumes my time. I don’t want it to, I just want to get through it. But it does. And I can’t stop it.

As luck would have it, there are only something like 17 days until it will all be over! In the meantime, I have something new to blog about. It should help keep me posting more often too. (Bonus!)

On to the food…

Dinner!

 In addition to our upcoming nuptials, Scott and I are also trying to save $$ because I am going back to school! (My last semester, to finish my much hated Sociology degree. Nothing wrong with it, I just personally regret the choice) January 5 I go back FULL-TIME! I haven’t been able to be in school full time since my first year of Uni, (2004?) and I am so. looking. forward to it. To help with saving, I am on a strict grocery budget. And it’s been fantastic!

I’m forcing myself to spend no more than $400/month on Groceries. That includes food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (Yup, all three. No eating out!) It also includes paper products (like TP) and cleaning supplies (like toilet bowl cleaner. Although, I may look for a more environmentally friendly version!) and it includes dinner parties. Of which there will not be many in the next little while!

In order to make it work, I’m going back to meal planning. It’s hard work, but it’s helping. This dinner is the first of our meal planning journey. It comes from the book The Dinner Fix by Sandi Richard who also provides meal planning tips, etc.  I originally loved the book. Then, I became disillusioned by it’s simplicity. And then, I came back to it when the diversity of some of my other books threatened to overwhelm my new venture. The recipes in this book are set out in two columns with the directions on the left, and the ingredients on the right. It just doesn’t knock my socks off. In fact, I find it hard to read. But that’s OK, since this was still tasty!

Apricot BBQ Glazed Chicken – Adapted from The Dinner Fix, Pg. 128

Ingredients:

• 4 Large Chicken Breasts
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp Mrs. Dash Original Seasoning (Could also use dried herbs of your choice. Even fresh parsley would be nice)
• 1 onion (although I’d cut it back to 1/2)
• 3/4 cup apricot jam
• 3/4 cup BBQ sauce (chicken ‘n’ rib or something slightly sweet is best)
• 1 tbsp reduced-sodium soya sauce

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Rinse chicken breasts. Pat dry and cut in half. Mix flour, pepper, seasonings on waxed paper. Dredge chicken in flour mixture and place onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes and then flip and return to oven for an additional 10 minutes. While the chicken is baking, slice the onion and set aside. Combine the jam, bbq sauce, and soy sauce.

Getting ready.

When timer rings for chicken, take it out and scatter onion slices over top. Pour sauce onto chicken (it will be thick!) making sure all pieces are covered. Return to oven for 30 minutes.

Sandi suggests serving with peas and rice, so for simplicity that’s what I did. I thought the sauce mixed with the chicken and rice was really good! I ended up having it for both of my lunch breaks the next day! (I get two 15 minute breaks. So I eat two lunches.)

Helpers!

That being said, I haven’t had time to write a proper post for you. But I have been in the kitchen. Our friends Kate and Ernie (of payday dinner fame) were booted from their apartment without much notice and have been living in our basement for a week now. Kate and I spent all day Sunday whipping up goodies. And since I had a partner (who goes home to the U.K. the day after our wedding) it was much easier to take pictures!

Raspberry Ice Cream, and Rasp-Apple Deep Dish Pie

 I’ll admit right now, neither of us are wonderful photographers. I have the desire, but not the skills, sadly. Although the picture doesn’t rock my world, the ice cream itself sure does. Yum. We decided to make raspberries our focus for the weekend’s desserts, and I’m glad we did!

Another name for this ice cream could be “Must Love Raspberries” since the dominant flavour (chocolate) is complimented so nicely by raspberry jam both mixed in and then swirled around for an added kick! The ice cream actually came after the pie pictured above, but I loved the ice cream enough to post about it first!

We based the recipe on Dorie’s Unbelievably Good Chocolate Blueberry Ice Cream (which can be found on Pg. 433 of her book) although I’m planning on using the recipe again with blueberries too!

Chocolate “Must Love Raspberries” Ice Cream

• 5 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1/2 cup 18% cream (also called coffee cream)
• 1/2 cup 1% milk (Dorie uses 1 cup whole milk and 1/2 cup heavy cream. I never buy whole milk, since we won’t use it for anything but baking, yet I always have 1%, coffee cream and whipping cream in the fridge so that’s what we used.)
• 3 large egg yolks (make sure you save the whites for meringues, I freeze them in ice cube trays!)
• 3 tbsp granulated sugar
• 8 tbsp seedless raspberry jam (if you’re in Canada, try PC Seedless with 50% fruit !)

Put chopped chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Meanwhile, bring creams and milk to a boil in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. While it’s coming up to a boil, whisk yolks and sugar together in a bowl until very well blended and slightly thickened. 

Action Shot, Kate as a hand model!

Still whisking, drizzle in about 1/3 of the hot liquid to temper the yolks. (Trust me, this is an important step. My last ice cream attempt didn’t go so well… Egg Ice Cream anyone?) Whisk in the remaining liquid and then pour back into the saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the custard reaches 170 degrees F but no more than 180 degrees F. (Dorie recommends using the coats the back of a spoon method, but I need my thermometer!) Immediately remove the pan from the heat and pour the custard over the chopped chocolate. Let the mixture sit for 1 minute and then stir gently until the chocolate is melted and the custard is smooth. Refrigerate over night until the custard is well chilled. It will be firm when you take it out.

The next day, stir 4 heaping tbsp of the raspberry jam into the custard. Pour the mix into a chilled ice cream maker insert and churn according to the directions on the machine. When the ice cream is thickened and lighter in color, turn off the maker, and gently fold in the remaining 4 tbsp of jam. Pack into a container and freeze for at least 2 hours.

Going in!

 

Ready for the freezer!

And can I just say, I love the irony of freezing my ice cream in recycled containers that give a nod to the ingredients?

Like this one. Blueberry Sour Cream anyone?

I’ve been trying to work up some inspiration for my own wedding cake, and I took a look through my recent cakes. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I generally get asked for birthday cakes and not wedding cakes, so I don’t have much to go with!

This is a wedding cake I made for a woman I worked with. She and her fiance got engaged, then a week later, set a date, and a week after that they got married! In a fairly fancy shindig! I was quite impressed with the speed they pulled it all together. (Of course, money helps with that, and Scott and I won’t have quite the same experience in that regard…) Anyway, I had 4 days to pull this cake off. And, to make matters worse, I hadn’t done any cake making for about a year (since we’d been living out of boxes while waiting to buy a house) so I had to dig all of my cake supplies out of storage! I can see all the little mistakes, but luckily, no one else could. It did eventually have white chocolate covered strawberries on top.

Moving on, I wanted to post a recipe for you too. This is a fabulous dish I made with a little tiny bit of help/inspiration from Jamie Oliver. I was looking for something to do with my new BBQ and some chicken breasts. I wanted it to be simple to create, yet tasty and delicious to eat. I unfortunately don’t have pictures for you, since I was too hungry to wait!

LRG Chicken
1/4 cup dried rosemary
2 lemons
3 cloves garlic
10 – 15 good glugs of olive oil

4 – 6 Chicken breasts

In a mortar and pestle (or on a cutting board with a heavy jar) pound rosemary until aromatic and crushed. Place into a large plastic freezer bag (the ziplock kind) and set aside. Zest the two lemons and add to bag. Cut lemons in half, and squeeze out the juice into the bag. Don’t worry about the seeds, they won’t hurt anything. Throw 2 halves (juiced and crushed) into the bag as well. Add chicken breasts to bag, then add in your 10-15 healthy glugs of oil. You want the marinade to coat the chicken, so add oil until it does.

Seal bag and lay flat in the refrigerator, for 2 hours or longer. Grill or bake as desired.

I served it with potatoes, carrots, and a yummy salad.

I know, I know… And what does this have to do with food? Well, we’ve decided to hold a teeny tiny little wedding in our teeny tiny little backyard, and serve only desserts. And coffee. And probably wine too.

Scott was all for the buying of fancy desserts from his favourite bakery Chocolate Zen (check out the pictures! Now that is food porn.) and normally I’d agree because they have some delicious items for sale there… However, I have been in the kitchen every Saturday for weeks now, honing my skills. I think it’s fitting that I try them out in one big hurrah, by making my own desserts!

We have tentatively decided on the following desserts:

1. Wedding Cake (Chocolate Cake with Strawberry buttercream)
2. Fruit Tarts
3. Brownies
4. Cheesecake Bites

And we want one last thing to complete the menu. That’s where you come in. I want to know what you prefer:

Peanut and Caramel-topped Brownie Cake

Double Crust Blueberry Pie

Peach Berry Galettes

Choice # 3

Take a look, decide on the one you’d love to eat,  and leave me a comment. Pretty please?

The one and only photo!

Another recipe from Baking that I’ve undertaken in the last while, the Lemon Poppy seed muffins were extremely well received, especially once the lemon glaze was on!

Scott’s favourite muffin is lemon poppy seed, although that preference really stems from those mini grocery store muffins! It’s always easier to justify spending the grocery budget on baking, if Scott gets to eat what I make and because of that, I whipped these up extremely quickly, with the idea that they would be for breakfasts in the next two days.  I’m sure it comes as no surprise, these goodies were scarfed down before lunch was over the next day. Two thumbs up for the subtle lemon flavour of the muffin it self, and big lemon punch from the glaze!

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from my home to yours. Pg. 10 -11

Ingredients:

For the Muffins:

• 2/3 cup sugar
• Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract (I used artificial, purely because I have a jumbo container to use up.)
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 2 tbsp poppy seeds (I threw in a third, I love the crunch of the seeds!)

For the Icing:

• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
• 2-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice (I used ReaLemon from concentrate, didn’t want to waste a lemon)

Directions:

To Make the Muffins:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. (I choose to butter the pan only, and I do not use papers. I hate losing the ‘crust’ of the muffin on to those papers!) Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and the lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of the lemon strong. (By far, the best part.) Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough-a few lumps are better than over mixing the batter. Stir in the poppy seeds. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Cool the muffins completely on the rack before icing them.

To Make the Icing:
Put the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl and add about 1 1/2 T of the lemon juice. Stir with a spoon to moisten the sugar, then add enough additional lemon juice, a dribble at a time, to get an icing that is thin enough to drizzle from the tip of the spoon. You can then drizzle lines of icing over the tops of the muffins or coat the tops entirely, the better to get an extra zap of lemon.

In the sidelines of this recipe, I have written ‘Scott’s exact reaction: “FANTASTIC!” ‘

Ingrediants

Waiting to go in!

Mango Studded Goodness

Recipe:

Fresh Mango Bread:

• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup flavourless oil, such as canola or safflower oil (I used Canola)
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 2 cups diced mango
• 3/4 cup golden raisins
• grated zest of 1/2 a lime

• 1 cup heavy cream (I’ve used either whipping cream, or 18% coffee cream)
• 5 ounces grated Fontina cheese
• 5 ounces fresh grated Parmesan cheese
• Salt and Pepper
• 2 egg yolks

Directions:
In a saucepan or skillet over low heat, add cream and allow it to begin to heat, no more than a minute. Add Fontina and Parmesan by the handful, stirring well between each addition. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Allow cheeses to melt slowly. Beat egg yolks and add into sauce. Stir lightly until combined. Give it another moment to cook the eggs. If the sauce is too thick, thin it out with a bit of your pasta water. Enjoy!

Cheese sauce, and a tomato, basil and mozza salad.
(The salad was yummy, but not my recipe, sadly.)

I am unfortunately experiencing some temporary Internet problems, that Martin, my brother, has been working on fixing.

I`m still in the kitchen however, and I have some posts baked up for you, as I try to work my way through Dorie Greenspan`s Baking From my Home to yours. Look for Double Crust Blueberry Pie, Lemon Poppy seed Muffins, Fresh Mango Bread, and even some homemade ice cream!

Hopefully Soon!

Carlee

It was another payday dinner that we decided to make fresh pasta. I’ve always wanted to make my own pasta, but hadn’t felt all that confident about it until I saw it on this blog and figured that if she could do it, I wouldn’t screw it up too badly! I actually used Jamie Oliver’s recipe from Jamie at home.

Fresh Pasta – Adapted from Jamie at home

• 4 Large free-range or organic eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (and extra for dusting

Crack the eggs into the bowl of a food processor and add the flour. Whiz it up and listen for the sound to change to a rumble -this means the dough is coming together nicely. Turn the power off and test the dough by pinching it. If it’s sticky, add more flour and pulse again.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and shape it into a ball with your hands. Give it a little knead until smooth, and divide your dough into 4 equal parts. Start on the thickest setting of your pasta machine and run the first bit through 4 or 5 times moving the rollers closer together until the pasta is silky and smooth and the thickness of a cd. Flour the sheet generously and cut as desired.

We actually used the linguine setting on the cutters that came with my pasta machine, and then let them dry on a pasta rack we made out of broomsticks!

We cooked the pasta is salted boiling water, and it took no more than 5 minutes for it to get al dente. (Probably more like 3 minutes, but I was being cautious) I made up two separate sauces for the pasta, since my Scott is so picky. He hates tomato sauce on pasta. We made a quick fontina cheese sauce, and a tomato-basil as well. I will however, leave those recipes for another post!

(I apologize for the poor picture quality… I was only trying to capture them for posterity, I didn’t plan on blogging with them at the time!)