Summer Vegetable Lasagne

This is again a Jamie Oliver recipe and I have to say, previously I thought this guy was basically just another Celebrity Chef who rubbed elbows with Hollywood bigwigs and didn't necessarily have a lot of substance to him. But I feel like now I'm seeing the man behind the myth and I have to say he is winning his way to my heart thru my stomach no less. True he did really impress me with his trying to change the world from fast food junkies back to home cooked meal addicts. (A philosphy I completely support.) He really seems to put his money where his mouth is for that kind of thing - at least on the surface. But I felt like I was sick of this guy as he seemed to be everywhere I looked for so long that I really didn't give him a fair shot. But this lasagne his so delicious, hearty, easy to make and has quality ingredients that I think I'm a believer now. To tell you the truth, I've even downloaded his app on my iphone. That's how much drastic change there has been in the MrsK/Jamie Oliver relationship. (Don't worry Nigella you're still in my heart too!)

So this lasagne is not made the way you're used to making lasagne. This one is made on your stove top and only finished in the oven to get the golden brown we all love on the top of our lasagne. I think this is a great way to get your families to eat more greens but in a way they maybe won't complain about it. What you do is saute your veg with the appropriate herbs then bring them to a boil in chicken stock (or veggie stock) and a little bit of cream (I used 5% to keep the fat content down), and cottage cheese. Then once everything is humming along nicely you start to layering your concoction with FRESH lasagne noodles in your ovenware. Layer, layer, layer with a little parmesan cheese in there (which if that's too rich for your blood you could always use something a little less pricey - say an aged cheddar or something with strong flavour, no mild cheeses here). Then top it off with the tops of your asparagus spears and more cheese, pop it in the oven for a few on broil and bon appetite!

If you wanted to you could add chicken to this lasagne and it would go really nicely. I would say use fully cooked chicken breast cut up into slices and then just toss it on maybe the middle layer of the lasagne when you're layering. And for my fellow vegetarians you could also add some silken tofu to this to beef up the protein. But keep in mind there are beans in this lasagne which are giving you some protein already.

Another great thing about this lasagne is it freezes really well. Personally I made this on a Sunday night then cut it up into portions, froze them in tupperware and there I had my lunches for the week. I think this recipe is fantastic and I will definitely be making this again.

http://hotcooking.co.uk/recipes/28/jamie-oliver-30-minute-meals-summer-veg-lasagne

Italian Tomato and Bread Salad

I haven't watched the Food Network in quite sometime. For a while I felt like I had seen just about every show on there at least twice. So I took a lengthy break - maybe a year or so. Then today out of nowhere I just decided to put on the food network. I am so glad that I did. Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals was on and he made this salad. It looked so good that I decided to make it. This recipe is so easy to make and D-effing-licious. Husband loved it and I loved it. It takes about 10 minutes prepare and can be served as either a side or in my opinion can also be the main dish. It's hearty and flavourful. The kind of flavour where you have a perfect combination of ingredients and everything just works. AMAZING is all I have to say. I highly recommend this dish, it doesn't gest much better than this is my books.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetarian-recipes/italian-tomato-bread-salad

German Eis Cafes

I cannot sleep. I keep thinking about my vacation and how I wish I was still on it! Sometimes I have a hard time shutting down my train of thought long enough for me to fall asleep. Tonight is one of those nights and I'm thinking about my recent return to a little town in Germany called Hattingen. When I was in high school I did a student exchange to Hattingen and lived with a host family there for 3 months. Just 2 weeks ago I returned and met again with the girl who was my exchange partner. It was a little surreal to see her again and spend an evening with her and her husband. All in all it was a great reunion but I was reminded of so many things about her that I had forgotten in the last 15 years. And tonight that is what I am thinking of.

While we were in Hattingen Husband and I spent our first night with my exchange partner and her husband. They took us to a nice Italian restaurant in the Alt Stadt or Old Town. It was really a very nice meal with plenty to drink and in true German style we capped the night off with some schnapps. The next day Husband and I went on a fantastic walk along the river Rhur and hiked up to the Isenburg ruins just outside the main city. It was a very hot day and once we got back to the city I insisted that we go for an ice cream . If you haven't had ice cream in Germany put it on your bucket list. These people know how to do ice cream. It is one of the things that sticks out in my mind about the food in Germany from when I was there on exchange. I went with a group of other Canadian high school students who were all sent to different families then halfway thru the exchange we all met up for a trip to Trier organized by our exchange foundation. One of the first things we all said to each other was "Can you believe the ice cream here?!" . We were all in love with it. So I was pretty excited about indulging in this once again. Deciding what to order what really difficult but I decided on a chocolate, strawberry, banana masterpiece that looked amazing. Husband didn't order an ice cream despite my attempts at persuading him, and He was sorry when my ice cream came. He definitely was a little jealous of my treat while he sat there with a smoothie.

The ice cream in Germany is so creamy and so smooth and soooooo tasty. Keep in mind that the Eis Cafe we went to was not even a top notch one. When I was living there my exchange mother would drive us into Essen to go to a REAL eis cafe as she described it. The ice cream there was in-frigging-credible and would blow my icey treat I was trying to re-live the glory thru out of the water. But still, this was enough for me to get my fix, as you can tell by the look on my face in the photo.

If you are lucky enough to visit a German Eis Cafe, I'm going to recommend at least one person in your party order some strawberry ice cream (erdbeer = strawberry). It's unbelievable. You'll never want to eat shitty North American strawberry ice cream again that's for sure. Let's just say that in 3 months in Germany I gained 5 kilos that I have to this day not lost. Erdbeer Eis is responsible for at least one of those kilos.

La Chouffe!

I'm back from Europe and better for it! I wish I was still there but I'm also enjoying the coziness that only "home" can give a person. I had so many amazing foods while in Europe but I fell in love with a beer called "La Chouffe".

I'm not going to lie I am easily swayed by packaging and let's be honest the initial part of falling in love is a physical attraction. It was kind of love at first sight for me and La Chouffe when I saw the super cute little gnome on the glass and I knew I had to have it. Then the taste just confirmed it for me.


La Chouffe is a Belgian beer and there are 2 commercial products. "La Chouffe" a blonde beer, and "Mc Chouffe" a dark beer. Both are delicious!!!! This beer was available in most places in Amsterdam and Brussels. I drank it every chance I got. I was lucky enough to discover it on the first day of vacation and asked for it everywhere I went pretty much. Of course I had other beers too, but I tried to have at least one La Chouffe per day if possible. I'm told that if you watch for it you can get La Chouffe at the LCBO particularly at Christmas time. So keep your eyes peeled beer lovers this one is a must try!

http://www.achouffe.be/en

A bit of a Dry Spell....

Okay, I've really fallen off the blogging wagon lately. There are reasons/excuses for this which involve me being busy and I won't bore you with further detail than that. What it boils down to is, these days I haven't had much time or energy to experiment in the kitchen which I really think takes away from my level of relaxation to tell you the truth. So it's not all that surprising that I've also been really stressed lately too. Creating something in the kitchen on the weekend is one of my favourite things to do. I just like to make things in general, whether it be sewing, painting or making up jingles about mundane activities I need to do. I always feel the need to be in the process of making something. And making food is so rewarding sometimes. There is nothing like the smell of good food cooking to melt your troubles away. But I want you to know I haven't stopped thinking of recipes to try and soon I will get back to it.

I don't have a recipe for you this time around because life continues in a busy pattern for me and another weekend goes by without my putting on my apron and rolling up my sleeves. However, I do have a culinary crusade ahead of me in the vey near future. My dear friends, I am very shortly about to expose Husband to the world of European Food. Something he has not experienced in this life before. I want him to day dream of European pastry shop windows the way I do. That is longingly and with a heavy regretful sigh that I'm not sipping cappuccinos and munching croissants in a Parisian cafe every morning. However for a short while, I will be living a variation of that constant day dream of mine. And I'm quite sure I'll have a story or 2 for you from those adventures. So, more to the point of this endless drivel I'm on about here, I'm not going to have any posts between now and the start of October. Sorry there's a bit of a dry spell here but I'm hoping that when I do come back it will be with a bang!

Corn and Sweet Potato Chowder with Chipotle

This is another Mark Bittman recipe and I had really high expectations because of how much I love the quinoa tabouleh. I think I set myself up for failure in that respect. I did not love this nearly as much. It's still a good soup, but I wanted it to be the best soup I'd ever had. Which it wasn't. the best soup I ever had as a pumpkin soup in a French restaurant in the Dominican Republic. The pumpkin soup still holds the title. What I do like about this soup this that it feels healthy when you eat it. Yeah okay there's cream in it so it's not the world's healthiest soup. But it's only half a cup of cream in the whole batch, and what I mean by feels healthy is that there's beautiful chunks of healthy veggies and there's nothing like fresh ingredients. For the love of God DO NOT make this with canned corn. I hate effing canned corn. Use corn fresh off the cob as directed in the recipe of just go eat at some grease pit fast food joint. Seriously.

Make this soup if you like a little spice in your culinary life and if you have an appreciation of a chunky soup.

recipe: http://itsfeedingtimeatthezoo.com/2011/05/31/corn-and-sweet-potato-chowder-with-chipotle/

Donuts!!!!

Husband is obsessed with fresh made donuts. For our honeymoon we stayed at an all inclusive resort and they served fresh made donuts. He talks about them with a gleam in his eye and drool on his chin. He got for a gift from his sister a dry mix for homemade donuts from Williams Sonoma, one might say the perfect gift for him. But you have to know it's not going to be him standing over a pot of oil on a Monday night. That's where I come in. Today was not my greatest day at work. I had to stay late and I was pretty tired when I got home. This morning I became semi-conscious at around 6am and thought to myself "Oh, it's Sunday I can keep sleeping." and proceeded to fall back into my dream of being at a day spa on a farm in France. 30 minutes later my anger at not having had my french facial yet brought me back to consciousness and I realized it was actually Monday and I'd slept in half and hour. From there the day continued much in the same pattern. So yes I was not in the best spirits tonight and wasn't much in the mood for deep frying anything. That is exactly what I did though.

The donut mix was Willams Sonoma Bouchon Bakery Donut mix. You add butter, egg yolks and warm milk to the packet of dry ingredients and yeast included. Mix it up and let it rise in a bowl for an hour. Then you roll out the dough and cut your donuts. Don't have a donut cutter? Neither do I, but I do have a round cookie cutter so that's what I used. No holes in these donuts. Then you place your cut dough on greased cookies sheets and let sit for at least 8 hours in the fridge. Mine sat about 24 hours. I came home took them out of the fridge to let them get back up to room temperature and filled a pot with oil.

Now, if you recall I hate deep frying. So me standing there waiting for the oil to heat, I was getting more paranoid by the second. Images of my flesh burning thru to the bone from hot oil. My face melting off a la wicked witch of the west, or Jack Nicholson's joker. Or even me looking like Jack Napier's girlfriend Alicia post "Living Art Experiment" in Tim Burton's Batman (one of my favourite films growing up). This is how I see my face looking all because Husband wants a donut. Either I was too exhausted to really care, or I'm braver than I think I am because I just went for it. Not much hesitation this time. I burned my first few donuts as I think the oil was too hot but once I found my stride I was good to go. Even if I was full of bottled terror. I cooked all my donuts and then dredged them in the cinnamon and sugar mixture that also was included in the kit from Williams & Sonoma. The end result is about a dozen cute little donuts that Husband gave a 10 out of 10. I didn't try one because for some reason I'm doing a sugar detox right now....We'll just have to take his word for it!