Monday, April 28, 2008

Sunday, April 27, 2008

A post about food

M and I have been trying to eat at home more this year. Since eating out is so incredibly cheap here, and usually pretty tasty, it's easy to eat out a lot. Not that healthy though. Lots of oil and salt.
I've experimented with a lot of new recipes. That has been fun. Some things M and I have both liked, and some we've disagreed on the taste quotient.

So far this year I've made all kinds of things, like Lemony Lentil Soup, Lemon Chicken soup, borsht, Homemade pizza dough (without yeast), Rice pudding, pound cake, chocolate macaroons, Cream of mushroom soup, baking soda bisquits....among some other things... (ok some of those aren't that healthy but they are all homemade...)

Many recipes I've tried, are courtesy of allrecipes.com and some are courtesy of my Mom, and some are picked from here or there...

I've learned to make an easy local cucumber dish, but I'm still perfecting it. The person that taught me didn't use a recipe and could tell me the ingredients but couldn't tell me how much of each. She just said "I think you have to make it many times before you can get it right." So, I made it and put in too much vinegar, it made M's teeth hurt. So, it's work in progess.

The baking powder bisquit recipe I have is fantastic. I say that as one who loves carbohydrates. And it just popped into my recipe book after a friend stayed in our apartment last summer. Thank you very much Terrie!

Tonight, I tried a new recipe- Cabbage Roll casserole.... I have been wanting to try my hand at making cabbage rolls for a long time, but when push came to shove, this casserole seemed easier with my time limit, and I have all the ingredients. M and I both agree- it's really good!!

I think the recipe that I've made that got the best reviews was a Jean Pare recipe that my Mom and Dad sent me for Cream of Mushroom soup.(Thanks Mom and Dad!) It was liked by local friends and Canadian friends. We even made it again tonight. It's good. And low fat if you substitute skim milk for the cream. I won't post it here as it's probably copyright or something... but oh Jean Pare, thank you for the yummy goodness. And note that you can get some free recipes on her site...

Some Christmas baking ....




The macaroons that were delicious even if they didn't set right and I had to eat most of them myself.






Wonder what recipe he's going to make with that side of pork on the back of his bike?

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Little of this, and a little of that

I find myself mentally updating my blog a lot, thinking things in point form bullets. Something like this....

- This is a very sneezy place. Lotsa sneezing, everywhere.
- Lots of spring tree blossoms out everywhere, it's just so beautiful.
- I make things with lentils now. Does that make me crunchy granola?
- I've tried making lots of new things this year:rice pudding, lemon chicken soup, borsht... and pig's in blankets.... which is little weiners wrapped in dough.... one of the dough pieces came open while cooking, we renamed it "pig on a couch." He seemed to be reclining comfortably.
- For a conversational english class that I teach, I made my students (all professionals) pick english names to use. I mostly just wanted them to pick them so that they become more familiar with the sound of english names. It's also really fun giving people names. Lotsa fun. Fun fun fun. I made up a list of appropriate names for their age and status etc.. and then let them pick.
One man came a couple days late so I made a special list just for him with names like William, Timothy, Peter, etc etc .... and at the last minute just for fun I threw in "Lanny" in reference to Lanny Mcdonald. Do you know out of all those names, which he picked? Lanny. Lanny it is. Which for some reason makes me ridiculously happy.
- The neighbour dog is cute but barky.
- Who are the neighbourhood ladies always yelling at to "come here!"?
- The dog can't compete with the neighbour ladies for volume, or ability to vocally pierce through a wall or window.
- For the most part it doesn't bother us.