When, for an early birthday gift, the lovely D drove an hour and a half to pick me up and drive another hour and a half to the Stratford Festival, I wanted a fresh and gluten-free lunch recipe. As quick and easy-to-make as they are tangy and sweet, these mango salad rolls were the perfect treat.
Finally a cake that is a triple threat: it is tasty, pretty and dare I suggest also healthy?
Obviously taste is always the most important, and it didn’t disappoint. A subtle banana flavour within a very moist cake spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon.
Being photogenic helps for a food blog, and this cake certainly deserved to be a model for my photo shoot…..
However, I was skeptical it would all come together in a healthy package. It is made entirely without any oil or butter. Instead, you use bananas. Wow! Enjoy!
Last year, when I was reviewing restaurants for Voir in Ottawa/Gatineau I went to Coconut Lagoon, a good South Indian restaurant on Saint-Laurent Boulevard in Ottawa. I had a pumpkin curry there that I really enjoyed and it has stayed in my mind. Recently, the idea of doing it sprang up again when I spotted a lonely butternut squash in my kitchen. A few nights ago, I tried out a recipe which I borrowed from someone else’s blog, Vividha Ruchulu. I don’t know anything about her, but the recipe worked and I thoroughly enjoyed that curry! I ate it with store bough chapatis which fried up with a bit of butter to make them even better (right Pomelo? ;-)). Anyway, I am no expert in Indian cooking, but the sauce turned out really rich and creamy in this recipe and there is only a few teaspoons of oil…not bad! I think processing the onions to almost a pulp really gave some yummy body to this sauce, but have to explore more recipes to ascertain this claim. You can find the recipe on Ms. Ruchulu’s blog (link above). Below is my finished product, sans chapatis. This is the last serving and I hope it doesn’t look to baleful in that bowl…however, the little amount left is a testimony to its deliciousness!
Let me start this by saying I am not a foodie hippie. While I do enjoy granola, my cupboards are not filled with wacky ingredients like agave, nor do I believe that all organic food is the right way to go. I don’t have many cupboards in my apartment, so I try to keep quasi-normal ingredients in my pantry. However, I have a stash of wheat berries. I was first introduced to wheat berries a year ago, and it was an interesting adventure to procure the nutty wheat gems. I originally found them in a natural bulk food store, of the organics variety, with a higher price point. In fairness, I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was pleased once I made my first salad. They were delicious and worth it. Once I was armed with what wheat berries looked like, I found them much cheaper at Loblaws, but under another name: wheat kernels.
Wheat berries are the whole kernel of wheat, minus the hull, so they are chockful of nutrients. Wheat is typically stripped of nutrients during the processing of white flour. Wow, I sound kind of like a granola girl… but what you really need to know, and all that matters is that they taste great and are incredibly filling. A little bit goes a long way. The slightly nutty flavour is captured within a chewy nugget that is perfect for salads, soups, and sides.
The following salad combines wheat berries with equally nutty wild rice and pairs them with crunchy apples, sweet cranberries and toasted almonds. It is all tossed together in a flavourful citrus dressing. This is one of my favourite salads, and the slightly counterintuitive secret may be to dress the salad just as it is being served. Read the rest of this entry »
I saw this super easy recipe for cajun spiced salmon in Real Simple magazine (paper copy). Take a filet of salmon (I used wild, but Atlantic farmed would be fine also), shake on some cajun spices (I just used a President’s Choice grinder mix – I had to grind it rather than take a pinch and press it in, but it was ok anyway) and 10 minutes later you have a salmon dinner. I ate it with steamed swiss chard which I doused with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice also. It was quite good and tied me over for well over 5 hours.
Here are some pics, before and after:
Salmon with cajun spices
Blackened salmon with cajun spices and a side of swiss chard
These Apple Cheddar Waffles were a special breakfast-for-dinner treat, made for me and amuse-bouche on Wednesday night by a special someone! The waffle recipe comes from the Pocket Cook Book by Elizabeth Woody and members of the Food Staff of McCall’s Magazine — first printed in 1942. My garage-sale version is a reprint from 1946.
To make our breakfast more dinner-like, we added grated cheese, melted by the delicious apple topping…with a fried egg for protein.
The waffle iron entered my life for $5.00 courtesy of a friend’s moving sale, making this dish as much an ode to second chances as to breakfast for dinner.
the taste space 