Basil-nanza!

The basil on my patio has gotten out of control (the picture above is from several weeks before the overgrowth) and some of my tomatoes are vine ripened. This was a good excuse for me to buy a food processor. Actually, I haven't needed much of an excuse to buy a new kitchen doodad as of late (please see the imminent post on the Titan Peeler... and no I didn't make wood shavings from a table leg for dinner). I've always resisted buying a food processor because I have a really good hand blender which is pretty good to make smoothies and soups and is so much easier to clean than a blender/food processor. But I figured since I had so much basil and someday I'm going to want to try to make baby food to convince myself that this will prevent my kid from wanting to eat McDonald's everyday, I should finally break down and get one. This Cuisinart one was very well reviewed and was under 40 dollars. It holds 24 oz, which sounds pretty small, but the plethora of basil I had fit in there just fine and since my kitchen is pretty small it doesn't take up much space in a cupboard, which is key.

Here is one of my breakfasts this week which did not involve the food processor but had some basil and some tomatoes. It looks like a lot of food for a little person like me, but if I don't eat this much before I go to work I get grumpy and hungry by 10:30.








Here is the basil-nanza being washed, then sitting in my new kitchen toy with some olive oil and going into some ice cube trays for use in pesto, dressings, marinades, sauces etc. I figure since it's frozen I won't get really sick of eating basil-y meals in the next couple of weeks because I can spread the consumption out over a few months!

Homemade Belgian Waffles

Waffles often fall into the category of things I want to go out for instead of making at home. This is for several reasons:

1) I don't own a waffle maker and think it is one of those kitchen appliances that is more trouble than it is worth in the cleaning department
2) I thought that it would be too hard to figure out how long to cook them without burning the outside and leaving the inside raw
3) I tend to be more of a savory cook than a sweet cook

But things have changed for the better! We were recently watching a food/travel program on the Travel Network called "Extreme Fast Foods", which featured a place called the Waffle Cabin., which is situated halfway down a ski hill in Vermont. Ski a bit, stop for waffle. Hold waffle in one hand while skiing down rest of hill!!

Now even though I grew up in Canada, my family was never a downhill skiing family. I tried snowboarding a few times, but my butt has never wanted to go back. Seeing the waffle cabin, I seriously considered taking up skiing next winter just so that I could get some of these in my belly! E was even more excited about it than I was, which led to him talking about waffles almost everyday until we happened to go to Karl's Sausage kitchen and found the special ingredients for Belgian Waffles.



Then he started talking about waffles everyday, several times a day until we went to Target and got this waffle maker for $18.99. I gave in because really if it was a terrible, useless contraption, less than 20 dollars was not that much to sacrifice.



The key to this type of waffle is the pearl sugar. It creates a nice crispy and sweet outer shell to the waffles and aids in giving the nice caramelized colour. Also key to decreasing the mess factor is following a Belgian waffle recipe which makes more of a moldable dough rather than a batter. This means there is no batter pouring and much less mess in the waffle iron and thus much less clean-up duty. We made three varieties: plain, chocolate chip and cinnammon chocolate chip.










I'm quite surprised that waffle cabins haven't caught on in popularity in New England as I imagine it would be a great cold weather food. E and I have been joking that should our careers not work out, we would consider opening up our own waffle cabin somewhere in Boston!

Sprouts update

I'm pretty impressed at how quickly the mung beans have grown. They have already been harvested, cooked and enjoyed and it has been less than one week. The mustard sprouts are still growing their way into a sandwich so I'll give you another update on those later. I also recently received a Zesty Salad and Sandwich Mix, so that is next on my list to grow.

Here is what the mung beans and mustard sprouts look like after having soaked under water in the jars for night and being cozy in their new sprout home.



Then check out the mung beans after only 24 hours!



36 hours later...





And 96 hours later being showered before they meet the stir-fry pan.





Here they are featured with some grilled scallops that the hubbie grilled on the BBQ because he likes to think that grillin' is a man's job.



I probably could have waited a few more days before harvesting them so that they would get longer, but I was too impatient and wanted to taste them ASAP. Nice and crunchy and no worries about pesticides, fertilizer and dirt residue!

I think this would be a great science experiment/kitchen activity for kids. You could put them in charge of the twice daily rinsing of the sprouts so that they don't go funky and then they could be very proud of their involvement with meal prep. The added bonus is that the results are super fast which appeals to both the level of patience of me and that of a toddler!

Sprouts!

I never like to buy alfalfa sprouts or most other sprouts from the grocery store because I am paranoid about all the outbreaks of E. coli and Salmonella that are reported from not being able to wash them properly. This combined with the fact that I am a sucker for weird kitchen/gardening implements caused me to buy this Seed Sprouter contraption from an online garden store called, Hirt's. I was pretty impressed by the rapid service and prices so I would recommend them from that point of view. Don't know if the thing works yet because I am just on Step 1 of the included instructions, so stay tuned!

I have started to soak the mustard sprout




and the mung bean sprouts.





Tomorrow I will transfer them to their new sprouting environment and in at most one week, I'm hoping to have some tasty results!

Japanese Hot Pot Party!

Before I attended this feast I was ignorant to the fact that Japanese Hot Pot and Shabu Shabu are two separate things. Both involve cooking at the table, but in Japanese Hot Pot everything is put in at the same time, whereas with Shabu Shabu, the meat is put in at various times throughout the meal. The thinly sliced meats make a specific "swishy" sound which is where the name comes from. Ponzu sauce is an integral component of this meal as it lends a lot of flavor to the meat -- in this case it was halibut and chicken meatballs. Towards the end of the soup-fest, we added udon noodles. Yum!

Our gracious hosts had us over in January, at a time in Boston when hot soup is very much appreciated! They had a very fancy hot pot apparatus which they brought with them from Japan when they moved over here.



There were several tasty appetizers - an asparagus dish and a tasty Japanese fried chicken that Japanese boys have a particular liking for. My friend Mayumi (the chef), claims this is very easy to make and that her husband can even make it, so has challenged the other boys to also make it for themselves. That sounds like a Japanese fried chicken throwdown!




Some happy hot pot participants!

Gyoza Lesson

My language exchange has morphed into a recipe and cooking exchange which is perfectly fine with my belly. Food is after all a very important part of learning about a different culture. I introduced my Japanese friend to beets and how to roast them. In return she invited me over to make dumplings!

Still in the spirit of learning Japanese she prepared me an ingredient list with translations.



We mucked around a bit with the ingredients.



She had the coolest ceramic ginger grater that eliminates all the fibrous material from the ginger and puts all the gingery goodness into the surrounding moat. A quick google search found that I could easily purchase one for about 10-15$ or one that is in the shape of a blowfish for even less. Fugu!



And then we got down to business with the wrapping. Hers are prettier and less oozy than mine. It's a bit like arts and crafts and I'm like the toddler who uses too much glue and sparkles.



Fry em' up! Yum!

Let's "cook with a book" - cooking with kids!

Here goes some shameless family promotion. (For significantly more, see "My bro's page" in sites that make me hungry on the right hand side.) My niece, Fionna is both extremely cute and extremely smart. I'm saying this not only from a biased auntie's perspective, but from a professional perspective. I've seen a lot of kids in my line of work and Fionna and Abby (my younger niece) rank in the top 99th percentile of cute and smart. Yes, the confounding factor is the reporting by a family member, but I've already fully disclosed that conflict of interest.

Contributing to their cuteness/smartness factor, may be the fact that Fionna attends Montessori school where "play" is "work" and they are taught from the beginning that finding their own stuff to be interested in is key. This is clearly demonstrated by the phase that Fionna went through of shining silverware. She had a little toothbrush that she would use to clean some sort of candelabra at school so this translated into a lot of clean, shiny things at home as well.

So recently, she saw her mom cooking in the kitchen and so demanded that she also be allowed to "cook with a book". Only thing is she picked this book! Apparently to a young thing, all books can be cookbooks despite the lack of cooking instructions in this picture board book.



The following kitchen fun ensued and thus she will have a higher likelihood of being in the kitchen when she is a teenager than standing in the line at McDonald's? Is this how we should be addressing childhood obesity? Maybe, if only we could encourage her to make vegetables instead of cupcakes in a 10:1 ratio then we'd be successful!








If our vegetables containers had cute silicon feet like this cupcake holder, I bet it would be easier. Also of note, is the way our genetics cause us to "house" food in the same manner.

Monkeying around in the kitchen

As promised, here is my awesome monkey vegetable peeler. I like how he lives on my paper towel dispenser and looks like he is going to climb around in my decorative lucky bamboo. This is the same peeler that I nearly peeled my thumb nail off with in the post about the fruity Smarties. We bought him in Europe but then found out that he is manufactured in Boston. Well, I guess he was meant to come back to his home land with us!

Also along the lines of monkeys is our monkey-scrubbing-pad-holder-thingy. I got him at Economy True Hardware in the North End, where they have a surprising amount of great kitchen tools.



And here is a mango that I sliced up with that blue knife that someone with good taste liked. I love mango and apparently I love all things orange.

Gin Lemon Rickey

The new refreshing drink of the summer is my concoction the Gin Lemon Rickey.

I employed the "Flavour Shaker" that I bought in a very Euro kitchen store in Amsterdam. It is a kitchen tool made by Jamie Oliver, hence the "ou" in "flavour" (but also because I am Canadian). I don't think it was made to make drinks but essentially it looks like a black Barbapapa that can serve as a mortar and pestle. For more information, see:

http://www.flavourshaker.co.uk/





Here I mashed up some mint with ice cubes in the implement, then added gin, lemon bubbly water and enjoyed on a hot summer day.

Some famous characters who enjoy the traditional lime rickey:
-Mr. Burns
-Tony Soprano
-people in "The Great Gatsby"
-Karen from "Will and Grace"