You know those days when you really don’t feel like cooking anything but you also don’t want to spend $30 on some shitty take-out dinner that the kid won’t eat anyway because he actually just wanted Honey Nut Cheerios? Yeah. That. I was very tempted to have cereal for dinner too the first night I made this but I was feeling pretty guilty about letting food go to waste in the fridge. I remembered that I had kale from Bailey’s Local Foods. I also had some Enoki mushrooms that I’d bought to use for a different recipe that was […]
Cottage Pie (Shepherd’s Pie) with Celeriac, Sweet Potato Mash
If there is any meal that can bring Timothy up the stairs from the playroom for dinner then this is it. Aside from boxed macaroni and cheese, this is his favourite meal. While Simon and I love to put HP Sauce on it, Timothy loves anything he can put ketchup on. This is another recipe that uses a large quantity of ground beef, which is why I call it Cottage Pie rather than Shepherd’s Pie – shepherds heard sheep, not cows. In North America it would be very rare to be served Shepherd’s Pie and not have it be made […]
Spaghetti Sauce and Buying Half a Cow
The perils of buying half a steer from an organic farmer, such as Vibrant Farms, are few but the main ones are an inordinate amount of freezer space required and the need for some really good recipes for ground beef. With a small child who has varying degrees of pickyeateritis, which is hereditary, getting the optimal amount of vegetables into the little one is also a concern of ours. This recipe for good old fashion Spaghetti Sauce is perfect for two out of three issue; using a lot of ground beef and getting several servings of vegetables into a picky kid. I […]
Chicken Cacciatore aka Pantry Cooking
My mom would often make chicken cacciatore and she always served it with rice. I have no idea if that is traditional Italian but who cares. I never put it with the rice on my plate back then because I was the kid who didn’t want the different foods touching. It would totally gross me out when my English relatives (and my mom) would mash all the different foods of turkey dinner onto the back of their forks. I have evolved slightly now and I do put the chicken on my rice rather than eat the two separately. It is […]
Braised Beef Short Rib Ragout
I don’t know about you but after Christmas my bank account has a wicked hangover. This means that going out to dinner is just not going to happen. In fact we are usually still in recovering at Valentine’s so we don’t go out, or do presents then either. This recipe is a fair amount of work but when you sit down to something as good as you would get in a restaurant, it is worth it. This is hands down, my favourite dinner. The first time I had short ribs they were on the bone and in a restaurant. They […]
Creamy Parsnip Soup with Tarragon & Pancetta Crisps
Very close to the top of the list of my favourite kitchen gadgets is my immersion blender. I would be very torn if someone told me that I had to give away my immersion blender, food processor or my KitchenAid mixer. Generally I call my immersion blender my stick blender and it has made making pureed soups ridiculously simple. This parsnip soup has a very simple base: leeks and garlic (onion would be a fine substitute for the leeks). When I was trying to think of something that would pair well with the unique flavour of parsnips I went sniffing around my […]
Quinoa with Grilled Veggies
I am very happy to belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) again this year. This is our third year being CSA members and each year we know that we will be inundated with zucchini and summer squash (the yellow zucchini). I didn’t get time this year to get very creative with the zucchini and a lot of the other veggies we got in our CSA box combined with some sweet peppers from our pathetic little garden. Some people might like this served at room temperature but I serve this hot. The leftovers are one of my favourite lunches to […]