My family was shocked to find out that I love soggy French fries.  My favourite fry is typically accomplished when a potato is freshly cut and not allowed too much time in the frying pie.  If it is floppy when you spear it with your fork, I am a happy camper.  When not cooked to crispy, I think that the sweetness and fleshiness of the potato shines through.

They were appropriately surprised because most other foods that I eat, I like crunchy.  If there is cheese or sauce stuck to the bottom of a casserole dish, I am in heaven by scraping it off with a spatula and popping it right into my mouth.  I think that this comes from being one of six kids when I was growing up.  I was the oldest daughter, so I was often in charge of dishes and scraping these little treats up while doing dishes, was my “consolation” prize, as it were.

I think that this is why I love a pan-seared steak.  I know that grilling is the healthiest way to cook a steak so that the fat runs away from the meat but let’s face it; fat is what makes a steak taste good!  I would rather give up a creamy sweet than pass on a juicy steak.  My Dad taught me how to perfectly sear a steak.  I bet that I was no more than nine or ten at the time.

His technique was exactly like the one in the attached video by Canada Beef with one exception: he would always sear a steak in butter and not oil.  He declared that the nutty saltiness of the butter was the perfect enhancement to the hearty taste of the steak. And,if you serve the pan-seared steak on a piece of garlic toast, you have an even easier time of capturing all of the crispy bits and juices to savour and enjoy.

Canada Beef has all kinds of recipes and references on their beef info website.   So if you have never learned to perfectly pan-sear a steak, you can learn right on their site.  And, in order to make food video watching super easy in the kitchen, Canada Beef is giving away 5 Ipads!  Click here to enter their contest (closes March 31, 2014).

Kath’s quote: “The only time to eat diet food is while you are waiting for the steak to cook.”-Julia Child

Love-that is all.

There are many topics that I could write about today but I choose to start my recollections of our wonderful time on Isla Mujeres.  This is the snowy scene outside my window at this moment. This is a good day to think tropical thoughts….

From my journal:

“Feeling wonky, as is sometimes the case on arrival day as I had to be up at 4 am and of course I didn’t have the best sleep.  The flight went quite quickly: got some work done and watched Argo.  Cancun was a zoo!  Wasn’t on Isla until 1:15 ( I think Donna said) and that was with no waiting for the ferry.  Just long enough to for me to buy everybody a beer for the ferry ride over.”

I get such a kick out of the ferry ride to Isla that this year, I crossed an extra couple of times, just to savour the trip more often.

We knew that Jill from Casa el Pio would be waiting for us, so we quickly pulled out bags over and then headed right out again to meet Sister #2 and Miquel for lunch before they headed in the direction of Punta Sur to their little beach place.  With an easy consensus, the meeting place was Bally Hoo for our traditional first lunch of fish and chips and inaugural island cervezas.

Sister #2  had coconut shrimp.

Sister #3: fish tacos.

And I, fish and a fantastic little salad.  Bally Hoo is perched on stilts right in the water, adjacent to the docks where the sport fisherman tie up their boats and clean their catch.  Perhaps this is why their fish is the freshest I have ever tasted, literally sparkling in your mouth.

My first view of “fisherman’s” beach from Bally Hoo.  Ah Isla, I have returned…..

We stopped in at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some supplies for the room: milk for my morning coffee, yoghurt for breakfast, more cervezas for any time of day and a Chilean Merlot that I had never sampled before.  It was so good, that the entourage of vinto tinto drinkers that accompanied me, stocked up too and for a while, the grocery store was sold out.

Casa el Pio would be home for the first half of my stay.

I love the crisp white and blue of the casa.  It reminds me of the Greek islands.

As my roommate settled in, I had my first walk around the seawall

and then to take in the lengthening shadows of the palms by the naval base.

Dinner that night was at Brisa Mexicana so we could watch the Oscars.

Breaded fish.

Seafood pasta.

I saw that they had pork chops on their surf and turf menu and they were kind enough to accommodate my request for them.  But who was I kidding?  They were tasty enough, but could not come close to Fredy’s 2 bone pork chop which I was craving.  I took half home for a next day sandwich.  Casa el Pio has a little fridge for left overs, that is also stocked with welcome cervesas and a shot of tequila!  They generously provide the coffee and filters for a great cup of joe, too.

But not surprizingly, we didn’t last long.  Fairly soon after the best supporting awards, we decided to head back to our cozy beds.  I thought that we might possibly be able to watch a live stream of the rest of the award show, but it really did not matter.  We were tired, but more than that: we were anxious for sleep so that we could wake up to our full first day on the island.

Kath’s quote: “There is poetry in a pork chop to a hungry man (person).”-  Philip Gibbs

Love-that is all.

This time last year, Winnipeg was in full fledged spring mode: the snow was gone, the sun was warm, flip flops were donned, gardens were being tidied and Adirondacks pulled out of the garage.  This year on the prairies, well, not so much.  The sun is in a different place in the sky and does feel a titch warmer than the weeks previously but OMGoodness, we have a long way to go.  I literally cannot see if my van is still parked on the street for the height of the snow drifts!  And, the worst is still to come because all that snow and ice has to go somewhere when it melts (memories of the flood of 1997).

My Window Box

But because I have always maintained a Katie Scarlett O’Hara attitude, I’m not thinking about that right now, I’ll think about that tomorrow.  Right now I am focused on the spring that is yet to come and how I might beckon it closer in my home, kitchen and dining room.  We are in the midst of renovating our basement family room and the colour that most reminds me of spring is a fresh, young green.  Perhaps this will get the nod for the new wall colour.

The tastes that most remind me of most of spring are cilantro and lime!

So besides planning on preparing cilantro chicken very soon, we are going to unshovel the barbecue to start grilling again.  I have salmon fillets ready to go for this evening.  And this week so that we could remember our favourite treat from last summer-I roasted whole unpeeled beets in a little bit of canola oil with a glistening of sea salt.

I am sure by now that you all know that I am a Sobey’s “Better Food Lover”, but enough about me.  You’re Invited to the #LoveSobeys Refresh Your Flavours Twitter Party!  Join us on Twitter and tell us how you’re getting your taste-buds ready for spring.  Share your best ideas on the freshest tastes of the season and every tweet gives you a chance to win a Sobeys gift card. Up to $1,200.00 in Sobeys gift cards are up for grabs.

Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Time: 8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. CDST

Where: On Twitter, using the hashtag: #LoveSobeys

Join me and other Party Hosts:

Andrea Tomkins (@missfish)     Mardi Michels (@eatlivtravwrite)     Laura O’Rourke (@LauraORourke)     Maria Lianos-Carbone (@amotherworld)     Tammi Roy (@MyChaos)     Heather Nolan (@mmmisformommy)     Rebecca Stanisic (@bitofmomsense)     Gina Bell (@eastcoastmommy1)     Jen Banks (@Jen_Banks)     Jody Arsenault (@MommyMomentBlog)    Kathryn Lavallee (@mommykatandkids)

How to Party?  It’s easy to join in—just sign in to Twitter at party time and find “#LoveSobeys”. Chime in to the conversation with your thoughts and suggestions for better food ideas by simply adding “#LoveSobeys” to the end of every tweet. Each tweet gives you a chance to win a Sobeys gift card (up to $1,200 in Sobeys gift cards will be given out). Check out the twitter party rules and regulations and be sure to R.S.V.P by scrolling down the link here.

P.S.  I would never recommend something for you, my loyal readers, that I would not use myself and I just can’t tell you how impressed I am with Sobey’s.  I had to go grocery shopping for a food styling job, after I started this post this morning.  I am feeling like I might be catching a cold, so I wanted to make the errand really easy on myself.  For one, by going first thing in the morning, there were very few customers there and I didn’t have to jostle around other carts and be squished into the aisles.  There was lots of staff on and that was a really good thing as I needed help finding rhubarb and barley flour.  At Sobey’s, they don’t just tell you an aisle number, they accompany you to the place on the shelf where they anticipate finding the product.  If they are unsuccessful, they will check with a manager instead of saying “we must be out of it”.  When there was no grated Monterrey Jack cheese, the fellow restocking the dairy shelves, suggested an alternative and then accompanied me to the deli section, where another staff member grated it for me-at no extra charge!  A deli item on special caught my attention and when I asked what the flavour was like, he sliced off a piece for me to taste.  The cashier cheerfully, tallied my two separate orders and payment and another person bagged my groceries for me exactly like I would have done myself, with dairy in one bag, meats in another, etc.  I love Sobey’s -they make food shopping enjoyable again!

Kath’s quote: “Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.” -Al Bernstein

Love-that is all.

D and I knew that for the Frenchman’s birthday, we could pretty much fix anything and he would be delighted; that is just the kind of guy he is.  We pulled out some old family favourites, that we hadn’t enjoyed together for a while.  Lemon Oregano Chicken is one of the first “grown up” dishes that I had ever acquired a recipe for, completely on my own.  It was a very long time ago when I lived in a gorgeous vintage downtown apartment and worked two jobs: 1) the Winnipeg Art Gallery and 2) The Keg or the Keg ‘n Cleaver as it was called in those days.  I suppose they dropped the latter word as it came off kind of violent.

My boss at the WAG at that time was from a famous artistic Winnipeg family and her Mom was a renowned cook.  I had heard so many descriptions of dinner parties that had been thrown for Winnipeg’s artistic elite.  The Lemon Chicken recipe was passed from Jan’s Mom to her and then to me.  I passed it to my Mom and two sisters and I understand that everyone in our family makes it a slightly different way.  J1 and J2 have recently requested it to treat a new Mom and her husband and so the tradition continues.

But as usual, I digress.  Mushrooms Neptune have been a staple on the Keg menu for years and years and since both D an Sister #3 were Keg prep-cooks at some point in their careers, they both had the recipe memorized.  I know that Sister #3 has included a copy of it in a family cook book that she has been writing.  On the day that I was shopping for ingredients, I didn’t want to test D’s memory, so I did what everybody does now a days I suspect, I Googled it.  This recipe came through the TSN website and I know that it is authentic because there has been a long standing partnership between the restaurant and the network.

So without further adieu.

Love-that is all.

The Buick GM Team had one final meal adventure in store for us on our last night at the Touchstone Resort.

J and I (and everybody else in the group) had a great deal of freedom throughout the day to go off in our Buick Encore to whatever adventure we desired. We would gather together at cocktail time before dinner, to share the details of our day.

On this last evening, instead of going into the regular dining room, we were escorted to the private living quarters of the owner.

We were introduced to the sommelier that had paired wines to go with our meal and discuss why each wine was chosen.

We began with an amuse-bouche of lobster claw with a citrus zest to get the party going.

This led to a grilled spiced pineapple, pan-seared king scallops, citrus foam, crisp pancetta and black lava salt, with a mint dressing.

From there we had a wonderful mushroom soup with an herb crouton with sautéed duck foie gras bites.

Our next course was our salad filled with watercress and avocado, grapes, almonds, and a champagne vinaigrette. At this point in the meal we began with some great meats.

We tucked into a hoisin sautéed duck breast with a pecan and cucumber salad with Riesling infused watermelon (my favourite dish).

We moved from duck to a rack of lamb with a mustard and fresh thyme crust accompanied by a gnocchi tossed in a pea mint puree with a pear poached in aged port.

Next up was a beef tenderloin accompanied by mushroom and poached quail egg, saffron risotto croquettes, honey glazed baby carrots, and a cabernet reduction.

If all of this amazing food was not enough, we finished off with an angel hair sugar basket covered cheesecake with strawberries and a chocolate cake for desert.

J and I had never had a meal like this before, but I must say, we look forward to having one again! This was definitely the icing on the cake of our culinary adventure.

A special thanks again to the GM team and Buick Canada for creating all of these amazing memories. Also, a shout out to all of the wonderful people that we met on the adventure. Canada is filled with talented people who are passionate about love, food and travel and we definitely look forward to meeting you all again on our future adventures.

Kath’s quote: “I have long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters … food, for me, has always been an adventure.”-Anthony Bourdain

Love-that is all.