Browsing: Food Products

Guest Blogger J2: Groceries Made Easier for New Moms-Sobey’s

November4

As a new mom of a 3 month old, it is nice to have a few outings during the week. Taking a mom and baby class, visiting friends and going for a walk are all things to which I look forward. Grocery shopping on the other hand, is something that I generally welcome any excuse to avoid. I have even found myself eating KD and tuna for dinner because my fridge is bare and I have no desire to fill it. There are a few things about grocery shopping that can make it a not-so-enjoyable task with a little one by your side. The new Sobeys in Sage Creek is attempting to make this experience a little easier for moms by addressing a few of these difficulties.

#1. Every shopping cart is built differently which means the way the car seat rests in the cart is different. When I bring my sleeping child from the car into a store and struggle to find the right angle to hook the seat in, meanwhile jostling baby around and consequentially waking baby up….I am not a happy mommy. Not to mention the fact that it is not even recommended to rest the car seat on the cart for safety reasons.

Sobeys has eliminated this problem with car seat Safe Docks, making it safe and easy to attach the car seat to the cart while you shop.

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They also have fun grocery carts for kids who are a little older who can pretend that they are steering the cart in play cars.

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#2. Generally when I leave the house it involves a mad rush to feed baby, pack the diaper bag, dress the baby, get her in the car seat, double check that I have at least somewhat acceptable clothing on and run out the door all before there is a meltdown (either by baby or myself). This list does not usually include feeding myself. When the task at hand is grocery shopping, this leaves me feeling lightheaded and slightly nauseous as I try to get in and out as quickly as possible. It also means that I often make less healthy food choices (which is why it is advised never to shop with an empty stomach.)

Now, thanks to Sobeys, I can pick up a ready to eat lunch from the Sobeys Kitchen which includes tons of healthy and delicious options including vegetable fried rice, roasted rutabaga, sesame orange chicken, vegetable noodle dishes and tons more. I can shop with a full stomach and feel good about the food choices that I am making.

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#3. I have posted here before about my beautiful Menu Board that I created a couple of years ago to help with weekly meal planning. I have to admit that since having a baby I haven’t touched this board once. This is in part because we have mostly been eating meals brought to us by friends and families as well as our pre-prepared freezer meals (so amazing!), but also because I don’t have the brain power to think far enough into the future about what we should eat and what ingredients I would have to buy to make those meals.

In comes Sobeys with the Better Food News section of their website that highlights the best deals of the week and gives you recipe ideas for easier meal planning.They also have a new phone app where you can find new recipes, better deals and create a shopping list that you will never forget because it’s right on your phone!

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With aisles of beautiful, fresh produce and Certified Humane meat choices it’s easy to create lots of meals high in protein and vitamins like iron and calcium for a breastfeeding mom. A handsome Jamie Oliver promoting ‘Better Food for All’ doesn’t hurt either.

Kath’s quote:  “A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bank balance smaller, home happier, clothes dirty, the past forgotten and the future worth living for.” -Unknown

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Love-that is all.

Bacon Wrapped Queso Fresca Stuffed Figs

August29

I was reading through a blog post from last week and realized that I had not posted a recipe which I had promised.  This turned out to be one of the hits at the recent baby shower that Daughter #2 hosted for the Wee One.

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I find it mighty hard to leave all this behind.

Truth is, the appetizer was a bit of a fluke.  I wanted to do some of my prep while out at the beach house to lessen my responsibilities once I got into town.  So I  snooped around the freezer and found a pound of bacon.  I discovered that I still had some California figs left when the producers graciously sent them to me.  I tried a ricotta at first with no success-too mild and impossible to stuff without a pastry bag so I rattled around a little more in the fridge and found this deliciously salty cheese that I was going to brown in a fry pan and serve with taco chips.  Best of all, it was firm enough to be cut into little sticks and then pressed into the fig with ease.

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Bacon Wrapped Queso Fesca Stuffed Figs
Author: 
Recipe type: Appetizer
Cuisine: Fusion
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
 
Ingredients
  • 1 package of bacon, cut each strip in half
  • count the number above
  • match that number with the same number of figs
  • match that number with the same number of cheese sticks
Instructions
  1. cut off the stem end of the fig
  2. use your paring knife to gently make a tunnel into the fig, making sure that you do not break through the other end
  3. gently ease the cheese stick into the fig
  4. wrap with one half strip of bacon and secure with a toothpick
  5. line a 8 x 8 square cake pan with parchment paper
  6. place the figs close together in the pan so that they will support each other making sure that the closed end is next to the pan
  7. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until the bacon has crisped up to your desired likeness

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So quick, easy and SO delicious.

Kath’s quote: “Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.”-Doug Larson

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Love-that is all.

Wild Blueberry Platz

July7

Happy Sunday morning readers.  We were in the city this summer weekend which as you know is very unusual for us.  Yesterday was a perfect summer day-a time for baking and writing and visiting into the wee hours with family and good friends that I don’t see often enough over the summer.  The weekend in town, afforded me the opportunity to write most of this special blog post.  I am honoured to be a part of the Canadian Food Experience Project  which began June 7 2013.  As we (participants) share our collective stories through our regional food experiences, we hope to bring global clarity to our Canadian culinary identity. There were 58 participants in the first round up!  This month’s challenge was to write about a regional Canadian food and I choose wild blueberries for a number of reasons: their exemplary nutritional value, their low cost and their distinct connection to the places they grow here in Manitoba and on the Canadian prairies. 

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The beach areas on the east and west side of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba were populated by various ethnic groups that are like the patchwork swatches that make up the provincial quilt.  The French holidayed at Paige Albert, Jewish persons at Winnipeg Beach, the Anglo-Saxons at Victoria Beach, Icelanders at Gimli and the Germans at Lester Beach.  Our family are not German but we have been welcomed into and have been part of the lake crowd at Lester Beach since the mid-seventies when my brother Tom and his wife bought a little two bedroom cottage.  Fast forward almost forty years and there are now approximately 38 of us who take turns staying at various wooden beach houses within a one block radius.  There are some streets where you can hear German spoken amongst the seniors who still enjoy the forest and the sandy beach.  As you walk along the lanes the cottage families are identified by signs such as the one at the end of our road “The Regiers and the birds live here”.

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Friends of ours who have a cabin close by but who we also know from the city, renewed their wedding vows one summer on the beach and then hosted a huge party in the yard.  At supper time an old metal drum that had been split and made into a barbeque was fired up and there were hamburger patties and various sausages grilled up.  A number of salad and accompaniments were contributed by various guests, as well as a bevy of desserts.  There was one dessert that came in various fruit variations: peach, apple, rhubarb and blueberry.  It was called “platz” and it was the most divine dessert that I had ever tasted.

I am not a sweet lover but prefer desserts like this one that are doughy, and buttery with natural sweetness from the fruit and just a hint of sugar to crunch up the crumb topping.  “Platz” is German for coffee cake and many Mennonite homes have one available in case family, friends or neighbours drop in for coffee and a visit.  From my first taste, I was hooked and now make platz on a regular basis.  I love to bake one up in the summer when fresh fruit is at its peak.  The simple ingredients are always at hand and frozen fruit produces an equally fine result.  I originally found the recipe in a book entitled “Mennonite Girls Can Cook” but have modified it over the years to use half brown sugar and even sugar substitutes.

Wild blueberries are plentiful throughout Manitoba and especially in the lake district.  I love to blueberry picking.  Actually, I have to be honest…I love the results of blueberry picking but not the act of picking itself.  Wood ticks are an issue as well as bears, not to mention poison ivy, the risk of getting lost in the bush and coping with the backache, heat, thirst and mosquitoes.  What I am trying to say is, picking is no fun at all but the results make the difficult task more than worth it.

5.0 from 1 reviews
Wild Blueberry Platz
Author: 
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Mennonite
 
Ingredients
  • 2 c flour
  • 1 c of sugar (or substitute brown, Splenda or Monkfruit Sugar for ½ the white sugar)
  • ¾ c of room temperature butter
  • Scoop out 1¼ c of the above and set it aside for the topping (once it has been blended with a pastry blender).
  • To the balance of the mixture that is left, add:
  • 2 t baking powder
  • ½ t baking soda
  • 1 beaten egg
  • ¾ c milk soured with 1 T vinegar
Instructions
  1. Mix baking powder and soda into dry ingredients.
  2. Add beaten egg and soured milk.
  3. Mix well.
  4. Spread into a greased 9 x 13 pan.
  5. Sprinkle with 2 c of blueberries.
  6. Drop crumb mixture over blueberries.
  7. Bake for 35-40 minutes in a 375 oven.

The time for wild blueberry picking is not yet upon us, as it was a very late spring on the prairies.  But I have noticed an abundance of plants and flowers as I have meandered in the forest, so this summer’s crop is sure to be abundant.  In the mean time, because we so love the nutritious fruit, I always have a pint on hand.  But because I live in a busy house, my plans sometimes are foiled by a hungry family member looking for something to have with their morning granola.  In that case, I go to plan B because I always have frozen berries as well.  When all is said and done, the taste is very close.

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Kath’s hint:  I made a double batch this morning and then split it between three smaller sized pans.  With one I varied the fruit to mango and banana and then added coconut to the crumb mix.  This will go with us to a tropical pool party this evening.  One of the berry cakes will accompany us to a back yard graduate lunch this afternoon.  The third is to just have on hand.  It stays fresh on the counter for a day, can go into the fridge for a couple of days or go immediately into the freezer for future entertaining.

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Kath’s quote: “I remember his burlesque pretense that morning of an inextinguishable grief when I wonder that I had never eaten blueberry cake before, and how he kept returning to the pathos of the fact that there should be a region of the earth where blueberry cake was unknown.”-William Dean Howells (1894)

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Love-that is all.

Red River Exhibition 2013

June19

Hello readers.  Are fairs and exhibitions, permanently etched in your memories as a way to mark time?  They are in mine.  The Red River Ex was a must do when I was a youngster along with a tour of the Eaton’s windows at Christmastime, the Shrine Circus and Ice Capades.  It was truly limited to these major events.   Now a days, this number of activities could be on a elementary schoolers’ one week agenda.  The Ex was always one of my favourites because it marked the end of the school year and the official beginning of summer.  We used to take the bus to Polo Park and I can still remember the roar of the mobile generators, the music blaring from the rides, and the carneys trying to lure us into going for the big prize.  The smells were unmistakable of cotton candy and grilled onions to top the burgers.  We took our kids almost every year as they were growing up and then there was this big long gap in attendance for us.  In fact, this year was the first time that I have attended at the new exhibition site!

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This past Monday was a perfect summer evening to start a new era of the Red River Ex for us.  We wandered around the beautifully accessible fair grounds with no cables to climb over like the “olden” days.  There were plenty of washrooms and shade and in my mind the new set up is just about perfect, except that with everything so stretched out, it seems to lack the vibrancy that I remember so clearly.  Perhaps, busier days deliver this.

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But to the food….

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We did a lap to check out all of our options.  After taking note of the sign below, we decided to start with a couple of the many healthy choices available to fair goers.

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When D suggested that he wanted to order a combination of kielbasa, cabbage rolls and perogies, I heartily agreed and grabbed a fork to sample a taste.

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I was happy with my supper choice of Pad Thai.  I never thought that I’d live to see the day that I could order noodle boxes at the fair.  By the number of stir fries being enjoyed at the tables around us, they were a big hit.

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This talented artist was our dinner entertainment while we sat at communal tables and also indulged in our favourite fair activity-people watching.

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We then promptly forgot about the size warning for the rides (heck we had no intention of going on the rides anyway) and performed another lap to seek out our next course.

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D had to satisfy his sweet tooth so decided upon a caramel and apple pie.

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When given a choice, I also go for salty and had these homemade kettle chips for my extra treat.

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Somewhere in between we also tasted Lemon Pepper wings at Little Bones

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AND what turned out to be our favourite new taste of the evening: Seafood Poutine from the Poutine King.

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If, we had any room whatsoever, we have sampled the authentic Mexican fare from this concession, but alas, it would have to be another time.

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As we waddled to our car, singing along with the songs of Glass Tiger from the main stage, we enjoyed watching the thrill seekers on the midway.  Being one of those adrenalin junkies seems like a long time ago, and I like it that way.

Kath’s quote: “I don’t like to eat snails. I prefer fast food.”-Roger von Oech

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Love-that is all.

My First Memory of an Authentic Canadian Food Experience

June7

Hello lovely readers.  How far back does memory go?  I can distinctly remember being four years old.  That is because I started kindergarten that year.  Now a days it is called junior kindergarten or nursery school but back in the late 50’s (yes I am THAT old), there was no such thing as these or of day care, for that matter.  Most Moms were of the “stay at home” variety, unless there were extenuating circumstances, such as my Auntie who was a school teacher because, my uncle passed away suddenly at the age of 27.  I was also familiar with a couple of Moms who were nurses and there was my Mom’s best friend who lived (and still does) across the street, who had a kindergarten classroom in her basement.  As a favour to my Mom, she invited me to join this class when I was four years old.

When I was three, my Mom give birth to my twin brother and sister and so the gesture was to give my Mom a bit of a break, as there was a distinct possibility that I was a tad precocious.  I still remember many of the resources that were in the classroom that assisted us in learning our colours, numbers and letters.  I also remember how the room was set up with long tables in a “u” formation and where the teacher’s desk was placed, in addition to the shelves that held extra fat crayons and pencils for little hands.

I love exercising my brain in  this way because as is often the case as your grow older, my long range memory seems sharper than my more immediate.  I am forever running downstairs to our basement pantry and then yelling back upstairs “Does anyone know why I came down here?”

I suppose that I remember my fourth year so distinctly because I loved every single minute of school.  Does it make sense that the most vivid memories are of things that you love?  My love of food brings clear images to me as well, but in even greater detail, including aromas and tastes.  My first memory of an authentic Canadian food experience was when my Mom and Dad purchased a 1/4 bushel of corn on the cob.  I don’t even know how much that is, but I clearly remember that a pick up truck arrived in our back lane and we were rallied around to unload, what seemed to me, an endless supply of cobs.  The truck had come from a farm in Morden, Manitoba where the long, warm growing season produces bumper crops of corn and apples.

At this particular time, there were seven people in my family, as Sister #3 was not born until I was eight years old.  Feeding seven people is no easy task on one income and my Mom and Dad were very resourceful.  My Mom canned and pickled and my Dad had connections in the food-service business so that he could buy “wholesale”.  My Dad was an agrologist and knew many local farmers and so it must have come to pass that he got a deal on this bulk corn.

I also remember that we were all enlisted to shuck the corn.  The twins were too young to help and so my hands were the youngest and not the strongest, therefore instead of the muscular task of removing the husks and snapping off the stock, I was in charge of pulling out the fine strands that sometimes remain between the kernels.  When the corn was “bare naked”, I recall that my Mom blanched batches of it in her “pressure cooker” pot and then after they were patted dry, she lined six cobs into each freezer bag.  The day was a hot one and in those days there were very few homes with air conditioning.  The continual process of blanching the corn, produced a very steamy kitchen, indeed.  By the time supper came around we were all “dying” to taste the fruits of our labour.  I also think that my Mom must have been pooped, because what did we have for supper that night?  Corn on the cob, of course.  Just…corn on the cob.

There was always a pound of butter sitting on the kitchen table as well as the salt and pepper shaker and I was allowed to dress up my own cob.  Perhaps this is one of the sources for my love of sweet and salty tastes.  The corn was super-sweet-in fact, I think that was the name of the variety that we had ordered.  When slathered with creamy butter and liberally dosed with a glistening of salt, well, I don’t know if there is a taste in the world that would compare.  I was allowed to have seconds.  In fact, I was permitted to eat until my heart’s content.  I don’t recall the exact count, but it was the greatest number of cobs that I have eaten in one sitting, to this day.

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Morden corn-my first authentic Canadian food experience. Here’s a bonus.  Sister #3 is preparing a cookbook of all of our family and friend favourites.  She has tested our Mom’s recipe for wild blueberry pie.  I told you that my Mom and Dad were resourceful and this included yearly family foraging trips for enough wild blueberries to freeze for the winter.  One year our car got stuck and we were almost stranded in the woods, but I leave that tale for another day.

My Mom's Wild Blueberry Pie
Author: 
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Canadian
Cook time: 
Total time: 
 
Ingredients
  • 2 c fresh wild blueberries
  • ¼ c white sugar
  • 2 T flour
  • dash of lemon juice
  • pinch of salt
  • prepared pie crust
Instructions
  1. Pre-heat oven to 425ºF.
  2. Mix together sugar, flour and salt, toss blueberries in mixture.
  3. Place in pie crust, drizzle with lemon juice.
  4. Cover with pie crust top.
  5. Poke holes in top with fork so that steam can escape while baking.
  6. Bake for 10 minutes at 425º, turn oven down to 350º and bake for another 40 minutes.

Kath’s quote: “Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.” –Garrison Keillor

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Love-that is all.

 

 

 

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