Last night in Winnipeg, we were the coldest city on earth!  A distinction I would happily give up.  And yet this morning the coffee is hot, I do not have to venture out quite yet and I am snuggled up with fuzzy socks on my feet and a blanket across my lap. How do we live here? Well, this is one of my secret coping methods: I have such a vivid imagination that often times, surrounding myself with aromas and flavours from a place that I have traveled to, will take me right back to that time and place.  This really saves money in our travel budget!  I was in Greece many, (many), years ago but the flavours of lemon, feta and oregano are so distinctive, that I can recall the surprising heat of that spring and hear the constant traffic sounds from Omonia Square in the heart of Athens.  I was such a picky eater then, having never traveled to Europe before, that I turned my nose up at moussaka and spanakopita.  Oh, to have the chance to relive those times again.

I buy large “club” packs of ground beef and then repackage them into smaller portions as soon as I get home from grocery shopping.  Although ground beef is already one of the most economical meats around, purchasing it in this manner makes it even more so.  As a result, I can always rely on having chubs of ground beef in our deep freeze.  Beef is so versatile; this recipe combines traditional Greek ingredients to a meatloaf recipe and the results are a hearty and exotic tasting dinner.  Here is a fabulous link about utilizing beef to same time and money.

This recipe is a slow-cooker one as I am trying to increase my repertoire on the off chance, I decide to take a particular job that has been made known to me.  The couple of handling tips are from Sally Vaughan-Johnston’s Best of Bridge Slowcooker Cookbook fame, whom I had the opportunity to work with prior to Christmas.  Plus, on a bone-chilling day like this one, it is lovely to have hearty aromas waft through the house.

She suggests that you take a long piece of aluminum foil, fold it in half lengthwise and then place it in the bottom of the pot with the edges up and over the rim.  This way when cooking is complete, you grasp the foil ends and lift out the meatloaf, draining off any accumulated fat.

Do you happen to have one of these handy little choppers?  Mine is an OXO and comes in so handy as I hate chopping onions.  Once it is out and already needs washing, I just use it to chop everything else up too.  Then you just pull it apart and throw it in the dishwasher-so handy.  I got mine in a goodie bag when I attended Eat, Write, Retreat earlier this spring in Washington DC.  I won the opportunity to attend through Canada Beef.  Coincidence?  I think, not.

 

Kath’s quote: “Triptolemus, one of the principal figures in Greek religion, is said to be the inventor of the plow and of agriculture, and therefore the real father of what we call civilization.”-M.F.K. Fisher

Love-that is all.

When you live on the Canadian prairies, blizzards are not unexpected.  I have experienced some lollapaloozas in my memory but not surprisingly, the most precious one was when I was little.   In the midst of the storm, we could not see the Dyers’ home across the street, when in clear weather, my Mom could see her good friend at the kitchen sink washing dishes.  I know that schools closed (not such a thrill for me because I loved school) and my Dad got to stay home from work.  But true to form, he went to all the neighbours and took their lists for provisions and then snow-shoed to the grocery store pulling a toboggan to ensure that neighbouring families all had milk and bread.   I recall the post storm photos in the  Winnipeg Free Press of all the stranded Eaton’s staff and shoppers who had to spend the night in the mattress department (I remember thinking how cool that would be).  Just after the enormous drifts accumulated, my two eldest brothers fashioned a snow slide which started on the roof of the garage, down a snow bank and right to the far corner of the back yard.  Good times.

The storm that is forecast to hit today has been predicted for days and in anticipation, I have an extra big storehouse of red wine.  Rural schools have already been closed and travel will be tricky for D’s entourage at work, who have assembled from Man/Sask for a food show.  But other than that, it is business as usual (for now at least).

If we have to, we can always make what I call refrigerator pizza.  We did so last Sunday (for mandatory dinner) just because I had an excess of sauces and pestos around.  I made double batch of dough in our bread-maker with ingredients that are always in the house.  Daughter #2, who is a professionally trained pizza maker, is always put in charge of expertly stretching and forming the pies into shape.  I am in awe of her ability, at this and every skill that I see my children demonstrate that I (or D) didn’t personally teach them.  She also supervises the application of ingredients knowing that you want to go very light-handed with the sauce and have two layers of cheese-one right next to the sauce and the second on top of your varied ingredients.

These were the resulting refrigerator concoctions:

Margherita on the pizza stone

and out of the oven.

Meat lovers with Italian deli purchases of salami and spicy sausage.

Daughter #1 and 3’s fav of Alfredo sauce, spinach, roasted chicken and feta.

And my favourite of the evening: ham, asparagus and sun-dried tomato pesto.

So get your head into the fridge and see what you can invent.  You are going to need the calories for all that shoveling that awaits you.

Kath’s quote: “A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds and low temperatures. The difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to 56 km/h (35 mph) with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 meters or a quarter mile or less and must last for a prolonged period of time — typically three hours or more”.-Wikipedia   PS Blizzard is also the name of my favourite Dairy Queen treat.

Love-that is all.

Here is Daughter #2 with that “Mom, you aren’t going to take another fondue picture of me when -I- have- just- put- food -in- my- face expression.”

It is fun to go back over the years and the photos of our annual family fondue party.  There have been various friends invited to join us and the date has sometimes been New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day or the Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s but the one thing that remains the same, is that it must be scheduled.  Last year when we spent New Year’s on Isla Mujeres, I even tried to gather up some fondue pots on the island, to no avail.  We are a family who love our traditions.

The key to a successful fondue party is being well prepared.  I layout a plastic table cloth, ensure that we have lots of fuel on hand and that every place setting has an adequate share of forks.  If you are queasy about cross contamination (we have many safe food handlers in our family), you can eliminate concern by placing  stack of paper plates in front of each of your guests.  You would think that this would cut down on dishes to be done but the dirty dishes still seem endless.  One small drawback to a fondue evening, but still well worth it.

I also like to provide lots of variety, not only on the nightly selection but the choices from one year to another.  We started making tempura vegetables the year that the Frenchman’s sister (who is vegetarian) joined us and now that has become a staple.  But this year was the first time that I prepared an authentic tempura dipping sauce to have with it-that was a big hit. 

I also mixed things up a bit by preparing a spicy chicken coating and a meatball stuffed with camembert.  Here is the recipe for the latter:

 

We always have a bazillion sauces on our refrigerator door so I pour out a variety of these.  I also made Bearnaise to have as a treat with the sirloin strips.  To add more veggies, I prepared a broccoli cheese fondue rather than our typical cheese only one.

For dessert: angel food cake, strawberries, pineapple and banana are always dipped in melted chocolate.  This year we added a salted caramel sauce and the piece de resistance-we dipped the most amazing shortbread (a Christmas gift) into chocolate (salty/sweet-I’m in heaven)!

Kath’s quote: “Well loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes. And for to drinken strong wyn, reed as blood.”-Geoffrey Chaucer

Love-that is all.

 

I recently had the opportunity to work with CJ Katz who was on a media tour promoting her award winning cookbook Taste -Seasonal Dishes from a Prairie Table.  CJ is a food writer, photographer and culinary judge but best of all she is a prairie-girl, residing in Regina.  If you still need items to put on your Christmas list or to purchase for other foodie loved-ones, this cookbook is exquisite.  As the back cover states: “a feast for the eyes and food for the soul”.  Throughout the recipes themselves, CJ weaves the story of the seasons of the priaires, the land itself and the local growers and producers.  All the mouth-watering photography is her own!

D loves Christmas and turkey is one of the primary reasons why.  He enjoys Christmas dinner (duh) but LOVES turkey left overs. 

While he was still roasting turkeys for a recent dinner, I came home to this gorgeous pot of turkey soup and basil dumplings, bubbly on the stove.

I, on the other hand, would just as soon get the left overs all used up and move towards some lighter fare.  Here is a recipe that will satisfy us both.  It would be perfect for a Boxing Day Brunch but is so festive, it could be featured on any holiday table.

I apologise that I do not have any photos of this one.  Food styling is a hectic business and I was so focused on making the food look good, that I plum forgot!  Trust me, with the contrast and vibrant colours in this dish-it is gorgeous.

Kath’s quote: “Rational habits permit of discarding nothing left over, and the use to which leftovers (and their economic allies, the wild things of nature) are put is often at the heart of a cooking’s character.”-Richard Olney

Love-that is all.

 

There are so many reasons why I decided to make this Pot Roast recipe last evening.

1) My slow cooker was sitting right there on the counter.  I go through cooking spurts with certain appliances.  Right now I am in immersion blender mode: turnips and mashed potatoes last evening.  And anything that I can think of cooking in my brand new slow-cooker.

2) As we move closer to Christmas when we get a bit “turkeyed” out, beef provides a welcome change of tastes.

3) Speaking of turkey though, we already had one roasting in the oven for Sister #3 who puts on a dinner every year for the volunteers of  Winnipeg Havest.  Because the oven was occupied for the day, a slow-cooker recipe was the perfect choice.

4 ) Last night was Mandatory Sunday Supper at our house and I always try to prepare something particularly economical so that I can afford to package up the left overs and send a couple of meals home with our kids to help out with their busy lives (and their grocery bills).

5) D and I had tried a coffee rubbed steak at a tappas restaurant in the states this summer and I have been searching for a coffee/beef recipe that would equally satisfy.

6) There were roast tweets all afternoon on my twitter feed Friday and I could not stop thinking about the aroma of roasting beef filling my house.

7) I wanted to give my new talking digital meat thermometer a test drive.  Wow-this device takes all of the guess work out of roasting meat.  The gadget was absolutely precise when the beef was at our desired doneness and even spoke to me in a polite voice!

8) I seared the roast early in the morning, threw it into the slow-cooker and then was free to focus on my family and other tasks for the rest of the day (like trimming the Christmas tree).  I didn’t even have to make gravy, as this recipe makes its own!

9) I had the pleasure of working with Sally Vaughan Johnston this week when she was in Winnipeg and wanted to try another recipe from her “Best of Bridge Slowcooker Cookbook”.  So far she is 5 for 5, everything has worked out delicious and effortless.

10) We are going to need the energy that beef provides to get us through the week ahead: another major food-styling job for me and an annual Christmas dinner for a charity that we support that D caters each year.

 

Kath’s Tips: 1) The oven was already pre-heating for our turkey so I browned the roast in the oven instead of as the recipe suggests. Why waste electricity? 2) A meat thermometer means that your meat will cook to exactly the desired temperature. Mine is a Brookstone brand Grill Alert. A little pricier than the grocery store variety but so worth it! It even has a remote feature so that we could take the receiver downstairs with us and hear the signal over top of the sound of the Viking’s game on the big screen.  3) There are so many good recipes and cooking suggestions on the Beef Info site.

Kath’s quote: “In the childhood memories of every good cook, there’s a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot and a mom.” -Barbara Costikyan

Love-that is all.