In the olden days Air Canada had this great offer for students.  You could buy a special pass which allowed you to fly standby on domestic flights until you turned 22 years of age.  I took full advantage of this and visited Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto on a regular basis.  I imagined my self to be very “worldly”.  Well our 22 year old puts me to shame.  She has traveled across western Canada, to El Salvador, across all of South Africa, Nicaragua, Israel and Jordan.  As opposed to my style of young travel which was to shop and hit the tourist spots and clubs, she volunteers- performing humanitarian work when she leaves home.  After her most recent stint in Israel, volunteering with the wonderful organization entitled Save a Child’s Heart, (more about this later) she made us her favourite Israeli meal.

Sabich was brought to Israel by Mizrahi Jews who moved in the 1940s and 1950s. On the Sabbath, when no cooking is allowed, Mizrahi Jews ate a cold meal of precooked fried eggplant, cooked potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. In Israel, these ingredients were stuffed in a pita and sold as fast food. In the 1950s and 1960s, vendors began to sell the sandwich in open-air stalls.

This is where Daughter #2 fell in love with the taste of Sabich.  She said that the street sellers came to recognize her as a regular and knew her name.

She assembled all of these fresh, whole, simple ingredients and then instructed us as to how to assemble our Sabich.

She first showed us how to carefully open our pitas so that it would remain intact when stuffed.  Next, we placed a big smear of hummus on the floor of the pita and then placed slices of potatoes, hard cooked eggs and cubed eggplant inside.  All the other toppings of sliced banana peppers, parsley, kosher pickles, Israeli salad (like a pico de gallo), chopped and seasoned cabbage and hand-formed falafel were optional but she encouraged us to try them all and she was absolutely right, as each bite was just a little bit different but absolutely delectable.

She also demonstrated how to knead the falafel in the bottom of the pita to break it up and spread the crunchy, spicy concoction into the other ingredients.

Not everyone was successful in rolling the stuffed pita up but I was pretty impressed wth my own.  We washed everything down with lemonade which she made the old fashioned way-with lemons!  I can still smell the lemon groves in Israel from my own sojourn there.

Now that Daughter #2 is home, she is still raising money for Save a Child’s Heart.  This is the organization’s mandate:

Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) is an Israeli-based international humanitarian project, whose mission is to improve the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries who suffer from heart  disease and to create centers of competence in these countries. SACH is totally dedicated to the idea that every child deserves the best medical treatment available, regardless of the child’s nationality, religion, color, gender or financial situation.

If you would be so inclined to contribute to her fund raising goal, you can do so with the link imbedded here: Give Your Heart Out this Valentine’s Day.  The link tells you more about how her heart was touched by the kids that she cared for there and how you can help.

Kath’s quote: “You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” -Unknown

Love-that is all.

PS to B-I am humbled by the honour of being your Momma.

I have been faithful to my new regime of eating, low fat, no deep-fried items, no processed foods.  I decided a month ago that it would have to be a really extraordinary dish to get me to veer off my clean eating track.  This week I received an email announcing that Smoke’s Poutinerie was opening a second location and would I like to drop by for a VIP preview of the restaurant?  We have visited their Albert St. location a number of times since they opened in 2011.  They have enjoyed such success.  Well if anything was going to make me break my vows to myself, poutine would be it.  I love poutine, but it has to be absolutely authentic.  That means a savoury gravy and real cheese curds-the squeakier the better.  Smoke’s Poutinerie fills the bill.

Add to it, Daughter #2’s recommendation to try their “Country Style” poutine with grilled chicken, bacon, caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms and baby peas and oh la, la.  I ordered it, I ate it, I loved it!  The toppings should be dubbed something else because they don’t merely sit on top but are found threaded all through the hand-cut, yellow-fleshed fries.

So every forkful contained the winning combination of tastes.  I especially enjoyed how the sweetness of the peas, offset the saltiness of the gravy and sautéed veggies.

D followed the lead of The Frenchman and selected the “Montreal”.  Get this: shaved Montreal smoked meat, kosher dill pickle slices and a squeeze of yellow mustard.  I thought that it sounded yucky but D absolutely loved it.

He described it as very unique and said that all the flavours together tasted like a smoked meat sandwich, the likes of which we’ve savoured at the world-famous Schwartz’s Deli in Montreal.

I predict that Smoke’s will do very well in Transcona with their meal in a box.  D’s family once lived in Tcon and they are a hard-working community who love their meat and potatoes.  Thanks for the invite Smoke’s.

Kath’s quote: “Vive La Poutine Libre!”-unknown

Love-that is all.

Huh? I was recently asked to create a cupcake recipe for the Be Well Blog that would match my personality.  This is harder to do than you might imagine.  At first I put forth the idea that I was a tomato soup cupcake because:

• I am very practical and there is always affordable and convenient tomato soup in every bodies’ cupboard.
• I prefer “savoury” over “sweet” and the spicy tastes of this recipe suit me just fine.
• I prefer hearty cream cheese icings over light and sweet ones, loving the pungency of the cream cheese.
• I am old school.
• The recipe has been passed down from my Mom (with modifications).
• Tomatoes, raisins, cloves and cinnamon are all super foods with many known health benefits. I love to provide foods for my family that are a tasty treat and nutritional at the same time.

Turns out that there was another cupcake that suited me much better.  Do you think that I would be?:

The Peacekeeper: You are straightforward, honest, and give the best advice. You would rather avoid conflict, but are always there to referee and keep the peace. You like the simple things in life, but that doesn’t mean that you are boring. Sometimes you go crazy and choose chocolate. (It’s ok. We won’t tell.)

or

The Archivist: You are down-to-earth, welcoming, and grateful for every single day. You love celebrating with your extended family and friends and are just a little on the nostalgic side. You save everything and are considered the unofficial family archivist.

I think that both sound like me, which means that I would be a cross between a Classic Yellow Buttermilk cupcake and a Pumpkin one with Spicy Cream Cheese icing.

In the end, it was a no-brainer:

The Lover: You are a classic romantic and a lover of love itself. For those that are on the receiving end of your affection, every day is Valentine’s. Your passion for life is as big as your heart, which, it just so happens, you wear on your sleeve. You are surprising, but dependable, and infinitely lovable. You give the best hugs.

The challenge to develop the perfect Red Velvet Cupcake was a lengthy one and I tested a batch a day for about a week.  Some were a luxurious red but tasted too much like beets and others were absolutely delicious but were to chocolaty to qualify as red velvet.  But good things come with perseverance and I am sure that you will find my recipe on the Bell Well blog site absolutely scrumpdillyicious (if I do say so myself).

Kath’s quote: “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”-George Bernard Shaw

Love-that is all.

In the weeks and months ahead, I have a new journey to share with you.  It is the story of family wedding preparations.  A joyful but sometimes stressful time in a family’s life and so I thought that perhaps following our odyssey may help you when the time comes to create your own special event whether it be a wedding, an anniversary or a milestone birthday celebration.  We are a family who loves to celebrate and we are pretty darned good at it as this story may indicate.

“The Frenchman” has been a part of our family for a number of years now but as of this Christmas (two days after Daughter #2 returned from a humanitarian trip to Israel), he has made it official and will be renamed Son#2 in the fall of 2014.  D and I are absolutely delighted, but not terribly surprised.  When he asked D to meet him for a Friday night beer, we knew something was up.  When he formally asked his future father-in-law’s permission to marry his daughter, there was not a moment’s hesitation.  In fact, D has often said, if he was to personally chose someone to cherish his baby girl, he could not select a person more suitable than The Frenchman.

Would it be considered ethnic profiling to say that The Frenchman is very romantic? He thoughtfully selected the location and moment of the proposal and then requested that our niece who is a professional photographer be hiding to be able to capture the exact moment.   Now it turns out that Daughter #2 was seriously jet-lagged and turned down his request to go out for dinner with him on his first attempt.  Unfortunately, messages got crossed with the photographer and she ended up hiding at the decided location to no avail (what a trooper)!

Daughter #2 never got to go out for dinner on the designated night.  Once she said “yes” there was a whirlwind of car rides to let her family share in their good news in person.  One of the first stops was to visit my mom in Deer Lodge Hospital (what a good girl).  It just so happened that Sister #2 and #3 were there as well as well as her cousin who now lives in Australia, so it was a happy mix of laughter and tears.  I happened to be at a women’s networking event with many of my old media friends when all of a sudden the couple was there.  My girlfriends sent up cheerful screams when they knew what had just transpired.

D and my first thoughts were of the Frenchman’s parents and we wanted to see them face to face as we talked about the news.  Since the poor couple never did get to eat that evening, D picked up a mass of sushi (our first thoughts are almost always of food when we are celebrating) and connected his tablet to the TV so that we could Skype with our daughter’s future parents.  D had a bottle of champagne chilling and we were able to raise our glasses as a new family, via the wonders of technology.  As I write this and see all of D’s preparations that evening, I see that I married a pretty romantic guy too.  The Frenchman has big shoes to fill in the romance department…..

Kath’s quote:  “I dreamed of a wedding of elaborate elegance, a church filled with family and friends. I asked him what kind of a wedding he wished for, he said one that would make me his wife.”

Love-that is all.

As you may know, I am three weeks into my new year’s “kick yourself in the pants” eating plan and everything is going well.  I am wearing my size 6 Petite dresspants today which only seldom fit.  I do like the feel and shape of them (in addition to the fact that I almost always wear black pants) so I sometimes pin them when the button doesn’t close and then wear something loose and flowy over top to create an illusion.  Have you acquired some of these dressing tricks too?

I have lots of energy and enthusiasm for life and I love spending time in the kitchen using ingredients that have been on my pantry shelves for eons.  As reported last post, some of my dishes have been tremendous hits and others, well not so much.  But in my commitment to be totally transparent in this walk, I will share them all.

My first success and fav snack is baked broccoli (believe it or not).  Your peel the stocks like this.

Chop it all up.

Throw it in a zip loc with lots of chopped garlic, 2 T of canola oil, lots of cracked pepper and a pinch of sea salt.  Shake it all about and place on a heavy baking sheet.  Roast at 375 degrees for 30 minutes-oh yea!

I also made a version of Bonnie Stern’s Chicken Jambalaya.

I added a wee bit of spicy Italian sausage that I had pierced, parboiled, washed and drained and cooked the brown rice separately to decrease the carbs.  Instead I added some corn because I am crazy for the combination of savoury and sweet.  Shrimp is actually high in cholesterol (who knew?) so I did not include any.

I even got myself all psyched up to make a bean burger which I served on freshly baked whole wheat buns.

The result was declared a hit by other members of our gang, but I could only have a couple of bites before my tummy started protesting.  I know how good beans are and I want to conquer my prejudice, so I just keep trying.

I made these two pizzas utilizing whole wheat crusts.  The one on the left is Potato and Bacon.  The baby potatoes are multi coloured and have been parboiled (they were left overs from this weekend).  The bacon was pre-cooked, rinsed with piping hot water and then blotted dry.  The same went with the sausage of the Spicy Italian Sausage and Red Pepper one on the right.  The secret ingredient is that I pulversized a half can of dark red kidney beans and their juice and threw them into my tomato sauce made from 1 chopped onion, chopped garlic and lots of basil.  I sautéed the veggies with the beans and did not have to add any fat.  I find that when you put the toppings on top of the cheese, you can get away with using far less cheese.  The results were delicious, if I do say so myself and a single piece was perfectly satisfying (I am typically a 3 piece gal).

But the piece de resistance are these cookies that I am still fine tuning.  Made with honey & molasses they contain oatmeal which is known to lower cholesterol and flax which is claimed to lower high blood pressure.  They also contain dark chocolate chips, coconut and roasted walnuts.  But best of all-they are absolutely delicious.  I tried increasing the flax but the second batch was slightly less sensational.

Kath’s quote: “Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.”-Robert Redford

Love-that is all.