Anyone Still Out There?

I know I haven't bothered to update in a long time. I'm a horrible blogger. A large part of it is that I've been working evenings six days a week for the last two months and that really cuts down on the amount that I cook. It's sad. Also, Jody's camera is currently dead and we can't find the battery charger so we're short on pictures as well.

But last night I pulled out my piece of crap Canon and we made Guinness cheese soup. The recipe here is a little bit misleading in that it claims the recipe serves four people. I cut the thing in half and that would easily serve four. I mean really... three quarts of soup for four people? Maybe if they don't want to walk, talk or move for two hours...

Guinness. Meal in a can. Really almost a stew in itself. Best served cold with a spoon.


Cheese. In this case, aged cheddar from the insanely tasty Forfar Cheese Factory in Ontario. My parents were kind enough to bring some back for me when they went for a family wedding.

The whole thing starts off with butter. Quite a bit of butter. And some onion.


Now, I didn't saute the onion as long as I probably should have. Looking back I should have let it go longer to get some nice brown colour and flavour. But I didn't. The soup didn't really suffer as a result.


To the artery clogging pool of butter we add an equally large amount of flour and cook that for a few minutes to make a nice roux. This will make the soup thicken up nicely and prevent the butter from turning it into a horrible oil slick.

This is where my picture taking gets a little bit shoddy. I blame three things for this. The first is that I was cooking. The second is that the recipe only uses half a cup of Guinness, leaving me to finish off the rest of the can.

This is the third. I bought this wine at the Kensington Wine Market last week because they had a big sale on and the label was funny. It was also fairly cheap. Thankfully it was also tasty and I didn't buy the "You Are What You Drink" bag the lady at the counter suggested. Also, please try to ignore the funny hair growth on my face. It's a work in progress and doesn't look as silly in person as it does in this picture. Honest.

But enough about my suspect wine purchasing. Once the roux is cooked a bit we added vegetable stock, beer, half and half (in place of the heavy cream), salt and dry mustard. All of this simmered for about forty minutes to thicken and to allow Jody and I to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Once I was happy with the texture of the soup (or impatient enough...) the cheese went in and continued to cook for another ten minutes or so. Spooned happily into bowls and served with cheese buns it was a nice comforting meal.

I swear I'll try to get posts up more regularly. Sunday night cooking is about all that we get around to these days but hopefully I can get around to a Monday post. Or maybe I'll find a new job and actually cook more than twice a week.

We've Been Eating... I Swear

I just haven't gotten around to posting anything in a while. After a bit of chastising (I'm looking at you Rachel...) I've finally gotten around to posting a few of the pictures we've taken.

Roasted Pepper and Goat Cheese Dip

Recipe Here

Now, I don't have a lot of pictures of this for some reason. Probably because Jody was busy making salad and she takes most of the pictures.


The two grey looking things were actually purple peppers before they went in the oven. For some reason all the purple just disappeared. The other one is just a regular red pepper from the Farmer's Market. The sour cream was replaced with plain yogurt because that's what I had sitting around. I had some herbed goat cheese left over and it was delicious. Unfortunately, the peppers were really mild so it ended up tasting mostly like a goat cheese dip. This isn't really a problem for me.

Here's the final product being judged by my parents' cat Sasha. I think she approved. Not that it really mattered.

Also pictured is the delicious tomato salad that Jody made for us. While we were at the Farmer's Market we found the cutest tomatoes ever. Zebra tomatoes.

That's some adorable produce right there. Add some mini bocconcini, a bit of olive oil and some of the awesome balsamic vinegar my parents brought from Italy and you get...

An amazing salad. The tomatoes were a little on the firm side. They weren't under ripe. Just put up a little more resistance than your average Safeway tomato. But my god were they ever tasty.

Last Night

After a short trip to Edmonton I wasn't feeling like cooking a lot so we decided to bring back a favourite meal. The wine and cheese lunch. Well, supper in this case...

Springbank Cheese provided all of the cheese and the crackers for tonight's meal. I personally prefer Paddy's in Edmonton because they'll cut you wedges to order but the selection at Springbank is just as good and they aren't three hours away.

On the menu tonight:
- Red Dragon (Cheddar with ale and mustard seeds)
- Monterey jack with jalepeno
- Bonaparte triple cream brie
- rosemary almond cranberry crackers
- whole wheat French bread
- apple and pepper slices
- Pelee Island Winery's pinot grigio

Some pictures:

This is my favourite knife (a Christmas present from Jody) and one of my favourite cheeses (the Red Dragon). However, the knife is completely useless for cutting cheese. May have to invest in a proper cheese knife some day.

Jody described this as "A brie the size of your head!"

Weshy decided he had to observe everything I did. He also decided he had to sample the cheese and had to be kicked off the counter several times.


This is the final layout.
My quick attempt at a visually pleasing presentation.

And bread. Not pictured is the olive oil and balsamic vinegar we were using to dip the bread.

I can not stress how good the brie was on those crackers. It's like the almighty cheese gods set out to perfect a pairing for our supper. I will be having that for snacks until I run out of cheese.

Tonight I'm making risotto. So look for pictures from that in another month or so.

A Few Old Things. And Something New

Jody pointed out that there are a bunch of pictures on the camera of various things we've made over the last while that haven't been posted yet. So she thought it would be a good idea to put them up tonight. I'm getting this started but she's probably going to end up writing up a bit of the entry later. Right now she's playing Wii Fit.

This is our second (or possibly third... I don't remember) attempt at using the Poach Pods. We've figured out how to use them and haven't overcooked an egg since the first time around. Here they are with some smashed avocado, a slice of tomato and some toasted English muffins. This may well be my new favorite breakfast. Or my new favorite supper.

Here they are with salsa verde. It's seriously heaven on a plate.

Switching spots now. Daniel is playing Wii Fit now and is currently doing warrior pose in his underwear. Last week we had discussed the need to make tasty sangria soon. So while I was at work he looked up some recipes and found equally yummy sounding recipes for white and red wine. So he made both.

The red had plums, cherries, oranges and limes. The white had raspberries, peaches, lemons and limes. It is really easy to consume two bottles of wine in this form. I'm trying to remember what we were doing on sangria night. I think we may have spent hours playing this. I'm sorry if you end up addicted. Well... not really.

During the last week we also came up with a fish curry. Some peppers, onions, red curry paste, veggie broth and a bit of coconut milk went into the mix. We added in some fish near the end and ate the result with some focaccia. And the teeny bit of sangria that remained.

This was also the first time we had used lemongrass. Daniel bought it on a whim and didn't actually have any idea what to do with it. So he started chopping up the big woody stalk into rounds and was about to dump them in before I stopped him. I mean... it's like chunks of stick. So we cut some bigger chunks and bruised them before throwing them in to add some flavour. Reading up on it later, we discovered that you can finely chop and use the inner bits but that's not really what was Daniel was doing. Now refered to as the epic lemongrass failure.


Daniel again. That's my lemograss failure. The less said about it the better. Moving on to tonight.


Speaking of things that shouldn't be talked about... Jody thought this was a good idea. I thought it was a good idea to indulge her. Yes, she runs the place.

Tonight is lasagna night. So less scrawny Asian kid, more Italian cooking! Everyone wins!

Here's a bowl full of pasta sauce and canned tomatoes. This will be providing the liquid and general redness so common in lasagna.

This is a different bowl containing ricotta and romano cheese, sauteed onions and garlic and a handful of random shredded cheese from the fridge. It will be providing pretty much everything else in the dish.

Except the noodles.

While we're waiting for the oven to heat Jody enjoys a bit of a drink. The tea pot is full of creme caramel black tea.

My glass is full of red wine. One of us is a lush, the other is less so. Can you guess which is which? The answer may surprise you.

Assembly begins.

Into a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes! Well... that's what the package of noodles said. Turns out it's full of nothing but lies and falsehoods. We ended up having it in there for about an hour. Which is fine. We updated this and played Wii Fit.


Jody seems to think things turned out well. And she was right. Man this stuff was good. I'm so full and happy.

This is my first plate. I had two. The second one was larger. Seriously. Full.

In other news, I love cheese.

Daniel Cooks Asian Food!

So here we are, back for another exciting installment of me talking about food. On the menu tonight... stirfry! I love stirfry. It's easy to make, bordering on idiot-proof. It's also fast and tasty which is good because I'm kind of lazy and like things that taste good. And now, on with the show.


We start off with onions. Which go into a bowl so they're off the cutting board.


Red peppers come next and get a similar insert-into-bowl treatment.


In the mean time, frozen scallops and shrimp are sitting in the sink thawing out.


This picture really has nothing to do with food. It's just a picture of my shirt. I'm not really sure why Jody took it but she did and it gives me a chance to once again remind you all that you're bad people for not listening to enough Jawbreaker. Okay, I'm done. Back to the good stuff.


Zucchini comes next. Chop, bowl, etc. Seeing a pattern here at all?


Ginger was peeled and grated (I find it way easier than chopping) and garlic was smashed and hacked up. With all the prep done it's time to cook!




Exciting stirfry action shots!! Sort of... A little bit of oil in the pan and on to the heat. Vegetables go in and fry for a few minutes until tender. Garlic and ginger go in for another minute or two. Finally it's noodle time.



The noodles we had came in a vacuum sealed bag and were precooked. They're tasty, cheap and quick to use. The only problem is that they come out of the bag in a pretty solid mass and you have to smack them around a bit to get them to break up.

This stuff was awesome. Normally I just use soy sauce and some hoisin or oyster sauce for stirfry but we bought this a while ago and hadn't tried it. I don't normally like mushroom anything that much. I know, I know, I'm a horrible freak. Blah, blah. But this stuff really doesn't taste like mushroom at all. It tastes a lot like miso with a little bit of kick. Highly recommended.



I did go ahead and add a little bit of hoisin sauce just because I really like it.


Seafood, now nicely thawed, goes in and cooks away.

Tossed some snow peas in at the last minute and just let them warm up a bit.


And here are a couple with the lid off so you can see. Please try to ignore the rest of the mess...

Jody's bowl. Thank goodness she has some presentation skills because god knows I don't. I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes make ugly food. Really tasty... just not the most visually appealing.

And here I am enjoying the fruits (or vegetables I suppose) of my labours. 24 Hour Revenge Therapy? More like... 24 minute... food... therapy... oh god... I'm done.