The Yum Yum Factor

It's New Year's Eve and so this is the last soup of the year! I make turkey scotch broth after every christmas turkey and I might change a small thing or two but this is my family's favourite turkey soup so I don't like to mess with it too much. Some years I will keep a bit of broth and set it aside for a nice little pot of sopa de lima later on but it has become custom to make this every year. Scotch broth is a traditional Scottish soup that is typically made with lamb or even beef but we like it with turkey because it's a much milder flavoured soup and we all really love turkey. Well, I like lamb but Shack doesn't because he is a bad, bad scottishish person.

photo by Shack We like to take a family trip somewhere at Christmas instead of buying each other tons of gifts. We have done the Mayan Riviera of Mexico the last two years (I HATE that term but it seems to be what it is called now so that is what I will call it) and, although we love it there, we wanted to go somewhere else. We had San Francisco, Austin Texas and New Orleans on the short list but we had spent Xmas in New Orleans pre kid and our good friends, The Neighbours, had never been and were dying to go. Even the kid is okay with this set up and was given a choice between an iPad and a trip to New Orleans and he chose New Orleans, which made us all very happy because I would have been a bit sad leaving him home alone with his new iPad while his parents galavanted around New Orleans without him. Unfortunately, Little Shack came down with a fever on Thursday, Dec. 16 and we were leaving on Dec. 19 but this did not have us worried since he had never ran a fever for longer th...

Yesterday, my son told me that he had eaten a meringue from the bakery near his school and that he had really enjoyed it. I asked him if he would like to make some the next day, seeing that the next day was a Sunday and I needed to get started on my christmas baking. There was no reason not to add some nice little meringues to my baking repertoire, I actually have cream of tartar in the cupboard and he seemed exited about the prospect of making them. I read about a hundred recipes for meringues and finally settled on the recipe we will use and while I am searching, I get the brilliant idea to make a pavlova for my christmas dinner dessert. I love pavlova and it's one of those things that most people have never had and assume that it is some sort of rare, exotic dish that takes days of preparation and hours of sweat and tears. They never need to know that making a pavlova is basically dessert making for dummies. It's all good in the shack household and we go to bed, exited a...

But it's also christmas eve and I have a houseful of people coming over in a couple of hours AND we just got back from a nice little trip to New Orleans so that means there is a boat load of cheese and pate and olives and delicious apps and copious amounts of wine but there is no soup today. I have some puff pastry pinwheels with caramelized onions, sundried tomato pesto and gryure resting in the freezer, some pesto chicken and bocaccini waiting to be scooped into warm little toasty cups and polenta that will be baked and topped with a spicy black pepper jelly, blue cheese and a bit of arugula waiting to be assembled. I will share my recipes and pictures in a couple of days after I finish eating and making merry.  I can't wait to sit down and dish about my New Orleans trip and all of the stuff we did and the food we ate but first, we must do this thing! Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, happy whatever religious holiday might happen to fall at this time of year and  happ...

Tom Kha Gai  For a Sick Young Guy Today's post will be short and sweet. Yesterday I was called to school to pick up Little Shack, who was not feeling well but had insisted on going to school. He didn't want to miss the christmas party but by the time I got there he was lying on the couch with a blanket over him while his classmates made merry all around him. Poor bugger was burning up and is even worse today so it's actually a perfect day for some nourishing, delicious soup. I was planning to make something else but I changed my mind. Today's soup is only about comfort food. Something that will tempt him to eat, something nutritious and filling enough but light at the same time.  Tom Kha Gai Soup is so simple to make. It doesn't really require a recipe, per say, just a list of ingredients: about 5 cups of chicken stock 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts lemon grass garlic kaffir lime leaves your choice of vegetables a can of coconut milk ...

It's christmas and that means baking your fool head off, no? And everybody expects something a little different from those of us who talk of nothing but food day in and day out. They want chocolate chip cookies from their grandmother but they want matcha shortbread made with North western Tibetan goat butter and a dusting of freeze dried truffle pig snouts from their foodie friends. I have been wracking my brain to come up with one last sweet thing to put in my christmas goodie boxes. I have a cakey, ginger molasses cookie, meringues, chocolate pecan toffee and lime meltaways. I felt like I needed something really chocolately and really chewy. Brownies were a consideration for a while but that wasn't quite what I was looking for so I kept searching through cooking blogs, knowing that when I saw the perfect recipe, I would know it just like a bride at Kleinfeld's just knows that they just slipped into THE dress. You know what? That is exactly what happened.  This is my Say...

My son came home from school last Friday and said that his classmate had bought a meringue from the bakery and let him taste it. He could not stop talking about how delicious it was soI asked him if he would like to make some and he was thrilled. Like his mother, he is so easily thrilled.  I have never made meringue cookies but I do make pavlova, in fact I am planning to make a pavlova for christmas dinner, so this would be a nice little dry run. Honestly, I have always assumed that I would hate meringues on their own and have thought that it's all that whipped cream soaking into a pavlova that makes the meringue all marshmallowy and chewy inside. They just look so dry and cardboard like and the odd meringue I have tasted over the years have not thrilled me at all. Nonetheless, I promised him that we could make some on Sunday. I did my usual due diligence and read 500 recipes. I searched tastespotting, Cook's Illustrated, flipped through some cookbooks and decided to make ...

s I have to be honest. I really, really wanted to make sopa de lima today. Jen, from Piccante Dolce, was kind enough to bring me along with her this week to a dinner put on by the Mexican Tourism Board at Frida, a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Toronto. UNESCO has recognized Mexican cuisine's cultural heritage and added it to the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity . How cool is that? We got to dine on multiple courses, all representing different UNESCO recognized sites throughout Mexico. It was a very special experience for me because Mexico is a country of my heart - sorry, I know that sounds incredibly cheesy, but it's true. I have travelled quite a bit there over the last 20 years or so and have an incredible affinity for it's culture and it's food. I am going to wait for Jen to write about it and then I will link you to her post and I will chime in with my thoughts at that time.  Okay, back to soup. Shack loves French Onion Soup and I am kind o...

Yesterday was a very, very exciting day in my life. Yesterday, Shack came home with  the meat grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid!!  Oh happy day! I have been starting to really get skeeved out by the thought of buying pre ground meats from the grocery store and realistically, I can't always get out to the actual butcher to buy a pound of ground beef or pork or chicken for a quick weeknight dinner. I have been coveting this forever and Christmas is still weeks away! What to make? Well, considering that he also brought home a pound of beef to grind up last night and that would have to used up, I decided to  make swedish meatballs. I have never made them and have only eaten proper swedish meatballs a time or two but Little Shack eats them at school and says that he loves them. I went out this morning and bought about 1/2 lb. of stew pork and literally ran home and threw it in this bad boy! How awesome is that? I could weep with joy. I am so easy to please you kno...

Tomorrow is my son's turn to provide snack, which we all know means that it is MY turn to provide snack. Last month I made tatziki and brought that in with pita so this month I wanted to bake something. I like to keep them guessing and messing with their little heads by switching it up drastically. I don't want to be that mom who "always brings in cheese and crackers". I knew that I wanted to make something apple. Apple oatmeal was my original thought but then I stumbled upon this recipe for whole wheat apple muffins at smitten kitchen  and decided on making these instead: Whole Wheat Apple Muffins Adapted from King Arthur Flour These dark, crazy moist muffins will keep well for several days, and the brown sugar on top, should you not skimp on it like I did, adds a crunchy touch, perfect for those of you who know that the lid is the best part. Yield: They said 12, I got 18 1 cup (4 ounces) whole wheat flour 1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon b...

This week I had a hankering for white bean, kale and sausage soup. I had two sausages in the freezer that I wanted to use up and since I THOUGHT that they were pork and fennel, it would be so perfect for that kind of a soup and all I needed to do was pick up some kale. Since I was making a pretty hearty soup, it would be heavy enough to serve for supper with a fresh loaf of bread so I also made an pesto bread using my olive oil bread dough from  Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking . I came home with my kale, I prepped all of my ingredients, i put the two, defrosted sausages in a cast iron pan and put them in the oven to roast and made my soup. The last ingredient to go in would be the cooked sausages that I would slice into discs. I don't like crumbled up sausage meat in my soup, I like disks of cooked sausage. If you like crumbled up sausage meat in your soup, knock yourself out and just remove the casings and fry them in the ...