The Yum Yum Factor

It's time for soup again but this mild weather is making it difficult to want to even want soups and stews. It would appear that winter is passing us by this year so even though I feel like should be bbqing and planting herbs in my shorts, it is January and a soup must be made. I did a squash pear soup that nobody liked but me a while back so I thought I would try again with a more savoury version and this time I would add a bit of bacon because bacon makes everything more delicious. I am determined to get The Kid to eat squash soup if it kills me.

I have been invited to attend the S.Pellegrino  Almost Famous Chef competition in Toronto taking place on January 30th at the Calphalon Culinary Centre . The winner of this contest will go on to compete against the  nine winners from all of the other regions in the final contest in Napa, California. Thanks to their generosity, I am also doing my first Give Away. I feel very official and respectable! I went last year as a guest of Jen from Piccante Dolce , who generously offered to drag me along for one of my first event as a food blogger. I wrote about it in  February and was just so thrilled to be there, tasting all of the great food and watching the competition. I got to tour the amazing Calphalon kitchen while the contestants raced to finish their dishes for the judging and tried not to get in anyone's way while I snapped away with trusty iPhone. I was kind of hoping that one of these shiny pans would fall into my purse by mistake, but it was not happening. I ...

There has been a big batch of turkey stock that came from my New Year's Day turkey sitting in my freezer, begging to be turned into something but I didn't want to make the same turkey barley soup I always make. I also didn't want to make sopa de lima again and was throwing around ideas like turkey fois gras lemon grass bisque or a nice turkey goulash with sea urchin croutons when realized that maybe I should just make a nice, simple soup like an old fashioned chicken noodle or chicken rice type of soup. I added a can of plum tomatoes, some red rice as well as basmati and ended up with something really hearty and homey. The tomatoes turned it into something that reminded me of the  soup my mom always made so how that be a bad thing? Actually, I will admit now that the beloved soup that my mom made was her "doctored up" Lipton's chicken noodle soup. In addition to broken up spaghetti and frozen corn, she always added a big squirt of ketchup  - I KNOW, I K...

I have been wanting to check out Leslie Jones for ages but we always seem to go elsewhere. I don't know why because I have only heard great things about it, it's small and looks lovely and I understand that there is a really fabulous patio out back. Regardless, we constantly overlook it when we are going out so I was exited when a friend suggested the restaurant for dinner. There is no website for the restaurant but I did find a link to their menu here , if you are curious. This is when I admit that I assumed that the restaurant was named after the chef, Leslie Jones because I am an idiot. It is named Leslie Jones because it sits at 1182 Queen St East, smack dab between Leslie St and Jones Ave. It's really quite small with a nice open kitchen (and it appears that the chefs work their magic on a stove that looks exactly like the stove in my own tiny kitchen). Our waitress was attentive and suggested a nice bottle of wine that we all enjoyed. I would love to share that ...

We eat out a lot. In fact, we probably eat out far too much but I am going to try to share some of our favourite restaurants this year to try to justify it so here you have it - this is my first restaurant meal of 2012. We live in The Beaches in Toronto (or The Beach which is what The Beaches has decided to change it's name to after a billion years of being called The Beaches - whatever). I live in The Beaches. I love it here. I love being by the water, I love walking the boardwalk, I love all the stinky wet dogs, I love all the kids and the chaos, I don't even hate the tourists who flood my neighbourhood all summer and I love feeling like I live in a little beach town tucked away inside the biggest city in the country. What I don't like is the lack of restaurant choices that don't involve chicken wings, chicken wings, sushi and more chicken wings. This means if we want to stay close to home but eat real, tasty food we have to venture to either The Danforth or...

I did not give The Yum Yum Factor the attention that I would have liked to in 2011. I was so consumed with my year long no reEATS challenge that it got to the point that making sure that I made two things a week that were new, pretty enough to photograph and scheduling everything so I could photograph dinner while working, momming and taking care of everyone's life took over and there was little time for me to just cook stuff because I felt like cooking it. Now that life will go back to normal - okay, our life is never normal but back to OUR normal- I can sit back and relax and just start cooking stuff that I want to cook. I had a look back to see what post was the most popular of the year and my blueberry stripey popsicles won by a landslide. The next post that received the most views was my cauliflower soup with pecorino and truffle oil  . cauliflower soup with pecorino and truffle oil It's kind of interesting that the two most popular posts are so incredibly diff...

Mexico is still very much on my mind so I am still looking to make the things that I was looking forward to eating but didn't get to eat while I was there. Although I have eaten my fair share,  I have never actually made a tres leches cake so I thought it would be a great choice of dessert for New Year's Day dinner. We were having our MVP friends over (Most Valuable Peruvians) and I know that they have their own version of this cake so I know it will be familiar enough but I want to christmas it up a bit. We are still all about the turkey dinner and so we are having one last turkey dinner on New Year's Day.There is a full thing of eggnog leftover (the rest of it is sitting comfortably on my ass and belly right now) and so it made sense to make an eggnog tres leche so we can mix the best of all worlds in one, damp, delicious little cake. Most importantly, it will also use up the last of the eggnog and get it out of my house until next year. I decided to use this reci...