The Yum Yum Factor

age dashi tofu at Nakayoshi Izakaya This was another light week and I am sure my body is thanking me for that. I was sick all weekend so apart from water, tea and handfuls of potato chips, my sustenance of choice when I have any type of flu like ailment, I abstained entirely. I am sure The Kid ate something here and there but I can't even remember anything apart from hearing ramblings of ramen and sprite. Nakayoshi Izakaya I finally broke my fast with a bowl of spicy miso ramen from Nakayoshi Izakaya on Danforth. Shack and I have both driven by this place a thousand times but, for some reason, I just assumed it wasn't going to be any good. The sushi places in the Greek area of the Danforth tend to be pretty pedestrian, all you can eat places so I guess I thought this would be the same but with noodles. Illness will make you desperate though and I wasn't up to a drive to Markham or downtown so we popped in to check it out. Only two other tables were occup...

As part of my continuing experimentation with this whole  blend and extend  thing, I have discovered another recipe that is improved by the addition of mushrooms. The mushrooms release liquid that keeps the filling from drying out and it really does make your meat go a lot farther.  I managed to make 7 burritos using only 300 grams of beef and because this filling doesn't have to hold it's shape like a meatball, I think that you could even up the mushroom to beef ratio in this recipe without any trouble. I am going to try it half and half next and will report my findings. If anyone tries it first, please let me know how it went in the comments. As August comes to a close, I start to panic about the lunch sitch with The Kid and I am suddenly obsessed with the need to stock the freezer with lunch items. It's like a foodie mom's non pregnant nesting or something and I can't stop until I know that I have enough food for at least three lunches/dinners a week for S...

a week that begins with a magical wedding weekend in cottage country and ends with a trip to the market is a good week indeed We attended our second wedding this summer on Saturday in cottage country and had a really great dinner while we were there. I am not going to lie, I don't usually expect much from any sort of wedding meal and I joked that I had checked off the beef option because I was holding out for a steak. Imagine my delight when I saw that the beef option was, indeed, a perfectly grilled, medium rare steak!

ipad photo shot in hipstamatic and edited in PS Express Long, long ago in a faraway time I had to lug around an extra backpack just for my camera, my travel books, my walkman - SHUT UP I KNOW THAT DATES ME, reading material and the various gadgets I would need when I set out to see the world on my dinosaur. Happily, those days are long gone because now I just do a bit of work getting my trusty iphone up to speed, throw that and my ipad mini (you don't even need the ipad but it's really handy for photo storage, magazines and photo editing for my old, bifocal wearing eyeballs) into my purse and I am out the door. Between those two items I have a library of reading material, a million travel books, currency converter, maps, gps, camera and darkroom, a phone, a computer, a travel agent, a translator and personal DJ. thanks to my iphone, I can travel overseas for 10 days with only this fashionable child's carry on and a purse Word of warning: This list is very iph...

brunch at The County Cocktail Saturday was the first day of the Pan American Food Festival so I didn't want to eat anything heavy for breakfast or lunch. I had a night of eating tamales ahead of me and I had to keep my game stomach on so I passed on going to The Wren. I love the Wren, as you all know, but all of the dishes are pretty heavy and I generally make that my meal of the day when I brunch there so I talked the boys into trying someplace new.

Oh, it's all blend and extend all the time in this house right now. Last week, I finally got around to trying this method of adding ground mushrooms to ground beef in order to make your meat go farther and add a serving of vegetable to dishes while you are at it. The result were these  Jamaican Patty Pops  and I have to tell you, I was actually kind of amazed at how much the addition of the mushrooms worked as far as texture and and keeping the meat moist was concerned. I spent the rest of the week perfecting these Middle Eastern Inspired MeatBalls, which had been my runner up idea for the appetizer challenge until I got it right. These little meatballs are also great on their own and made a nice little dinner served with a  dollop  of  tzatziki, a greek salad and a chunk of bread. If you are lucky to live near a store that sells middle eastern groceries, you can find the preserved lemons, pickled turnip and sumac there and some larger grocery ch...

About once a year I toy with the idea of making homemade Jamaican beef patties after having one too many stale, microwaved corner store patties. I get all fired up, spend hours reading recipes but then I start thinking about having to find beef rennet for the dough and all of that work and muse to myself "since I have to get on the subway anyway to go find this beef rennet, why not just drop by Bathurst station and buy myself a delectable beef patty and skip all that work?" and that is usually what I do. One bite of that hot, juicy meat pie and all thoughts of beef rennet fly away. Have you ever had the patties at the Bathurst Subway Station??? Honestly. So, there is a bit of a contest going on over at the Food Bloggers of Canada  and I am not one to resist a contest. Mushrooms Canada and Ontario Beef have teamed up to promote their new concept, Blend and Extend. The idea is that you replace some of the ground beef with finely chopped mushrooms in your favourite reci...

The groom's ride                                                                                                               Photo:Shack Our week started off with a bang when we attended a Guyanese Hindu wedding in Brampton on Saturday. Now, I have been to an East Indian Hindu wedding and although it was a three day affair, the actual wedding ceremony only took about an hour and was followed by a dinner and a reception so I assumed this would be similar. At this wedding,  guests were free to leave the ceremony and wander over to the food tent whenever they felt a bit peckish with  people lining up to fill their plates with delicious vegetarian dishes, sitting at the tables to eat and then returning...

It's Throwback Thursday so let's repost this No ReEats gem from September 25 back in 2011: Sept 22     half price apps at a pub Sept 23     BBQ beef from the freezer on homemade rolls with coleslaw Sept 24     impromptu road trip to Niagara and Buffalo, late lunch at The Anchor bar Sept 25     Grilled Strip Loins with Chimichurri Compound Butter We have been eating out a ton because Shack is finally done his movie and has been making it home in time to eat and he wants to go out all the time, so we have been out and about and not eating at home a ton. This Sunday was a beautiful, warm, sunny September day and seeing that we have barely used the bbq all summer, I demanded that we stay home and grill. He has been jonesing for steak and baked potatoes but I wanted to do something a little special. I LOVE chimichurri but thought it might be fun to make a compound butter using all the ingredients but substituting butter for the olive oil a...

I ate nothing but I took The Kid to see Queen and that was THE highlight of my week, so there  Busy, busy week again starting with Queen at the ACC on Monday. Shack surprised The Kid and I with amazing seats for the concert because he knows that my son and I share a deep and abiding love for Queen. Let's face it, although they both still play with the energy and stamina of 25 year olds, Brian May and Roger Taylor are closer to 70 than 60 and this could be the last time they play together like this.  Adam Lambert was born to sing this music and did a fine job of standing in for Freddie Mercury but the thrill, for me, was to breathe the same airspace as Brian May, one of the most important guitarists in rock history, in my humble opinion. We laughed, I cried, we sang and all was right with the world.