The Yum Yum Factor

Last night was Food Share's 6th annual Recipe for Change  at the St Lawrence Market and boy, was it a great night. 30 local chefs, a couple of breweries, some wine, amazing silent auctions and the chance to eat your face off for the greater good. Someone tweeted something like "eat the change that you want to be" in regards to this event, which made me jealous because I didn't think of it first. I will write about the event and about all of the amazing things that Food Share does for the city, as well as telling you all of the ways that you can still contribute, either with your time or your money or both.

Okay, so I am just starting to embark on this Sous Vide adventure and I am going to take you along for the ride. I promise to be honest, to share my colossal failures as well as my successes and to spare you the expense, frustration and heartache that goes hand in hand with learning any new cooking technique. Because I love, I will do that for you.

So, it's done. Another year, another batch of exciting lentil recipes for the contest over at Canadian Lentils. This year I deep fried them, I roasted them, I turned them into caramel and praline in my attempts to not hide the lentils, but to whip them into submission, force them to break out of their little lentil rut and celebrate them.  All in all, I am pretty exited about all three recipes and encourage you guys to try them out and see how delicious a lentil can be.

I love the way the crispy black beluga lentils mimic caviar  This is it. This is my final entry for the  Lentil Recipe Revelations Challenge  and I think it's a doozer. I had made some of this beluga lentil za'atar at the beginning of my recipe development phase and although I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, I knew they would make an appearance. They are perfect when you want to add a bit of crunch to something and the addition of the za'atar turns the lentils into an actual condiment. I have been sprinkling them on food and eating them straight out of the container for weeks now while I munch and I think. I munch and I think. What to do with these brilliant little black pearls? I found a beet dip in the cookbook, Jerusalem and fell madly in love with it, making variations of it all the time. How you can not fall in love with anything this delicious that is also so bright and colourful? For this appetizer, I used less yogurt so that it is thicker-...

 There is a Family Bites Baby on the way! Jan, from Family Bites is having a boy - her third, so here's a little something blue for the festivities. As a group of bloggers, we are scattered across the country so the reality of throwing a proper baby shower where we all sit in a circle on wooden, folding chairs, drink too much white wine and wrap the expectant mommy up in toilet paper are slim to none but that can't stop us from throwing a virtual shower, can it? When I looked over the list of treats that the other 16 bloggers were making, I realized that it was almost entirely a sugar fest and although I understand that most people would be thrilled with nothing but desserts, I am the weirdo who doesn't really have a big sweet tooth. Where other people go nuts over chocolate, I get all fired up about tiny, crustless tuna sandwiches on white bread and Aunt June's famous devilled eggs. It's not a shower until there is a fancy, little savoury something some...

mine didn't come with the extra roll or the jar sealer but yours will Oh Food Saver, sucker of the evil air that causes my food to get freezer burn and go stale, how do I love thee? I have been coveting some sort of vacuum system for years but my fear of adding another large appliance to my teeny kitchen coupled with so many different systems on the market has meant that I just never actually commit to buying one. Instead, I convinced myself that my home made method of sucking air out of a tiny corner of unzipped ziplock bag with a straw was sufficient, even if it meant have to swallow tiny particles of cookie dust, soup and raw bacon fumes. My current obsession with getting a sous vide immersion device has put the food vaccum system back on the front burner and lo and behold, the universe heard my whining and an email landed in my inbox asking me if I would be interested in trying out a Food Saver 2-in-1 Vacuum Sealing System . Why, HELL YES! Yes I would love to try ou...

look at how green that falafel is ..... beautiful Last week I was all about La Cubana, visiting twice in a ten day period which is a pretty big deal for me. I don't venture out the far reaches of the west end just to eat all that often, especially considering that my second visit was on an especially frigid day by transit. La Cubana Chorizo Empanada So, how did this past week start? With a THIRD visit to La Cubana with friends on Sunday night for dinner. My previous two visits were both for lunch for this was my first dinner visit. Although it was great to have some nice wine with my meal, my only complaint is that it is really, really bright and retains that diner feeling which is not always what I want in the evening. During the day, it is bright and cheery and full of sunlight if you sit at the front but there is a bit of a cafeteria feel to it after dark. Now, all that said, the food is so great that I will give it a pass (although I would be more apt to go f...

One of the perks of this gig is that I often get the opportunity to try out all kind of products and  I make it a point to only accept things I already like or am already interested in trying. When I was asked to do something with some  Tre Stelle cheese  I wasn't about to turn that down, especially with a brand like Tre Stelle, that is a Canadian staple and a product line I already use all the time. Their extra smooth ricotta is almost always in my fridge. I guess I could just eat some and tell you what I think about it but that's not really how I roll, is it? Ever since enjoying my annual bowl of French Onion Soup from La Papillion after their Souper Bowl fundraiser, I have been craving more ooey, gooey Swiss cheese. As always, there are constantly disjointed ideas festering around in my brain that don't always make sense for ages until that magic moment where it all comes together, usually at the most inconvenient times. This time, I was lying in bed, just a...

As the proud owner of a new FoodSaver vacuum sealer  (my review will be up soon), I have spent the last week playing around with it and sucking the air out of everything in my path. I had used the zip lock bags, the jar sealer, sealed up potato chip bags, and made a custom bag to marinate some flank steak in as well as using another one to freeze some soup. The only thing left to do with it was to take the quick marinator out for a spin and, as luck would have it, my door on my mini freezer in my basement was left ajar overnight and so a rack of pork side ribs was almost completely thawed out and I had to use them asap. That decision was made for me, ribs it would be. I was fancying some sort of miso flavoured meat so I whipped up this marinade, threw the meat and the marinade in the marinator container and let the machine work it's magic. I would usually leave these ribs in the fridge overnight but, to be honest, my fridge is almost always packed and I hate having to ...

Okay, this week was kind of overwhelming with what feels like non stop cooking, eating out, recipe testing and great new stuff to try out so get ready for a loaded post.

Like any normal human being, I love caramel corn. I also love my roasted lentils AND I love gochujang, that magic, sticky, sweet, spicy Korean hot pepper paste. I bought my first tub of gochujang in a mall called K-Town so, naturally, I am calling this confection "K Corn". Props to my Korean grocery store peeps who are responsible for igniting my love affair with Korean food. This candied popcorn is sweet, it's spicy and it's crunchy, thanks to crispy roasted french lentils and nutty sesame seeds. I had to hide this stuff just so I could have enough to photograph because both of my guys wouldn't stop wandering into the kitchen to sneak handfuls of this caramel corn all night. This is the only snack you will ever need again. It took me a few tries to get the caramel just right but using the base recipe from The Kitchn  as my foundation, it finally all came together. You can find gochujang  at any Korean or Japanese grocery store as well as most general ...