The Yum Yum Factor

We all love a tasty rice bowl and I absolutely depend on it as a way to use leftovers without anyone suspecting they are eating leftovers, especially when I'm left with a little bit of this and that. It's the perfect way to stretch one leftover piece of protein,  a few tbls of leftover grilled vegetable or a small bowl of shrimp to that it can feed everyone. Bibimbap, Korean for "mixed rice" is not as scary as it sounds. At it's most traditional, it is made in a hot stone bowl so that the outside of the rice forms a crunchy crust and then you mix all of the ingredients together at the table, letting the oozy egg yolk and the spicy sauce blend together and bind the dish into a gooey, comforting mess. We skip the hot stone bowl and just use sticky sushi rice and rather than a traditional raw egg, I use a sous vide poached or fried egg on top. Okay, I know that this dish has lots of elements to make it come together, but they are all pretty simple ...

Can you believe I made those with very own hands??/ I was invited to take a course, free of charge, at the Bonnie Gordon College  and if I liked it, to share my experience and since I loved it, I am sharing. When it came time to pick a class, me being me, I immediately chose the one that terrified me the most - Croissants and Brioche Yes, I was that mom. At least I was not actually in costume I am an artistic gal and I am relatively sure I could crank out some decent sugar flowers - I was pretty much the reigning queen of over the top birthday theme cakes when The Kid was little. My giant castle cake that I fashioned for his Medieval themed Jousting Tournament party took me three days to finish and I had to leave the room when it was time to let the little heathens dig into it. I pretty much know how to make decent bread and The Kid has taken over the pie making duties so that left me staring the one class that made my stomach roll over. I set off to find the school o...

This week I attended the Taste Canada Awards   to witness a parade of Canadian talent in the world of cookbook writing (with a category for best food blog as well now!)

Poor Shack. Two of the things that he loves the most are things I almost never make for him - veal parmesan and arancini. To make arancini, you need to have cold, leftover risotto but, trust me, if I am going to stand over a stove, stirring rice, for half an hour, I am not going to put it all aside to use for fried rice balls. Occasionally, I might have gone out of my way to double the recipe so that I could make these the next day but, honestly,  that often just resulted in gluttony. We were left with all of us rolling around the house, moaning and groaning, with too much food in our bellies and still not enough leftover rice. Enter my Instant Pot. Since making my first batch of risotto in the pressure cooker, I have not looked back. I was the last person who wanted to believe that you could end up with a risotto that was indistinguishable from a lovingly stirred pan of soupy rice but, here I am, making risotto in the pressure cooker all the live long day...

For the last four days, I can't eat anything but soup after a difficult molar extraction. I know you feel me. There is only so much miso soup a gal can eat before she realizes that she is about to eat her own foot and when that happens, it's time to whip up something a little more hearty. My brain wants to eat steak and potato chips but my mouth has other ideas. When I make anything with potatoes, I always like to throw in a sweet potato to make it a bit more nutritious, flavourful and to give it some beautiful colour while I'm at it. Making it in the pressure cooker makes an easy soup, even easier and we are always on board with that. When you factor in the time it takes for the soup to come to pressure, you probably are not saving a ton of time but what you can do is throw everything in the pot, set the timer and walk away, catch up on American Horror Story and not worry that the pot is boiling over or losing too much liquid. Because there is no evaporat...

So, on Monday, November 14, 2016, I will be at the Taste Canada Awards as a Taste Ambassador to see which Canadians will win recognition for their work - cookbook writers, bloggers and culinary writers compete in the Oscars of the Canadian culinary world! Out of all of these 55 incredible nominees, 22 will be awarded a Gold or Silver award in categories that span both English and French language publications. You can join me there for lots of great food, wine and rub shoulders with the who's who's of the Canadian Food Scene! If you can't join me, follow online on Twitter , Instagram and Facebook while I cover all of the excitement. Check out  www.tastecanada.org/tickets/  for tickets! Taste Canada Awards / Les Lauréats des Saveurs du Canada

Fall is starting to get a bit long in the tooth, the wind is kicking up and the nights get progressively colder. As we sadly acknowledge that BBQ season is over, our tastes start to turn to heartier fare that sticks to the ribs and fills the belly. Unlike most people I know, I didn't grow up eating mac and cheese so I was a little late to the party but I have become a bit of an expert this past year, making a number of different versions in my pressure cooker, but I know that not everyone has one so stovetop mac and cheese lets you whip up the ultimate comfort food with the ease and speed that a pressure cooker provides. One pot, baby. I am all about the one pot dinners and as we start to gear up for the hustle and bustle of the impending holiday season, we all need a few one pot show stoppers in our back pocket. When Grace hired me to come up with a recipe using a couple of their Organic coconut products , I already had a bunch of them in my pantry so I jumped at the ch...