The Yum Yum Factor

Spring is in the air and a young girl's thoughts turn to....... Wine Poached Pears with Vanilla Whipped Yogurt. Okay, pears are not in season here until late summer, I know, but they are still easy to find in the grocery store. As the weather gets warmer, I want lighter treats. My winter pies and molten chocolate things start to feel too heavy and I just want fruity, lighter desserts. Poaching pears in wine (you can totally do this with white wine too but you won't get the fabulous colour) I also really love the tang you get with whipped yogurt - there's enough cream in there to ensure that it's still rich and decadent, don't worry. I also love that this dessert looks incredibly fancy but is so easy to make. You can make the pears a day in advance and store them in the fridge with the poaching liquid and then just bring them to room temperature while you reduce the poaching liquid until it's syrupy. Wine Poached Pears with Vanilla Whipped Yogur...

I am really pissed off at this weather. It is just barely mid September and it is freezing outside. This is Toronto. We should be having a lovely, long, hot September, not a cold, windy, overcast September and I am about to just quit. I am not sure what I am quitting exactly, but I quit. The only good thing about this stupid weather is the fact that it felt like the right time to make an apple crisp. I got all exited about doing something new, maybe adding some chunks of dark chocolate with some crunchy nuts or something and made the mistake of musing out loud so that Shack got wind of my plans. I swear to god, this guy is turning into his father over night. Suddenly, there is only ONE way to eat apple crisp, three ways to eat pasta and the only thing I am allowed to add to homemade ice cream are either raspberries or strawberries.  I said to him "you do realize that I am a food blogger, right? I won't have much to write about if I can only make apple crisp with c...

Last summer I had the most incredible squash pear soup with blue cheese and I have been craving it ever since. I had a squash to do a soup with this week and I was going back and forth between replicating the pear squash soup or doing something spicy with coconut and curry paste and , in the end, I chose to try out a pear soup. I found lots of great looking soups for inspiration and I finally settled on this soup from The Pastry Affair as my base but I switched out the apples and juice for pear, I added some pancetta and thyme and to cut the sweetness, I added just a bit of curry powder. I find curry has this ability to add a new depth of flavour with actually making the food taste like curry and I find I use a pinch of it here and there all the time. On it's own it's quite sweet but once you add the greek yogurt and the blue cheese, the sweetness sits in the background and lets the stinky socks and the sour tang of the yogurt play down. One of The Neighbour's lo...