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...

The only thing better than visiting a really nice winery is eating a fabulous lunch on a patio overlooking that really nice winery. Sadly, there are far too many really great looking wineries out there that serve underwhelming food. I want to be as wowed by my meal as I am by the wine that accompanies it and I will admit that I was not sure that my lunch at Southbrook Vineyards  was going to be able to knock my socks off but I was certainly happy to take a drive out to Niagara on the Lake and give it a try.  The winery and the vineyard are lovely and I have been there many times, perhaps to buy a bottle or ten of their delicious Framboise. I had not eaten anything here though and this visit was really about trying out their Farmer's Table menu. Starting in early June and ending on Thanksgiving weekend, the Farmer's Table @Southbrook is open from Thursday to Monday, from 11:30am to 5:00pm. Executive chef, Shawn Murphy has returned to Niagara after graduating f...

Okay, for a year I did a regular Friday thing called "it's Friday, it must be soup!" and it seemed to go over well and all that but, come on. I am not going to make a new soup every single week and I rarely make soup at all in the summer. What I DO do all the time, all year long, is eat out, search the web for great looking food and food related shiz. So, I am now going to change Friday from soup day to a recap of the top stuff that happened in food that week. This first week is a bit light because between the flooding and The Kid not feeling well for a couple of days, we didn't really eat out at all, which is NOT the norm around here. We spent last Saturday at Lailey Vineyard  , sampling their tasty wines and eating sausages grilled over their old barrels. I LOVE their vidal and a little birdie there told me that the 2013 is going to be the best in years so keep that under your hat. We all really liked their 2012 Rose  even though I ended up spilling more of i...

My son's school runs a  summer camp for kids who wouldn't otherwise have the chance to go to camp at all. We both volunteer our time at the camp and I am also on the fundraising committee. This year, it fell upon me to come up with the "signature drink" for our annual fundraising extravaganza which also happens to be tonight. I was going to do a strawberry rhubarb mojito but we realized that this was going to be too much work to make 50 or 60 of them and have them be able to sit out and still be tasty so my thoughts turned to something sangria like. I love the idea of sangria but I also love bubbles so I started looking for a sangria with prosecco and found this great recipe on If You Can Make That You Can Make This  . We were supposed to get together and let the committee taste a couple of different drinks and choose their favourite but we just couldn't get all together in time. At one point the only two of us who could make it considered testing it ourselv...