The Yum Yum Factor

I have a cooking demo coming up this weekend at Harbourfront for the Hot and Spicy Festival where will talk about Blend and Extend while serving up my Mushroom Beef Kofta . To freshen your memory, Blend and Extend is a marriage between Mushrooms Canada and Ontario Beef where you replace a portion of ground beef with ground mushrooms in your recipes. This makes your meat go farther, cuts out lots of saturated fat, adds a portion of vegetable to the dish and really just lightens up whatever you are making. Because of this, my brain is on a full on blend and extend, mushroom trajectory. Now, The Kid has been gainfully employed all summer long at Harbourfront as a nerd camp counsellor but because his bento doesn't fit in his Murse (ManPurse) that he takes to work, he has been taking a smaller lunch bag with only cold items. It has been the summer of sandwiches for the poor, young soul who has had to learn to love sandwiches in a hurry. School starts next week and school mean...

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...

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...