The Yum Yum Factor

It's an Ugly Sweater Party!

It was mid December and we realized that we had nothing happening for an entire week. Sadly, The Kid didn't want to miss any school (WHO IS THIS PERSON??) so Shack and I booked our trip late Friday night and flew to NYC early Sunday morning. No time to plan or overthink. We landed to find ourselves sweltering in our winter coats. The first thing we did was check into our hotel and ditch the coats and set off to explore the city in nothing more than long sleeves two weeks before Christmas Day. We spent the entire day wandering midtown, making our way towards Central Park where we rented bikes and rode through it, again WITHOUT COATS, until the sun set. Dinner consisted of a couple stops in Little Italy for meatballs and pasta and then a third place for espresso and dessert. Even late at night, the weather was balmy and perfect for exploring the magical wonderland that is New York at Christmas without having to brave the cold and snow.  Perfection. We spent a d...

As we all know, we are knee deep into holiday baking season and I wanted to make all new cookies this year and I get sick of making lime meltaways and gingersnaps year after year, even if that disappoints some of my people. I had great success with   Chai Tea Cookies , Cardamom Quince Layer Cookies  and Chocolate Dipped Gingery Pecan Shortbread and wanted one last cookie to round things out. I guess it's because my kid is no longer little that I am gravitating towards more grown up flavours and away from just sweet and easy. After a wine fueled pinning frenzy, I found these cookies on Rock Recipes and couldn't get them out of my mind. The basic cookie dough looked great but I detest chocolate mint chips with a white hot passion. Actually, I only like fresh mint and have never found any sort of food item that contains any sort of mint extract that I would want to eat. I also really prefer chocolate to anything else so I used his basic cookie recipe and then changed it to s...

Not into making a huge turkey dinner this year but still want all the flavours and kind of feel like you had turkey dinner? This blast from the past was posted on my other blog, NoReEats back in 2011  and it's something I make when we are craving turkey dinner at other times of the year. Making a huge turkey for just the three of us is kind of ridiculous even though if we could, we would have a big turkey dinner once a  month all year round. If you think about it, I should have had five more kids just to justify more turkey  but it's too late now. I have to make do with this tasty turkey meatloaf and one, measly kid. I alway freeze some turkey stock after christmas and thanksgiving dinner so I use that to make this but chicken gravy works fine in a pinch. I think you can buy turkey stock from Kitchen Basics if you really want to use turkey broth and don't have any handy.  Just make sure you use all the same herbs and spices that you would use in your stuffin...

I have been searching for this recipe for days, knowing that I made them and that I wanted to make them again. I have not lost my mind, it just seems that this ten year old recipe was supposed to auto publish and it never did lol! So, here you are, a tasty cookie recipe from the past. Chocolate Dipped Gingery Pecan  Shortbread 1 cup flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup butter, room temp 1/3 cup sugar 1/2 cup raw pecans, coarsely chopped 1 tsp vanilla approx 100 grams dark chocolate (I used 70%) 2 tbls butter another 1/4 to 1/3 cup pecans, more finely chopped than the first 1/2 cup 2 tbls finely chopped crystallized ginger 1/2 tsp fleur de sel or some other coarse finishing salt Preheat the oven to 325F Whisk the flour, baking powder in salt together in a bowl and set aside. Cream your butter and sugar together with the paddle attachment until nice and creamy - I like to do this for a good five minutes, scraping down the sides as needed. Add the vani...

For the last couple of years, I have been in charge of making dessert for The Neighbour's annual Xmas dinner. They throw a big dinner party for out of town friends and their in town sister with other people added to the guest list each year. We are fortunate enough to be included because it is always an impressive feast and tons of fun. Every guest gets a stocking filled with homemade cookies and a beautiful, hand painted ornament. Last year I made two desserts because it is always a crowd of at least 11 or 12 people but they were both a lot of work and both required slicing and plating and felt too formal for this type of gathering.  This year I wanted to make one dessert that would be substantial enough to feed a big crowd, easy to serve and not require pretty plating. Since this is basically three desserts in one, big bowl and requires nothing more than a big spoon and a shallow bowl, it fit the bill. At first, I was going to just make my Rum and Eggnog Tres Leche...

I am going to be very honest with you right now. The Great Blogger Cookie Swap was happening and the deadline for shipping was only days away. I had assumed, this whole time, that I was going to make cardamom/rosewater palmiers and had planned to make them at the very last minute to ensure their freshness upon delivery. As the time approached, I started panicking. What if they got lost in the mail? What if the Canada Post truck fell down a sink hole? What if my recipients opened their package only to find stale, horrible palmier train wreck cookies that would bring shame upon all of our houses??? Instead, I made the Cardamom Quince Layer Cookies that went out to the three bloggers who were assigned to me. These are really good but very strongly flavoured and when they are warm, out of the oven, they are incredibly cardamomish and after eating one like that, I had a mild breakdown. THEY WERE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO SEND TO OTHER FOOD BLOGGERS FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING OH HOLY NIGHT! ...

From the time I can really remember until I grew into my late teens and my grown siblings and their young families gathered on Christmas Eve to open presents, eat, drink and be merry. I was the youngest of five so by the time I was about 7 or 8, my older siblings were getting married and moving out on their own and so it was a great treat to have them all back together for the evening, I got to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and I was still young enough to be spoiled rotten. Starting in mid December, my mom always put out the same little cut glass bowl of minty candies and nuts in their shells with a nutcracker in every bowl. She would get a big gift box of turtles, which she would proceed to eat over the next day and a half until she would literally make herself sick and then swear them off for another year, just to do it all over again the next Christmas day.  We ate exactly the same turkey dinner every single year, the same pies for dessert with nothi...