My Weeknight Out at the Lobby on York

Every now and then it is nice to be spoiled rotten, isn't it? Ahhh.....yes.....spoiled rotten. You see, a few weeks ago I received an offer that was just too darned good to pass up. So of course, I said yes! I don't know too many people who would pass up a night out with a group of fun loving people for dinner at the Lobby on York. I simply cannot think of a better way to spend a Tuesday evening! So here I sit, watching some baseball and reminiscing about the fun, food, and wine at the Lobby on York.

I must admit to not going to the downtown area all too often these days but once upon a time when I first started dating Hubby, he lived in the building across York street from where The Lobby on York is located and to be quite honest, the location was a little on the seedy side. Opened in May of 2009, The Lobby has such a nice warm glow that it gives off the perfect vibe for a nice slow meal with friends and loved ones.  It has definitely been fixed up, looks completely different, and serves up some modern grub in a gentle, warmly lit environment.

It was a quiet evening in this cozy restaurant and lounge, well it was quiet until us ladies showed up! We were greeted warmly at the front desk by general manager, Shan, and escorted to the back where they had a room set up for us. Almost as though they knew we might cause some sort of trouble. Shan gave us the low down on the Lobby, including the two different rooms they have for various sizes of gatherings.
Everything was already set up for us, including a table with the different wines we would be enjoying that night. Dinning room manager, Karl, got the wine flowing right away for us, with a nice light Riesling from Loosen Brothers. I am going to leave the wine comments up to Sarah as she actually knows what she is talking about in that department, all I know is that it went down smoothly. Once all the ladies (Trina, Shel, Rebecca, Susie, Sarah, and myself) showed up and we got settled, Karl hopped to it! Before we knew it we had 7 appetizers and 3 different wines in front of us.

We were treated to the following scintillating appetizers:

Albacore tuna tartare served with avocado, sesame, chili aioli, cilantro, and these delectable little homemade ripple chips. I have never tried a tuna tartare before and this was fabulous! I would order this again.

Sliced beef & crostini: smoked tenderloin served on a Guinness mustard with horseradish cream, Parmesan, and fresh arugula. An overly strong smoky flavour on the beef but it goes so well with the horseradish cream that is cut the smokiness.

Village Bay oysters served with lemon and a red wine mignonette. (These gems are from Canadian waters.) These oysters were salty and fresh. The mignonette paired so well they went down smoothly. I could have have a few more of these guys.

Tomato salad served with blue cheese, baby greens, spiced nuts, pickled onion, and a smoked buttermilk dressing. Fresh, crisp, tasty....need I say more?

Korean beef short ribs done in a ponzu marinade with sesame, cilantro, and a house made red chili sauce similar to Sriarcha, but better. Another one of my favourites.

Chopped salad consisting of crisp romaine, corn, onion, cucumber, olive, radish, and feta finished with an oregano cream dressing. Another great combination of crisp, fresh veggies.

Duck quesadilla made with pulled duck, a Brie and cheddar mix with sesame, bell peppers served with spicy mayo. Served as a roll cut into sections, a complete taste sensation.

Three wines where chosen to be served with our appetizers. To be honest, I just smiled and nodded when Karl explained the wine related details. My only question was 'Karl, is there alcohol in that wine? Then pour please.' It all tasted fabulous and that is really what matters to me.

While the 6 ladies chatted, laughed, and made a lot of noise, our selection of entrees was being carefully prepared by head chef Jesse.

For our entrees we were treated to a fabulous selection of food:

Peppercorn New York strip loin served with a pink peppercorn sauce, scallion mashed potato and seasonal vegetable. (Beef at the Lobby comes from High River Alberta, not local, but still Canadian.) The steak was well cooked but I am not a huge fan of too many peppercorns. If you love pepper, then this is for you.

Portobello rib steak served with a marinated portobello mushroom and truffle butter on scallion mashed potato and seasonal vegetable. My favourite entree of the night.

Australian rack of lamb with a tamarind mint sauce. I know lamb is best served rare but this was a bit too rare for my liking. Taste wise however, it was quite good.

Ricotta Gnocchi with a red pepper pesto, walnuts, mushrooms, asparagus, brocollini, and fresh arugula. A nice vegetarian option.

Seafood trio which turns out to be prawns, scallops, and a 1/2 lobster tail served on lemon risotto. I don't eat a lot of seafood but this not only was pretty to look at, it was pretty to eat as well.

Local pickerel served on saffron couscous, marinated tomato, and herb pesto topped with crispy Serrano ham. I am a fan of pickerel and this fish swam well with all the rest of this dish.

Alaskan lingcod served on wild mushroom risotto, truffle butter, and shaved asparagus. This was a new fish to me. It was a meaty filet but the most memorable part of this dish was the risotto. A nice combination.

Three different wines were carefully selected to go with our entrees and yet again, the wines went well with the food.

Karl was a good man and even brought out a few desserts to try:

I am fairly new to the restaurant review game but if you are looking for a night out with great food but don't want the same old boring food, this is the place to go. Be prepared to spend a little extra money but it will be worth your while and your taste buds will thank you.


The quick and easy:

Lobby not only has their dinner menu, they also offer up a fabulous lounge menu and a lunch menu!

Lounge offerings run from about 8$ for sides to 16$ for appetizers or a burger, and the steaks start at 24$

The lounge at the Lobby has some fabulous deals during the week which include:
   - Thursday's buck a shuck oysters and 8$ drinks.  Now don't go ordering a ton of oysters for 1$ each and drink water. Have a drink or two. The bartenders will fix you something nice.
    -Friday in the lounge you can get a 5 oz glass of wine for 5$ or a 9 oz glass for 9$ (or how about the bottle for 25$)
     -Jets nights will find the lounge offering shots for 3.50 and appetizer 2 for 20$ (not signature appies though)

 The lunch menu runs from about 6$ for the soup up to  about 16$ and cover a wide range of salad, sandwiches, and seafood offerings.

Dinner offerings are more expensive but have plenty to offer. Starters are in the 10 to 15$ range. Entree offerings will run from 24$ to 39$ with side dishes starting at 8$.

A funny thing happens when you dine out with food bloggers; Everyone HAS to take photos of all the food before we eat. Not only that, everyone feels the need to live tweet the event as well thus sending my phone into a tizzy of notifications. At least when dining with fellow bloggers, no one complains about everyone having their phones out. We all understand each other.

Thank you so much Lobby for putting up with us!!!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Please note that while the Lobby generously provided us with all the food and drinks during our night out, it had no bearing on my opinions regarding quality and taste.

CSA Week 1

Yesterday Hubby picked up our first basket of goodies from our wonderful community supported agriculture program with Almost Urban.  We were so excited when we got the email telling us of our first pick up. As it is early in the growing season, and we have had large amounts of rain, our first basket is mainly leafy greens that will pump up our mason jar salads.

Some radishes and salad turnips were in there as were mixed greens with edible flowers,

lovage, chard, spring onions, garlic scapes, a bouquet of flowers, dill,

A bag of micro greens (Sunflowers)

and a bar of soap!

We know as the growing progresses we will get more and more wonderful goodies in our basket.  For now our salads have some extra fresh & local flavour and we get to try some things we haven't had before (such as edible flowers and lovage....)

We are so looking forward to getting new things each week this summer!

In other news: CTV Morning Live has invited me back to their show! Next week (July 29) I will be discussing Canada Day inspired edibles for your celebrations!! I am so excited!!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!

Mason Jar Salad- End of the Week

I survived grade 8 camp!!! There were wood ticks (too many to count), whiny kids, fun activities, kids who didn't sleep, and all sorts of strangeness. I even conquered the zip line! I have photos of that but since the harness is in no way shape or form flattering, I refuse to show them but I did it!  I am still catching up on sleep though. I hope to be all caught up by Monday! Unfortunately I did not bring any mason jar salads with me to camp (I really should have).  Fortunately Hubby made salads to get him through the week. He reports that the salads did indeed remain fresh and tasty the whole week. We are going to keep trying these out with some different combinations.

Friday's supper was a super simple tomato basil pasta using a recipe from Jamie Oliver's book "Jamie's Food Revolution". I sort of followed the recipe, making only a few adjustments to use up some things in my fridge.

While at the Red River General Store the other week, we picked up some locally made pasta. We chose a sun dried tomato fettuccine pasta. (If you haven't been, the Red River General Store is all about local, fresh products and lots of antiques! We bought asparagus from a farm in Thompson, MB, wild rice from Northern Manitoba, maple syrup from Mcreary, and Pasta From Steinbach, Manitoba!!! We pretty much covered 4 corners of the province in just one stop)

Okay, back to the recipe. (Sorry about that)

 Classic Tomato Spaghetti (page 43 in Jamie's Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver)
Printable recipe here

2 cloves garlic (I used 3)
1 red or green chile (I used dried because that's what I had)
 a small bunch of fresh basil (from the garden)
1 pound dried spaghetti (Or any noodle you'd like)
olive oil
1 can diced tomato (recipe said 14 oz, but I used a 28 oz can)
sea salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese (I had fresh mozzarella but no parm so I used that instead)

Peel and thinly slice the garlic and the chile (if using fresh). This is also a good time to wash and dry the basil.

Get the water for the past boiling and salted and get a skillet over medium heat. Drop the pasta in the water and then add 2 tbsp of olive oil to the skillet.  Add the garlic and chile to the oil and stir things up.  Once the garlic begins to brown, add most of the basil leaves and the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper.
As soon as the pasta is cooked, drain it and transfer to the skillet and stir it all up.

At this point I added some spinach to the pasta and some torn up fresh mozzarella (Because why not?).

Slice up the rest of the basil and top it off.

Let me tell you, rave reviews on this one.  The pasta had such a fabulous consistency.  I couldn't really taste the sun dried tomato but the pasta itself was fabulous. I will be buying it again.

I did manage to plant my celery that I had in my window sill.

Some other news in the Little Kitchen: Tuesday we pick up our first week's worth of fresh farm produce from our CSA. We joined a community supported agriculture program for the summer and are excited to see what we get this week.

In the mean time, I'm gonna go make some more jar salads!!

Until next time, stay dry and eat well!!!

Only On The Prairie: Perogi Soup

We have been hitting record highs with the weather here lately and it has been absolutely fabulous! Even with the side serving of spring allergies popping up!

Have you ever tried Perogi soup? Have your ever heard of Perogi soup? That's okay if you haven't because there are many prairie dwellars that haven't tried it or heard of it either.  The fine folks (James, Sharmelle, and Alain) over at Fozen Comfort in North Winnipeg have made this soup a standard in my kitchen.  I have also tried their turkey soup and it is also fabulous!  I do need to get back there and try out some of their other tasty looking items!

Perogi soup is basically a creamy potato soup with chunks of perogi, bacon, and green onions in it.  Quality does indeed make a difference here...not only is the soup tasty, the perogi pieces are great tasting and no one is going to argue with bacon being added! If you love potatoe soup, you will love perogi soup!

Frozen Comfort is a new store in West Kildonon that makes and sells frozen foods.  They proudly cook up their foods fresh and without extra preservative and flash freeze it in store.  Soups come frozen in generous bowl sized (and shaped) portions wich make for easy heating!

The soups can be heated in either the microwave or on the stove and taste fantastic!

Frozen foods isn't their only market.  They make lunches to go, they cater, make their own ice cream, sell gluten free and diabetic friendly items....the list goes on!

If you happen to be in the West Kildonan area, make sure you pop by as they are open until 7pm on weeknights which is perfect for picking up something on your home for dinner!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!

A Trip to the Farmers' Market

Hi, my name is Lori and I am addicted to Farmers' Markets....whew....that is a load off!  Hubby knows me a little too well so Saturday morning when he was still snoozing, the words "No worries, I can go to Lac du Bonnet by myself" got him out of bed and dressed so fast, you'd never know it was before 9:00am!  Apparently I am not to be trusted at the farmers' market alone. Even a small scale one such as the Lac du Bonnet market. I tend to get over excited, spend more money than I should on things we don't need.....I like having a 3kg tub of honey to use for baking!!  Now I wonder what would happen if I attempted the St. Norbert Farmers' Market....

 
Produce is finally starting to pop up at the local farmers' markets and I couldn't be happier!  While my garden is doing fairly well, especially the tomato plants which have become too heavy for the cages, I don't have room to plant everything I wanted. On the same note, not everything I planted is thriving.  Luckily we have some amazing markets to help pick up the slack!

Last weekend, the only thing I really wanted from the market was some local honey as I was all out! I found a vendor selling honey and honey products (YES!) They didn't have the 3kg buckets yet but I am happy with my 1kg jar of unpasteurized honey!! ($7.50).  We also purchased a small jar of habanero pepper jelly.  This stuff is sweet with a big kick!

This sounds like the makings of a marinade.....hmmmmm.  I have since used this on both a whole chicken and on chicken pieces!!





Habanero Honey Dijon Marinade

Equal amounts of:

• runny honey
• habanero pepper jelly
• Dijon mustard
• olive oil

So if you use 1 tbsp each of everything, you will have a 1/4 cup of marinade

Mix in a pinch of salt and pepper.

Pour it all into a zip top bag, add your meat (I used chicken for this one and I had no zip top bags so I mixed it in a bowl!)

Pop it into the fridge to rest for at least 4 hours or overnight.
(Alternatively, you can rub this all over a whole chicken and pop it into the oven to roast....make sure to get some of this goodness under the skin as well)

Chicken pieces doused in this marinade grill up perfectly on the BBQ!

Some more sights of the the Lac du Bonnet Farmers' market

Pickles, relishes, mustard....

More fantastic honey products!

Tree saplings

Of course the Car B Cue was there!

 Until next time, stay warm and eat well!

Bready or Not, Here's Some Rye Bread

Every time I wander down the baking aisle at the grocery store, I eye up the types of flour I would really like to try.  I pick up a package, look it over, and put it back on the shelf.  Saturday was the day I finally broke down and bought the rye flour to test out. I mean being a prairie dweller, I should at least make the attempt at making rye bread, right??

For those who may not know, this region of the prairies is renowned for rye bread...there is even 'Winnipeg Rye bread'!! The lovely bakers at KUB bread do have it down to a science.  One of the things people who move away from Winnipeg constantly ask visitors to bring them is KUB rye bread!!

The package of flour I bought had a bread recipe right on the back so I figured I would just try this one out tonight.  Of course, I had to play around a little with the recipe so I made two batches tonight.  The first batch, I swapped out some of the white flour for whole wheat.  These loaves were a bit heavier, chewy, but still oh so tasty.  I added some vital wheat gluten to both batches, just because I have some kicking around so I wanted to use it.

Rogers Basic Rye Bread

• 2 1/4 cups warm water
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp yeast
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used Canola oil)
• 1 tbsp salt (I did use a little less than this)
• 1 tbsp caraway seeds (optional, I didn't have any so I didn't use them)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 3 cups dark rye flour
• 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I made one batch with 1/2 of this amount as whole wheat flour)
• 4 tbsp vital wheat gluten (not in the original recipe but it adds protein and some elasticity)

In the bowl of a stand mixer mix the warm water, honey, and yeast.  Let this mixture get all foamy and ready for bready.

Add the caraway seeds, oil, salt, and lemon juice and mix.  Then add the dark rye flour and beat on low speed with the dough hook for about 2 minutes, making sure all of the flour is is moist.    

Now add enough of the all purpose flour and the vital wheat gluten to make a soft dough.  Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and knead for about 5 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.  (you can do this with the dough hook but this works out soooo much stress....)

Form the dough into a ball and place it in a greased bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and allow to rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Punch the ginormous dough ball down and form it into 2 balls.

Cover and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Roll each ball into a long, rounded loaf.

 

Place it on a lined baking sheet.

Use a sharp knife make about 4 shallow diagonal slashes across the top of each loaf.

Cover with a clean tea towel and allow to rise until double in bulk, about 1/2 to a full hour.

 

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes at 375F until baked and brown.

Moved baked loaves to a wire rack to cool.

 

Slice and enjoy! 

Now these loaves turned out incredibly tasty with a nice chewy texture.  It toasted great and went so well with peanut butter. I will definitely make these again, especially since I have the flour!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!