Quinoa Salad is Berry-licious!

                                                                                 

I really have no excuse for not posting too regularly except for the fact that I have been enjoying some much needed alone time.  How is this you ask? For one, I am on holidays from work until September.  Two, Hubby has been working during the day, as per usual. Three, the Boy is on a fantastic Me to We adventure in Ecuador building a school, playing games with kids, and having a blast. (He's a keeper!)

Not to brag too much, but I have been sleeping in, watching Netflix, and hanging out in the garden.  Nothing too exciting but seems to be just what I needed.  That being said, many apologies if I haven't kept in touch. I must also admit to spending a good amount of time browsing Pinterest.  I love seeing the ideas and thing people come up with and sometimes it inspires my own thought processes.

I found some salads featuring quinoa and berries.  The dressings didn't seem to appeal to me so I figured honey and lime always go well with berries and boom....there you have it. 

Berry Quinoa Salad with Honey Lime Dressing

4 cups mixed berries 

    - I used a mixture of blueberries, cherries, raspberries, and strawberries

1/2 cup un cooked quinoa

1 cup water

Slivered almonds, toast almonds in a dry pan until slightly golden and allow to cool.

Honey lime dressing

1/4 cup lime juice

2 tbsp honey

3 tbsp oil (use a neutral tasting oil such as canola)

Pinch of salt

Combine the quinoa and water in a pot.  Bring to a boil, slap a lid on it, reduce the temperature to low and set the timer for 15 minutes.  When the timer dings, take it off the heat, fluff it with a fork and set it aside to cool.

Wash and dry the berries, cut up the strawberries, pit and halve the cherries, and put it all to the side.

Combine the dressing ingredients in a jar and shake it until everything is combined. Give the dressing a taste to see if it needs more honey, or lime, or salt.

Once the quinoa is cooled, combine it with the berries, almonds, and the dressing. Chill until serving time.

This salad was divine....Hubby gave it rave reviews!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Supper Central: Meal Assembly 101

Oh my, have things been busy around here.  The Boy graduated high school!!  There was convocation, a dinner and a dance, a limo full of teenagers.... Now that graduation things are over, we had to get the Boy registered for University classes in the fall!  By the way, he earned himself an entrance scholarship!  The last of our excitement is underway as way as well:  the Boy leaves for his Me to We trip to Ecuador!  Wow!

 A while back I had the opportunity to check out Supper Central.  They had teamed up with the Manitoba Chicken Producers to sponsor a meal prep gathering. I had heard about this place but had never been. Supper central is a dinner assembly kitchen. You order your meals, set a day and time to go in, and rotate through the statio stations assembling meals. Here's the neat part: they do all the prep AND the clean up! What's not to love? At the end of the evening you leave with your meals, each one neatly packed in a big zip top bag complete with meat, grain or pasta, and veggie.

Packing your meal couldn't be easier. Rice and pasta are pre measured into baggies, meats are already portioned out into another baggie....seriously.  All you need to do is follow the recipe instructions they provide to add marinade ingredients to the meat, smoosh it up, reseal it and put it into the larger zip top bag.  Now grab your grain or pasta, toss that in, and assemble your last part.  On this meal that was the mango salsa.  In another meal, it was grabbing a Baggie of frozen green beans and adding honey and soy.

As you assemble your meals you can adjust seasonings to your family's liking, we like spicy so I added extra spices accordingly. Supper Central will also provide you with a handy prep card with instructions on how to prepare your meal.

Meals come together quickly and easily. For a busy family or couple, this is a fabulous dinner option.  The chicken and mango salsa were tasty and came together quickly with a quick grill of the chicken, boil the rice and thaw the mango salsa. Everyone in the house enjoyed it.  We got 5 chicken breast with the 'full size' meal. The pieces were quite smaller than I would normally buy when grocery shopping but if you are feeding smaller kids, they are a good size. If you are feeding a giant teen boy, there most likely want be leftovers.

The Quick and Easy:

I am in love with the concept of supper central and will most likely make use of them during busy times. They are organized, clean, and they do the work for you.  The meals are tasty and well thought out as well.

Supper Central is allergy aware with nut free stations, gluten free options and the like.  

They have plenty of single meals pre frozen to store in your freezer and which are great options for singles or people who aren't able to cook.

Supper Central offers a packing service where they will assemble your meals and all you need to do is to pick them up.

If their meals seem pricey, think about the time component. All the chopping and cleaning pins done for you. You just show up and assemble.

Definitely worth checking out.

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Please note that I assembled 2 meals at Supper Central which were generously provided to those in attendance by Manitoba Chicken Producers. Thank you for the opportunity to try out meal assembly. 

Late Breakfast or Early Lunch?

Breakfast this morning Lunch this afternoon was another super simple meal. (It is my summer vacay so sometimes brekkie happens at lunch...) I cooked 2 eggs over easy and served them on a bed of farm fresh kale and a side of multi grain rye toast.  It was simple, easy, and didn't heat the kitchen up.

I must admit that I have never really tried kale. It is always used as decoration and I never really thought about eating it.  We tried making the kale chips last week, but no one liked them. As a matter of fact, it almost deterred us from trying the kale again. A friend mentioned using a dehydrator instead so I will have to look into that. I think next time it needs a side of fruit but I did enjoy the kale on it's own with the runny egg yolks.

Until next time, stay warm cool and eat well.

Bacon, Pasta, and Power

Tonight was one of those nights I actually got some time to myself after work. I must admit it is a bit of a strange feeling.  The Boy is at school until 6:30 for driver's ed, Hubby has a class, and there was no rehearsal for the school production due to a meeting (that I didn't have to attend)!! What to do with that time??? I thought about having a nap but didn't think I would wake up until tomorrow morning. Instead I wandered over the the IGA by my house to browse the shelves and get some ingredients for dinner.  I had a recipe in the back of my head and had a quasi-mental list...okay, I confess, I checked a recipe in my new Jamie Oliver cook book and knew what I wanted to make.

The original inspiration for tonight's dinner was "mini shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce". Such a long title but it was an easy peasy recipe and has bacon in it! Once I got to the store, I discovered that IGA didn't have fresh mint and things just got worse from there.  As I was at the dairy case, the power went out.  It did kind of throw me for a loop. It wasn't dark as it was actually still light out and there are windows but it still caused me to forget to grab some frozen peas and double check what I was getting as all the interact machines were down!

So I walked home from the powerless store to my powerless house and put my groceries away in my powerless fridge. With no power to cook supper, run the Internet, or heat the house I bundled up and walked over to my friend Marie's house.  We drank some beer so it wouldn't go bad....and she has three fabulous dogs that took turns sitting with me to keep me warm!!

The original recipe can be found on page 52 of Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Food Revolution and calls for:

• 10 slices smoked bacon
• a small bunch of mint
• salt and pepper
• 1 lb mini shell pasta
• olive oil
• a pat of butter
• 2 cups frozen peas
• 2 tbsp creme fraiche or heavy cream
• 1 lemon
• 6 ounces Parmesan cheese

As some of you may know, I have issues following rules recipes so many times the recipe I start with is very different from what I actually cook.  I do like to use the recipes as a base idea and then add my own flair. The pasta dish I served up tonight included:
Printable recipe

• 1/2 lb bacon, cut into small pieces
• basil
• salt and pepper
• rotini pasta
• 1 cup frozen peas (dug in the freezer and found some)
• 2 tbsp half and half
• 1/2 lemon
• 2 cloves garlic (because hey, it's garlic)
• 1 cup chopped tomatoes in juice (I had some left over from the other day. I blitzed them with a hand blender first)
• sauteed mushrooms and asparagus (these were left over from last night's dinner. They had been sauteed in garlic and were fan-freaking-tastic)
• Parmesan cheese (I actually had some leftover from making the chicken fingers last week! It was about 1/2 a cup)

Put a pot of water on to boil, heat a skillet, and chop the bacon.

Saute the bacon until it is crisp. Drain the fat (or at least some of it).  Add the peas, mushrooms, and asparagus.  Also grate on a micro plane or use a press to add in the 2 cloves of garlic.  This is also a great place to add in a couple grinds of pepper.

To the pot of boiling water, add a hefty pinch of salt and plunk in the pasta.  Cook according to package directions.
Pour the tomatoes into the skillet along with some pinches of basil.  Let this boil down until the pasta is half cooked.

Add 2 tbsp of half and half to the skillet and stir.

Remove the pasta from the water and add it to the skillet.  Mix it all together and add the squeezings of half a lemon and the Parmesan cheese.

Serve with salad or veggies.

This dish received fabulous reviews from the boys and heated up nicely for Hubby when he got back from his class tonight.

 


Devour!

FYI, the power did go back on just before 6pm, after 2 hours.  Apparently the hydro company had to shut off the power so they could fix a hydro pole fire issue. 

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Dreaming of sunny weather and blue waters...

The Tastiest, Easiest Fudgey Pumpkin Cookies Ever and an Epic Battle

Gratuitous fudgey pumpkin cookie shot....something to look forward to....

The Nephew slept over Saturday night so I got to spend my birthday with my 3 favourite guys....Hubby, the Boy, and the Nephew! We watched a movie, watched the nephew get over tired from going to 2 other birthday celebrations, and had a massive Nerf dart gun battle. You know you are in trouble when you see this:

Or this.....

The poor little guy, because of the cast, he needed help loading gun for EVERY shot! It still didn't stop him from chasing the Boy into the bathroom and cornering him in the tub though!

Darts were flying everywhere!!

Eventually though, snacks were needed....energy was needed to keep up the battle.....

And to keep everyone happy!

A happy Nephew and his pirate loot!

The moment I saw these, I knew I had to make them.  I have made them twice now.  Since Sunday.  It is only Tuesday.  Hubby did take some to work and I did some to my mother in law's for supper last night. Cleo Coyle not only writes the Coffee House Mysteries, she manages to whip up some very tasty treats!  Cleo did a guest post on Dying for Chocolate and that post introduced me to Chocolate Fudge Pumpkin Cookies.  You only need a few items from the pantry to make these.

A box of devil's food cake mix, a can of pumpkin, vanilla, and chocolate chips!!!  For the glaze, all you need is butter, water, pumpkin pie spice, orange colouring, vanilla, and icing sugar. Seriously.....go to the dying for chocolate link, get the recipe, and make these....then go to the Coffee House Mysteries link and check things out.

Mix the mix, pumpkin, and vanilla

Keep mixing....it will come together

Add the chocolate chips

Scoop and bake

Make the glaze

Drizzle with Glaze

Seriously, make these cookies.....I dare you!!

Make sure to check out the blog hop for Melt in you Mouth Monday over at Make Ahead Meals!!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!

We Be Grillin'

The fall weather is just so lovely right now we want to get every last bit of BBQ time in that we possibly can.  Tonight we grilled pizzas! I  made up a batch of pizza dough, the boys prepped the toppings, then out to the yard we went or our grilled pizza party!  You can either make your own dough or use store bought, it is up to you.  Get some help slicing up your favourite fixings, get everyone stretching their own dough and topping their own pizza and you get a whole lot of fun, with everyone pitching in!

Grilled pizza party

The boy works on his pizza

Pizza dough of your choice
toppings of your choice
pizza sauce of your choice
garlic oil
oil
pizza peel or non melting cutting board
tongs

Pre heat the grill, scrape clean, and oil up the grates.

Stretch out the dough into small pizza shapes....the fun here is stretching out your own dough, and making any shape the dough will go.

Brush some oil on to the dough and slap it on the grill.

no worries if some pizzas are funny shapes...it all tastes great!

Close the lid and let the dough bake for a few minutes.

Carefully remove the half baked dough from the grill and flip it over.  The cooked side is the side you will arrange your toppings on.

Slide the pizza back onto the grill, close the lid and let it bake a few more minutes.

Enjoy!!

Everyone made their own pizzas tonight and we all made extras for lunch tomorrow!

These pizzas were so darn tasty! They hit the spot and made a great lunch!

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!