Making Love in the Kitchen

Want to try a delicious way to use leftover pulp from juicing? Look no further than this quick, simple and delish pate.

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Social situations can be awkward when you’re trying to be healthy. How do you navigate sticky circumstances without offending your loved ones? Find out how to say no to food without appearing like a self-righteous jerk. Plenty of people don’t see food as nourishment – they view it as a vehicle for socializing, spreading the love and bonding with others. But what is the best way to respond to well-meaning friends, family and coworkers when we’re presented with an item that doesn’t jive with our food philosophy or health style? Do you accept the offering and feed it to the family dog, or do you snort with haughty derision? Unless you have Meghan’s wit and charm, the latter will likely land you alone with only your kale chips and goji berries to keep you warm at night.

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There are many snacks out there that claim to be healthy, but in reality they’re not as virtuous as they seem. What’s a health-conscious snacker to do? Eat roasted chickpeas, of course! These delicious nibblies are crunchy, flavourful and full of beneficial nutrients.

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I told you I had a Thai inspired New Years feast. This dish was the shining star of the night- next to me of course. (Joking. Only joking). Thai food had once been my extra super favourite in the whole world. It was also one of the first things I knew I couldn’t eat anymore. The last time I had Thai food from a restaurant, I was doubled over in such horrible toot cramps that I swore I would never eat it again. After doing the research I needed to do to create this recipe, I now know why. I knew that Thai food was loaded with sugar, but holly smokaroondles, I didn’t know there was that much sugar. Seriously. The combo of vinegar and sugar is a perfect recipe to create the biggest toot bomb to ever be ballooned in the belly… not to mention suspect fish sauce. Not to worry my Thai food lovers. I am here for you. I have you covered with this gem. Last week when we rocked the mango salad, I talked about my (now embarrassing) discovery of Sambal (seriously- how did you all know about it and I didn’t), so I thought I’d share some info on another ingredient that I have had before but never bought before. This one will for sure be knew to a few of you… at least I hope so.

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My sweet mango pies! It seems like eons upon eons since I offered you fresh off the skillet (or in this case, fresh out of the spiral slicer) recipe for you. It actually has been. Well the next few that I have for you are uber awesome treats. For New Year’s eve, the man was feeling a tad under the weather and the yoga evening I had wanted to join was all full up. Instead I decided to cook up the best ever from scratch dinner. The inspiration started with these treats we had on Kauai- tofu potstickers. I’ll get to those next week. In order to fill out the meal- there needed to be more. So I scooted along the Thai theme until I came up with two other dishes. Green mango salad was one of them. As I was researching recipes and dressings, I came across an ingredient I had never heard of before. I love when that happens. Even after doing this for five years, I love that I still get to keep exploring and discobering. It’s a bit like being a painter and discovering a new colour exists and then you want to go back to all of your past paintings and splash it on. The ingredient that kept popping up was sambal oelek. You know it? When I first read it, I was all negative nelly thinking I was going to have to run around the city trying to track this down. Sambal is really just a blend of chili peppers. I never actually use is a chilis because of the time I nearly exploded my whole face.

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Friends and lovers. It’s that sweet, sweet time again.
That time where my dad comes over to the kitchen, we paint cat whiskers on our face as we dress up as Halloween Cats.

In the past, you have seen us as Cat Burglars, Cool Cats, and Jungle Cats. This year we went for a Mexican Cat theme makes almost no sense at all but since my dad and I have this ability to take an idea and run with it- we ran and no one caught up with us to tell us it made no sense. In fact, even my dad and I didn’t notice that it made no sense until we actually started filming- wondering what cats had to do with Mexico and what Mexico or cats had to do with brownies or pumpkin. Love us simply for our stream of consciousness and creativity.

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It all started with this gorgalicious ceramic dish with a lid that I picked up at my absolute favourite-if-it-didin’t-exist-I’d-be-naked-store Anthropologie. I saw it and immediately thought, TAGINE central. I don’t know why. Just something about being able to open that lid, have the steam burst out and my getting to announce a fine tah-dah to my dining companion.

The thing is, I am pretty sure I have never actually had a tagine before that I liked. They most often had lamb in them and I am just not that in to eating laaa-aaaa-aaamb. But when fall rolls in, something in the abundance of root veggies at the market, combined with my desire to eat cozy food and not have to work that hard for it, made this one bought adventure a must.

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You would think this would be totally sick-ass disgusting. A couple weeks ago, I was kicking it at Dufferin Grove with my delightful intern Alexa when she told me that kale chip inspiration had been dropped on her. She said her idea was so good that she actually had to turn her light on while in bed at night and write it down.

Her brainwave: Kale Chips!

I instantly imagined a head of kale shaped light bulb go on over her head, and then it went over the both of us. I thought this was brilliant. We ran off to get our heads of kale and bunches of dill. We were inspired.

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Oh my, oh my was this homemade ice cream the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Or in the top 10 for sure.

My bestest friends over at Hamilton Beach Canada sent me the sweetest of gifts and the latest was their 1½ Quart Ice Cream & Frozen Yogurt Maker. All this time I thought ice cream made in a blender was as good as anything else, but let me tell you- that machine did some magic to our blend of magic.

I was also surprised that there was really not much of a process involved. We blended the goods together in our blender, poured it into our ice cream maker and shazaam alakazaam, a half hour later we were ooing and aahing over the amazing ice creamy creation we had collectively created.

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A few weeks ago, the team here participated in an event called Soupalicious. The preparation for this involved us cooking up 20 litres of soup. By the end of that weekend we were totally souped out. And then soome. Now, weeks later, we are still haunted by it for 3 reasons.

1) We still have 14 liters of soup in the fridge.

2) It still smells like curry in the kitchen.

3) We still have a box of juice monkey onions, 2 fart-worthy cauliflowers, one lonely old leek, and a big ol’ bag of carrots with no place to go. After giving most of it away at a workshop…and frankly to anyone on the streets who would take it, I decided to take a couple carrots home and turn them into something magical. And ooooh boy that I did.

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We all have those veggies we don’t really like. The ones we know are great for us, but for whatever reason, they just aren’t the ones we would ever reach for when we are staying on our game and desiring a healthy snack.

For me, it’s carrots and celery. I wish to bits that a handful of carrots were a desirable snack for me but they just aren’t. Maybe it’s because they’re so freaking hard and I have wires cemented to the back side of my front and bottom teeth, a souvenir of the years of braces. Every time I bite into one of these shard-of-glass like veggies I am fairly sure they are going to crack off that cemented wire and I will find myself back in the orthodentist’s chair with one of those big plastic speculum type deals stretching my mouth unnaturally far from my face, all while surrounded by twelve year olds.

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When some people don’t want to consume hot dogs (and meat in general for that matter), they often turn to the vegetarian options. And what might these be? Veggie dogs! There are also veggie burgers, veggie deli meat, veggie turkey, veggie ground beef, veggie chicken pieces and the list goes on and on. From the looks of it, it seems that vegetarians have no problem replacing meat since there are so many options readily available for them. They can have some faux bacon for breakfast, followed by a mock salami sandwich for lunch, rounding things off with a chicken-less “chicken” stir fry for dinner. Oh, and don’t forget about soy pudding for dessert!

How easy was that? By consuming these fake meat items, vegans and vegetarians can pick up right where they left off with the real stuff. Can you tell yet that I’m joking?

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How are you enjoying your last day off before we go back to school?

Wait a second? Are you going back to school?

I am, my own school and my face will likely still be smudged with chocolate from today’s cooking demo at Toronto Harbourfront’s Hot and Spicy Food Festival.

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How it makes my heart sing when I can go to a regular restaurant and order my lover of a food, tempeh. Now, when I say regular restaurant, I’m not talking about nonsense places with names like “Wings and Things”, or “Deep Fry It So You’ll Try It”. I mean restaurants where their overall values- eat organic, local, seasonal etc.- make sweet love with my own.

So wasn’t I over the rainbow excited to see a veg menu with tempeh on it. And this wasn’t the kind of tempeh you might find at most veg/vegan restaurants where it’s kind of just cooked to a crisp and served over a bowl of rice. This tempeh was prepared as if it were the leanest cut of gold labeled cow (do cows come with with gold labels?).

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When I took the bus to school in high school, I had to pass through the Yonge/Eglinton Subway station. Inside was a Cinnabon. For those of you who live outside the 30 countries where thay are now located, or managed to avoid shopping malls your whole life (and for that I would envy you), Cinnabon is the sweetest smelling cinnamon bun bakery there ever was. They are steamy hot, oooey, gooey, chewy and dripping in the sweetest icing.

And passing through the building, smelling these at 3:30pm on a daily basis was torture. To my cravings and to my bum size. According to online sources, one Cinnabon contains 800 calories.

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