I Live with a Magician

Around suppertime last night, I noticed there was leftover mac and cheese, but not enough for both of us.

John said: "You have it and I'll make something later."

We've been together long enough that I know full well that the 'something' he made later would be 1000x better than the mac and cheese. By that time, I would already be full of my supper and be extremely envious of whatever he spontaneously came up with.

I told him I wanted what he was having (I trusted it would be amazing), and we agreed the mac and cheese could become a side dish or a snack for later.

John asked: "Do we have chicken?" We did. Then the words "spicy chicken" came out of his mouth and he just does what he does, which is make something truly amazing out of nowhere. He doesn't use a recipe, he doesn't measure, and I am pretty sure he doesn't know what the final result will be until he is halfway through cooking it. He definitely has mad kitchen skills.

Which allow this to happen:

Spicy curry chicken

John also took the sweet potato I was going to steam, diced and spiced it, and we had curried sweet potatoes on the side, all served over basmati rice. Take that mac and cheese leftovers!

My spontaneous curry plate

The flavour combinations were all amazing and John said: "I just wanted to have something that tasted really good." We definitely did and I get to have the leftovers for lunch today. Mmmmm...

Mom's 65th Birthday!

We had a celebration for Mom's 65th birthday on the weekend. We ordered a tonne of Chinese food and I brought the cake.

The Food:
We ordered take out from Mom's (and our) favourite place, Canton Restaurant in Midhurst. Because 65 is a big deal, and because it's the holidays, we went over the top and ordered about $20 more than we normally do. It was basically the equivalent of having 3 extra dishes of awesome food. Canton Restaurant seriously has the best Chinese food, and it is always super delicious. Even though we had all the extra food, we still ended up with the same amount of leftovers. Funny how that happened. No one had room for cake (I had mine the next day). If food's on the table, we eat it!

The Cake:
Last month I practiced decorating a 65th birthday cake to try out some ideas. I'm so glad I did. It encouraged me to pick up a few more Wilton decorating tips (I got Star #21 for the borders, and Round #3 to make the cake toppers), and I decided to go with a chocolate on chocolate cake. The cake was very chocolate, and even had some icy squares on top (in triangles and as crumble).

For the "6 and 5" cake toppers, I used my Round tip to pipe melted chocolate chips onto parchment paper that had a number stencil taped underneath. I printed the numbers backwards, so that the side that faced out would be flat and smooth. It was super easy to make them and they stuck in the cake perfectly.

The festivities for the 65th continue, as I'm heading to Barrie this morning to have lunch with Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandma. I'm finding it hard to believe Mom is actually 65 (and so is she), but the more we celebrate the more it'll sink in. Plus when she starts getting the sweet seniors discount at certain retailers, she might just be happy to be 65.

Happy Birthday Mommy!!! I love you!!! 

 

Sometimes Turkey Happens... And It's The Best!

Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October, so it's been almost two long months since I had a home made turkey dinner. I hadn't made one of my own in over a year and I was itching to roast one and take advantage of having a fridge full of leftovers. It didn't help that the U.S. celebrated their Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, and the news feeds on my Blogger, Twitter, and Happier were filled with countless photos of delicious turkey dinners with all the fixings. It was only a matter of time before I cooked one, and I knew there was no way I could wait for Christmas.

Luckily I had two turkeys in my freezer, so I made one earlier this week and had my sisters-in-law over. It was a good meal with great company and I even made pumpkin pie for dessert. Last night we enjoyed leftovers for supper and this morning I boiled up the turkey bones for some stock.

We used part of the stock tonight to make some home style turkey soup. Making a big pot of soup is one of my favourite ways to eat turkey leftovers. Plus the house smells amazing while the stock is boiling.

I also packed away 10 cups of turkey stock for the freezer. Sometime down the road we'll make some fresh soup and/or add it to other dishes for flavour.

Every time I make a turkey I remark at how far the meal goes. There really is so much joy that comes from one awesome bird.

Fancy Dinner and a Movie

Any celebration with my family or friends always involves food. The food ranges from big home cooked dinners, to vast quantities of take out, to giant piles of hors d'oeuvres to nibble on throughout the event. For us, there really is nothing better than sharing food with the people we love.

John and I have been having movie date nights recently, most of which have been spent watching the Lord of the Rings films. I have been reading the books, so it's been a lot of fun to watch the movies together and discuss all the ins and outs of putting such an epic tale to screen. For our most recent date night, we continued our Tolkien obsession and had a fancy dinner to start the date off right.

We picked up a smoked turkey leg, a Brie, and Ciabatta baguette for a fancy nibbly dinner.

I baked a brown sugar coated Brie for about 10 minutes in a 350°F oven. John made an oil and spice mixture for the bread, and toasted slices of it while the Brie cooked. We both cut pieces off the turkey leg and sampled as we did so. Then we grouped the food festively on a serving tray and were really excited to get eating.

 

We even made a salad to go with it, so we weren't just eating meat, cheese, and bread.

We paired our fancy dinner with The Hobbit: Extended Edition. It was hard to focus on the movie at first, as my mind was completely taken over by the Brie. Once we finished most of the food, we were able to pay more attention to the movie.

The movie was fantastic. We've seen the theatrical release about a thousand times already, and this version was even better. Most of the extended scenes added welcome back story, or more depth to the characters. The entire Rivendell sequence was greatly enhanced by the extra scenes, some of which were really important to the plot. The LOTR extended editions are miles above the original theatrical releases, and I'm glad to see The Hobbit is too.

NFLD French Fries

My sister-in-law is from Newfoundland and recently shared a photo of how french fries are sometimes served there: covered with stuffing and gravy. I'm always open to new toppings for french fries, and I had a feeling I would like this one (I love stuffing).

As I haven't made a turkey recently, I had no stuffing and gravy leftovers (but having said that, I usually don't, even when I do make a turkey). So I relied on my packaged friends to help me out. The gravy packet I bought was 'poutine', as this dish seemed poutine-esque.

We always make homemade french fries, as we are working away at 50lbs of farmer potatoes, and they are just so cheap and easy to make.

Next we prepared the stuffing and gravy.

And added it to the cooked fries.

And obviously it tasted amazing. This version was pretty salty, but that could be cured easily by making my own stuffing and gravy. Next time. Because, of course, I will have to try these again.

Cake Try Outs

My Mom is turning 65 in a few weeks and I offered to make the cake. The only instruction I was given was: "chocolate". I thought there were a lot of places I could go with that so I started brainstorming ideas. One of my favourite ways to fancy up a cake is to add chocolate bars to it. One of Mom's favourites is Terry's Chocolate Orange, so I decided I would try making a chocolate orange cake. As I recently learned that it's good for me to try out new recipes, I spent much of Sunday fooling around in the kitchen with a chocolate orange cake.

The cake was super fun to bake and decorate, and because I was just making it for practice there was no stress while making it. I made a three layer cake that was iced mainly with whipped chocolate icing and had orange frosting between the layers and on the top.

This is what it looked like:

I was really happy with how the cake looked and it was actually pretty easy to decorate. I texted this picture to Mom and this was the response I got:

She is the sweetest, eh?

The look of the cake was what I wanted and I will definitely use some of the same decorative elements in the final version. The only thing that has to change is the taste. Turns out I went a little overboard with the orange extract that was added to the icing. So much so that my mouth actually tingled when I ate it. Whoops! It's still edible, but the chocolate orange balance just wasn't right. Dare I say, it was too much of a good thing.

But this is why I'm practicing. And I've learned a new baking rule: easy on the extract!

I still have a few weeks to figure out what cake I'll take to her birthday, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to adhere more to her initial instruction and just go with chocolate.

Quick No Bake Treats

We had a last minute family dinner on the weekend and while John was in charge of making the 6lb roast beef, I made a tray of squares for dessert with supplies I had on hand.

I looked for these squares online to double check the ingredients and this treat has many names, including: Mile High squares, Chocolate, Peanut Butter, and Marshmallow squares, and Pudge.

Ingredients:
2.5 cups milk chocolate chips
1/4 cup margarine
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
4 cups mini colourful marshmallows

Method:
Put chocolate chips, margarine, and peanut butter in microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir to combine. Microwave another 30 seconds and stir until all is melted together.

Combine melted chocolate mixture with marshmallows and stir until marshmallows are sufficiently coated. Pour into a greased square pan and cool for a few hours in the fridge.

Makes 20 giant squares (the way I first cut them).

Or 40 more reasonably sized squares.

Rainbow Cake - Success!

It's my birthday tomorrow, so we had a big turkey dinner last night at Mom's. Like always, Mom's turkey was perfect and our bellies were full (over-full mostly). I elected to make a cake for last night's affair and I excitedly opted to make a Rainbow Cake.

Baking the cake was easy and fun. I used two white cake mixes, which I made one at a time and each became three layers of the cake. I absolutley love working with colour paste and over the next while I am going to find any excuse to use them. Colour is fun!

Prepare cake mix

Divide into three

Add colour (red, orange, yellow) and mix

Bake for about 22 minutes

And repeat!!

Add colour (green, blue, purple) and mix

And bake about 22 minutes

All the colours of the rainbow - baked!

The assembly of the cake was a little harder than baking, which I detailed in yesterday's post. I excitedly stacked the layers together (with a little parchment paper between them), and when I unstacked them, each layer ripped a giant hole in the layer beneath it. Whoops! Also, the more I handled the layers, the more fragile they became, with the green one actually breaking in three. If I try this cake again I know it will go a lot smoother, and I'm happy to say the cake turned out awesome regardless of the difficulty I faced.

While dealing with cracking and breaking cake layers, I forgot to take photos of how it was assembled. And while decorating, I was just hoping that it didn't collapse, so no photos of that either. Just imagine it being assembled with lots of wishing and hoping that it would work out.

To cover the cake and ice between the layers, I needed almost three full cans of vanilla frosting. I wouldn't claim that I have awesome icing skills, and icing a multi-layer, multi-colour cake with a tonne of icing is hard. The crumbs of each colour layer seemed to actively jump onto the icing knife so they could spread themselves happily throughout the white icing. Every attempt at correcting it seemed to make it 100 times worse. But not to worry! The solution is to distract the people with sprinkles. Sprinkles are my new cake decorating best friend.

Also, it is super fun to throw sprinkles at a cake!

Based on the complications, I wasn't really sure what it would look like inside. I'm so happy that it did not disappoint. This cake is definitely visually crowd pleasing. It tastes pretty great too.

Having Fun In The Kitchen

About a year and a half ago my mom got a new food processor and gave me her old one. A few months later I got 50 lbs of potatoes from my farmer brother and wanted to use the processor to make some chips. Unfortunately, in the time between receiving it and wanting to use it, I had hid it on myself. I looked everywhere at least three times, even checking at mom's thinking maybe I left it there. Nope. I had lost it. :(

Mom's old food processor. It's from the 80s.

This past weekend we cleaned out the garage and stored a number of things in the attic. We moved some boxes around up there to make space, and I just happened to open the box that had my food processor in it! John said the look on my face was pure delight. I also just got my annual 50 lb bag of potatoes from my farmer bro, so the timing of finding it was perfect.

My Bro grew some pretty amazing potatoes this year

I spent much of the next day just fooling around in the kitchen. Potatoes were sliced. Chips were made. French fries were baked. I spent a year waiting to use it, so I had a lot of fun. We don't have a deep fryer, so I baked the chips in the microwave and the oven. Both versions tasted great, but they took soooooo long in the microwave (I have a small one so could only cook a few at a time).

Food processor equipped with the ripple chip slicer

Putting a potato in the feeder

One potato turned into a whole lotta slices

Chips prepared in microwave (took six minutes and two flips)

Chips prepared in the oven (about 20 minutes, checking often)

Baking some fries made with the french fry slicer blade

A bowl of french fries

Excited to have loads of fun with this food processor. Can't wait to try recipes with sweet potatoes too. Also going to pick up some peanuts and try homemade peanut butter. There are really a million and one things I can do with this and I love that I can finally make use of it.

Thanks Mom!! :)

Celebrating a Love of Turkey on Thanksgiving

My favourite meal to cook is a big turkey dinner. There is so much I love about it beyond the wonderful food I get to eat when it's done. I love having the house smell amazing all day. I love preparing all the sides. I love impressing people with my turkey making skills. I also love 2-3 days of leftovers and the option of making turkey soup. There is so much to enjoy.

For some people, a turkey is just served on holidays. In my family, we throw a turkey in the oven whenever there is an excuse to do so. When I was away at school, any weekend I came home was a reason to have a turkey. Now most birthdays or family get togethers are accented with a turkey. I often make one on my own birthday, as I like making them so much (but this year mom has volunteered).

I have a method for making a turkey that works for me (and works for mom, as I mostly copy her method). We cook the turkey for a long time, but somehow we don't overcook it. We stuff the bird. We make tonnes of sides. And we have a relaxing and enjoyable time preparing it. If you've never made a turkey before, there are some safe food handling concerns regarding preparation and ensuring the meat and stuffing are cooked to the proper internal temperature. For a good overview of how to make a turkey safely, please check out Butterball's Turkey Safety Tips and Turkey Ontario's How to Prepare a Turkey.
 
I will let the pros provide a step by step guide for cooking turkey, but the following are some of the things I do to have an awesome turkey dinner - every time.

An important aspect of cooking a turkey is getting a turkey deal. For me, a turkey deal is when the price is $0.99/lb or less. I love getting a turkey for $10, and a 10 pound turkey is my favourite size to prepare. There's enough for dinner with guests with the perfect amount of leftovers (too many turkey leftovers can be too much of a good thing). With Thanksgiving sales this past week, I got two 11 pounders at the $0.99 price point. Gotta love the turkey deal!

On the day of cooking, with a completely thawed turkey, I make my stuffing. I like a simple stuffing: bread, onion, garlic, mushrooms, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper, and butter. 

I use a turkey rack (when I remember) which makes removing the cooked turkey from the pan so much easier. Because I like to cook my turkey for a long time, it has a tendency to fall to pieces when taking it out of the pan, but the turkey rack helps keep it intact.

I stuff the bird right before it goes into the oven, stuffing the cavity and the neck. I sprinkle the turkey with salt, pepper, and some melted butter, and into the oven it goes at 325°F.

The turkey cooks throughout the day and I relax. I baste it periodically, but mostly I just let the oven do all the work. I do spend some time preparing sides, but I find that relaxing. Early in the day I peel potatoes, prepare and mash a sweet potato, and chop broccoli and carrots. 

I usually aim to have my turkey done at 5:30pm and then it is Go Time. The turkey comes out of the oven and settles for half an hour while I hop around the kitchen. The potatoes get on and boiling then mashed, the veggies get steamed, the gravy gets prepared, and the sweet potato gets reheated. Finally the stuffing comes out and the bird is carved.

And the beautiful dance that is turkey dinner is complete and is ready for consumption!

After dinner is done and (most likely) pie is consumed, I head back to the kitchen and de-bone the turkey. All the meat gets stored in a convenient tupperware for the next few days of leftovers, and the bones are frozen and saved for some fantastic turkey soup.

Best. Meal. Ever.