400th Post!!!!

I'm adding another item to my list of 2013 Blog Milestones. Today is the 400th post on the blog!

It's been a really active year on the blog and I'm very happy to celebrate all the times I've hit 'publish'. Over the entire year I have averaged 15 blog posts per month, but since I upped my game in June, I've been averaging 22 posts per month. So awesome and very proud of myself.

Thanks for being on this ride with me. It really is a lot of fun! :)

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.

Cake Pops: Keeping Them Fun

Cake pops are delicious, fun to eat, and a hit at parties (who doesn't love eating food on a stick?). I've made them five or six times over the past few years, and each time I've been rewarded with around 50 cake pops. They are best for sharing, as that is a lot of cake on a stick!

The idea of cake pops is simple: mix baked cake with icing and form into balls. Add a lollipop stick. Dip balls into chocolate or candy melts, set, and enjoy. The pros can make them look like any shape, but as a cake pop amateur, I tend to sick to a plain old ball on a stick.

The first few batches I made were balls on a stick + melted chocolate chips + sprinkles.

Next batch, I played with the colour of the cake/icing to make them more festive inside.

Earlier this year, I tried making heart shaped cake pops, and they (mostly) turned out, but it was a lot more challenging.

Recently I made them again for my friend Jen's birthday. It was a team effort. I made plain ones (no sprinkles) and then she decorated them.

Dipped cake pops

Cake pops with my friend Jen's spooky decorating

In my most recent adventure in cake pop making I realized a few things:

(1) I hate making 50 cake pops at a time. Rolling the balls is fun, but dipping 50 balls on a stick into chocolate is tedious. From now on I am only making half batches (I want baking to be fun - and 25 cake pops is still a lot of cake pops!).

(2) I haven't figured out candy melts and find them really difficult to work with. Every cake pop I coat with the candy melts cracks, and I find they aren't as fluid as melted chocolate chips. Now, obviously they work for other people, so there is just some part of the technique I am missing. Currently I'm not patient enough to learn how to make them work, so I'm giving up on using them for now. Chocolate chips do the job, so I am going to stick with them.

From here on out, my goal is to keep cake pops fun. They really do taste fantastic and I don't want some minor frustrations to keep them off my baking list.

Coconut Curry Chicken with Curried Potatoes and Peas #FoodPicFriday

Since the moment I met him, John has been a master of spice. I remember when we first got together, he would bring over delicious home made dishes for me to share with my room mate. Good food is definitely a quick route to my heart, and we have shared many amazing meals over the years.

One of our favourite meals is a good curry, but we have gotten out of the habit of making them. Last week we re-discovered our love for them and had a fantastic meal of coconut curry chicken and curried potatoes with peas served over basmati rice. This meal was so tasty and filling - I'm so glad we remembered how much we love them.

Switching Up Salad

We are about halfway through November and I am still surprised every time I look at the calendar.  It is cold and we've had snow, but somehow it doesn't feel like mid-November yet. I'm lost somewhere in September, I think, as that sounds much more reasonable. Summer always seems to go fast, but this one really flew by.

One of the drawbacks of the colder months is less access to fresh vegetables at a good price. One major budget blower in the winter is lettuce. In the summer a big, beautiful romaine is $0.79. In the winter they are small, wilty, and $2.49 ($2.99 some days). The price increase and quality drop has already begun, and I came home lettuce-less on my most recent grocery run.

One thing that is cheap and plentiful this time of year is carrots. I really like carrots, but I have a hard time just eating a carrot and not being so completely bored. I find even dipping them boring - and my jaw gets mad at all the crunching. I asked Google if there was a way to make carrots more exciting - and Google didn't let me down (it rarely does).

I found a recipe for carrot salad. So simple, I never thought to do it. Just grate a carrot, season it, and eat. This recipe suggested mayo and lemon juice. I tried it and it tasted pretty good. The next day I mixed a spoonful of Greek salad dressing with the shredded carrot and it also tasted pretty good. For my third try I mixed in some chopped cucumber and topped it with cucumber dressing. It was tasty too.

I currently have 5lbs of carrots in the fridge and I'm looking forward to eating them as fun salads.