Adventures in Food

I was in the grocery store yesterday picking up a few things.  As I was walking down the soda and snack food isle, I came across a new popcorn flavour from Orville Redenbacher.  I love the popcorn under this brand, I have had the microwave version, and all the ready to eat kinds.  Needless to say I was excited when I saw that there was a flavour of popcorn I hadn’t tried yet, Caramel and White Cheddar.    I am a lover of Chicago mix.  The cheesy,  contrasting the sweetness of the caramel popcorn.  

With this bag there was nothing but disappointment.  

When I opened the bag, 2/3 of the bag was air.  I get that caramel popcorn is heavier, but come on guys, use a smaller bag for this mix.  Make your consumers feel like they are getting more for their money, not less.  

The flavour combination of the white cheddar and the sweet caramel, in my opinion, does not work.  The white cheddar is too delicate a flavour and the caramel overpowers it.  I found myself eating one kernel of caramel and then 7 or 8 pieces of white cheddar, waiting for the balance that I usually taste with a Chicago Mix.  

My dad and I have decided that we want to smoke our own meat.  We are going to make a smoker in 2 weeks. Specifically Easter weekend.  I found this cool post on Pinterest (which I will link later) of how to make your own smoker.  

I will be making some modifications to the design to fit my needs.  I am really excited!

Japanese Curry

I was in the grocery store in the ethnic sauces section.  I found Japanese Tasty Curry.  The last time that I had Japanese curry, it was glicko curry.  

I added chicken, potatoes and some frozen veggies called “Asian Mix”.  Everything slow coked for about an hour.  In the last 5 mins I added in the curry.  

I made rice, but I think that I undercooked it.  I have a love/hate relationship with rice.  Once in a while I will cook it perfectly, every other time it is either over cooked or undercooked.  

I made rice with coconut milk and water the other day, it turned out perfect. 

I digress.  

I made so much curry that I ended up freezing a bunch of it.  Yay leftovers.  

18 Hour Dutch Oven Bread

I hate making bread from scratch.  It requires more work that I really want to exert.  But homemade bread is awesome.  I have 2 really amazing cast iron pots, in different sizes that I received over the past few holidays.  

I found a recipe that requires very little work, so I tried it.  

The bread turned out really good.  I am looking forward to possibly trying a version of sourdough bread the same way.  

Recipe: 

Dutch Oven Crusty Bread Ingredients 3 c bread flour 1 tsp active dry yeast 1 1/2 tsp salt 1 1/2 c water, warm Directions 1 Whisk flour, yeast and salt in a 3-4 quart bowl with a tight fitting lid. I like to use my trusty Tupperware. If you don't have a bowl w/lid use plastic wrap on a bowl. Add the water and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough is mixed well. The dough will be quite sticky and shaggy looking, but that's OK. Cover the bowl and set aside for 12-18 hours,(up to 24) overnight is fine. 2 Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place a cast iron Dutch oven with the lid into the oven while preheating and heat the pot/lid for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, scrape the risen dough from the bowl onto a heavily floured surface. (Dough will still be very sticky.) With floured hands, gently shape the dough into a round loaf, making sure there's enough flour on the surface so dough doesn't stick. let the dough just sit there until you're pot is preheated. 3 Take the hot pot from the oven and gently place the dough into the pot. Cover with the lid and return to the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid at that time and return the pot to the oven for another 10-15 minutes. Gently shake the loaf onto a cooling rack and enjoy the beautiful aroma. Give it a chance to cool before cutting into the loaf.

Indian Curry Chicken with Black Bean Rice.

I was hungry and I went looking in my fridge for food, I found chicken breasts and yogurt and butter.  I decided that I would make Indian Curry from Scratch.  I loosely followed a recipe.  When I say loosely, I mean loosely.  I increased the cooking time to 2.5 hours.  I added sun dried tomatoes and tomato paste instead of sugar.   

Letting the tomato paste, the sundried tomatoes, the stock, herbs and the chicken cook for that long ensured that all the flavours were melded into the chicken, while still keeping the chicken moist and fully cooked.  

I know black beans are not usually used or paired with Indian cooking,  I had a can in my cupboard.  I decided to enhance my rice so I warmed up the black beans and added them to the rice.   The bean rice was almost a pilaf.  

This curry did not make it past 2 days in the fridge.  

Breakfast at the Starving Artist on St Clair West.  I had been to the Starving Artist location on Lansdowne Ave a long time ago, it was really really good and it really wanted waffle bacon again.  Finally went.  While not pictured here, waffle bacon was had.  Pictured here is potato waffle eggs benedict.  

Also very yummy.  This place gets really busy on the weekends, if you are going to go for brunch, go early.  

MIs-Adventures in Corn Muffins.  

One day I decided I wanted to make corn muffins.  But I didn't want them to be ordinary, I wanted them to be full of flavour.  This was an experiment indeed.  Looking back, it might have been better to make mini loaves and add an extra moisture agent into the recipe.  The muffins turned out drier than I expected them too.  

I tried a few different combinations, sausage and cheese, dill and something, jalapeno and cheese actually turned out pretty good.  The olive and blue cheese however, not so good.  Spinach was in there too somewhere.  

I will attempt different flavour combinations again, maybe with a different setup than muffins.  

I welcome any suggestions.  

So, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, he mentioned that he was eating crumble or crisp.  I cannot remember which it was but it was definitely one of the two.  I digress.  

It made me want crumble... It has been a long time since I had crumble.  

I found a recipe on FoodNetwork.com.  

I put off making the crumble for a week or so, I thought that I did not have flour.  I was planning on making graham flour from the abundance of graham crumbs that I seem to have.  According to a few sites that came up in my good search, they said that you can process the crumbs into a fine powder (flour). 

I decided to rearrange my kitchen, in the process I managed to bruise myself....I am a klutz.  

I continue to digress. 

During my reorganization, to my surprise, I found that I had flour.  The next day, once I was not hurting as much, I finally made the crumble.  I had a mixed berry combination in the freezer as well as some fresh blueberries that I threw in the freezer to make sure that they would not go bad before I could get to use them.  I reduced the packaged frozen berries with some Stevia.  This time I checked to make sure it was sweet enough.  I added the reduction to the regular blueberries and this made the filling.  I think I cut too much butter into the mix, or did not cut it in enough, it seemed like a lot of butter.  

The one thing that I would change for next time is to remove the Stevia that I put in to replace most of the regular sugar in in the flour mixture and only add 1/4 cup of white sugar.  I would probably even replace it with coconut sugar instead, if I have it on hand.  

There is a bit too much Stevia for my liking. Next time I will reduce the amount and it should be perfect :). 

So I am sick at home today.  I decided to watch netflix and one of my most favourite things about netflix is the documentaries that they have available.

I decided to watch one called "Fork over Knives".  The premises is that animal based diets are the reason that North America, (it is based in the states, but Canada has the same issues), has so many health problems.  I can see what they are talking about, but I am not going to take their word as law.  

Then Netflix suggested that I watch "A Place at the Table", this documentary has Tom Colicchio, who is a well known chef.  I saw that he was in this documentary, so I watched it.  This documentary talks about hunger insecurity.  Hunger insecurity means that a person does not know where their next meal is coming from.  Again this movie/documentary (people are not certain that this is a documentary) is about the U.S. but Canada is not perfect.  This country has food insecurity as well.  If we didn't Second Harvest and the Canadian Food Bank would not exist and would not be clamouring for donations at non holiday times of the year.  

I have experienced food insecurity, it is stressful and not fun.  We were a 1 parent household with 2 children.  I was an adult child and I was working full time to pay the bills and the rent for the house that we lived in, even though my grandparents owned the house.  

My mom could not work as she was waiting for her permanent disability to come through.  She had to go to the food bank and get donations to make sure that my brother who was still in highschool had enough food so that he could finish, and so that I could work 40-50 hour weeks.  

I am in transition being transferred from one store to another.  Apparently this upset in my life has been more stressful than I realized.  I have continued to stay quit of smoking, which is a feat.  But I have been trying to find something to calm me of the stress that my body currently feels.  

I opened my soon to be old store this morning, on my way home I was thinking about the cornbread that I have been wanting to make for a while now.  I have not had to time nor the focus lately, since I have been working like crazy.  

I thought about what kind of modifications that I could make to the cornbread to make it more interesting.  Not that plain cornbread is not interesting.  Well, it needs to accompany something, like chili.  

I decided to try Paula Dean's Recipe for Cornbread.  She is from the south, not to be stereotypical, but I figure that her being from the south, she knows what she is doing with cornbread.  

I picked up a bunch of ingredients, including Fresh Dill, Jalapeno, cheese (blue and chedder), I had hot italian sausage in the freezer. 

I made 2 batches and replaced the buttermilk with almond milk and white vinegar.  

I bought some cheap paper muffin liners, the cornbread sticks to them.  But the more expensive Paper Chef ones that I have were much better.  

I digress.  

The muffins came out well.  Still have yet to taste test them all.  I think I am going to go pick up a few small mixing bowls so that I can combine flavours more easily.