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Wow, I keep getting assigned all these wonderful blogs each month! This time I was given Sarah's Kitchen. I love her meal plans as well as her recipes. She seems to have the same taste as I do when it comes to food. A lot of her recipes are ones I would choose to make or have made. It was easy to choose a recipe this time, only because my cousin had given me some rhubarb from her garden a few days
My daughter's 3rd birthday party is today. I made this popcorn last night and it's still perfectly crunchy today. It's really easy to make too. You can buy ready popped popcorn or make your own, and you can choose any flavour/colour of Kool-Aid you like. Our party has a strawberry theme, but the store I was shopping at didn't have strawberry Kool-Aid, so I chose cherry instead. If I couldn't g
I joined a new group on Facebook called The Salad Bar Monthly Blogging Group! Everyone needs more salad in their life right?! This is our first post and I'm really excited to see all the different salads. As with a lot of challenges, there is a theme. This month was berries. I found a really beautiful and refreshing summer salad over at O&CO. I didn't actually use their products t
I always find that the hardest part about making pies, is making the crust. If you want to save yourself some time, use a ready made pie crust! The rest is easy. Here we go. Pear Pie Adapted from allrecipes. 8 Servings Ingredients 1 ready made pie crust, 9" unbaked 6 pears, peeled, cored and sliced 3/4 cup brown sugar1/4 cup butter1/4 cup all-purpose flour1 teaspoo
My husband is a huge fan of carrot cake. Sometimes when you buy it from the store or a restaurant, the flavour isn't as good as when you make your own. So, why not just make your own then? This is the best carrot cake recipe I've tried, and it's not difficult. Sometimes I make only half the recipe and still get a good size cake out of it. You can easily serve 8 people with half the recipe. I thi
This challenge I was given yet another fabulous blog to choose a recipe from. Sid's Sea Palm Cooking is the blog and if you're looking for Tapas ideas, you'll definitely want to go have a look! While Sid has an amazing selection of delicious recipes, I chose to make butter. I'm thinking now that I may have chosen something a little too simple, but before I saw it on Sid's blog, I never thou
Who likes cardamom? We do! We use it in Yazdi Cupcakes and it’s also in our tea. If you can’t find tea already flavoured with cardamom, just drop a few pods in to brew with your loose tea. Crack the pods or poke them with a knife to get some of the flavour out. When I saw this recipe for Cardamom Tea Cakes on Melissa’s blog, Smells Like Brownies, I knew this was the recipe I w
I made this before I started Weight Watchers so I used the full fat cheddar, but you could use light cheese if you want, in order to save a point. Or maybe use turkey bacon? I like to roast peppers all the time, so one day I was looking in the fridge and noticed that I had some roasted peppers and also some leftover bacon. What? Leftover bacon?! I wanted to eat it at breakfast, but I didn't wan
Of all the places in the world, I found this carrot and mango salad at a Chinese buffet. I came home and I tried to make it myself. This is what I came up with. It's another easy salad, and it's SO delicious! And best of all, it's 0 PointsPlus! I think the buffet used the most common green/red mangoes, but I much prefer the yellow ones. We call them Ataulfo here, but I think they have other n
This chole is really delicious, but it was nothing like the saucy one we get in the restaurants. I realized later that the reason for that is because Chole (Chana) Masala is the saucy one that I was originally looking for. Kadhai Chole is the dryer version. I had a really hard time finding any kind of nutritional information for mango powder, so I just didn't count it in the recipe. I doubt a
I needed some kind of salad to go with my lunch tomorrow but I was feeling really lazy. This 0 PointsPlus salad took only minutes to prepare. You can use a mandolin to get the cucumbers really thin, and use fresh dill if you have it. I only had dried today so that's what I used. Easy Cucumber Salad 1 Serving | PointsPlus per Serving: 0 Ingredients 1/2 to 1 cup thinly sliced cucumbe
The first time I made this recipe, I didn't have orange marmalade, so I used Apricot jam instead. I figured it would give me a kind of sweet and sour flavour. It was really yummy! And it doesn't really get any easier either! The second time I used orange marmalade and of course it tasted more like orange. Love it! I also cut open a blood orange by accident, but it worked just as
This recipe has been published on Allrecipes.com! My husband served this to me the first time I ever visited his house when we started dating. He doesn't really know how to cook, but this recipe is one thing he makes well. Of course, it only has 4 ingredients so it's a little hard to mess up. You can serve it with or without ice cream, or cut the recipe in half and make one serving in your
With St. Patrick's Day coming up in a few days, I thought it would be nice to finally try making Irish Soda Bread. I wasn't sure what to expect at first, but when I took it out of the oven it looked like a giant biscuit! How exciting is that?! Who doesn't love biscuits? It was really good, a little sweet from the sugar so we put butter and jam on it. It would also be nice with raisins as I see a l
This month I was given another wonderful blog to choose a recipe from for the challenge. Robin Restored is the blog and Robin has so many wonderful recipes to share. You'll also find some good recipes that won't cost you a lot to make, which is a bonus! Normally I would go with one of the cheesy ones, but I'm on Weight Watchers (again) so I had to choose something a little healthier. I also had a
Danielle is my coffee and food loving best friend, who I've known since grade 2 (which was a very VERY long time ago). She has a cute little boy who requested a mango cake. How could I say no? I had to make something that would hold up in a suitcase, because they live in Winnipeg and I live in Toronto. I came across this recipe for Mango Pound Cake was was originally a recipe for Sour Cream Pound
Chicken Kabobs are one of my favourite things to make. They're so easy and healthy. Something really great happens to food when you grill it so I usually put these on the barbecue, but you could probably bake them too. Check out my post on U.S. Kids Parents & Teachers to find out how to make these yummy Kabobs.
I was so excited when I got the email from April asking if I wanted to join the Secret Recipe Club! And then when I got my first assignment, I immediately went over to browse the blog that was assigned to me. Betcha Can’t Eat Just One is a fabulous blog loaded with sugar, sugar and more sugar! I was dying to pin recipes, but then I didn’t want to give anything away until reveal day.
I adapted this from an apple brownie recipe on Allrecipes. I decided to call it a cake because I wouldn't really describe the texture as brownie-like. I cut back the apples by 1 and used brown sugar instead of white. It was delicious! It doesn't rise like a cake, and it looks like a brownie, but it's not a brownie in my opinion. I read some of the reviews on Allrecipes and some people said
Try replacing some of the white flour with whole wheat in some of your recipes. The whole wheat flour and oats in this recipe will keep you feeling fuller a little longer. Oatmeal Cranberry Date Muffins with FlaxMakes 12 muffins Ingredients Muffins 2/3 cup all purpose flour 2/3 cup whole wheat flour 3/4 cup rolled oats 1/3 cup granulated sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teasp
Sometimes a girl just needs a nice muffin for breakfast or with her evening coffee. Don't you agree? Well, I usually have some brown bananas hanging around so I'm always looking for something to do with them. You can't go wrong with banana muffins. Banana Blueberry Muffins Makes 12 muffins Ingredients 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour1 teaspoon baking soda1 teaspoon baking powder1 teasp
I've made these yazdi cupcakes before, but this time I wanted to do something a little different with them, so I made a nice syrup which made them extra yummy! The flavours of cardamom and rosewater really make these cupcakes special. Yazdi Cupcakes with Honey Rosewater Syrup Adapted from the book New Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij. Makes 9 cup
I really don't like washing dishes. Do you? These brownies are easy and I since I'm on vacation from work this week, it was easy to eat too many of them. Usually I bring leftovers to work to get rid of them. My co-workers LOVE treats. Since Valentine's Day is coming up, you could probably use a cookie cutter to make heart brownies for your Valentine, or bake the mixture in a heart shaped muffin pa
I had some pork tenderloin in the freezer that I needed to use up. The first thing that came to mind was pulled pork of course! This is really easy, delicious and I know my family likes pulled pork, so it was pretty much guaranteed to please them. By the end of cooking, the sauce got nice and thick. I added some water in the middle of cooking because the sauce was getting a bit thick. 1/2 a cup wa
Finally, after trying 3 times I managed to make a caramel sauce that's thick like it should be!And it really doesn't take much effort, you just have to get the timing right on the sugar so it doesn't burn and become bitter. Chocolate Caramel Sauce Makes about 1/2 cup (I didn't measure) Ingredients 1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup 1/2 &1/2 cream, room temp 1
I never skip breakfast. I never really skip any meal for that matter. I love food! During the week I pack breakfast for work. Here are some of the things I like to eat for breakfast. I eat a lot of boiled eggs because they're easy to prepare, but my favourite breakfast is feta cheese with bread. I buy it marinated or I marinate it myself. Sometimes I put olives or peppers in it. I l
This soup is slightly different from the recipe I posted in 2010, also titled Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup. This version doesn't have cinnamon or chickpeas but I added paprika instead. I used Campbell ’s No Salt Added Chicken Broth, and it seemed a little bland. Normally I use the lower salt one, but then they came out with the no salt and I had to give it a try. I adde
No canned soup here! I like making this sauce whenever I’m making breaded chicken or pork chops. I coat the meat with egg and then breadcrumbs, and fry it lightly in a bit of oil or butter. Okay, not really diet food, but my family likes it every now and then. So I make pasta and of course that means there has to be a sauce. We like cream sauces and this would be a nice alternative to your
The Secret Recipe Club that is! My task will be to choose recipe from another blog and make it. I can hardly wait to see which blog I get assigned to. My first post will go up on February 11th at 12pm (EST) so stayed tuned!
Back in August 2011 was the last time I made flax crackers. They were Low Carb Parmesan Flax Crackers and I was on a low carb diet. Last week I thought I might try low carbing again, but it only lasted 2 days. I was desperate for sugar. I have a sugar problem! Anyway, during those 2 days I made more flax crackers. This time I left them plain. No cheese or seasoning went into these and only a low c
I originally bought buttermilk to make Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits for Christmas but we can only get 500ml cartons here. You don't need that much for a single recipe of biscuits, so I decided to make some buttermilk pancakes a few days later. I took my favourite Fluffy Pancake recipe and changed it up a bit. Then I found a Christmas pancake pan for $2.44 at an end of season clearance sale. Next
I made Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits for Christmas, and I forgot to add the Cheddar! I was in a rush to get the dough together. Oops! I couldn't believe it! I'll include the cheddar in the recipe, but if you leave it out you'll still end up with some very nice buttermilk biscuits! Also, I used buttermilk instead of regular milk. Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits Adapted from Food & Family
Christmas is really my favourite time of year. I can't believe it's over! I love Christmas so much! My family is pretty small, but my generation has been expanding our family pretty rapidly over the past few years. It was so nice to have 7 small children at Christmas this year. There were years when we didn't have any children at Christmas. Up until 5 years ago when I had my first daughter
You'll never see broccoli the same way again when you make this salad! Raw broccoli that is. It's hard to get it down, even with dip. Raw broccoli is so dry. The simple dressing that goes into this salad makes it feel almost like the broccoli is partially cooked, but it's not! I'm addicted to this salad! You can also make this with different cheeses. I think Parmesan would be nice! How ab
This year I made fudge to go with our Christmas cookies this year. Fudge is not hard to make! The only think about making mint fudge, is that the flavour of it is powerful enough to make everything else taste minty, so I recommend storing it in a separate container. If you store it with your other goodies, they will taste minty. If you can't find mint chocolate chips, you can add more mint ext
I know I haven't been blogging much. I've been busy with Christmas stuff, but now that's all over for another year so maybe I can get caught up. I do have to start concentrating on my diet again in the new year though. In the meantime, enjoy this recipe for sugar plums! This is probably one of the easiest recipes you'll every make, and a nice little sweet to go with your tea. All the
We made these delicious cookies as part of our Christmas Cookie selection this year. They were soft and chewy and did I mention delicious? I froze some and once they were thawed, they were just as soft as the day they were made. The recipe made a lot of cookies though! It says 24 but we got 70, and they weren't small either! Next time we'll definitely have to cut the recipe in half. My cousin b
Well, there were more bananas that were begging to be baked into something. This time I chose to do a banana gingerbread cake and it was great! I used only half the amount of ginger because I didn't want it to be too overpowering. And I made this at my mom's house. So what does that mean? Well, my mom doesn't have a lot of the pantry items that I have in my own kitchen, so I had to leave out some
Somehow I always have brown bananas sitting around. My kids like bananas but they never seem to eat them all no matter how many I buy. I usually only buy about 6 at a time. I like mine when they’ve just passed the green stage, but I don’t like to eat them once they’ve gone completely yellow, or even worse, when they start to get spotty. The ganache was extremely rich. It almost re
Are you still trying to decide what to make for your cookie trays? I think I know what I'll be putting on mine this year. The past few years my cousin has been taking over half the cookie baking. We discuss who will make what each year. I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to make yet, but time is running out! And some stores are out of cream cheese. Can you believe it?! Here are some delicio
Apparently the Crazy Cooking Challenge has ended, but I must have missed that bit of information somehow. That's a shame. I really enjoyed participating every month. This month we were scheduled to make sugar cookies, so I did. If you like sugar cookies, then you'll probably like these. Even though I added some nutmeg to the recipe, I still found them a little blah. Every year I make a batch o
I like making things in muffin tins. Sweet muffins, egg muffins, pizza muffins or any other kind of muffin you can think of. Muffins are so easy to grab when you need to run out the door. How about making them a little healthier by using whole wheat flour and adding some oats and flax? Enjoy your breakfast my friends! Healthier Banana Blueberry Muffins 12 servings 1 cups
Tonight I decided to try making a cookie without eggs and the result was delicious! When I first took them out of the oven (and let them cool slightly) they were crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle. As I let them sit they got crispier but the flavour of these cookies is so fabulous that it doesn't matter! Normally chewy cookies are what I like, but I think this cookie could be one of my
We usually eat turkey twice a year in my family. Thanksgiving and Christmas of course. Well, here in Canada we've already celebrated our thanksgiving (in October), and my mom has informed me that she won't be making a turkey for Christmas this year. WHAT??? She said that she wants to try stuffing chicken breasts instead since they'll cook faster. The turkey always takes the longest and we end up e
Here are a few more ideas for lunch and dinner. I love feta for breakfast. That's slow cooker chicken with peppers and tomatoes on the top left. The kids really enjoy the variety of these muffin tin meals. Meatloaf.
I know I keep saying that I'm not baking anything else before Christmas, but I just can't help myself. These Chocolate Chip Blondies are made with a box of cake mix. Very easy to do. The first day the texture is like a dense cake, and the second day they end up as something in between dense cake and a cookie. But they were delicious. I adapted this recipe from Girl Meets Life. But I'm not into spr
I’ve been on weight watchers since late June. While I’m happy to report that I’ve lost about 17lbs so far, I’m really getting bored with having to calculate points. That’s probably one of the reasons why I haven’t been making a lot of new recipes lately. It’s annoying having to calculate every recipe to get the points value before I eat it. Calorie counting is easier and a lot of recipes
Muffin tin meals are very cool! I've made 2 so far and my kids love them. I use the free printable planner page from Second Story Window. I love how this planner has all the food groups listed at the top. You check them off to make sure you've included something from each group in your meal. I've got a bento/ muffin tin meal Pinterest board going as well. Whenever I come across meal ideas I pin
I just made these in between loads of laundry. They were delicious! Probably not that Weight Watchers friendly though. I've been slipping the past few weeks with all the baking I've been doing. Time to stop until closer to Christmas. Or at least bake more low fat items instead. I told my cousin to take this recipe and use 1/2 cup Peanut butter and 1/2 Cup Nutella, then tell me what happened. S
