Mmm... lunch.

Yesterday's lunch, delicious and easy, thank you asian supermarket! So good I made it again today! Udon noodles, fish balls and fried crab flavoured nuggets. Yummm!

Best Looking Pie Ever

Isn't this the most beautiful looking shepherd's pie ever? Mmm... melty cheese...

Makin' Mincemeat!

This year we are having two dinners, a traditional ukranian dinner on the Sunday before Christmas, for which I am making a mountain of perogies, and a traditional Southern dinner on Christmas day for which Craig is frying a whole turkey (expect pictures!) and for this dinner I have been charged with making an old fashioned, real, from scratch mincemeat pie. Not sure how that came about, seeing as I have only ever tasted mincemeat once or twice and have never made a pie beyond the "canned filling frozen crust" type. But I will try my best, the mincemeat lovers (Craig) are counting on me! The filling got made yesterday and of course I took pictures of the process.


Here are all the strange and wonderful things that go into the mincemeat, not including of course...





The meat! How many people out there knew there was real meat in mincemeat? Not me! We bought some beef and I cut it into rough pieces and browned it in a pan with a bit of water. Then I drained it and let it cool, and then chopped it up pretty fine. There was some extra when I was all done, Buster got that.


Buster is always around to help with the cooking.

Next came the fruit prep, which was the most time consuming part. The recipe required 4 cups of chopped apple and a large orange to be peeled and diced.



For those keeping track at home, that's a TON of apple chopping to do.

All of that gets put into a big pot with a bunch of strange and seemingly unrelated ingredients...

Raisins...


Sweet pickle juice and pineapple juice...


Spices, beef broth and molasses.

Everything got combined and looked like this:


Then got cooked down for about two hours into this:


Craig came home and tasted it and said it was great, I don't have much experience with mincemeat so if he was impressed I guess I did alright! Now just to pack it up and put it in the fridge until next week. According to The Internet, it gets better if it sits for a little while.

Today's *random loaf*

I like to make baked goods. Things like banana bread and soda bread are my favourites to make, and I even regularly make a baked thing I've named Franklbuns for my parrot, who won't eat veggies unless they are blended and mixed into a fruity bun. Little does he know the fruity buns he loves so much are... good for him! Anywho, I sometimes make random loaves of soda bread, and today was one of those days. There's not much science to it, I just kinda add random things to a basic mix, usually the last bits of stuff I have in the fridge or pantry. With that, we get today's creation... jalapeno garlic cheese bread!

The first step to any baking project is....

A clean kitchen! I hate starting to cook anything when there are dirty dishes and counters around, so I always clean the kitchen before I start. Plus I keep a sink full of hot soapy water going so I can "wash as I go" between steps, thereby making less clean up at the end! Next, gather your ingredients:

Then, pre-heat the oven! I went with 400 this time, but I would really recommend only 350. This oven is wierd.

I use plain all purpose flour, vegetable oil and baking soda for the main base, as well as a packet or spoonful of vinegar, depending which I have handy. I also put in a packet of malt vinegar to see if it would affect the taste. Regardless what kind you use you need some sort of acid as there is no yeast in this mix and the baking soda needs something to work with! To start, I put about 1 1/4c of water into the stand up mixer, along with 1/2c of oil, you can use regular oil but we had some chili oil and some garlic oil kicking around, so I added a splash of those as well. I also put in two big squeezes of deli mustard, the last spoonful of minced garlic in the jar, and although not pictured, the last spoonful of garlic cream cheese from the container (see what I mean about clearing out my fridge!). Finally I added a couple of chopped up jalapenos that were starting to get a bit old and wrinkly in their package (another bit gone!). If we had any eggs I probably would've added one or two but we were out of eggs, oh well. I gave this all a good mix (as well as you can mix oil and water), and then combined 3c of flour with 2tsp baking soda in a bowl. Depending how much liquid you used you may have to add a bit more flour to get a smooth dough. I will get to that part in a minute. Here's where we are at:

I forgot to take a progress shot, but basically you want to mix the flour mixture in a bit at a time at a slow speed. Your mix will go from liquidy to firm quite quickly. I usually start with 3 cups of flour/baking soda/other dry items (like spices) in the mixer and then knead in the rest. To do that, cover your counter with a good amount of flour and dump your sticky dough ball on there. Get lots of flour on your hands and then dump a good sized handful of flour on your dough, and knead it on the counter, pulling the ball apart to expose sticky dough and just kinda working all the flour in. I keep adding handfuls until it no longer pulls apart to reveal any sticky dough and it's in a fairly even round easy to shape ball. Once it's in it's final shape I oil it with a bit of veg oil to help the crust stay soft:

Slap that dough ball onto a buttered baking sheet, and cut an X on top with a sharp floured knife:

At this point I put it in the oven for about 10 min, just to get the crust to start to form. I then usually pull it out and add a bit of melted butter to the crust to help keep it soft. This time I also put a bit of cheese on top, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper:

Then back into the oven for about 20 mins, I keep an eye on it near the end though so the crust doesnt get too dark. Ta da!

Let it cool on the counter for a bit.

Yum!

And always remember to turn the oven off when you're done!

The 3-day turkey soup!

Craig and I recently had 3 days off together to celebrate our 4th anniversary, and among some of the things we did, we made turkey soup! We had cooked a turkey the week before and saved the carcass and drippings to make soup. What made it so awesome was that we had 3 days to devote to cooking the soup, so it was extra flavourful! To start, we divided up the bones and drippings and neck into our two biggest pots, and added some onion, carrots, celery, peppercorns, and a bunch of whole rosemary, thyme and sage tied into bunches. That's what the strings are sticking out of the pots:

We brought the mixtures to a boil and then turned them right down and let them simmer for the evening, I would estimate it was about 4 hours, maybe a bit more. Before bed we strained out all the big stuff, saving the bunches of herbs for the next day. Here's what our broth looked like:

I put it in the fridge overnight to harden the fat on top, which I skimmed off the next morning. When that was done we put in all of the shredded up turkey we has saved from dinner and off of the bones, as well as the herb bunches from before:

We simmered it like that for another hour or so, and then finally added some cut up celery, carrots and partly cooked potatoes, and simmered for maybe 3 more hours. Then it was done! Because we left the herbs in for so long it was super flavourful and delicious. I love making soup! You can use up all of your leftover veggies and meats and take it for lunch throughout the next week. It's so easy!