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Standardby Julie56 Comments

I realize this is neither wintry nor particularly healthy.. but when I went to buy some eggs for my Seven-Minute Frosting yesterday, carrying nothing but a box of eggs home with me I couldn’t stop thinking about egg salad sandwiches. And so this morning I boiled some eggs – you know, just in case – and at dinnertime I couldn’t summon up the gumption to make anything but. However. I didn’t have any celery or green onion, and my chives are currently lying dormant under snow and frozen-solid Lou poo. Rooting through my fridge I did come up with some fresh (sort of – revived in a glass of water like a teeny bouquet) basil, and… drumroll please… bacon. Bacon and egg salad sandwiches! How have I never thought of this before? So I chopped a few strips, cooked them and crumbled the chunky bits into my chopped hard-boiled eggs along with some low fat mayo, torn basil and lots of pepper. I’m pretty sureContinue reading

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Standardby Julie54 Comments

This blog has begun to trigger a Pavlovian response in me; every time I sit down to type my eyes nearly go crossed with drowsiness, probably because it has become the last thing I do every night before bed, and because I never, ever seem to make it to bed before midnight. (If this thing has a time stamp, it’s about an hour off, and I can’t figure out how to fix it.)Lately the process has become even more time consuming as my computers start to slowly deconstruct… I’m sure they are choked with photos and files and things W has clicked on while playing Art Machine or Peep – my laptop is sticky with candy cane fingers and peanut butter; my screen about 4 times the size it was (as if I was ultra hard of seeing) and I am sporadically unable to highlight text and add links and really do anything but type. The H and L are so sticky I have to hammerContinue reading

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Standardby Julie50 Comments

Check this out. I was rummaging through the fridge, trying to identify the contents of the 7 or so yogurt containers in there. Some were yogurt. One was leftover lentil veg curry. It looked awful. And mushy. I wondered how to reheat it now that we don’t have a microwave (real estate in this kitchen is at its prime; the convection toaster oven won space with a view, close to all amenities). So on a whim, I put it in the food processor with a can of drained chick peas, a squirt of lemon juice and drizzle of olive oil and pureed it. It was perfect. I split and cut a few pitas, brushed the rough sides with a bit of oil and sprinkled them with Italian seasoning, and toasted them in the toaster oven to go with. (See? Microwaved pitas just wouldn’t have been the same.) And pulled out a bag of baby carrots from the market that didn’t even need peeling. This is theContinue reading

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Standardby Julie46 Comments

I didn’t think I ate too much until I went and listed it. No wonder I’ve managed to fill out even my PJ pants. As usual, I ate too many warm, puffy-white Pillsbury Crescent Rolls (this is the only night we have them) between oven and table before I even started on dinner. (As I was rolling them up, I snuck a chunk of my Dad’s 70% cocoa Lindt chocolate into the middle of one I then arranged crookedly in one corner of the cookie sheet so I could distinguish it from the others. Kind of a lowbrow chocolate croissant.) Everyone contributed something: I did the soup (threw all the ingredients, including two leeks the size of baseball bats, in the slow cooker last night and left it, then pureed with a hand-held immersion blender right in the pot), cranberry-rhubarb sauce and dessert, and nothing was that elaborate, really; even the squash was just thrown in the microwave and the baby carrots quickly steamed and drizzled with honey. My sister cutContinue reading

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Standardby Julie48 Comments

It was a phlegmy slide from Friday into Saturday. By 3pm Mike and I still hadn’t eaten a thing, so I turned the about-to-be-chucked stump of (three) day-old French bread sitting on the counter into French toast. I haven’t had French toast in eons, but it was all I could muster making, and although my stomach was rumbling louder than the nearby trains, it was all I could imagine eating. Coincidentally, I just got an assignment to write a short piece on chicken soup and other food remedies and whether or not there is any substance to the old wives’ tales of cure-alls for the common cold and flu. Since no food lore required me to drown my phlegm in milkshakes, I made a pot of chickenoodle soup instead. Which I haven’t really had an appetite for since I was pregnant – roasted chicken was the worst, for some reason – so Mike ate some, W picked out the meat and noodles, and I ateContinue reading

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Standardby Julie55 Comments

Thanksgiving has come early to the Van R house, thanks to a day of shooting Thanksgiving segments for Living Calgary (CBC TV), during which we shot an extreme makeover, turkey edition that included bang bang turkey and this panini. There was enough left over leftovers to make more when I got home, and I was spurred on by the novelty of having my panini grill back (my sister had borrowed it to make chocolate panini for a staff meeting at work. Yes, chocolate panini. Another day. Maybe tomorrow?) A panini is just a fancy name for a grilled sandwich, pressed down as it cooks (on both sides simultaneously) in a panini grill; if you don’t have a grill, just cook them in a skillet with another skillet (or pot, or anything heavy) set on top of it to weigh it down. These sandwiches were made with crusty bread brushed with garlicky canola oil (crush a clove of garlic into a small ramekin of oil; brushContinue reading

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Standardby Julie57 Comments

This morning I was pummeled awake at 7 am by a 3 year old and his 65 pound puppy. It was chilly and rainy and grey, so I pulled on my big brown socks with the orange stripes (damn sexy, they are) and went downstairs, made oatmeal for W, put on his beloved (and very dated) Green Eggs and Ham DVD, and made cream puffs. Today is the day for my Daring Bakers challenge – and this month our assignment was chocolate eclairs. Happy is the day when someone else tells me I have to make eclairs, absolving me of any guilt. When I was a kid, I literally used to fantasize about chocolate eclairs. I would choose a cream-filled chocolate eclair over almost anything; it seemed to me the biggest and best thing with the most elements – doughnut, chocolate and cream. If the choice was between cream puffs and Nanaimo bars, I would have had a hard time. Fortunately I can’t remember ever being in that predicament. ItContinue reading

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Standardby Julie60 Comments

I didn’t want to jam up the title with a bunch of finger foods that I’ve already written about earlier this year. Really, the one thing I was most excited about was a new invention – grilled mini donuts dipped in warm caramel. (Please don’t tell me if someone has done this already, I’m certain someone, somewhere has already thought of it.) But first, let me lay the groundwork for you. Tonight I ended up cooking for a fabulous party with tents full of wine and food and cheer spread out over rolling fields just east of Red Deer, at the home of a prolific author (him) and singer (her), who brought her band up from Nashville to perform on the patio, violins and all. It was glorious. I made some familiar things: bison meatballs with blueberry sauce, gruyère gougères (a.k.a. cheese puffs) which barely made it outside and down the stairs; crostini with bruschetta and olive-fig-walnut tapenade, which didn’t go over as well (I heardContinue reading

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Standardby Julie44 Comments

Bookmark this page. Seriously, do it now, before you forget. I wasn’t sure what to call this. Technically it’s more cake than pie, but calling it cake doesn’t do justice to a pieplateload of juicy fruit topped with a sweet, crunchy topping; it’s not a pie either – it has no pastry but is baked in a pie plate and cut into wedges. The fruit-topping ratio is reminiscent of a crumble or a cobbler, but this is easier than any of the above. I could go as far as to call it foolproof. Generally I don’t make dessert on a regular Monday night, but I had bought red and yellow plums on the weekend with something specific in mind – cobbler? Pie? Upside down cake? It was something, but today I had no idea what it was, and flipping through the rained-on-and-dried-out magazines on my front step gave no clues. Also, I happened to have whipping cream in the fridge, which almost never happens. So I couldn’t really notContinue reading

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