#93–Have a beer and hotdog at the Yankee’s Stadium

I think Justin was most excited about this item list. To be honest I was on the fence about this one but thought that if I was in New York I had to do this. While we were waiting for The World Trade Memorial site to open we purchased some Yankee swag just so we didn’t look out of place while we were watching the game.

We got to see the Yankee vs. Red Sox rivalry which was pretty fun to watch. I have to say that the Red Soxs got creamed; one inning was 9-0 (did you catch that?! one inning!). This ended up being a pretty fun item on the list as well and I’m so glad I got to share it with Lynn, Helder and Justin.

Just a side note (and I have to bring this up!): The hotdogs and beer are extremely expensive! They truly are making a killing on those ones. Just a side note though.

#27–Watch a Broadway show in NYC

I landed in the concrete jungle, the big apple, or New York City with my travel partners Justin, Lynn, and Helder. This was a really exciting trip for us because none of us have ever been here!

There were two items on my list that I could cross off here and who wouldn’t want to spend some time in New York just for the fun of it? Justin purchased a package through a charity and worked his magic to make it work for all of us.

The first full  day we were there we decided to hit Broadway. Lynn and Helder were kind enough to wait in line for tickets while Justin and I found a washroom and bought a 2G network card. Rock of Ages was our pick and I have to admit it was the most amazing show! I was laughing throughout the entire show and sometimes laughing so hard I was crying. It was fun and energetic and didn’t really want it to end. I tried to take more pictures in the theatre but got in trouble a number of times so decided to stop.

After the first night we got a little Broadway happy and ended up seeing Chicago and Peter and the Stargazers. Both were extremely good but I should have brought my glasses so I could actually see facial expressions on the stage.

Overall, this had to be one of my favourite items on the big list! Crossed it off three times.

May 14 2012

The third out of our three-peat. Donna Hay Seasons flat roasted chicken with almond and mint. The cookbook has been one of the nicest cookbooks I have seen in awhile featuring a ton of pictures, simple straight forward recipes, and even some nice photographs.

The meal looked amazing in the book but the sauce to put on top of the chicken left a little to be desired. A few comments from the crew were: the lemon was overwhelming, the olive oil was too overwhelming, and the mint was delicious.

The BBQ is getting a good workout this weekend because it’s been so hot out lately. Back to the normal cooking as of tomorrow.

We rated this an overall score of 7.8/10 because of the few changes we would have made to the chicken sauce. Overall it was a pretty good meal.

May 13 2012

Another rendition of salmon, this time flavoured with dill. It was pretty comparable to the other salmon dishes that we have made in the past but happened to be extra delightful after a 10km race.

We rated this dish a 7.75/10. My Mom rated this meal an 8.5/10 and wanted me to post her score! Pretty tasty and very quick to make.

May 12 2012

We are trying desperately to try and catch up on our weekly cooking adventures! It’s been a busy few weeks (I know.. excuses, excuses) but have wrapped up another tasty meal.

A quick trip to the farmers market cost us a few dollars as we ended up getting more flavours of cheese than required and fresh shrimp. The cheese even came from as close as Red Deer! I may have made the mistake of filling up on spicy gouda prior to actually eating, it was sooo good (insert gouda joke here) though I couldn’t help myself.

Anyways, back to the meal. Today we cooked Shrimp with Herb Butter (I’ve said enough haven’t I?) with a white wine herb pasta. It was our first meals that we could actually eat outside and was delicious.

Overall, it was rated a 8.8/10 (2 people voted 8.5 and 1 person voted a 9.5). This recipe was quick and easy to make and was packed with flavour.

April 21 2012

Pulled Pork Sandwiches and a Feta Salad.

Well, I must admit that I didn’t have a lot to do with this recipe. We had a training run early Saturday morning so the pork was put in a slow cooker prior to that and then a salad was prepared closer to dinner time.

I didn’t even take a picture! Not my best work as far as the dinners come.

The next couple of weeks are looking mighty busy so I might have to condense a few cooking days into one week when I have a bit more spare time. Too much running, biking, gardening (or never enough), and working.. No excuse but that’s the way it’s panning out.

April 16 2012

Slow braised short ribs

This recipe was a little complicated and took awhile to prepare. This is definitely a weekend meal! The ribs ended up being delicious although I would have purchased a different cut of rib.

My Dad rated this one a 9/10 and he’s always been the toughest critic between all of us. Overall this recipe scored an 8.5/10. While preparing this meal I did not think it would turn out as well.

Now, I’m finally caught up!

April 14 2012

Asian Grilled Vegetables and Steak.

We finally bought a new BBQ after what my Dad says has been 25+ years. So today it was a perfect excuse to use it!

This recipe was simple and had a lot of flavour. The vegetables turned out amazing (probably because it was cooked with more garlic than I would like to admit). I certainly would make this again because of how quick, simple, and easy this recipe was.

We rated this meal an 8/10. Recipe from Nordstrom's Entertaining at Home cookbook.

April 13 2012

Well this week I have to make up for the my absence in the kitchen. First, Sault Ste. Marie for my Baba’s 80th birthday. Then, a cold that won’t seem to go away.

Tonight we decided on Sushi. My sister struggles with an allergy to garlic and I struggle trying to find a recipe without it. I’ve always wanted to make my own sushi but had never really attempted it before. I had fun making this but it turned out to be quite a pricey meal. There probably won’t be many redo’s of this one!

I found the sushi amazing. My sister is a sushi connoisseur so she had a few comments including: the raw fish to be a bit warm and some of the sushi pieces to be a bit big (not the ones I made of course!).

Overall, this meal scored an 8.5/10. I personally thought it was a 9 but that was probably because I was cooking and rolling a lot of sushi rolls. 

March 24 2012

A Portuguese recipe in preparation for our trip to Portugal!

This week we had Lombo de Porco Com Ameijoas (prok with calms). I have to admit that I did not prepare much of this meal as my job was to find a salad to go with it.

The clams were purchased at the Farmers Market and were amazing! I haven’t had clams that tasty in awhile (the ones in Croatia were a close second though).

Overall, this meal was a 7/10 as the pork was a bit tough and the difficulty of the meal wasn’t that high. Tasty meal post run.

March 19 2012

Dinner tonight included:

Three Grain Bread – Cook Great Food Canada

Cilantro Vinaigrette for the salad – Nordstrom Flavours

BBQ Lentils with Eggplant – Whole Foods Market Cookbook

It was my first time using the Whole Foods Market Cookbook thanks to my supervisor to lending it to me! Although there aren’t any pictures, every single recipe looked so tasty. The conditions for this week were it had to take under 3 hours of cooking and I wanted it to be vegetarian. I am now officially purchasing the Whole Foods Market Cookbook.

It was also my first time cooking bread by myself and I didn’t realize how easy it actually was. This is something that I will definitely try making again. Everybody really enjoyed it and were going back for seconds and thirds (maybe even fourths but I shouldn’t mention that).

The meal today was delicious. It was very hearty and the whole combination went very well together. Overall we rated this meal an 8/10.

With the amount of time spent from start to finish (over 3 hours) I wish it would have scored higher!

March 10 2012

This was supposed to be our Moroccan inspired meal since we’ll be heading there in June. I’m pretty sure anybody who is from there would think that this dish needed some help.

The Moroccan chicken recipe was very flavourful and spiced quite nicely. I still felt there just just a little something missing from this one component. I believe that this would make a great during the week meal just didn’t really make the cut for our meal of the week!

The other dish was an asparagus and tomato couscous salad which in my opinion was a flop. The flavouring was minimal on this salad and I could have thought of a few different ways to give it some spice.

Overall, this meal got a 6.5/10.

March 2 2012

No pictures this week!

We prepared the meal for three hours and got a little a excited to eat. Today we made veggies burgers from turnips, beets, zucchini, hazelnuts, mashed potatoes, and rice. Pretty tough work but the burgers turned out really well.

We rated this a 8/10!

February 23 2012

Spinach, Orzo salad, and baked yams!

We gave this meal a 7.5/10 it really was delicious! We made up the recipe for every component of this meal and could tweak them a bit to get a higher score. Pretty delicious considering!

91– go dog sledding

So today Justin and I went dog sledding. This has been something that I’ve wanted to do for awhile but wasn’t really sure if the dogs were treated humanely (especially after what happened in Whistler).

Justin booked a trip and I started researching the company and asked around for advice. We had to switch the initial company we booked through because of their poor treatment of animals. Later we found out that the guy who owns the company we initially went through is associated with the company in Whistler. Not cool..

We finally booked through Snowy Owl based out of Canmore. They offered information on how they take care of their animals, what they are being fed, where they sleep, and how often they receive veterinary care. They also have the Canadian Inuit Husky, the original sled dog and now considered the rarest dog breed! Did I mention we had one pulling our dog sled?!

Before we had our instructional on how to use the dog sled we had an opportunity to meet the dogs. There were 14 sleds each sled had 6 dogs, so you could imagine how noisy it would be when they got excited to go for a ride.

Key learning for our instructional:

Go – Hike, Easy – slow down, Whoa – stop, you have to be doing something really wrong to flip your sled, and keep the ropes tight.

The silly looking one on the bottom left is the Canadian Inuit Husky named Baby Hudson. He was the goofiest dog and had quite the personality. I’m glad we had him on our team!

So we ended up getting our dogs tangled at first because our sled was going faster than the dogs. Mistake number one. We also flipped our sled coming off of one of the bumps. Luckily our dogs really liked us and waited for us to figure things out. When we flipped the sled they were looking back at us trying to figure out how we managed that.

We made it to the half way point with our dogs and sled in tack. Justin was officially retiring from driving and it was now my chance to take over. The dogs had a quick break and it was time for some pictures.

 

 

 

After the photo opportunity we switched places but while we were doing this our guide ended up losing his team of dogs. They pulled out the ice pick and started running. It was pretty funny to see him chase down his dogs for 300m. It’s a good thing he caught them or else he would have had to buy everyone that worked there beers. It sure made for a good day though.

 

The dogs getting ready to go home for the night and enjoy their well earned supper. Overall it was a really fun experience and wouldn’t mind doing it again. Great item to cross off on my list.

February 19 2012

So we tried out the Indian recipe again today and this time it worked out really well! The sauce definitely didn’t have as much tomato in it and I spiced like crazy.

Here is the final product. We decided against making all of the recipes that we learnt in class because of time constraints but it was delicious and filling. The Indian cuisine really lacks veggies so next time I’m going to have to think about ways to incorporate some in to the meal.

Overall, we gave this meal an 8.5/10.

#63–Attend a Cooking Class

This our meal of the week and I got to cross an item off my list while doing it!

The menu:

Vegetable Pakora

Butter Chicken

Jeera Rice

Dal Makhani (Black gram lentils)

Mango Fruit Cream

The class started out a bit chaotic but once we got into the swing of things we were on a roll. I chose an Indian cuisine cooking class because I find the spices are quite difficult to perfect. The instructor gave some really great tips for getting the spices just right, as you can see in the picture below!

1. All spices should be bought fresh and whole

2. Spices should be ground together to make a Tandoori Masala (cumin, corriander, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves). After ground in a coffee grinder they can be sealed in an air tight container for months.

3. Don’t panic until you add Kasurimethi, it really makes butter chicken sauce what it is

4. If at first you don’t succeed, spice spice again..

Overall it was a really fun class and made for some amazing food. I’ll have to try making this again at home to see if I can duplicate it. It was pretty tricky..

If we had made this at home and returned flavours and results like this it would have been a 10/10 but we can’t take all the credit for meal. Our portion of the meal was a 9/10, a little less tomato sauce and it would have been a 10.

February 10 2012

This meal was a little delayed due to my recent trip to Vancouver. It didn’t leave a lot of time to make out meal last week so this one we’re doing double duty.

So up on deck this week was a seared sirloin steak, mashed potatoes, and carrots all from the Jaime Oliver cookbook.

This recipe required a little more patience and skill than some of our other recipes. Here is the final result:

Overall comments:

- although Beef was humanly raised, they were grazers, no hormones, pesticides etc. etc. my one of us thought the beef was a little tough

- the carrots had a very summer hint because it included orange zest and a light white wine and didn’t seem to pair well with the other two items

- the meal wasn’t hot when served (this is definitely something we have to work on

Overall due to difficulty we give this meal an 8/10. The flavour of the salmon was better but the overall meal racked up the 8 points here.

I think we’re getting closer and closer every week..

January 30 2012

We had to rush this meal because it was done right before our dog training class. Anyways, I prepared most of this meal myself because everyone else was busy at work. The menu was Dijon Herb Crusted Salmon and Arugula Salad from the Nordstrom Flavour cookbook. After setting off the smoke alarm over 6 times we get the final result.

It was amazing! The herbs really make the salmon and rightfully so because there was every herb you could name on there..

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Overall we gave this meal an 8/10 not because of the individual tastes but there seemed to be a component missing from the meal.

January 30 2012

Abby at her Rally-O dog training class. No treats for this class so she didn’t want to participate in the course more than twice. For an old girl she’s doing really well!

January 22 2012

Me using the the potato ricer to make the gnocchi. This was the best part of the cooking process!

Gnocchi was made with potatoes, flour, porcini mushrooms and a bit of cheese. Delicious!

Gnocchi with sage sauce. This meal was excellent and was a little more difficult than the last two meals that I’ve made. The porcini mushroom gave this dish a little extra flavour and was a great way to spice up the gnocchi.

The rating for this meal was 7.5/10. We figured that we need to adjust our rating system to make it consistent for our meals. We’ll work on that part! We also decided that we probably won’t get a 10/10 unless it’s a three course meal and something that would be served in a restaurant.

Great recipe from David Rocco’s Made in Italy Cookbook.

January 21 2012

It finally warmed up enough to take a picture of Abby with her boots on. With the lowest being –49 with windchill anything warmer than –20 seems like it’s ok to wear shorts. Unfortunately, none of the weather phased Abby as she wanted to go out everyday this week for her routine walks.

January 15 2011

So, we attempted to make Jerk chicken today.. It did not turn out great at all and the rice didn’t help either. Overall rating for this recipe was 5.5/10. The only thing that really made this meal appetizing was the blood orange salad with my made up salad dressing.

Jerk Chicken Recipe: Light Hearted Cooking with Anne Lindsay (don’t attempt unless you can grill it). I was quite disappointed with this. 

The good news: I went to the farmers market to purchase most of the ingredients. Another component to our weekly cooking regimes.

Next week: home made gnocchi. I hope it tastes better!

January 14 2011

Today my Dad and I went downtown to a live art piece called “Limelight”. They set up spot lights on Stephen Avenue and just waited for people passing by to come experience their moment in the spotlight. It was a pretty fun experience but a little difficult to get a great shot.

If you’re wondering, I had my moment in the Limelight although not as creative as the one pictured above.

#53–be a part of a bocce ball tournament

What better place to knock this off my list than a beach in Jamaica.

If you’re wondering, yes we won, and I have the t-shirt to prove it. All those years of practicing really came to good use against the team from Saskatchewan. And yes, I contributed quite well to the teams score.

#88–take a photo a day for a year

Well, I did it. A photo a day for a year.

My idea was that I would pick up my camera and learn how to use it. The camera was a gift for Christmas in 2010 and I couldn’t think of a better project then to use it everyday (almost everyday).

It was difficult to take a picture everyday. At 11:50pm I realize I forgot to take one, now what?! I grab my camera equipment and try and find something. This project made me see the world in a different way. From small minute insects to a panoramic of the city and everything in between. When I go for walks I now look at everything, what would be a great picture? How could I make that picture look different? What angle could I try?

I learnt a lot of tips and skills throughout the year as well. As I look back I can see the progression of my photos throughout the year. I’ve become more critical of my work and have become more accustomed to each lens that I own.

Throughout the past week I keep thinking about taking a picture every single day but have decided that I would rather focus on my photography skills than just trying to put a picture up. This year, I think I’m going to try and post a picture every week to continue improving my skills.

#99–cook a different meal a week for a year

Ok, week #1. I sure like to choose year long projects!

My goal is to try different meals to challenge my cooking skills. This week was a simple recipe from Nordstroms Flavors Cookbook Lime and Cilantro Chicken Tacos

I give this meal a 7.5 out of 10, not because of our cooking skills but just because it was OK. We’re aiming to find a meal that is a 10/10. Can we find one this year?!

January 2 2011

Last day on the beach and then we are heading home tonight. Couldn’t have asked for a better holiday. Great company, great weather, great food. Same time again next year?

January 1 2011

Dinner our at the Japanese restaurant. They put on a pretty sweet show.