Thursday, February 23, 2012

February 23 2012

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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!

Monday, February 20, 2012

91– go dog sledding

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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?!

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

 

 

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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.

 

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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.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

February 19 2012

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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. IMG_2155

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.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

#63–Attend a Cooking Class

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

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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!IMG_2144

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.

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Friday, February 10, 2012

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.

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

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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..