Bites v 2.0

OK, this installment of Bites feels sort of long, so have a seat.

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Let's start with a super short Garden Update. I was in the yard Monday afternoon and I noticed that 4 of our potato plants had turned yellow and flopped to the ground. I figured I should pull them up and dig out the potatos.

Over 3 pounds from the 4 plants! And that's not including all the other potatos we dug up without disturbing the plants. Truly amazing to me. I grew this stuff!

The damn birds are eating our tomatos, so i picked all the red and reddish ones and pulled some carrots too. It's a freaking harvest people!

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If you are a Canuck, don't forget to email me to get your name in for the picnic basket giveaway.

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The minute I saw this salad at Mixed Salad Annie's I knew what I was going to have for lunch that day. Her Fresh Corn Salad is a brilliant recipe and so good for you with all those veggies and beans. The only things I did differently were to not cook the corn - I love raw fresh corn in salad - and I used more tomato. It was perfect and I made the recipe 3 times in one week.

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I came across this yummy recipe for Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins over at Daily Unadventures in Cooking at the end of July, when I happened to have some blueberries in the house. The recipe calls for you to use your food processor to grind up the oats a bit and then to mix the wet ingredients in with the oats.
I was too lazy to get out my food processor and then have to clean itScott was asleep when I made these, so I left the oats whole and unprocessed. The muffins still tasted terrific. My first batch did not look pretty though:

Damn these silicone muffin pans! Isn't the point of using them that they are non-stick and quick release?

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In July when our weather was hot, hot, hot, I made this recipe from Foodtv.ca - Spicy Black Bean Gazpacho. It turned out I didn't have black beans at home, so I used cannelloni beans instead. Fast, refreshing and delicious.

This is now tied with another gazpacho recipe I made this summer (you'll be hearing about it soon) for my favorite.

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This was my second recipe to use up all the preserved lemons I made months ago. Recipe One is here. Yeah, the preserved lemons sort of got lost in the shuffle, didn't they. I made this because I had a container of sour cream and lots of potatos. The purple color from the olives and the hot sauce is sort of odd, but it was pretty good.

Preserved Lemon and Olive Dip

1/3 cup mayonnaise
2/3 cup sour cream
3/8 of a preserved lemon
6 kalamata olives, pitted
1 tsp Sriracha or other hot sauce

Mix together the mayonnaise and sour cream. Remove the flesh from the lemon pieces and discard. Rinse the lemons well and mince them very finely. Mince the olives and mix the lemon, olives and hot sauce into the sour cream. Let sit for at least one hour before serving.

My days of preserved lemons are over, they were accidentally thrown out by my friend Jay who came across them in the fridge. She told Scott that she found something that had gone bad, and without looking at what she was holding, he told her to throw them away. Oh well, I'll make some more another time, a time when I've got some more recipes to use them up in.

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This is a fast and delicious pizza. Instead of using pizza dough for the base, pita bread was used. This way a pizza can be whipped up at a moments notice. We topped the pita bread with smoky bbq sauce instead of tomato sauce and scattered slices of red onion and chopped (cooked) chicken breast over top. Finish with a sprinkle of whatever cheese you have handy (I think we used Parmesan) and set it under the broiler for a few minutes.

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Not much to say about these, other than they were wonderful. When I was in Kamloops this summer my parents and I went out for lunch at a restaurant downtown and my Mom had some great lettuce wraps that she kindly shared with me. I made these when I got back to Calgary.

Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

2 tb oil
1 red pepper thinly sliced
1 stalk celery finely chopped
1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 green onions finely sliced
1 1/2 cups sliced napa cabbage
1/2 cup shredded carrot
1 tb grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced

Lettuce leaves for serving

Sauce:
2 tb tamari
2 tb hoisin
1/2 cup water
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp 5 spice powder
1 tb cornstarch

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium high heat. Add the pepper and celery and cook, stirring often for a few minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables and cook until the mushrooms are soft and the cabbage is wilted. In a bowl mix together all the sauce ingredients and pour over the vegetables in the frying pan. Stir and cook until the sauce is thick and bubbly. Move the stir fry to a plate. To serve, spoon some vegetables into a lettuce leaf, top with additional hoisin sauce if desired, roll up and eat.

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Many many moons ago I moved to Calgary from B.C. with my then (now ex) boyfriend. About a week after we got here, his Dad came to town on business and took us out to dinner at Caesars Restaurant downtown. Caesars is a hardcore old school steak house - lots of wood, very dark, waiters all dolled up in black. I couldn't tell you what I ate but it was good and we had fun watching the chef in the little glassed in grill area cook the steaks.

So it seemed somehow fitting that Scott and I were sitting in the Caesars restaurant in the Sound end of town sharing dessert two weeks ago when our Realtor called to tell us that the buyer had met all conditions and our house was sold.

The restaurant I had one of my first meals out in Calgary was home to one of my last.

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Speaking of Caesars, I'm a little confused. It's a nice place; it's a pricey place in my opinion. You're going to spend $50-70 bucks easy per person. To me that's a lot of money - we were only there because I'd been given a gift certificate. So why is the cheese bread - which is AMAZING by the way - brought to the table wrapped in aluminum foil? And why is the Parmesan cheese for my onion soup not real, but that powdery stuff? And why did my green salad look like the cheapo-bagged stuff I buy for $1.99 at the grocery store? A little cheap and cheesy for the price folks. But the steaks? Sooooooooooooo good.

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What? Oh I can't just tell you we sold our house and be done with it? Ok then. We've sold our house and are moving to BC at the end of September. I've given notice at work, we've started telling people, and all we have left to do is realize that this is actually happening and start getting ready to go. T minus 26 days!

Holy Crap.

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I saw this sign at the beginning of summer. I went back the next day with my camera for a picture. Good thing I did, they've replaced it now.

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Have a good day, I'm off to hyperventilate for a while.