Roast beef success! and 2 with no photos

We've started buying the majority of our meat from the butcher shop. We're doing this for 3 reasons. First, there is a butcher and a small grocery store about a 5 minute drive from our house. I can go there unshowered, with my hairy legs and spit-up covered yoga pants and no one notices. And the chance I will run into anyone I know is very slim, unlike the other day when I was dancing and singing to Paxton while pushing his stroller in Costco and looked up and saw someone I knew staring at me. Second, price. If I need only one chicken breast, I don't have to buy a pack of four. If I need only a pound of ground beef, I don't have to buy 2 packages of 3/4's of a pound each. And third is quality. This stuff is gooooood, much better quality than the grocery stores.

I was there a couple of days ago and they had some little tenderloin roasts on sale. I picked one up and regretted it right away, as I am crappy at cooking roasts. But why be negative, so I gave it a go.

First I took the roast out 30 minutes before cooking and unwrapped it and let it sit at room temperature.

I made a rub of
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp black pepper

and rubbed it on the roast. I heated 2 tb of vegetable oil over medium heat in a pan and browned the roast on all sides.


Then I put it in the oven at 400' for 30 minutes.


It came out around medium-ish. A little more done that I would like, but about what Scott prefers.

It was delicious; the roast was tender and the rub added nice flavor. I was pretty proud of myself and will feel more confident with roasts in the future.

I cooked a recipe from one of my notebooks. This is from Bon Appetit, Grilled Chicken Thighs. I marinated the chicken for a couple of hours before I broiled them. I love anything teriyaki, and these went over very well.
Recipe: Grilled Chicken Thighs.

And from my del.icio.us recipe list I made Mongolian Beef and I agree that this is quite a wonderful dish. I sauteed a sliced up orange bell pepper and a sliced zucchini to the pan for the final simmering. It was fabulous and quick and full of yum.

Beans R Good

Things are going pretty well over here. I recently had a doctor's appointment and all was proclaimed good, including that I don't have gestational diabetes (YAY), and my blood work was all good, except that my iron levels are "acceptable but low". I did a search on the internet yesterday before work for some iron rich foods but was coming up with only creepy lists that included whale and seal meat. I twittered (of course I did) what I was looking for, and when I got home that night I saw I had some responses from some very helpful people, suggesting leafy greens, red meat, beans and beets. So we had a big salad for dinner and after dinner I checked out the cupboards for what would be for dinner the next night and we had about 10 cans of beans, and I knew right away what to make -
Mexican Black Bean and Roasted Pineapple Bowl from Everybody Like Sandwiches.

Now who wouldn't like rice and beans and pineapple and salsa all layered together? Only a fool, I tell you.

We made the salsa with tomatos from the garden.

How good does this look?


The iron rich beans were sauteed with onion and bell pepper and spices. The pineapple, which should have been fresh and roasted, was canned and warmed in a pan. But still good. We topped the beans rice and pineapple with the fresh salsa and sour cream. I skipped the cheese on mine.


So delicious and good for you! Give Jeanette's recipe a try, you'll love it.

A Tale of Two Burgers

We've been grilling fools over here lately, and I wanted to share 2 fabulous burger recipes with you. They are so good. You should make them.

First up is a burger from the latest Food Network Magazine. The lead story on the cover is Best Burgers From Bobby Flay, promoting his new book Burgers, Fries and Shakes. I saw enough reviews on blogs to know that this is a book worth owning. I was drawn to the recipe for his Dallas Burger, a burger with homemade bbq sauce, dry rub, and coleslaw. It's a recipe he created for his wife, who loves bbq'd brisket. We love brisket too, so this was the one to try first.

The burger is a little time consuming - if you go whole hog you make not only the burger patties from scratch, but also the dry rub, coleslaw and bbq sauce. But not an awful amount of time. Be patient, it's worth it.


This burger is SO GOOD, and it's the bbq sauce and coleslaw that really make it fabulous.


Look at that! We had them 2 nights in a row. I think I'm drooling a little right now.....

Dallas Burger

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The other burger is also from Food Network, from their Ultimate Recipe Showdown show. I've only seen the show once, but luckily for me, it was the Burger episode, the episode that brought this burger into my life.

Sorry if I sound a little dramatic, but damn, this Vietnamese Bistro Burger rocks.


You may recall my recent post about how much we love and miss Vietnamese food. This is another easy flavorful Vietnamese recipe that we will be making a lot of. The patty is made of ground pork seasoned with lime, ginger, soy and fish sauce. Make sure you make the pickled carrot and daikon salad, it's fabulous on the burger.


I could go on for days about how wonderful this burger is. I won't though. I'll just say one more time it's easy and delicious and hopefully you are going to try these, cause you'll love them.


Vietnamese Bistro Burger

I have never felt more like Paula Deen than I do right now.

You'd assume that a recipe that starts off the ingredient list with bacon and butter must come from Miss Deen y'all, but not this one.


These yummy bacon cookies - yeah I said bacon cookie - are weirdly wonderful and come from Cookin' in the 'Cuse. If you're feeling wacky and have a half pound of bacon sitting around, give these a try.

Bites v 6

Back in June I posted a Wordless recipe for toast with peanut butter and bacon. An anonymous reader left a comment on that post with instructions on how to make peanut butter bacon spread. When Scott read that, there was no stopping him.



It was really really good! I was skeptical, but was won over. Salty smokey bacon and creamy peanut butter are a match made in heaven.
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We saw Jamie Oliver make this relish on his new(ish) show Jamie at Home - Jalapeno Avocado relish. At least, that's what I call ours. His is called something else similar, but the book is alllllll the way in the other room right now.


I first served the relish with some chicken breast I'd smoked in an old smoker bag. That bag had to have been 5 years old. About time to use it. The chicken and relish paired well together. The smoked pineapple, not so much. Grilled pineapple rocks. This smoked pineapple just tasted oily and weird. A waste of perfectly good pineapple!
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Here's a del.icio.us recipe for you from La Mia Cucina. I bookmarked this recipe in January 2007. Lisa made this for Weekend Cookbook Challenge, and even though I'd saved it, I was never sure I'd make it. Until I was faced with 3/4's of a large head of purple cabbage leftover from a salad recipe. I still had coleslaw in the fridge from the pork sandwiches, so we tried Lisa's stew


Kielbasa Stew.
This received good but mixed results. I'd had a choice between 3 kielbasa's at the store. I personally don't think I chose the best one. I enjoyed the "soup" part (I didn't cook it as long as the recipe recommends, so it was soupy, which is what I wanted), but wasn't crazy about the sausage. I found it too firm. Scott just loved the whole thing, and ate 2 bowlfuls that night. I divided the leftovers into lunch for Scott for the next day, and the rest for my parents. And mixed reviews from them too - my Dad enjoyed the veggies and soup, my mom thought the sausage was the best part.
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Back in the summer Scott's sister, brother in law and our nephew came to visit. That kid survived on a diet of ribs, skinny cow fudge pops, peas, and goldfish crackers the whole weekend. (The adults ate pretty much the same thing, with a few cocktails in the evenings.) One day I sat with my nephew as he ate his snack, and he was kind enough to share a couple of his goldfish crackers with me. They were good! A month later on holiday, a bowl of goldfish crackers turned up at the bar we were having a pre-dinner drink at, and when we went home, I added them to my grocery list. The bag sat untouched for a couple of months until I was trying to figure out what to do with some chicken for dinner. Cheddar Chicken Fingers were born.


The little crackers were so happy to go swimming in my mortar. Or pestle.

A massacre! Avert your eyes!

I lightly spread the chicken strips with mustard, and breaded them with the ground up flesh of hundred of small cheesy goldfish.

Then they were baked and eaten. The end.
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This was a Nigella recipe for Risi e Bisi - Rice and Peas. Basically a soupy risotto. It was ok.
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del.icio.us recipe of the week - my take on Michelles Beanapaloosa

This is possibly the fastest that a del.icio.us recipe of the week has made it from computer to plate - the same day. I saw this recipe on Tuesday morning before I left for work, picked up what I needed from the store at lunch, and made it that night for dinner.

When we packed up our house in Calgary to move here, cleaning out my pantry was the hardest part for me. I gave away a fair amount of spices, sauces etc, but some stuff I just couldn't part with, and a jar of garlic black bean sauce was one of the things that came with us. But what to do with it? No idea, which is why it was still in the pantry unopened until my Tuesday morning visit to Je Mange la Ville, where I found her Chicken and Green Bean stir fry.

Doesn't it look and sound delicious??? Or del.icio.us (ha! sorry.). Yes it does. But when I was at the grocery store I had a change of heart. We've eaten a lot of chicken lately, to the point I don't want to eat chicken again any time soon. Maybe I should save the recipe, and make something else tonight. OR, I could make a switch and use beef instead of chicken! Am I brilliant, or what?


This was ohmygod good. As I said, I used beef instead of chicken. I also used about 1/2 lb each of the beef and the beans - I am trying to cut down on leftovers around here - but left the sauce amounts the same, as we do love sauce. Scott was pretty uninterested in this when I started cooking it, but practically knocked me out of the way to get at it when it was done, then ate 3/4's of it, and said that anytime I wanted to make that again, it was ok with him.

The only thing I would do differently next time would be to cut back on the amount of garlic I used. Michelle's recipe calls for fermented black beans, and I used garlic black bean sauce. As fabulous as it was, I swear we radiated garlic out of our pores for the next two days.

Recipe: Chicken and Green Beans with Fermented Black Beans

del.icio.us recipe update, as of today 267 recipes. After I hit 300 in May I had to go through and delete recipes I knew that there was little chance I would actually make. And then I severely cut down on how many recipes I added to del.icio.us during the summer. Instead I just bookmarked them to my favorites, or wrote them out instead. So I really got ahead there.

Bites v 5

Saturday was the 3rd farmers market of the year. Pretty much the same as the week before - mainly plants with a couple of baking stands. We bought some whole wheat buns and a rhubarb plant.
After the market we had planned to go for a walk in the park, then pick up some lunch stuff at the deli and have a picnic in the park. It was too windy, so we went home and I worked in the yard. When we were done, we had a jug (or two) of beergaritas. And then suddenly, somehow, Saturday was over.
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I love zucchini and I made these little baked zukes last month. It started off as a Jamie Oliver recipe from Cook with Jamie, but he made a vinaigrette with herbs, and I didn't have all the stuff, and Scott wanted garlic, so it became just zucchini tossed with garlic and olive oil and baked in the oven. They were really really great, and the next day I chopped up some of the leftovers into a salad.

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This recipe was what I made for dinner on Valentines day. Savory Bread Pudding with Spinach, Gruyere and Shiitakes from Food to Live By, that I received from Lis last year. I'll never be able to thank her enough for this great book.
We couldn't find any shiitakes, so we used brown mushrooms. We also cut back on the amount of spinach. It was really great, and we ate the leftovers for breakfasts.

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Coral Broccoli that I bought from the deli downtown. Tasted pretty much just like cauliflower to me.
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I don't really like pork chops anymore, I think they are too lean and no matter how careful I am they are always too dry. I had some in the freezer I wanted to get rid of. Thankfully I found a bbq crockpot recipe to use them up.

Here's the recipe from Chicken, again?. Very tasty and I like any recipe where my crockpot does most of the work.

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I am thinking of changing the name of this blog from i like to cook to "i want to cook everything that the cookbook junkie blogs about". Catchy, huh? I think I've got half her posts bookmarked. I love anything sweet and sour, like her Sweet and Sour Meatballs. Don't they look yummy?
They really were. Here's the recipe for Sweet and Sour Meatballs.

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Donut King opened here in Kamloops in December. The owner is a former Tim Hortons franchisee. He's opened his store in a former (not his) Tim Hortons location on the corner of Summit and Columbia. The big difference between Donut King and Tim Hortons? Donut King makes their donuts fresh daily, on premises. Tim Hortons donuts are made in a factory, frozen, and shipped to the stores where they are heated up.

I had to buy donuts for an early morning meeting a couple of months ago. I'd heard rave reviews about Donut King, so I picked up two dozen donuts. They were still warm.


The verdict? OH MY GOD. Those are some mighty fine donuts. I scooped a couple to take home to Scott after work. He nearly had a fit when he saw them - one was covered in toasted coconut which apparently is his favorite donut. That was news to me, but we don't eat that many donuts. Isn't the box so great?

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It's been ages since I shared a del.icio.us recipe of the week . My recipe count on del.icio.us has hit 305 which is frankly ridiculous. I need to stop bookmarking and start cooking what I've already saved. Back in February I spotted a vegan pate recipe over at one of my weekly reads the urban vegan. It sounded really interesting, and the ingredient list was so short and simple I couldn't believe it. I showed the recipe to Scott and just like that we were off to the store to pick up mushrooms and pecans.

This could not be a simpler dish to make. Toast your pecans in a large pan on top of the stove. Then whizz them into toasted pecan flour. Slice up your mushrooms and garlic and cook them. And cook them. And then cook them some more. Deglaze with sherry.

Then toss them in the food processor with the pecan flour and some olive oil. I added some extra sherry at this point just because I could.

We let it cool and later that night served it with crackers. (Go look at uv's picture of the finished pate, it's much nicer than mine.)

There are no words to tell you how great this is. It's nutty from the toasted pecans, it's earthy from the mushrooms. It's boozy from the sherry. And it's even more amazing the next day.

A million Thank You's to the urban vegan for sharing such a delicious recipe with the internet. It's so damn good.

Recipe:sherry-infused pate.

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I tried another recipe from the most recent Rachel Ray magazine. Unlike the Asparagus Popover that we liked so much, this one was a dud. The turkey meatballs were pretty easy to make, but were so bland. There wasn't much seasoning in them, so Scott added some Italian blend. If he hadn't these would have been much worse.
A couple of days later we heated up the leftovers in some pasta sauce for meatball sandwiches. They were ok. I wouldn't make this again.
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Normally the end of April would/should be too warm to have the oven on for 3+ hours to make stew, but that wasn't the case here in Kamloops. So I found a nice sounding stew recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking - Carbonnades a la Flamande (Beef and Onions Braised in Beer)




This was tremendous - definitely the best stew I've ever made. I added more brown sugar than called for, the sugar was hard so I just threw in a clump, and I really enjoyed the sweetness it added. I'm hoping the warm weather is here to stay, so I won't be able to make this again until at least November!
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I was very fortunate to receive an advanced copy of Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs (available on May 6):
I loved this book! I was excited to see that Kate is originally from Hope, BC (although now lives in the US) which is practically down the road from Kamloops. This is Kate's second book and her first based on cooking. Because I'm afraid I'll give too much away, here's the official blurb:
In this smart, delicious novel by the bestselling author of The Friday Night Knitting Club, a celebrity chef shows her friends and family the joy of fulfillment— and manages to spice up her own life at the same time.
Shortly before turning the big 5-0, boisterous party planner and Cooking with Gusto! personality Augusta “Gus” Simpson finds herself planning a birthday party she’d rather not—her own. She’s getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to plan her own birthday party. What she needs is time on her own with enough distance to give her loved ones the ingredients to put together successful lives without her.
Assisted by a handsome up-and-coming chef, Oliver, Gus invites a select group to take an on-air cooking class. But instead of just preaching to the foodie masses, she will teach regular people how to make rich, sensuous meals—real people making real food. Gus decides to bring a vibrant cast of friends and family on the program: Sabrina, her fickle daughter; Troy, Sabrina’s ex-husband; Anna, Gus’s timid neighbor; and Carmen, Gus’s pompous and beautiful competitor at the Cooking Channel. And when she begins to have more than collegial feelings for her sous-chef, Gus realizes that she might be able to rejuvenate not just her professional life, but her personal life as well. . . .

I really enjoyed reading Comfort Food. I loved the writing, and the characters. I loved the plot twists, those I saw coming and those I didn't. It was a really fun read and will have a permanent home in my bookcase. There's also a companion website to go with the book, with information about the book, characters, recipes, and games and quizzes. I'm proud to say I received top scores in the quizzes, thankyouverymuch. Check this book out! I don't think you'll be disappointed.

del.icio.us recipe of the week - Tiganopita me Feta

The round up for Weekend Cookbook Challenge #20 was full of yummy recipes - as are all of the the round ups - but Valli's contribution of Tiganopita me Feta - basically a baked pancake full of feta cheese really piqued my interest. How could it not? A pancake - and it's full of feta cheese!

I made this for dinner on a night when I was home a little earlier. After the eggs, flour and water are whisked together, the batter needs to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes and up to 2 hours. Then the feta is added and the pancake is baked for 30 minutes, until it's all golden brown and pretty.


Scott liked this much more than I did. I really think it was the type of feta that I used - it had a very very mild flavor. Too mild I think. The flavor was plain but this dish would be quite wonderful with a strong feta.

Recipe: Tiganopita me Feta.

del.icio.us recipe of the week - hummus dressing

I have the world's largest container of hummus in my fridge right now.

See?


That's 908 grams baby - just over 2 pounds of hummus.

Having parents with a Costco membership is both a blessing and a curse.

I'm eating it as fast as I can. Scott is helping a little, but he doesn't like hummus as much as I do. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to throw most of it away. And then last night before I started dinner I remembered that Kalyn had posted about salad dressing made of hummus in the summer. Brilliant! Exactly what I needed.

The dressing is incredibly simple - hummus, olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. I also added a couple of tablespoons of water to make the dressing a bit thinner.

I used the dressing on a salad of baby romaine lettuce, and chopped tomato, kalamata olives and peppers.


Hummus dressing - not just a pretty face. Full of vitamin C, iron, protein and fiber.

Recipe: Hummus Dressing.

I made my first Ina Garten recipe, and now I'm sad.

I am a huge fan of Ina Garten, but until last week I'd never made one of her recipes. I don't have any of her books, and the recipes she has either don't appeal to me, sound too rich, or make too much food (like the baked ham for 35).

So I admire her from afar and covet her kitchen and garden and little convertible.

But then last month I stumbled across a blog called
No Lemon Juice and her post about Ina's lemon yogurt cake. Her pictures looked so gorgeous that I made it last weekend when we were still at my parents house. That way there would be more help in eating it.

My very favorite lemon bread recipe is my mom's but this one sounded pretty wonderful too, especially with the yogurt.

So I whipped up the batter and tossed it in the oven, and after the noted cooking time I checked it and it was still raw in the middle. I gave it a few more minutes, checked again. And again. And again. In the end we gave it almost 20 extra minutes. And then when I removed it from the pan (after the cooling period) it sank a bit.


There was also a sort of "band" of batter near the bottom of the loaf that looked uncooked.

It tasted ok, although the tang of the yogurt wasn't present in the cooked loaf like it was in the batter. (Yep, I licked the bowl!) It went fast - I made it Saturday afternoon and it was gone by Tuesday, so it couldn't have been so bad, eh?

Recipe: Lemon Yogurt Cake

del.icio.us recipe of the week - Pretzels!! Made with my own two hands!!!!!!!

Written before we left Calgary.....

After my recent foccacia success , I was just itching to get in the kitchen again and continue my winning bread-product-baking streak. I flipped through my handful of remaining cookbooks (most are already in BC) for a relatively easy bread or bun recipe, but came up with nothing. I checked out the Internet. Google gave me nothing. I really wanted to try Mary's Hamburger buns but I don't have potato flakes or know where to get them. And then while searching thru my del.icio.us files, I found it; the perfect recipe to try - the recipe that started the whole Daring Bakers group - the Pretzel Recipe!

The ingredients were all in my cupboard so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I used my stand mixer and followed the directions. My dough was quite stiff, not "quite slack" as the recipe stated. I tried adding some more water, but that didn't go well. I could feel my enthusiasm fading; this was going to end up like all the other times I failed at bread making. I left the dough to rise for 30 minutes, and when I came back it looked exactly the same as it had when I left the room. I gave it an additional 30 minutes, but not much happened.

I did not have a good feeling about this.

I divided the dough into 8, rolled the first piece out into a rope and formed a pretzel. After dunking the pretzel in the water/baking soda mixture I looked at what I had just made.


Umm. That's a bow, not a pretzel. I had to go turn the computer back on and Google pretzels to see what shape they were supposed to be. Hi, I am a dork.

Once I got the shape less crappy perfect and the pretzels dunked in the water/soda I sprinkled 4 of them with coarse salt and 4 with garlic salt.


Almost pretty!

I gotta say, even with the stiff dough and the no rising, these suckers were amazing. And so easy, I could not believe it. I did forget to brush them with butter when they were done, only because I was so excited that they turned out OK. I don't think they were lacking in any way though. When I make these again, I'm going to top some with rosemary and garlic, maybe some with cheese and garlic. If you've got a couple of hours to kill and you want to spend some time in the kitchen, this recipe is a perfect choice.

Recipe: Hot Buttered Pretzels.


del.icio.us recipe update - as of today - 201 recipes!