Author: Hilary
Grilled Chicken Barley Salad
I made this salad exactly one week ago to this day. The reason I am just posting it now can probably only be attributed to sheer laziness and my extreme backlog of blog posts. Get ready for some frequent (I’m talking maybe everyday) updates for the next week or so!
ANYWAYS, back to this Grilled Chicken Barley Salad. Surprisingly (or maybe not), this dish reminded me so much of the Mediterranean Barley Rice Salad I made back at the beginning of July. That being said, they were both delicious, and perhaps in the end the only similarities were my extremely poor palette and the fact that both dinners contained barley. Since I have been majorly lacking chicken in my diet lately (considering I ate plain chicken three times a week this school year – I’m in withdrawls), I decided I needed to find a recipe that incorporated both summer flavours and this favourite protein. Once again, Canadian Living pulled through for me, and this dish ended up being extremely easy to make as well as super effective as a work lunch for the next two days. Could a student ask for anything else?
Also, no matter how hard I try, I cannot bring myself to like raw tomatoes. I used grape tomatoes in this recipe, and I thought the sweetness of them would make me fall in love. How wrong I was. I will need to find another way to conquer this ever-expanding tomato hatred.
ALSO PART TWO: My friend Gord at the Savoury Starving Studenthas once again blog challenged me! This time, I need to make one of the recipes that he has posted on his site. Like a true journalism student, he gave me a deadline (August 26). I’ll keep you posted with what I choose, and will obviously post an absurd amount of pictures once the challenge is complete.
Pesto Onion Steak Sandwiches (AKA the most tasty sandwich ever)
Well, I most certainly wasn’t planning on making a nice dinner tonight. Recovering from what was a completely sugar-consumed weekend in Toronto (seriously, yesterday all I ate was funnel cake, oreos, chips and McDonalds…), I was thinking of taking it easy and making the standard toast, peanut butter and applesauce. Then it hit me – tonight was the finale of Hell’s Kitchen (GO HOLLI!). As an informal rule, whenever I watch some sort of culinary show, I am obligated to make something worthy to eat while watching it.
Adding to that rule was the fact that I haven’t had any sort of real protein in my diet for so long (besides chicken, but that only half counts), so I decided to go all out and eat the best of the best: steak! For the first time, I didn’t even buy the discounted will-go-bad-in-a-day steak, and bought my first meat purchase over $4. I’m moving up in the world!
Thisrecipe was from my Canadian Living Everyday Favourites cookbook, and involved some delicious teriyaki-dijon mustard marinated steak and red onions sautéed in pesto. Also, if I were to rank this sandwich on a messiness scale of one to 10, I would have to declare this one a solid 24. It’s a good thing that I firmly believe that the messier something is, the better it tastes. Bringing leftovers for lunch – the co-workers will be disgusted by my inability to eat cleanly. Will try my hardest.
White Chocolate Cheesecake with Fruit and Raspberry Coulis (Dinner Party, Part III)
Random intro line: The commercial for “Eat, Pray, Love” is on – I want to see it SO badly. Plus the song in the trailer is super catchy.
…
I knew that my dinner party encore had to be decadent and impressive. With these two requirements in mind, I narrowed my dessert search down to two dishes, this cheesecake, and a Chocolate Brownie Turtle Cake (from my Canadian Living Family Cookbook). Leaving the latter until another (very soon) occasion, I went forth with preparations for the cheesecake.
Having this be only the second cheesecake I’ve ever made, I was once more concerned about my lack of water-bath for cooking the cake. I cranked my oven down to a mere 275° F, and cooked the cheesecake for 3/4 of the required time. Perhaps I should be more modest, but the cake turned out perfectly. There was not a SINGLE crack, nor bubble in the top of the cheesecake. I am extremely pleased. Also, it didn’t taste too much like white chocolate, which pleasantly surprised me, since I’m more of a milk chocolate girl. With patience on my side for once, I let the cheesecake cool completely before lovingly cutting into the cake to prepare it for pictures. The results, I think, are quite pretty…
Needless to say, I had cheesecake for three major meals the next day. Nom, nom, nom, nom!
Penne with Sweet Peppers and Two Cheeses (& Dinner Party Part II)
Intro note: It is an extremely bad idea to type a post on your food blog right before dinner. Going to eat ice cream after this.
Last week, myself and a few of my fabulous co-workers trekked over to our local Value Village in search of an afternoon treasure hunt. Other than finding a fantastic red zig-zag blazer, I was disappointed in the clothing segment of the hunt, and thought that my Value Village purchases would remain minimal. Oh how wrong I was. Waiting for my friends to finish trying on their finds, I started eyeing up the book section of the store. Of course, I found the cookbooks, and OF COURSE I bought vintage Canadian Living cookbooks.
Here is my count so far:
Canadian Living cookbooks: 4
– Everyday Favourites
– Make it Tonight: Quick, Simple and Healthy Family Meals
– The Canadian Living Rush Hour Cookbook circa 1989
– Canadian Living’s Family Cookbook circa 1995
The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook? I AM COMING FOR YOU. As you can see, I am clearly out-of-control, and my addiction will soon lead to my own chubby demise (this as I now eat ice cream for dinner, gosh).
Deciding what to make for my dinner party’s main dish created this scene in my dining room (if you look closely you can see a sneak peek at what I made for dessert):
Anyways, I finally settled on a dish from the oldest of my cookbooks (the Rush Hour one). This “Penne with Sweet Peppers and Two Cheeses” recipe (since CL wasn’t online in 1989, I can’t find the recipe through google – will post in Recipes tab!) looked simple enough and reinforced the reason why I love cheese so much. The combination of swiss and parmesan was awesome, and peppers are slowly sneaking up to become one of my favourites foods (yes, a complete shocker I know, but they are just so good when they are soft!). I was originally hesitant to make this dish, with the cookbook being published in 1989 and all, and with no picture being provided for my visual pleasure. After much inner-conflict, however, I chose this recipe, and I am so glad I did! Even more proof that Canadian Living recipes are timeless (but lets be realistic, does a good recipe ever lose credibility?).
Keep checking for my dessert post which will be coming out in the next few days!
Hilary Makes 