Hearty meals

Spiced Beef Skillet Dinner (and my first encounter with green olives)

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

I am beginning to distrust ground beef.  Making this meal, I casually took some ground beef out of the freezer (I never use things when I first buy them, I’m horrible!) and defrosted it in the microwave in preparation for skillet-frying.  This was a smooth process, and it wasn’t until I started to stove fry the beef that I suspected something fishy.  As I fried up this defrosted beef, my nose was unhappily tickled by an unpleasant scent.  Unsure of whether or not this smell was coming from the beef, and being the paranoid/neurotic person that I am, I shut off the stove and sniffed my way around the kitchen in search of this mysterious scent.  Unable to find the source, and being far too hungry to care any longer, I continued to cook the meat, smell and all.  In the future, I promise to use fresh ground beef, and avoid the freezer from here on in.

Another unhappy note: back in June, I announced that I discovered I did not like black olives.  It is with a heavy heart that I admit that green olives too have an absolutely awful flavour, and that their oil-based taste does not do me any favours.  When this meal was done, you could evidently tell I had picked around the green, doughnut shaped vegetable, and left them for the compost in a neat little pile on my plate.

All in all, this dish made fireworks go off in my mouth.  There were such bizarre spices in it, spices that I never thought would be seen together, including paprika, cinnamon, cumin, ginger and coriander.  Surprisingly enough, they all worked out, and the entire meal had a consistently spicy taste.  Perfect supper for someone who is trying to develop their palette!

The recipe was from my“Make it Tonight” cookbook, a book I need to start using more, since it has so many fantastic-looking recipes!  Perhaps I will cook my way through all of the Canadian Living cookbooks, a sort of Julie/Julia challenge, n’est pas?

PS: WHY can I NOT cook couscous?  The recipe in my cookbook was apparently “fail-proof,” however my couscous STILL ended up resembling mashed potatoes.  Couscous: a must conquer in the near-future.

Sunday Night Dinner (Spanish Chicken with Peppers and Wildberry Crumble)

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

I AM WATCHING A HARRY POTTER SPECIAL ON NBC AND LOVING LIFE.  Eleven-year-old Daniel Radcliffe is so cute!

</nerdy obsession> Now for the actual post…

Since I’ve been quite the shlump for the past 24 hours (I watched season six of Sex and the City in its entirety), I decided I should cook myself an actual meal.  While finding out about Carrie and her new, creepy Russian boyfriend Aleksandr, I flipped through my Canadian Living cookbook and found a recipe forSpanish Chicken with Peppers.  The recipe looked easy enough and gave me an excuse to go to one of my favourite stores,Grace in the Kitchen, located a short walk from my humble abode.  At the store, I bought the best bread ever, a simple white loaf to go with my meal (it has a more impressive name, I just forgot it…sorry!).  So the chicken turned out awesome, and I really liked that the sauce had ham in it – it added a nice unique contrast to the tomatoes and red peppers.

While I ate my scrumptious chicken, I had dessert cooking in the oven.  My Wildberry Crumble turned out amazingly, considering I had to create a single-serving recipe using approximate ingredient estimations.  Thank god for all the extra frozen berries we had in our freezer!  They were perfect for this after-supper treat.

I’m really busy this week, so I’m not sure how often I will be able to post on here.  By the end of the week, however, you can be sure that I will have gotten sick of soup noodles and will need a good meal…

Salmon with a Lentil Pilaf

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

After an extensive lesson from my roommate Natalie on how to pronounce “pilaf,” this meal was officially complete.  Never having made this strange pilaf thing before, I knew this meal was going to be an interesting, new adventure.  First of all, the pilaf was made completely of vegetables, marking my official leap into the wonderful world of veggies.  Second, I almost cut my finger off when I got a little too enthusiastic chopping the celery.  Cooking with me is never boring, let me tell you!

The problem I have been facing lately is leftovers.  I have been making all this delicious food to blog about, but I always end up cooking way more than my little belly needs.  With such a dilemma, my normal pb&j sandwich lunches have been replaced by lasagna, lentil pilafs and enough homemade pizza to share with all my co-workers (true story).  Tomorrow there is a BBQ at work, but alas I must bring this leftover salmon.  I am guaranteed still buying a burger, make no mistake.

Since one of my co-workers Iffy (shout out!) requested that I start to post a link to the recipes I use, here it is – try it out!

Also, check out my friend Gord‘s fun new food blog, The Savoury Starving Student(he likes alliterations)!!

Ground beef curry

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

Today when I got off work I was almost absolutely positively sure I was going to bike over to the nearby-ish chinese food restaurant and pick myself up a delicious combo number 10.  After realizing I was far too poor and far too lazy to bike all the way to Hog’s Back (really not that far, but Wednesdays are exhausting, are they not?) I decided I would attempt to recreate another one of Canadian Living’s cookbook specialties.  I had some extra ground beef hanging around the freezer, and had been craving indian food almost as badly as chinese, so I decided this would be the perfect recipe for today!

And so, after dragging my tired, working butt down to the grocery store to buy curry paste, I created this… there was enough food for me, my friend Mike and lunch AND supper tomorrow night.  Oh man, I will be curry-ed out.

Interesting story involving the origins of the peas: I only had a frozen bag of mixed peas and carrots, so I patiently picked through the entire bag until I had a the required one cup of peas.  Just perhaps, this is a sign I have too much time on my hands.  Special thanks goes out to the random mint plant chilling on our kitchen counter: you added the beautiful green colour at a time when the peas turned a not-so-nice shade of curry brown.

Dijon cheddar chicken

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Apparently this blog has slowly turned into a documentation of all the delicious food I have been cooking.  I swear, it wasn’t even my main intention to create a foodie blog – it just seems that lately all I’ve had time for is work and cooking, so I might as well make the latter pretty and share it with all of you, right?  Here is my official promise to create some fantastic crafts to share very, very soon.  Next weekend perhaps.  Keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, here are two pictures of tonight’s dinner: dijon cheddar chicken!  The flavours in the sauce were lovely, and I finally overcame my fear of mustard and tried it!  So glad I did.  The light on the porch was kind of shady today (bad pun? I think so!), so I hope these pictures are alright!  Enjoy!