Hilary makes food

Recreating traditional Greek cuisine: Moussaka and Greek salad

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

If there is one food that reminds me of my time spent in Greece, it is eggplant. It was everywhere – in main courses, in dips, … as well as in other places that I just can’t recall. I’m pretty sure I ate enough eggplant to prevent the Greek economy from defaulting for another month. Yes sir, they can thank me for that.

Since I considered moussaka to be a bit of a kitchen challenge, I decided to limit the chance of any potentially devastating results by using a Canadian Living recipe to make mine. Always delicious, always reliable. The recipe was so detailed that it took up two pages of my cookbook.

Prior to my European travels, I had always flipped right past the page, scoffing at what I thought was just some sort of bastardized shepherd’s pie. Now I have to prevent myself from drooling every time I see the picture. Ladylike, I know.

A word for the wise: if you are looking for a quick dinner solution, moussaka is not it. From start to finish, this one dish took about three hours in total. Okay, maybe two and a half. Either way, this is serious business.

Actually, this meal was the bearer of several unexpected delays.

First, the inevitable – eggplant and its high maintenance state that requires it to be salted, dehydrated, rinsed and patted dry before it goes in the oven. Your patience will be tested.

The next delay was thanks to utter disorganization on my part. I didn’t have milk, something that is normally a pretty integral part of any cheese sauce, of which this dish demanded. When I went to the corner store next door, they were out of all large cartons, and so I got several smaller ones to compensate. I only dropped them once on the way home.

Finally, my lack of baking pans (I had used them to bring these cupcakes to the journalism picnic) meant that I needed to borrow one from a neighbour, otherwise spend the next two hours broiling eggplant in rounds on a foil-lined pie plate. I decided to borrow. Here’s how that went:

Hilary walks down the street, sees mother and son out on porch. She decides to ask to borrow their baking sheet.
Kid: Aren’t you that girl with that famous name? Taylor Swift or something?
Me: Haha. Hilary Duff. Nice try.
Kid: I know where you live. I’m Raffi.

New friends are the best.

Another delicious memory of Greece was the, you guessed it, Greek salad.

THE TOMATOES. Amazing. I never truly appreciated tomatoes until I ate them in Greece. I’m not even going to try to explain. I just see them in a completely different light now. Our attempt was a poor Greek man’s Greek salad, but tasty nonetheless. It also utilized some fresh produce from the Lansdowne Farmer’s Market. On top of the eggplant for the moussaka, I got heirloom tomatoes and lovely, crunchy field cucumbers. Just perfect.

Oh yes, and Gord came over for dinner. He brought baklava, which we inhaled the second dinner was through. All I want is a world where someone feeds me honey soaked pastry with a pistachio centre. Is that really too much to ask?

PS: Don’t mind the pictures. Moussaka is about as photogenic as lasagna, which is to say not at all.

Now please, won’t someone just take me back here?

The dinner view in Oia, Santorini

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Kicking off soup season with a chicken barley soup

~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

This post is dedicated to my dear boyfriend Matt, who is currently under the weather. Earlier today he disclosed to me a tragic tale about how he unwillingly needed to leave his house in order to purchase soup. Matt, this is the soup you can imagine that I’m to serving you. It tasted delicious. Enjoy, you sickie.

Now…

To many, fall means sweaters, boots and piles upon piles of leaves. While a serious fan of both the former and the latter, one of which allows me to reach optimum fashion levels (I really like layered clothing and black tights) and the other of which lets me to relive my ever-fleeting childhood, neither is what I think of immediately as autumn approaches. Nope, to me fall (and winter and early spring) is all about soup. With that, I officially declare that soup season has begun. It is not to end until the snow melts in the spring. That’s an order.

The best part about soup? It’s the king of all improvised foods. It lets you toss in absolutely anything, more specifically a large quantity of the pearl barley that I’ve had sitting in my pantry for about a year. To maximize the simplicity of this self-created recipe, I bought half a pre-cooked chicken from the deli section of my local grocery store. After a quick bike ride home my backpack smelled like a thousand Swiss Chalet branches. The dogs will be following me home from school, I know it.

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Whole-wheat strawberry and peach muffins (and my decision to finally cook for myself, and not for the blog)

~ Hilary ~ 7 Comments

That’s right – they’re packed with health.

For those of you who don’t know (which is likely everyone with the exception of my mom and my plentiful list of stalkers), I’ve recently changed student accommodations, moving from a house with one small, shabby kitchen into a house with a fairly decent sized there-is-actually-a-good-counter-per-person-ratio kitchen. Moving has also meant that I’m no longer living with five other girls (all of whom I still love, but living with that many people taunts the very best of co-operators). Rather, I’m now living with two – Brittany and Freya – the most athletically fit and enthusiastically energetic people I know. They’re a wonderful influence on me.

Brittany and Freya at this wicked new gelato place near our house

Their influence prompted the creation of these muffins. Since Britt and the Freymeister are both varsity athletes, it means that their meals are always jam packed with fruits, vegetables, healthy flours and honeys and oils that I only half like. Example: earlier in the day when I made these, Britt made red currant banana muffins with spelt flour (after trying them for scientific purposes, I can certify them as 100% delicious). I’m not sure what exactly spelt flour is or what its benefits are, but if B is using it than it must be good for you.

Point is, she inspired me to go above and beyond my basic all-purpose flour muffins and make them with whole-wheat flour. Yes, I know the use of whole-wheat flour does not automatically nominate me for the “healthy blogger of the year” award. I think Britt already has that one snagged. Rather, it’s just a tiny part of my September resolution to eat healthier at every meal.

Here’s the truth:

Although technically learning how to cook last year, I was terrible in the sense that I would only cook really healthy and good food for myself when I planned to blog about it. This being said, I was basically cooking for my blog, and not for me (my old roommates can vouch for the fact that I frequently had “blog desserts” that I would set aside and they would not be able to touch).

This year, things will be different. At each and every meal, I’m going to make the conscious effort to eat fruit and vegetables with or in said meal. And I’ll try not to snack, although snacking is my oldest and most dear friend. Hopefully from here on in we will just be friendly acquaintances.  I’ve already started out on this resolution, with stir frys, smoothies and fruit-buying galore. Lets see if I can keep it up once the real buzz of school begins.

In the meantime, I’ll just enjoy these muffins and revel in the fact that a whole-wheat something is better than a non-whole-wheat one. Heck, I’m no expert yet.

September muffins

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Spaghetti Carbonara: The first of many Europe trip-inspired meals

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Subtitle: A tragic tale of love and loss featuring borrowed Dutch bicycles

Food-wise, Europe was every bit as inspiring as I hoped it would be. In our four weeks of backpacking, Gord and I travelled across seven countries and have done our best to try the local cuisine of each. Basically we ate lots of pizza, pasta, cheese, eggplant, bread, macarons, bacon-wrapped hotdogs, pancakes AND MORE. Whew.

Over the next few weeks, Gord and I will be recreating our favourite dishes from our trip. We plan on having country-themed dinner parties in which we feed guests food from that one specific nation. Think massive, five-course meals.

To get a headstart on our food recreations, Gord and I made an Italian cuisine-inspired meal: spaghetti carbonara. In Amsterdam we had access to a kitchen at the airbnb apartment we were staying at, and we took full advantage of the fact that we could finally cook a full dinner.

Also, spaghetti carbonara happens to be just about the cheapest and easiest dish you can make. It requires about five basic ingredients. One of them is bacon. Have I convinced you to make this yet?

Of course, like any good plotline, no meal is complete unless presented with a dilemma. Ours came in the form of groceries lost whilst riding a bicycle. Seriously. Such a Dutch problem.

Here’s the story:

Having gone grocery shopping for dinner supplies in downtown Amsterdam, Gord and I smartly decided to use the elastic laces on the back of my borrowed bike to strap down our precious cargo. Off we go, biking away, me trying very hard not to get T-boned (almost happened twice) by the no-patience-for-tourists Dutch cyclists.

Sometime between the grocery store and a third of the way back, our bag of groceries decided to dislodge itself from its unstable home. Moments of hilarious realization occured and we backtracked our route in hope of recovering our estranged cargo. No such luck.

The story ended on a happy note, though, and we found a grocery store on the way home, repurchased our ingredients and peddled back, this time with the bag dangling from Gord’s handlebars.

Moral of the story? When trying to blend in with fashionable Dutch cyclists, ensure things are securely tied to your bicycle, or risk looking ridiculous as items unknowingly tumble from said vehicle. Lesson learned.

In the end, the resulting dinner was worth every once of the trouble. Our first home-cooked meal in a month. Delicious.

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A tale of two cravings: Mexican-inspired pizza

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

This is what happens when cravings collide.

It is very easy to determine the cause of my hankering for these two foods.  The first craving, my huge desire for Mexican food, can be attributed to the fact that my dear friend Ariel has been talking about all things Mexican food-related for the past week. Sampling her lunch on Monday (some chilli chicken stew thing) was enough to send me over the edge. A spicy meal had to happen sooner or later.

The second of craving, the one for pizza, can be blamed on the constant reminder I have of the gooey dish, thanks to the two pizza parlours visible from my front porch and the fact that in a mere three weeks I will be eating the real deal in Italy.

A quick brainstorm and Internet search later, I decided that the combination of these two things was a go. Since it’s a little hard to see from the picture, let me describe to you the most wonderful part of this pizza: the refried black bean sauce.

Okay, so it wasn’t really a sauce per se, but rather a huge and delicious pile of mush that formed the foundation layer of my pizza.  I mixed a cup of refried beans (they are incredibly solid when coming from a can. This surprised me) with water (to make it more sauce-like) and salsa.  Finally, I tossed in some Old El Paso chilli mix that I had lying around, and the spicy base was complete. It was awesome, and meant that I was getting a protein fix sans meat (this whole semi-vegetarian thing is going okay, huh?).

Piled on top of this black bean base were the most ingredients I’ve ever put on a pizza: tomato, jalapeno pepper, red onion, corn, cilantro and more cheese than you could shake a stick at. All made this pizza taste exactly like an authentic Mexican meal. If I closed my eyes I could have been eating a taco. Wonderful, wonderful craving queller.

Another awesome thing about this pizza: I have SO many leftovers, which means the next two days worth of lunches will not be as sad and disgusting as today’s makeshift meal (some old mixed greens, leftover macaroni pasta, Parmesan cheese and store-bought Italian dressing. I know, I puked a little bit too).

To end on a positive note: Over the next few days I am planning on making fantastic cupcakes using some wonderful cupcake accessories that I bought in Toronto back in April. Anticipate away! Update as of 12:11 a.m. on Friday morning: the cupcakes have been made. They are delicious and gorgeous. Check for post soon.

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