Hilary makes food

Peanut butter apple breakfast bake

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Oh wow, breakfast has been changed forever.

Let me explain the story behind this post.

For the past two years I’ve been living with her, I’ve witnessed my health-nut, super athlete roommate Brittany making fancy, morning-energizer breakfasts.  This means that while I’m sitting like a schlump in my purple Asian pajamas (don’t ask) eating Cheerios or peanut butter toast, she is cooking up a storm in the kitchen.  At 7:30 a.m.  Amazing, right?

Most often, this kitchen mania would result in what I now know to call a breakfast bake.

Informal definition:
Breakfast bake (noun) – some huge chunk of baked item that partially resembles a cake; in Britt’s case, this bake often includes spoonfuls of (my forgotten and leftover from making muffins) pumpkin puree, an impressively grainy looking flour, and some strange nut butter and/or coconut substance that she has bought from the food shelves of Winners.

Until today, I had never given these morning meals much thought but, with my rebirth as a fairly healthy person after a month of pure gluttony, I figured I should try one out.

Right as I decided to concoct my own recipe, low and behold, Britt posts hers on her awesome new blog, B Out There.  How does that saying go?  Oh right, great minds think alike.  Even cross continent (B is from Whitehorse), our brains are somehow in sync.

I must also give credit to the originator of the breakfast bake, Ashley from the blog the Edible Perspective.  Thank you for bringing this morning meal into my life.

I knew I wanted to include peanut butter and apple in my breakfast bake, so I fiddled around with Britt’s instructions until I got my adapted Hilary recipe.  A few key differences involve me using whole wheat flour instead of whole grain flour (this was because I forgot the name of the correct flour in a moment of Bulk Barn panic), my use of normal milk instead of the bizarre I-will-never-buy almond milk, and my addition of chocolate chips as a topping (because COME ON, everything is better with chocolate).

One quick tangent: UH, what the heck are chia seeds?  I bought some just for the sake of being fair to the recipe, but they just kind of look like poppy seeds (and I never want to see a poppy seed ever again, for reasons that only my roommates will understand).  Okay, Wikipedia tells me that they’re healthy and chalk full of omega-3’s.  I guess that’s cool.

End result?

A major case of the omnomnom’s.  The bake is the perfect energizer before my morning bike rides, so I am going to make them loads.  For the record, this recipe actually makes quite a large breakfast cake, so tiny appetites could probably share.  As for me?  No sharing.  Just me and a very large glass of milk.  Mornings just got a hell of a lot better.

As always, see recipe after the jump!

Ensure you mix everything together well with your very own Piggy Wiggy spatula! (see recipe below, you'll understand)

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Green pepper, chicken and mushroom quinoa with a sweet chili sauce

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Before I begin, let me just say that someone needs to create a website where you input the ingredients used in a meal and the site, in turn, churns out a shortened recipe name.  Sort of like a bit.ly for recipes.  Until this fantastic site is created, my post names shall continue to be the length of a short story.  Apologies.

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Fact: I totally forgot how much I loved cooking.

For the past two months I have been neglecting my love of homemade food.  This neglect has come in favour of studying (read: all I ate was bagels bought from Tim Hortons), food made by my aunt (which was delicious, but I was spoiled), or food bought from a variety of overpriced Toronto locations.  The latter made up most of my time in Toronto and, while I discovered a bunch of great new places, I really shouldn’t have been prematurely spending my summer income on gourmet vegan meals and mouthwatering cheesecakes.  But man, was it good while it lasted.

Now that I’m back in Ottawa for the summer (hooray!), I figured it was about time I got back to cooking.  I moved into a new house on Monday, which means that I am finally free of last year’s closet-sized kitchen and its oven that made the temperature in the depths of hell feel chilly.  I am now, however, limited by the fact that we only have a single pan and one very large stockpot.  We have no baking pans and no oven mitts.  Something will have to be done about that (the solution will likely come in the form of today’s IKEA trip with my friend Will).

But anyways, in the nature of me trying to get back into healthy eating, I headed down to the grocery store to stock up on veggies galore.  I kitchen improvised (something I want to do almost all the time now) with this meal, creating a supper that was filling, healthy and wielded a spicy kick.  Just the way I like it.

Also, NEWSFLASH: I like mushrooms!  I added some in for good measure.

See recipe under the pictures.  These shots were taken outside on my new porch.  I don’t even need to stand on a chair to take them.  Happiness achieved.

PS: check out how green our grass is – at least all this miserable weather paid off in the form of optimum yard colouring.

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Cajun Chicken Quinoa Salad

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

When I’m busy I always forget how much I love cooking.  Since I haven’t done that much dinner preparing this month, I was a little sluggish in making a final decision for this meal.  At first I was uninspired, standing alone atop a chair in my kitchen, gazing into the pantry with a spaced out look on my face.  I was so close to making Kraft Dinner.  Resisting the instinct to eat like a student, I finally decided to base my meal around three key ingredients: red pepper, red onion, and quinoa.

A simple google search informed me that I wasn’t insane in my dinner mission, and that the three ingredients I chose would actually go quite well together.  I’ve had an ungodly craving for chicken lately (bizarre, I know), so decided to throw that in for fun.  I found one recipe on the web that looked good, and decided to use it as a starting point for the dish you see below.

This turned out to be a great meal.  I’m currently studying in the library, deeply regretting my choice to leave my leftovers at home.  Guess what I’m having for dinner?  For students looking for a quick protein and fibre fix to get them through exams, this meal is stellar.  It also only takes about half an hour to prepare, which means you can get back to your work (or Facebook lurking) as quickly as possible.

Man, the thought of leftovers is killing me right now. Thank god Ariel is buying me a muffin. (Update: I just ate my leftovers for supper, I’m so happy right now)

See the recipe after the jump!

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Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Fresh Berries

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

I am so blissfully breakfast full.

Tuesday is my “chill out and sleep in until 8:30” morning, and I decided to extend the luxury of the morning into a gourmet breakfast.

I’m not one to normally make big breakfasts, so this was a treat for me.

As fancy as this might look, it was really quite a practical meal.  Leftover in my fridge I had ricotta cheese, lemons, strawberries and blueberries.  The typical university student fare, right?  Perhaps not… Anyways, you can imagine my excitement when I found a recipe on Canadian Living that used all four of these ingredients.

Now, since I had no desire to be eating these pancakes for the remainder of the week, I cut the recipe in half and tweaked a few things to make up for my lack of raspberries, etc. I also added twice the amount of lemon rind, mostly because I got overly enthusiastic while zesting.  That’s my bad, but I will stick by my guns when I say you can never have too much lemon rind.  Also, I didn’t put blueberries in my pancakes as the original recipe requested.  I’m not a huge blueberry person.  If you are, however, a lover of these petite berries, throw them in. They’ll go nicely with the lemon. (PS: you can find my recipe under the pictures)

The pancakes turned out great.  I drizzled them with some real maple syrup and piled my fork high with pancake and berries.  I am not even ashamed to admit that I ate five (GLUTTONY).  There was actually just the right amount of lemon, and the flavours made me feel like I was sinfully indulging in dessert for breakfast.  Morning calorie splurges are well deserved.

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Spring Chicken Salad with Pasta (and a troop of new vegetable friends)

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

It may have been the first day of spring in Ottawa yesterday, but apparently Mother Nature didn’t get the message.  Every form of precipitation known to mankind fell from the sky Monday, including a strange misty rain and tiny hail pellets.  Seriously, if there is something making our mythological season changer angry (Father Time cheated on her, etc., I don’t know), then it needs to stop.  I took out my bike on Sunday and it is now buried in snow. My sadness reaches epic proportions.

First day of spring in Ottawa: photo courtesy of The Weather Network

Trudging around in my winter boots again, I decided to defy Mother Nature and begin my spring cooking.  Well not quite. I’m not really sure what spring cooking is since this is the final season I must get through before my blog has its first birthday.  I figured this dinner recipe had the word “spring” in it and, for now, that was good enough for me.

Also, I just really wanted to cook and eat a real supper.  I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been eating very well for the past few weeks.  I’ve been so busy with school and work that I’m only ever home to sleep.  Also, as some of you know I’m currently on the hunt for Ottawa’s best cupcake for the blog Local Tourist Ottawa, so that has been keeping my sugar intake high, and my health content low.  Must strive for healthy balance!  I biked to pick up cupcakes this past weekend, that sort of cancels out the sugar, right?  Maybe not. Fine, I’ll get better.

I saw this recipe on Tastespotting when I was browsing the site at school.  At this point I had officially decided I needed to eat real food, and was deciding what meal should mark my re-emergence into the world of health.  I found this recipe on the blog Zoom Yummy, and it looked simple and delicious.  Petra (blogger) had posted several pictures of the how-to instructions, and the stunning images made it look like a PWC blog post.  I truly admire people who can take pictures detailing every step of the cooking process.  I would not have the patience.  My goal is to minimize the PTM (pan to mouth) time as much as possible.

Anyways, lots of chopping with this one, so make sure you do it before you start cooking your chicken.

Also, have a little fun along the way:

The green onions were just begging to be doodled on. Come on, don’t try and tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.  Also, they’re kind of reminiscent of my squash friend, n’est-ce pas?

(Aside: please don’t think I’m a complete weirdo, I just really like playing with my food).

Other than getting three new vegetable friends out of this recipe, I also got the perfect amount of pasta for last night’s supper and today’s lunch.  How dearly I have missed you leftovers!  The recipe itself was pretty good.  I love parsley so added in about double what the recipe requested…..also, I didn’t have any ground ginger, so that got omitted this time around.

Gosh I’m hungry now.  Might eat leftover pasta for breakfast.

Source: Zoom Yummy