Hilary makes food

Pasta Experiment v.1.0

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Lately, all I’ve been eating is soup and cupcakes.  Now a girl can only live off these two things for so long (luckily it takes far longer to get sick of the latter) before she needs to climb out of her winter-induced food rut.  In the end, both these foods failed to satisfy my number one craving… my insane desire for CARBS.  Hence the creation of this pasta dish.

UPDATE: This is a screenshot of the hilarious/devastatingly upsetting email I got from my mom shortly after she read this post.  My mom is a dietician and doesn’t 100 per cent approve of the cupcake quest aforementioned in this entry.

And yes, I said creation.  Alright, so maybe I was partially inspired by a Canadian Living recipe, but the only thing that was similar about the two recipes were the caramelized red onions and the walnuts.  Nonetheless, here is a 1/10 credit to them for this veggie loaded dish.

But I do feel like I should start making more of my own dishes.  I’ve apparently garnered some sort of reputation for being a foodie, and to live up to this title I need to start experimenting around more with my meals.  Through the creation of different dishes, I’ve discovered that I’m atrociously bad at naming said meals.  As a journalism student, I can’t write headlines, and as a foodie, I can’t name recipes.  Shame on me.  So for lack of any sort of naming talent, I decided to call this one Pasta Experiment v.1.0, in hopes that I can one day change the title to something that vaguely resembles a proper recipe name.

Now that I’m having a petite pity party, I also feel bad about the pictures.  As most of you are aware, the winter has made the days dreadfully short.  This, combined with the fact that I often cook these meals at 9 p.m. when I finally get home from school, all contribute to the re-heated wonder that occurs for almost all my photos.  What this means is that the day after I make this meal, I yank my leftovers out of the fridge and slop them down on a pretty plate during the bright morning hours.  I then photograph this delicious looking meal while drinking my orange pekoe tea, and send my stomach into a series of unhappy gurgling fits until it gets fed a proper lunch.  Such a first-world problem, I apologize.

But enough with my ranting, here are the pictures…

Also, you can find my recipe after this short photographic interlude.

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Homemade Baked Chips

~ Hilary ~ 7 Comments

Alright, so I know this blog has primarily been dedicated to me showing off (a) all the fancy schmancy dinners I make and (b) the delicious desserts I make to feed my erratical sugar cravings.  But here is something different.  Here, is a Hilary Makes snack.

I had two beets leftover from the borscht I made last month.  Although I was tempted to get artsy and juice them to somehow dye fabric, I decided to do something a little less weird and a tad easier.  The answer?  Make beet chips!  Of course, if I was going to make these, I needed to go all out.  This all or nothing attitude got me a pan full of beet, sweet potato, potato and zucchini chips, all which turned a slight shade of pink after the beet(lejuice) took over the pan.  I shamelessly admit that I give myself a mixed review for these.  The baked sweet potato and potato chips were awesome and crispy.  The beet chips, however, were kind of floppy and chewy and were missing the crunch that I was going for.  I seriously blame my lack of this fantastic slicing tool:

This little kitchen device is called a mandoline (no, this is not the incorrect spelling of a musical instrument, that’s actually what it’s called, I swear!).  I think it just kind of resembles one of those meat slicers that they have at the deli counter in the grocery store.  But apparently it works better than my slicing attempts, and probably could have helped crisp-ify my beets.  I may have to take a trip to my favourite kitchen store and invest in one…

Also, I am totally embarrassed to admit that my attempt at creating zucchini chips also failed, and my dear favourite vegetable was just too watery to be baked.

BUT since the baked potato chips worked out, I figured I would post the pictures and instructions for them, since I very much plan on making them again.

The instructions are pretty complicated, are you ready?

STEP 1: Slice potatoes thinly.
STEP 2: Toss ’em around in a big bowl with some olive oil.
STEP 3: Spread your oiled vegetables out on a parchment paper lined pan and bake at 350 degrees until they start to dry out, about 20 minutes.
STEP 4: Pop your newly baked chips down on a cooling rack and give them a few hours to crisp.

And voila, there you have it.  A quick mid-class snack.

One day I will conquer the beet chips…

Spicy Potato and Lentil Soup

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Okay, so you know how a few posts ago I said that my borscht was the cheapest thing I’ve ever made?  Well I lied.  Poor Mr. Borscht didn’t hold his title for very long, and this new soup quickly edged it out in both taste and price.  While I could go on and on about how great this soup was, I think I’ll condense my admiration down to four main points *ahem*:

1. It was SO fast to make.  Since I’m apparently never home for dinner anymore, I decided to make this soup at 9:15 a.m.  Yes, I had soup for breakfast, don’t judge me.  I had to be at school that day for 10:45, so let this tight schedule attest for how quickly this soup cooked itself up.

2. I’m not really a fan of chopping things, so I was relieved when this soup only required two potatoes, a celery stalk, and an onion to be chopped.  BUT HOLY, on that note, I cut up the most potent onion ever!!!!!  Seriously, I was crying like a teenage girl listening to Taylor Swift.  I wiped my eyes on my shirt so many times that my sleeve was partially drenched by the time I was finished cooking.  I need a set of these!

3. This soup just confirmed that my taste buds are way more high maintenance than in my “I’m just going to eat plain rice for supper” days (aka last year).  I was not at all happy with how little cumin and cayenne pepper that the original recipe requested, so I simply added a teaspoon more of the cumin, and about ten pinches of cayenne pepper (versus the original single pinch requested).  Mmmmm, that spice, combined with the explosion of fresh parsley, made my life.  Also, for anyone that is stuffed up or sniffly from a winter cold, this soup is so spicy it is sure to clear your sinuses!  Who needs cold fx, right?

4. Last but not least this soup was, of course, cheap.  I calculated my total cost per serving to be about 80 cents a bowl.  Stellar!!

Recipe: Canadian Living (with a few spicy adaptations by yours truly).

Ruby Red Borscht

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Let’s be honest.  The only reason I made this soup in the first place was because it is the shade of my favourite colour.  A deep magenta, this soup has been calling my name ever since I saw the picture of it in my very first Canadian Living cookbook.

This soup is the ultimate cheap student meal, and cost less than a dollar per serving.  I made it late last week and have been eating the leftovers at school non stop since then.  I was so worried that the tupperware container holding the soup would simply explode in my backpack and leak all over me, making me appear like some sort of mass murderer and Dexter wannabe.  Luckily this did not happen.  Okay, back to cheap.  You can’t really tell from the picture, but this soup actually had several different types of vegetables in it.  While it’s true that the colour of the beets dominated EVERYTHING (and dyed my hands a bright pink hue), there was also carrots, potato, celery, onion and green beans.  Only the latter managed to partially maintain its colour.  Also, can we just mention how awesome it is that this recipe has ketchup?!  Seriously, ketchup added to anything is the best.  Leaving these ingredients in a big stock pot to brew away for two hours resulted in a wonderful soupy liquid that made me feel like I was in Harry Potter’s potions class.

Ooo, and fresh dill is SO good!!!

PS: I have so, so, sooo many backlogged blog posts chilling out in my “blogger queue” right now.  I’ve been making all this stuff lately, particularly food of the baked variety, and simply haven’t had time to blog about it!  I think this weekend I’m just going to prepare a bunch of posts and have them schedule to publish at various times throughout the week.  Let the phantom blogging begin!

PPS: Holy, beets are super good.  I’m going to make beet chips next week.

Check out the recipe after the jump!

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Tomato Vegetable Soup with Tortellini

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

I’m so happy that the winter months allow me to make unlimited amounts of delicious soup.  Seriously though, soup is the perfect meal.  It’s always chalked full of healthy stuff and is perfectly filling while still being so fantastically low key, cheap and easy.  I used to think that because I’m a student I had every excuse to eat unhealthy meals.  It was from this attitude that my love for soup noodles, peanut butter and jam tortilla wraps, and George Foreman-ed steak with BBQ sauce arose last school year.  My discovery of foodism has led me to finding alternative ways to keep the simplistic values of cooking intact, while also allowing me to up the ante on my meals.  Now in the winter I have absolutely NO reason to eat crappy, chub-inducing food.  Chunky soup has provided me with the answer.

This week’s soup was an ultra-chunky vegetable soup with tortellini, a recipe that I got out of an old, Value Village-purchased copy of Canadian Living.  The base ingredients are all pretty standard for veggie soups: tomato, celery, carrot, zucchini, etc. etc.  The BEST part of this soup was the frozen cheese tortellini (buy it in the deli section of the grocery store!).  Oh man, tortellini is one of the best things in the world.  I have so many memories of my mom making tortellini, and me sneaking into the kitchen to steal the raw pasta, mischievously shoving it in my mouth with no shame.  Some things never change, and I ate a dozen and a half of these raw, half-frozen tortellinis before they had the chance to make it into my soup.  The ones that did survive long enough to get soupified were just as good, and added the perfect pasta dose to an otherwise vegetable-heavy soup.

Also, one more thing about this soup.  To make it even more hearty, the recipe asked that I add in a cup of chick peas.  Being in a recipe-compliant mood, I did – an action that I would gravely regret for leftover meals to come.  I’m not going to elaborate too much on this (since I’m already entering the TMI zone), but after gobbling down two portions of leftovers before two different classes, I was suppressing petite burps throughout each, hating chick peas more and more by the minute.  In my television class we had to do live hits.  My desire to burp was painful.  ‘Nuff said.

PS: Here is some life news…I’ve started JOGGING!  For the past two weeks, I’ve been jogging four kilometres nearly everyday (except for that awful day I tried to do 6 km and almost died).  This wasn’t even a New Years Resolution of mine, I just thought it was finally time for me to get off my butt and be more winter active.  Since the weather deprives me of biking, I needed to make up for it somehow!