Hilary makes food

Chicken Tortilla Soup

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

I know what you’re thinking: “how can Hilary be making soup when it’s almost June, she must be insane!”  Well let me tell you, dear readers, that your diagnoses of insanity is quite accurate; however, this soup was actually perfect for today.  With the sun taking a well-deserved break from an otherwise scorching week, I decided to take advantage of the cloudiness and make this heart warming Mexican-fiesta-in-a-bowl.

The recipe was from my Canadian Living cookbook (obviously) and found me making my first ever homemade soup.  Gone are the days of Campbell’s heat-and-eat soups – I am officially a cook!  I ended up adding way more cumin and chili pepper than the recipe suggested…I like a soup with a little kick!

Also, if anyone is ever looking for a great snack, fry some cut up tortilla pieces.  I added my homemade tortilla chips to the top of the soup and it was a delicious crunchy contrast to the smooth consistency of the soup.

First attempt at soup: a success!  Also, this Mexican-inspired dish curbed my major craving for tacos, and at half the cost.  Hilary: 1, Food expenses: 0.

Next up on the menu?  Something to use up my ricotta cheese (which expires in two days) and my copious amount of mini sweet peppers.

The Ultimate Bake Sale

~ Hilary ~ 9 Comments

On Friday afternoon, my friend Gord and I decided we wanted to have a bake sale.  Since we were hyped up on Friday afternoon air and sugar, we decided weren’t just going to have any bake sale – oh no, we were going to have our bake sale cater to all the bargain hunters at the annual Great Glebe Garage Sale!

For those of you who don’t know, garage sales begin very, very early.  And so, with our backpacks on and our baked goods loaded, we woke up in the wee hours of the morning (5:45 for me) and eagerly made our way down to the corner of Bank and Fourth Street where we decided to set up shop.  In case you’re trying to pinpoint our location, I can tell you that we were directly across from the Wild Oat, and that their little bake table seller frequently glanced over at our table to check out the competition (but seriously, they were really good sports about us being set up so close to them, and their food looked majorly delish).

Flash back to Friday night: Gord arrives at my house with a five kilo bag of flour, which has been accidentally torn and is now being stored in a reusable Walmart shopping bag.  After poorly estimating how much ingredients we needed, we trekked down to the local grocery store and picked up a pile of things, including two bags of sugar, 18 eggs and a heart-stopping amount of butter.

Once we got to my house, we successfully managed to conjure up SIX different baked good recipes, including vegan double-chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin muffins.  We were baking for five hours straight, and surrived thanks to the beautiful music of Hannah Georgas, a poorly filmed Sex and the City torrent and a $20 air -circulating fan.  A special, sad mention goes out to the one batch of oatmeal raisin cookies that came out of the oven DOA.  Also, I have never eaten so much cookie/muffin/cake batter in my life.  I probably ingested more raw eggs in one day than Rocky… not good.

After we finished baking, I got out my paper drawer and craft box and made us some cute little signs to go with the food.

I am proud to announce that the day was a huge success!  After spending a little too much money on baking supplies and juice boxes, Gord and I still managed to break even and sold $60 worth of delicious baked food!  It was a little difficult in the beginning, but after my roommate Natalie started off the day’s purchasing, it all went uphill!  I even got to practice my waitressing/being annoying skills as I walked up and down Fourth Street kindly pleading with people to buy our food.  I only got told off once!

All in all, a successful day.  With me yelling out “buy our homemade baked goods” and Gord chirping in with “and our juice boxes,” we had fun and made fools of ourselves in the best possible way.

So are we setting up a table next year?  Only time will tell…

One final thing: I just woke up from a three hour nap.  Early mornings are lame.

Red onion, grated zucchini and shaved ham pizza

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Alright, so this recipe is of my own little creation (which is probably why it looks and sounds so amateur), and mostly came about for three of the following reasons:

1. I had zucchini leftover from last night’s dinner and have always wondered what it would be like to grate it (it’s really quite fun, if you’ve never tried it, I recommend it!);
2. I accidentally ended up with three red onions in my cooking arsenal, and had nothing to do with them;
3. I was REALLY craving pizza

With the above reasons in mind, I made this “red onion, grated zucchini and shaved ham pizza.”  Yes, it’s a mouthful, but it is difficult to think of appetizing food names at 12:30 in the morning!  Give me a break.  Must stop blogging into the wee hours of the night.

Also important to note: this is the first time EVER I have eaten pizza with any sort of vegetable on it.  I know what you’re thinking… “that Hilary is such a daring rule-breaker!”  Try to refrain from the praise, please.  Okay, so if the pictures look kind of lame, as in it looks like there are very few vegetables – please just take a step back and remember that I am new with the whole veggie loving thing.  I promise to include more next time.

In the meantime, I’m upgrading from my usual ham and cheese sandwiches and taking leftovers for work.  Yes, all 3/4 of the remaining pizza.  Co-workers, you will be fed.

Chicken Couscous wraps with red pepper mayonnaise

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

Since I haven’t been home long enough in the past few days to craft up an elaborate meal, I decided that nothing screams “make your own dinner” like a Tuesday night.  Like pretty much every other food post on this blog, the recipe for this wrap came from my Canadian Living cookbook.

Most valuable player in tonight’s dinner adeventure?  Our wonderful Magic Bullet blender, that whipped up the most perfect, smooth red pepper mayonnaise.  The pictures for this one are a little plain – apparently wraps are the toddlers of food: very messy and difficult to photograph.  Will know better for next time.  I packaged up a delicious extra-portion of this meal for lunch tomorrow.  With that, and homemade chocolate cake (which I hopefully won’t eat before 9 a.m. this time), I will be the envy of all my fellow lunch munchers.

Today’s snippet of self-discovery: I like zucchini!

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.