Soup

Boxing day breakfast (English muffins with Swiss cheese, salami prosciutto and avocado)

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Pre-blog dance fest: I GOT A KITCHENAID HANDMIXER!!! THIS ONE!!! I WANT TO BAKE EVERY DAY.

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The glory days are upon us.

After much anticipation, I am now officially home for the holidays, and with welcome arms greet my family and my mother’s endless supply of grocery products.

I got home on December 24. In a weather twist that can only be described as a Christmas miracle, it started snowing exactly 10 minutes before I landed. As I stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac of the Sudbury airport (no, we do not have those fancy tunnels that connect the plane and the terminal), snowflakes came falling onto my nose, eyelashes and scarf. Each individual flake seemed to be grasping onto 10 of its closest friends, creating huge clumps of snow that I tried to catch on my tongue. I was home and it was finally snowing. Christmas in ever sense of the word.

It didn’t stop snowing until midway through Christmas day. The temperature hovered around zero for most of the morning, meaning that it was perfect snowman-making weather. My brother and I took advantage of this, rolling giant boulders of snow through our front yard and down the hill towards our backyard cliff. The finished snowmen ended up being taller than my skyscraper height brother.

Planking break

After that, we did this. I taught my parents how to hook words and showed them that a Scrabble Dictionary was actually a thing. There was some tension over my use of the word “ar,” which is, in fact, the phonetic spelling of the letter “R.” The Scrabble Bible says so.

Later in the day, we settled into the dining room for the traditional family supper. Unlike some who have their whole extended family over on Christmas day, it has always been just the four of us. We pop Christmas crackers, tell lame jokes and eventually succumb to the tryptophan overload caused by a too-big turkey.

Since stores in Sudbury are closed on Boxing Day, I slept in this morning (in my double bed no less, bliss) and made this for breakfast. This random, not-that-impressive English muffin meal. I was inspired by my favourite new cookbook, What To Cook & How to Cook It. Gord and I first saw it in a kitchen boutique in Amsterdam and fell in love.

Everything in the book is organized neatly, something that appeals to my sickening need for OCD order.

And so, this happened. It was delicious. I never buy salted butter at home, so this was a treat. Recreate in your own household. It’s easy-peasy. OCD not required.

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Good Food Box Ottawa, recipe one: Pumpkin apple soup

~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

Yes, I know, I know, enough with the pumpkin already.

Before you continue with your inaudible web whining, you should know that this one was for a good cause. Last month I saw a tweet from Ryan asking if any food bloggers were interested in receiving a food box from Good Food Box Ottawa.

Here’s an excerpt from their website to tell you more about the program:

We are a non-profit community-based initiative bringing neighbours together to buy a variety of delicious and nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables at wholesale prices. Our goal is to purchase food that is in season and is grown as close to home as possible.

Pretty rad, huh? Good Food Box is an especially good program for students, and I’ve heard of people splitting one of the large boxes with their roommates. The program has pick-up locations on both the Carleton and University of Ottawa campuses, which means you can avoid a produce run to the grocery store. Does it get much better than that?

A sample Good Food Box

Why yes, yes it does. The boxes can be easily bought online and the produce contained within each varies based on the time of year. Access to fresh food has never been easier. The normal boxes run from $10 to $20 and there’s a $5 fruit bag and $25 organic box as well.

Now, as you can imagine, I quickly messaged Ryan back and requested a Good Food Box of my own. After a slight mishap in which I picked up the box a few days late (I have scattered mind/scattered calendar syndrome), I made it home and examined my options. Since I plan on making a few more recipes with what was in my box, I won’t reveal all the goodies just yet.

I will, however, tell you that I made quick use of the pumpkin and apples (speaking of which, I looked only slightly ridiculous carrying a baby pumpkin across campus last night). I have been wanting to make a recipe like this since last October and had just never gotten around to it, so my Good Food Box gave me the perfect opportunity. After searching a few of my favourite recipe source sites (Canadian Living, Tastespotting) to get inspired, I decided to create a soup of my own.

But first, the preparation. Like I said in my previous blog post, it is completely against a pumpkin’s nature to want to be peeled. You think I would have learned better, but alas I did not. The difficulty it gave me was worth it, and the roasted pumpkin came out smelling and looking like a delicious cross between butternut squash and sweet potatoes.

The soup turned out great and I garnished it with a few seasoned pumpkin seeds that my roommate had made earlier in the week. They had cinnamon, salt and nutmeg on them, and added a crunchy surprise to the top of the soup. A pie in soup form. Awesome.

The sunny afternoon meant that I needed to crane my body over my meal setting in order to take pictures that weren’t harshly lit. I was out on the front patio for so long that (a) I had to reheat my soup after the photo shoot, and (b) I attracted the most annoying cat EVER. The little grey feline refused to leave, and insisted on brushing coyly up against my leg, eyes flickering towards my open dish of pumpkin seeds. You shall not induce my allergies today, punk. After much shooing and jumping about on the deck as though there was an earthquake, kitty retreated, choosing to sit instead at the end of our front path.

He may look cute, but this neighbourhood cat is NOTHING BUT TROUBLE (okay, so I'm not a cat person...)

Back to the soup: Of course, it is required that you serve such a meal in a pumpkin. Even if you cheat and keep the actual liquid in a bowl (I won’t tell if you don’t).

I can’t wait to decide what to make next with my Good Food Box finds. Hint: it will likely involve cranberries.

PS: don’t you just love it when your house has random planks of wood and bricks lying around that are perfect for food photo shoots?

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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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Sunday dinner with Ariel and Alex: Chilled guacamole soup and double chocolate chipotle muffins

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

…And Ariel made the fajitas (and Alex hung out with us but ate some vegetarian-friendly meal)!

There is little I love more in life than an impromptu, Mexican-themed meal.  Throw a couple of good friends into the mix, and you have the ingredients for a terrific night.

My charming friends
My fajita, served with a side of iPhone

The dynamics of my friendship with Ariel
(I’m in the mood for headings)
This past Sunday, Ariel invited me over to her house (my old house) for a taco dinner.  Obviously, I accepted.  It was Ariel’s turn to make me something anyways.  You see, the two of us have a payback system that never involves the exchange of money.  I make Ariel supper?  She makes me supper in return.  Ariel buys me an oat fudge bar from Starbucks and a fun popsicle after I forget my wallet at home?  I buy her a movie ticket at the Mayfair.  It’s a good system.  Yesterday we even had a muffin exchange at lunch.  This is why we are friends.

The appetizer
When brainstorming things to make on Sunday, I came across two recipes on Tastespotting.

The first was for a chilled guacamole soup.  I was intrigued.  I had never made guacamole before, but am passionately in love with avocados.  I figured I’d try this one out, and cart it over to Ariel and Alex’s as an appetizer.  It was super easy to make (it took 20 minutes + chill time) and gave me an excuse to buy and munch on my favourite fruit.

Please note the metal chunk that was once attached to Ariel's bicycle, Hans

But don’t get me wrong – this soup was not made without sacrifice.  Oh whatever do I mean?  Well, you know how a few blog posts back I mentioned that you need to wear gloves when you cut jalapeno peppers?  I decided to disobey my own advice, promising that I would be careful and not burn my fingers.

Good news: I didn’t burn my fingers.

JUST EVERY SINGLE PART OF MY FACE, INCLUDING EYELIDS, NOSE AND FOREHEAD.

Pain and agony.  Whine, whine, whine.

The dessert
Okay, I’m over the pepper burns.

I spotted these “muffins” shortly after the soup discovery.  Why the air quotes?  It’s because these were more or less cupcakes.  I’m sorry, anything with the term “double chocolate” in its name has no choice but to be excluded all together from the muffin category.  The addition of the chipotle spice was simply an excuse for me to use more of that $8 bottle of chipotle chili pepper that I bought when I made my Cinco de Mayo brownies (yes, I realize that these are the muffin equivalent of that dessert, shh).

I decided that if I was going to classify these as dessert, I might as well go all out.  I scooped out the top and plopped in a spoonful of ice cream.  Great summer dessert.  In true west coast fashion, Ariel had blackberries with hers.

Final note: the vanilla I used for the cuppins wasn’t just any old vanilla.  When I babysat for this family the other week (the girls and I made 50 cupcakes from scratch for their school classes, but that’s another story…), the mom gave me a bottle of homemade vanilla extract.  It was made with boiled down Grey Goose vodka and real vanilla beans (which were still sitting in the bottle).  So awesome.

PS: Oh old front porch, it was good to be back.  I missed standing on a chair to take photos (not).

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Roasted Red Pepper and Sweet Potato Soup

~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

This soup was my lifesaver early last week when I wasn’t able to chew anything.  Although I am (thankfully) now fully recovered from my wisdom teeth operation, this soup was a delicious way to enjoy my liquid diet meals.  Also, the only reason I decided to stop relying solely on mushy foods was because I really wanted chicken wings on my birthday…is this bad?

I’m typing this post right before I have to rush off to class, so I’ll be fairly quick about it.  Ever since I discovered that I love sweet potatoes, I have been looking for an excuse to include them in everything I make.  This soup was the perfect way to do this and, although I ate probably 1/4 of the potato before it even made it in the soup pot (roasted sweet potato = heaven), what was included added a lot of flavour and contributed to the overall consistency.

This might be the last hot soup I make for awhile, since the winter months are speeding towards the end.  Who knows though, if Ottawa weather keeps acting the way it is I might just have to extend my winter cooking until the end of March.  Fingers crossed that this is not the case, I want to start taking food pictures outside again!!!

PS: Ha! Just realized that the first picture looks like a soupy sunset.

Source: Canadian Living