Canadian Living

Penne with Sweet Peppers and Two Cheeses (& Dinner Party Part II)

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

Intro note: It is an extremely bad idea to type a post on your food blog right before dinner.  Going to eat ice cream after this.

Last week, myself and a few of my fabulous co-workers trekked over to our local Value Village in search of an afternoon treasure hunt.  Other than finding a fantastic red zig-zag blazer, I was disappointed in the clothing segment of the hunt, and thought that my Value Village purchases would remain minimal.  Oh how wrong I was.  Waiting for my friends to finish trying on their finds, I started eyeing up the book section of the store.  Of course, I found the cookbooks, and OF COURSE I bought vintage Canadian Living cookbooks.

Here is my count so far:
Canadian Living cookbooks: 4
– Everyday Favourites
– Make it Tonight: Quick, Simple and Healthy Family Meals
– The Canadian Living Rush Hour Cookbook circa 1989
– Canadian Living’s Family Cookbook circa 1995

The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook? I AM COMING FOR YOU.  As you can see, I am clearly out-of-control, and my addiction will soon lead to my own chubby demise (this as I now eat ice cream for dinner, gosh).

Deciding what to make for my dinner party’s main dish created this scene in my dining room (if you look closely you can see a sneak peek at what I made for dessert):


Anyways, I finally settled on a dish from the oldest of my cookbooks (the Rush Hour one).  This “Penne with Sweet Peppers and Two Cheeses” recipe (since CL wasn’t online in 1989, I can’t find the recipe through google – will post in Recipes tab!) looked simple enough and reinforced the reason why I love cheese so much.  The combination of swiss and parmesan was awesome, and peppers are slowly sneaking up to become one of my favourites foods (yes, a complete shocker I know, but they are just so good when they are soft!).  I was originally hesitant to make this dish, with the cookbook being published in 1989 and all, and with no picture being provided for my visual pleasure.  After much inner-conflict, however, I chose this recipe, and I am so glad I did!  Even more proof that Canadian Living recipes are timeless (but lets be realistic, does a good recipe ever lose credibility?).

Keep checking for my dessert post which will be coming out in the next few days!

Ginger Molasses Crinkle Cookies

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

No matter what delicious food I make in the future, I am positively sure that cookie dough will remain my favourite snack for the rest of time.  As always, I ate about 1/3 of the prepared cookie dough prior to it being baked, a task which quickly threw my stomach into a state of mass chaos.  Was it worth it?  Of course.

I made these cookies at the request of one of my co-workers, Diandria (shout-out!!).  She is a huge fan of the Starbucks ginger molasses cookies, so I knew I had to try my very best to recreate their treat.  Not having ever made ginger cookies of any kind, I had no idea what recipe to use.  Of course I turned to Canadian Living to fix my problem, and easily found the recipe for their Ginger Molasses Crinkle Cookies.  Not sure where the “crinkle” comes in (since the word kind of reminds me of Christmas wrapping paper), but I’m not complaining.

I haven’t brought in a Friday treat for awhile, since our Fridays have been completely occupied by Summer Orientation sessions.  Since today was our LAST Friday session (I can’t believe it), I decided to make these cookies to celebrate/mourn.  Also, it’s weird, but I’m getting some sort of inner-gut feeling when something is done in the oven.  Maybe that’s a super Foodie Freak thing to say, but it’s happening.  Okay, or it might just be that my paranoia makes me check the oven every minute so things don’t burn.  Either way, I’m learning.

PS: Sorry about the bland pictures.  There is only so much you can do with cookies.

Chicken Burger Melts & Mango Avocado Salad

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

Never having made a burger of any kind from scratch before, the task of making one was long overdue.  Shaping my own chicken burger was…an experience.  Raw meat is the most disgusting thing in the universe, and having to touch it was absolutely awful.  To make my burger, I used Canadian Living’s “Chicken Burger Melts” recipe.  The best thing about this burger was that it allowed me to bring out my old friend, the George Foreman grill for the very first time since learning to cook!  Taking out that grill brought back many, many memories from my grilled cheese and plain-chicken-and-bbq-sauce days.

Side note: This burger also represents the first time I have eaten vegetables on a burger.  Big step.
Side note II: If purchasing a delicious, mouth-watering cheese such as brie to put on your burger, ensure that you do not eat 3/4 of the cheese prior to your dinner being cooked.  Personal experience has found that it is almost enough to kill your appetite.

As for the mango and avocado salad, I am happy to announce that I FINALLY know how to properly peel and cut these two delicious fruits, thanks to a bunchofonlinetutorials.  There was a slight moment of panic while making this salad, as my first avocado turned out to be bad on the inside.  The new grocery store near my house turned out to be a lifesaver, and I quickly dashed down there to pick up a lovely already-ripe avocado.  Disaster averted.

Also, exciting news!  As some of you may have noticed, I now have my very own DOMAIN NAME!!  Hoorah!  I was completely positive that I was going to accidentally delete my blog whilst trying to achieve this url, so I am very happy that we are still here!

Apple Torte

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

With the weather having cooled off enough for me to cook without breaking out into a sweat, I decided it was time to rev-up the oven and bake again.  Craving something with apples in it, I was perfectly pleased with the simplicity of Canadian Living’s Apple Tort recipe.  The recipe also allowed me to pop down to the NEW specialty grocery market in my neighbourhood and pick up some apples (I used spartan).  This store is actually a two minute walk from my house, and will be a great place to go to pick up last minute blogging ingredients for foodie adventures in the future!

In the past, I’ve made one other apple dessert using a Canadian Living recipe (see the results: layered apple cake, a father’s day treat), and this apple torte turned out just as well, if not better, than that cake (and it was good!).  Being a huge fan of toasted almonds, I sprinkled an extra handful on top of the torte, along with some brown sugar, to add some colour to the top of the dish.  My pictures (and taste buds) benefitted from these last-minute additions, and they made the torte wonderfully photogenic.

Spiced Beef Skillet Dinner (and my first encounter with green olives)

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

I am beginning to distrust ground beef.  Making this meal, I casually took some ground beef out of the freezer (I never use things when I first buy them, I’m horrible!) and defrosted it in the microwave in preparation for skillet-frying.  This was a smooth process, and it wasn’t until I started to stove fry the beef that I suspected something fishy.  As I fried up this defrosted beef, my nose was unhappily tickled by an unpleasant scent.  Unsure of whether or not this smell was coming from the beef, and being the paranoid/neurotic person that I am, I shut off the stove and sniffed my way around the kitchen in search of this mysterious scent.  Unable to find the source, and being far too hungry to care any longer, I continued to cook the meat, smell and all.  In the future, I promise to use fresh ground beef, and avoid the freezer from here on in.

Another unhappy note: back in June, I announced that I discovered I did not like black olives.  It is with a heavy heart that I admit that green olives too have an absolutely awful flavour, and that their oil-based taste does not do me any favours.  When this meal was done, you could evidently tell I had picked around the green, doughnut shaped vegetable, and left them for the compost in a neat little pile on my plate.

All in all, this dish made fireworks go off in my mouth.  There were such bizarre spices in it, spices that I never thought would be seen together, including paprika, cinnamon, cumin, ginger and coriander.  Surprisingly enough, they all worked out, and the entire meal had a consistently spicy taste.  Perfect supper for someone who is trying to develop their palette!

The recipe was from my“Make it Tonight” cookbook, a book I need to start using more, since it has so many fantastic-looking recipes!  Perhaps I will cook my way through all of the Canadian Living cookbooks, a sort of Julie/Julia challenge, n’est pas?

PS: WHY can I NOT cook couscous?  The recipe in my cookbook was apparently “fail-proof,” however my couscous STILL ended up resembling mashed potatoes.  Couscous: a must conquer in the near-future.