Flash Freezing Fruit

 We buy frozen fruit sometimes for making smoothies. I like to buy a bunch of bananas and I usually end up freezing some of them before they go bad to make smoothies out of. I wanted to do the same with some other fruit, but I didn't know how to do that without having them all come out in one frozen lump. I then discovered the technique of flash freezing. By all the fruit not sticking together you can just take out however much you need at the time.

Sushi

A couple years ago, a Korean friend of mine taught me how to make sushi and I have been making it ever since. I make probably the simplest version of it but we enjoy it a lot.

Getting Organized: Pantry

My pantry is one of many areas that I find hard to keep organized. Recently, I finally took the time to put my dry goods into containers and label everything. Things go much more smoothly in the kitchen when we can find what we're looking for.

Frozen Soup

Probably every other day, we have soup for lunch. Soups are great because they are very nutritious with lots of vegetables, everything is well cooked and edible for my toddler, they are nice and warm in the winter, and they can be a quick and easy meal when taken from frozen. 

(Fudged) Seeded Popovers

I can be the worst when it comes to fudging a little on following recipes. I change the ingredients and skip steps and wherever I think it might be okay, I just make little changes to suit me at the time. So when I tried these Seeded Popovers that I found here, my fudging got me some funky results.

Russian Borscht

I asked a Russian friend of mine for his recipe for his amazing Borscht. My husband and son love it! Thank you so much for the recipe!

Growing Sprouts: What Seeds Can I Use?

My friend was showing me this site where they sell seeds for sprouting. They also have information about the health benefits for the different types of sprouted seeds and specific directions for sprouting. I was surprised to learn that you can sprout almost any kind of seed it seems and even more surprised when I realized that I already had a variety of seeds in my pantry ready for sprouting.

 My husband got in on the fun and tried out a few too. The one above is a 9 Bean Soup Mix bought at Cosco.  I didn't think it would work, but surprisingly most of them are sprouting. I had read that split peas won't sprout and sure enough it doesn't look like they are sprouting in this mix.

Growing Sprouts: First Attempt

I'm so excited to share with you my first attempt at growing sprouts! I can't believe how easy it is! 

Homemade "Ranch" Dressing

When I lived with my family overseas growing up, salad dressing was expensive and hard to find. So we began making this as a substitute for ranch dressing. Now that I've returned to North America, I really don't like the ranch dressing you can buy from the store and by far prefer the homemade salad dressing we made from scratch. We eat this salad dressing on everything especially on a green lettuce salad and on pizza. Guests in our home often ask for the recipe. So here it is!

Crisp Garlic Potatoes

Here is the side dish I served with Nonna's Lemon Garlic Salmon yesterday. I like these potatoes because they're fairly simple with just a few ingredients, but still taste great!

Nonna's Lemon Garlic Salmon

This salmon is delicious! My husband's grandmother is a wonderful cook. I've enjoyed many, many meals at her house. But she never follows a recipe so it's hard to get an exact recipe when asking her for directions. So I watched her make this salmon one time and tried my best to follow her steps. I'm sure Nonna can still make it much better than I can, but this is still excellent.

Quinoa with Pine Nuts and Broccoli

This is a new one to me that I tried for the first time today. I got it here. My husband, my 18 month old and I really enjoyed it. The quinoa is really moist and crumbly with a garlic and pine nut flavour.

Red Wheat Berry Salad

I made the Red Wheat Berry Salad for supper tonight that you can find here. It was very good! My husband looked at it skeptically, but when he tasted it, he said, "Wow! This tastes way better than it looks!" And true enough, the mix of lemon, mustard and honey is a very nice combination of flavours. For an added dish, we had scrambled eggs with cucumber and tomatoes in it.