Happy Chinese New Year!!

Today is the Chinese New Year, and to celebrate, we cooked up some Chinese food.  It's probably not too authentic, but Company's Coming called it Chinese, so that's good enough for me.

We started with hot and sour soup.

(p.49 of Company's Coming Chinese Cooking)

This was really, really good!  It was also very easy to make.  I added some sriracha to mine to make it even spicier.  We'll be making this again.

The main course was Cantonese Chow Mein.

(p. 122 of Company's Coming Chinese Cooking)

This was crunchy, and flavourful, and I added some sriracha to it too.

Our weekend is off to a pretty tasty start, and it's only going to get tastier.

What are you up to this weekend?

We want Chilly Willy!!

When we make chili ...

 
It's usually a freezing cold day.

We soak a bean/lentil mixture overnight.

We don't follow a recipe, but we usually use onions, garlic, celery or mushrooms, hot peppers, ground beef, diced tomatoes, other tomato product we might have on hand, beans and a lot of spices.

If we have green onions, cheese, or sour cream, those find their way on top.

We find something to dip in it.  This is especially easy if we have some slightly overcooked cornbread left from the weekend.

Someone goes back for seconds.

 
Wouldn't you?

We eat until we're stuffed, and look into the pot hopeful for leftovers.

We breath a sigh of relief and smile - there are leftovers.

Then the late night wheels begin turning in Jolene's mind, and she starts thinking that chili cheese dogs would make a really good late night snack this weekend ... just sayin'.

Finish the sentence:  When I/we make chili ...

What we ate Wednesday

Our dinner this evening was a chicken and mushroom penne.

We baked it with cheese, because we're wild like that.

We had some of this skinny, little, organic bread on the side:

This was a perfect mid-week dinner after our cold, long days.

What was your Wednesday dinner?

Ten on Tuesday

1)  On Monday I took my dad and Christopher out for dinner to one of my favourite restaurants, Swiss Chalet.  I get made fun of because of my love for this restaurant, but I don't care!  I love me that sauce!

2)  I have a hard time deciding what to take for lunch if we don't have leftovers.  Sometimes I rely on Costco's chicken cordon bleu, or their broccoli stuffed chicken, with rice or potatoes.  I cook it up the night before or in the morning ...

3)  I never thought I'd say this, but I'm lovin' the indoor golf!  We went on Sunday, and it was fun!

4)  My favourite juice is grapefruit juice.  We've been sipping this stuff:

5)  On Friday evening we're staying in and cooking a Chinese feast.  Tonight we chose the recipes:

6)  Breakfast this morning was egg in a hole, a summer-time favourite for me; too bad it's not summer:

7)  We have a trip to Denver coming up very soon, and I'm getting pretty excited!  The weather there looks much better than here.  I'm also excited to hit the slopes!  It's been too long.

8)  The other day we made homemade veggie pizza for an easy dinner:

9)  My case for my point & shoot camera broke a couple months ago. 

I finally replaced it today - yay!!

10)  Looking for Super Bowl snack ideas?  Check out this list!

What are your Tuesday things?

Saturday

We spent a good part of Saturday in the kitchen.  Christopher made breakfast, while I whipped up some cornbread.

We were too busy visiting and laughing over breakfast, that I completely forgot about the cornbread in the oven.  Ooops!  It wasn't completely burned, but it definitely was over-baked.  I set that one aside for us to gnaw at another day, and mixed up another pan of cornbread.

Christopher's parents came over for dinner and we started with some munchies in the living room.

We then had shrimp po boys:

And then king crab, tiger shrimp & sausage gumbo, with cornbread.

I forgot to snap pictures of the dessert, but we made pecan pie and homemade custard.

What did you do on Saturday?

Grocery Shopping

We do our big grocery shopping trips together, usually each Friday; however often one of us will stop at the store on the way home from work to grab other things we need throughout the week.  Between the two of us, we probably go to the grocery store a minimum of four times per week.

This evening Christopher picked up supplies for dinner on his way home, complete with a few extras.



Our typical after work snack is cheese and crackers, and he grabbed this cheese because he saw the word "butter" in the name and knew I'd like it:



I kinda, sorta like butter.  What can I say?  Butter's good!

Also in the bag was a fancy pasta sauce for dinner:




We both believe in paying for quality ingredients, and this pasta sauce is definitely quality.  The sauce is made in Italy in small batches, with ingredients that can all be traced back to the farm on which they were grown.  There are no artificial colours/ flavours, no preservatives, and no sugar or gluten.  It is also vegan, GMO free, and kosher.

The ingredients are:

Fresh vine ripened tomatoes
100% cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil
Fresh sauteed mushrooms
Fresh sauteed Spanish onions
Fresh peeled, whole garlic
Fresh Genovese basil leaf
Mediterranean sea salt
Fresh ground whole black pepper
Chili Flakes

The sauce was so good that I caught someone stealing some of mine!



Get outta there!

We have special company coming for dinner on Saturday, so we'll head to the grocery store again tomorrow night to buy supplies for that ... then likely again on Sunday or Monday to buy for the week.

How often do you grocery shop?  

Who does the grocery shopping in your family?

What's New Wedneday: Products

We haven't been buying much for groceries this month, but we did grab a few new (to us) products recently.  

These vegan, smoked apple sage sausages are pretty good.  Christopher really liked them, but I still haven't found a vegan sausage that I think is as good as the real deal.

I did like that their ingredient list was way shorter than that of other vegan sausage brands.

I found cucumber soda at Dad's Organic Market.  I LOVE this stuff!  It only has 4 ingredients, and all are recognizable.  The flavour is mild, and it would be great in the summer. 

We have a new grocery store down the street and it has a much better selection than the store that used to be there.  Last time we were grocery shopping we found this Amber Ale cheese:

It has now become one of my favourite cheeses.  It is sooooo creamy, medium-firmness, and almost buttery.  The taste is unlike any other cheese I've eaten.  It's about as strong as an old cheddar, but has a distinct ale taste.  This just might become a regular grocery item for us - mmmm!

Have you tried any new food products lately?

Ten on Tuesday

1)  When we were in Saskatoon recently, we ate breakfast in the James Hotel, and also had a nice visit with my auntie Nancy and uncle Ken, who I hadn't seen in a long time.  The buffet is really good, and the selections change daily.



2)  I quite enjoyed this list of Truly Upsetting Vintage Recipes.  Who would eat these things!?

3)  Since we made a turkey on Saturday, we've been eating pretty much nothing but leftovers since.  Turkey sandwiches, turkey soup ...




4)  We are super excited to eat at Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs in Denver (very soon)!!  The menu looks pretty ridiculous.  And by ridiculous, I mean awesome.

5)  Our fridge, cupboards, pantry, and freezers are usually too full, and overflowing with stuff ... but not this month!  We've been on a mission to eat everything up and have been buying very few grocery items each week.  We do have some exciting new dishes we plan on creating in the next little while though, so I'm thinking the grocery hauls will start getting a little bit heavier in February.

6)  The Screaming Daisies are jamming in the basement at this very moment, and the sounds coming from down there are pretty fantastic.  I think they're doing some kind of free-form jazz odyssey, but it's totally distracting me from this post.  I hope they remember what they are jamming right now and turn it into their next song, because it's cooooool!

7)  Recent eats have included sweet and sour meatballs:




8)  And pizza from Dominos.  They had a pretty good sale on, so we only paid $13 for an extra large pizza. 



We loved that we could track the progress of our order online. 



9)  I am super excited that one of my all-time favourite books, The Giver, will be made into a movie in 2014!  We read this book in class when I was in grade 8, and I've read it about 10 times since then. 

10)  I really want to go to a movie soon.  We have a couple gift cards that are begging to be used.  If you've been to any movies recently, what do you recommend?

What are your Tuesday things?

How is your week going so far?