Wine and Cheese Party

On Friday evening we hung out in the kitchen, listening to jazz and dancing, while I baked and Christopher made dinner.  I made some spiced nuts, and 65 double chocolate merlot cookies, while Christopher whipped up spaghetti and meatballs.

The next morning we cleaned the house, and got prepped for the evening.

We were having a wine and cheese evening with a close group of friends we get together with quite often.  Almost everyone in the group has had babies within the last two years, so grown-up evenings have become less common, and we thought it would be fun to get everyone together for a classy little evening, sans children.  We sent out invites back in December.

We had fun choosing many different cheeses (I think 17) and accompaniments, and then plating/arranging everything.

There was food in the living room, dining area, and the kitchen.

I forgot to get pictures of the hot dips in the kitchen - oops!  The dining table was full of goodies though ...

We had a fun evening catching up with pals, and snacking for hours.  As usual, we had way too much food ... but it's always better to have too much rather than not enough.

How was your weekend?  What did you do?

Dinner Last Night & Tips for Cream Pies

Yesterday afternoon we sat out in the backyard and enjoyed the heat wave we're having.  Eventually dinner rolled around, and we BBQd some curried potatoes, portobello mushrooms, and mini farmers' sausages.

Dessert was the chocolate cream pie that I had baked up that morning.

When baking cream pies, you have to blind-bake the crust, which just means that you bake it before you put the filling in.  In order to prevent shrinkage, and the crust falling down from the sides of the pie pan, you need to put something heavy in the middle while it bakes.  If you don't have pie weights, which I don't, you could use dried beans, rice, etc..  I used buckwheat that had been in the pantry forever. 

Just roll the dough out and place it in the pie pan, trim, and pierce with a fork along the bottom and sides.  Line with the shiny side of tinfoil (you could give the tin foil a quick spray to ensure it doesn't stick), and then fill with something heavy to hold it down.

You could also line the pie dough with tin foil, then put another pie plate on top to hold it down.

Once the crust is done, and cooled, you can cook up the filling on the stove and pour it in.  You'll refrigerate it for a couple hours to set the filling.  If you want to prevent a nasty "skin" from forming on the top of your cream pie, cover it with plastic wrap, pressing it down to touch the filling:

This will keep it nicely until it's chilled and you cover it with whipped cream.

Perfection.

How is your week going so far?  

Are you having a heat wave where you are?

I'm currently running two giveaways for my Canadian readers. 
- You can enter to win a journal here.
- If you visit Menchie's before the end of the month, Tweet or Instagram a photo of your creation with the message/hashtags you can find here.  You could win 7 free Menchie's treats!

Beautiful Weekend

We were very much looking forward to this past weekend.  The two previous weekends were spent in Saskatoon, and before that, we were just getting home from Vegas, and unpacking, etc..  We were so excited for a weekend of relaxing in our own backyard.

On Friday evening it was a bit rainy, so we made bee bim bop and put on a movie.

Comforting and cozy!

We slept in a bit on Saturday morning, which was so nice, and then cooked up eggs in a hole and bacon.

We then spent the rest of the day in the backyard.  We listened to all sorts of music from Miles Davis to DeadMau5.   

We snacked ...

Admired our homegrown peas ...

And saw something very frightening ...

For dinner we BBQd some tasty homemade burgers.

Christopher loaded his with blue cheese ... and I ... didn't.

We loved it outside so much, that the next morning we were right back out there cooking our breakfast.

I found the bacon stand thing at Home Sense recently and thought it was genius!  It catches the grease on both sides, so that it doesn't drip into the BBQ.  It worked perfectly.

It was such a beautiful morning, and so nice to eat outside.

Later in the day we made a big bowl of pico de gallo and snacked on that, and then used it to top our hotdogs.

We had a pretty great weekend - just the two of us, in the backyard.

We ended it off with some beetniks from the farmers' market.

How was your weekend?  What did you do?  Do you ever cook breakfast outside?

Korean Day & Everyday Foodie is Six!

I've been on the scene for six years!

Everyday Foodie turned six years old yesterday, and like any good foodies we celebrated with Spam:

Okay, stay with me.  There's more to it!  I haven't gone off the deep end.

Since Korean is our favourite type of ethnic cuisine we decided to have a couple Korean meals yesterday.  For lunch we had tteokbokki.



Then for dinner we decided to whip up budae jjigae.  Budae jjigae (army or soldier stew) became popular after the Korean war when food was scarce in Seoul.  Many people made use of canned surplus foods from army bases (Spam, ham, beans, etc.) and mixed them with Korean flavours such as gochujang and kimchi.  This dish is still popular in Korea, and it is a mixture of modern American ingredients such as instant noodles, American cheese, macaroni, and hotdogs, with tofu, a Korean broth and spices, rice cakes, and vegetables.

It starts with making and then straining a simple, quick broth.  In the broth are dried shitakes, dried shrimp, dried anchovies, onion, and kelp.

Then you saute some onion, carrot and garlic.  Once softened you top the vegetables with sliced Spam, sliced hotdogs, sliced tofu, rice cakes, and kimchi.  You can add different things too - Google a few recipes if you're interested.

You pour the broth over everything, and bring it to a boil ...

Then you add a spice mixture of gochujang powder, gochujang paste, soy sauce, and rice wine.

After cooking that for about five minutes, you add some instant ramen noodles, and cook until those are done.

Then, in case this hasn't been strange enough for you so far ...

You add a couple processed slices of cheese.

Stir that in and then dig in!

The verdict = It was too Western for us to be honest.  It tasted fine, but almost a little bland compared to what we're used to with Korean food.  We like to tell people that we're part Korean, and although this is a popular Korean dish, the addition of all the Western ingredients made it taste not Korean enough.  It could have used way more spice too.  We had fun making it though!

It's hard to believe that I created this blog six years ago.  I remember it perfectly, sitting in the spare room, on a desktop computer at a corner desk.  I had started blogs before, but never stuck with them.  This one I wanted to commit to.  I bought the domain name that day, and got started, never imagining where it would end up.  Within the past year alone I've partnered with some big names, such as Canadian Living Magazine, Sobeys, Circulon and Menchie's!  What a blast!  I'm so excited to see what the future holds for Everyday Foodie.

I'd love to learn more about my readers!  

If you have a minute, leave a comment (you don't need an account or anything like that - anyone can leave a comment) and tell me:

1) Your name
2) Where you're from
3) What keeps you coming back to read
4) What you're up to this weekend!