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!

This Week so Far ...

On Tuesday for lunch we whipped up a yummy tofu noodle dish.

Dinner was one of our favourite Korean meals, dak galbi.

And for dessert ... homemade banana cream pie.

Yesterday morning I was on the radio!  I had been interviewed for a local radio station about cool treats to beat the heat - fun! 

Yesterday afternoon we drove out of town about 40 minutes to ...

Meet our new niece!!  Christopher's sister and brother-in-law, Victoria and William had a little girl on Friday.  Elizabeth is absolutely gorgeous - when she opened her eyes and looked up at us, our hearts just melted. 

How's your week going so far?

The End of the Long Weekend

On Friday afternoon we arrived in Saskatoon.  From Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon, we basically spent every waking minute with my mom.  We went back to our hotel at night to sleep, and ordered in to the room.  We're pretty wiped, and are looking forward to relaxing a bit in our backyard this week.

Last night we were back in Regina, and Christopher's parents had us over for dinner.   We started with snacks in the backyard, while catching up.  A beautiful leg of lamb was cooking on the BBQ while we visited.

We moved inside for dinner.  With the lamb, we had gravy, potatoes, Caesar salad, and corn on the cob.

Everything was soooooo good!  Both of Christopher's parents are really great cooks.

To top it all off, we had berry pie for dessert.

It was a wonderful way to end off our long weekend.

Was it a long weekend for you?  How did you spend the weekend?

* Menchie's Giveaway - Don't forget!  If you go to Menchie's this week, take a few seconds to enter my giveaway!

Lobsta

Dinner on Thursday was kind of a random surprise.  Christopher came home from work, and when I greeted him at the door he had a large plastic bag.  "What's that?" I asked; it was a couple of live lobsters!  Those little guys made all sorts of noise while they hung out over ice for the afternoon.  We had to tell them to "keep it down!" a few times.

We hadn't planned any fancy sides to go with the lobsters, so we had them with a cheesy Sidekick noodle dish, and of course melted butter for dipping.

It was wonderful.

There were no leftovers, which was just fine, as we were heading out of town the next day for the long-weekend. 

How was your weekend?  What did you do?

Images from the Past Two Weeks

I can't believe we got home from Vegas less than two weeks ago ... with everything that's gone on since we arrived home, it seems like ages ago.  When my mom had a lengthy hospital stay years ago, while waiting for placement in a care home, I remember that time stood still.  It seems that has happened again. 

My time frame is jumbled, but here are some random foodie images from the past two weeks of our lives ...

At some point I also went for a couple peaceful morning walks around the lake.

My mom seems back to her usual self, but the doctors still don't know what happened on Sunday to cause her to land in the hospital.  She has responded remarkably well to fluids and antibiotics, but until they find out what's going on, they can't send her back to her care home.  Fortunately it's a long weekend in Canada this weekend so we can spend some extended time with her.

What are you up to this weekend?