Mustache Baby Shower

Last weekend I celebrated the upcoming arrival of my very dear friends son with some pretty awesome ladies. I hosted a baby shower at my Mamas house (with a ton of help from my mother) since most of the guests were from that area. I haven't had much free time lately so I needed to make sure the shower was planned efficiently and had to come up with simple decor and food ideas that could travel well. Thank you Pinterest! Since we knew the baby was a lil' man I decided to run with that idea.  Mustache theme it was! My girlfriend loves milk and cookies so I though a milk and cookie bar would be simple, yet yummy.  I hate preparing food while entertaining so everything on the menu was prepared ahead of time so I was able to spend the afternoon socializing. 

The Menu
Tuna & Egg salad sandwiches
Olive & pickle tray
cheese & crackers
Veggies & dip in a cup
Double stuffed oreos
Assorted cookies (homemade & from a bakery)
Timbits
Punch
Strawberry milk
Chocolate milk
Regular milk


I can't wait to meet this lil' man!!!!

Glories Sweet Potato Chips

Me like some crunch in my snack.  I think that's why I prefer salty over sweet snacks. I should mention that my husband HATES crunching.  This is problem when we are curled up watching a movie. crunch. crunch. crunch.  Poor hubby.  Anyways, I was at Bulk Barn today after work and walked the isles checking out all the cool products they sell and I stumbled across these bad boys.

Buy them. You won't be disappointed.  Don't be mistaken, they aren't healthy in the least but they are a great treat to crunch on when relaxing on the couch.  Just for fun, try to score their Wednesday Seniors discount and see what they say. I tried. No luck. Dammit.

Cream Cheese & Red Pepper Jelly

This weekend we traveled to the Peterborough area to visit with friends and have a good time. Mission Accomplished.  Our lovely hosts treated us very, very well. We were requested to bring an easy late night snack/appetizer and since we were traveling from quite a distance I wanted to bring something that could travel well and was super easy to prepare.  This isn't a recipe but rather a appetizer suggestion that has never failed me and is perfect in a pinch. After a few beverages last night my husband and I were chatting in the kitchen of my friends home and he said to me as he took a bite of the appetizer 'we' brought, "God this is good! Do you know who brought it?". Classic.

Ingredients
1 brick low fat cream cheese
1 jar red pepper jelly
A variety of crackers

Method
Remove cream cheese from fridge at least a 1/2 hour before serving to ensure it's easy to spread.  Place on a serving plate and pour red pepper jelly on top.  Fill the remainder of the plate with crackers. Enjoy!

Yummy French Onion Soup

French onion soup has got to be one of my favourite soups ever.  There is something so comforting about it.  Today I made a huge batch that will last us for at least 4 more servings.  I've written a french onion soup recipe on here before but I have to say this one was much tastier.  For some reason when you add wine to dishes they taste SO.MUCH.BETTER. Last night I used white wine in the mussels and tonight it was red wine in french onion soup.  My husband isn't much of a wine drinker (GASP!) so I find that I often have leftover wine.  I've been freezing it in 1/2 cup servings and it has come in so handy.  Here is the yummy recipe.  Enjoy!

Yield: 6+ servings
Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter
2 large Spanish onions, quartered and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper1/4 cup flour
8 cups beef broth (I used 8 cups water & 4 beef bouillon cubes)
1 cup red wine
1 bay leaf
Mozzarella cheese to top
French bread

Method

In a large soup pot melt butter over medium heat. Add onions, salt, pepper and thyme and cook about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in flour and cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and simmer about 30 minutes. Remove bay leaf and transfer to broiler safe bowls. Preheat broiler. Top bowls with french bread slices and cheese (mozza is best). Place bowls on baking sheet and broil until cheese is bubbly. about 3 minutes. Remove and serve. So f'n good.

Mussels & Baked Garlic Shrimp

Picture borrowed from here

Last night my Mama came for a sleepover so I decided to make a meal that she loves but doesn't have very often -- mussels. I also made a giant Caesar salad and baked garlic shrimp.  It was all delish!  It smelled like a garlic factory in here; just the way I like it.  I've posted recipes on here for both mussels and baked garlic shrimp but last night I altered them and am so happy with the turn out. I hope you like them as much as we did.  Enjoy!

Yield: 2 servings (as a meal)
Mussel Ingredients
2 - 2 1/2 lbs fresh mussels, scrubbed and debearded

1 onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

3 tablespoons butter

1 cup white wine

2 large tomatoes, chopped

freshly ground pepper, to taste

1/4 cup  fresh parsley, chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried parsley)

 

Method

Wash mussels in cold water.  Discard any mussels are don't close in the cold water. Over medium heat cook the onion, garlic and the butter until the onions are soft.  Add in the white wine, parsley, tomatoes, ground pepper and cook for 5 minutes. Turn to high heat and add mussels. Cook covered for about 5 minutes or until all the mussels have opened. Discard any mussels that did not open. Serve in a bowl with a fresh french bread.


Yield: 2 servings
Baked Garlic Shrimp Ingredients12 shrimp, cooked, devained, tails off
3 tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/8 teaspoon oregano
1/8 teaspoon basil
1/8 teaspoon thyme
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup grated cheese (whatever cheese you have. I always mix cheeses together)

Method
Place one shrimp in each of the sections of an escargot baking dish. Melt butter in the microwave. Add garlic, oregano, basil, thyme, paprika and pepper to butter and mix.  Pour butter mixture equally over shrimp. Cover with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted. Put on HI broil for 2 minutes to crisp up top of cheese. Serve with french bread for dipping.

My happy Place

Homemade Pizza + Red Wine + Ed Sheeran = Happy Jill

 

 

 

 

 

Homemade All-Natural Hand Soap

Are you sick of me writing about homemade cleaners yet? If so you should probably skip over this post. My sister-in-law knows I'm into natural products and gave me a bottle of Methods foaming hand soap in my stocking this year at Christmas.  It lasted me three months and I loved it! I was just about to toss the bottle out and realized the label peeled right off leaving me with a plain cute bottle. Hmm. This got me thinking, maybe I could use this bottle to make my own foaming soap.  I've made homemade hand soap but never considered putting it into a foaming bottle. SUCCESS! I'm so pumped right now. Get it?! Pumped. Har-har.  I bought a huge bottle of castile soap 9 months ago (mentioned here) and still have over half a bottle left. I looked up a few recipes online for foaming hand soap and settled on this one.  It's GREAT and works out to be about $1.00 per bottle to make. Me likie.

*Update: We've been using this soap for a well over a month and we absolutely love it.  I won't be purchasing hand soap every again (unless it's for the bottle!).  I warn you that tea tree scene is strong the first day but complete dissipates after that. 



Ingredients
1 foaming soap bottle
water
castile soap (I used Lavender)
tea tree oil


Method
Fill 1/3 of your bottle with castile soap. Put about 10 drops of tea tree oil and and fill the remainder of the bottle with water. Voila!

Apple Pie Pockets

I try to avoid baking because my husband and I end up eating entire batches to ourselves.  I know I can toss leftovers in the freezer but lets be honest, we'd just end up eating frozen cookies.  Today is a hang -round-the-house-and-get-shit-done day so I told my husband I'd make any baked good that he wanted. I barely got the offer out and he said 'apple pie'. Alrightly then.  I wasn't going to slave away and make homemade pie crust so I decided on individual pie pockets using puff pastry that has been hanging around my freezer for a few months.  These little guys turned out great! Super easy and cute (that's what he said).

Yield: 6 servings/individual pockets

Ingredients

1 square or roll of puff pastry

1 large apple (or 2 small), peeled and sliced into small cubes

1/3 cupbrown sugar

2 teaspoons flour

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1 egg, beaten

Method

Thaw puff pastry for two hours at room temperature. Peel, core and chop apples up into little cubes. Combine apples with sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Preheat oven to 400F. Flour surface lightly and roll out your puff pastry as big as possible in a square shape. Cut pastry sheet into 12 3x3 squares. Place about 2 tablespoons of apple mixture on each square. Place second pastry square on top form a pocket. Press down the edge with fingers to seal and then press with fork to decorate the edges. Brush top with egg and sprinkle with sugar. Using a fork, pierce top of each square. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 20-23 minutes. Enjoy!

Spam

...and I'm not talking about the canned meat.  It appears that I've been hit with a lot of spam in the form of odd comments on my blog and I had no idea until now.  It has apparently been happening for months so I've had to beef up my security on here.  If you've read any weird comments that include porn links ignore them.....or not. Whatever floats your boat.  I've tried my best to delete all of them, or save them to my 'favourites' so I hope my cooking blog is back to it's clean old self. Maybe it's all the 'that's what she said' lines I use. hmm...

So back to the canned meat. Has anyone ever tried spam before?...

Caribbean Sunset Soup

My homeboy

When I cook I usually google things like "recipes with sweet potato" and review about 5 recipes to come up with a plan, which usually consists of a combo of a few recipes.  I don't like following recipes -- I find them restrictive.  This sometimes gets me into trouble, with final products that are epic fails. However more often than not it turns out great and it helps me use up ingredients that I have laying around my house without having to run out to the grocery store to grab one stupid ingredient because we all know how much I love grocery shopping. Every now and then I rip out recipes from magazines that I think sound delish.  I toss them in my junk drawer never to be seen again.  Today when I was riffling around the drawer for a pen I came across a pile of recipes collecting dust.  Dammit. I have the day off today and little to do so there was no excuse. Time to use one of them. I picked a recipe that I knew I had most ingredients for and substituted the rest. I settled on Caribbean Sunset Soup from Fresh Juice, a fantastic free magazine that we get in the mail because we are President's Choice customers. Thanks to you, Galen Weston Jr. my house smells yummy!  Here is my adaptation of the recipe.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled & cubed
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups veggie or chicken stock
3/4 of a tin of light coconut milk
juice of 1 lime, a the zest of half
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 coriander (it called for fresh cilantro to garnish but that stuff makes me ralph)
1 teaspoon mild Indian curry paste (*I didn't have this so I used 1/2 teaspoon dried hot pepper flakes, 1/4 teaspoon turmeric, 2 teaspoons garam masala,1 1/2 tablespoons fresh ginger)

Method
In a large soup pot over medium heat warm oil and toss in garlic, onion and all the spices. Cook for about 4 minutes or until onions turn translucent. Add cubed potatoes and stock and bring to a boil.  Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender.  Transfer to a food processor and puree.  Return back to the pot.  Over low heat slowly stir in the coconut milk, the juice from 1 lime and a little of the zest. Stir and serve with triangles of warm naan bread.