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There really is a first time for everything

Today marks a first for Capt Mike and I. After slaving over a hottish stove for a good 40 minutes or so, we agreed that the salmon dish I had prepared was crap, and opted for delivery instead.
Now, I do not fancy myself a chef per se (despite applying for cooking school in Belleville... a girl's gotta do something to keep herself busy in Trenton, right?), but I am a pretty decent cook. I like to experiment in the kitchen, and usually the results are pretty tasty: roasted red pepper risotto on a bed of sautéed spinach, with Italian sausage meatballs; "teriyaki" salmon fillets; lemon-dill halibut steaks. I also like to try things I've seen on TV, particularly if they are touted as healthy and easy to make. So how was I to know that the salmon, spinach, and leek bake I borrowed from "You are what you eat" would end up tasting exactly like it was a recipe from a second-rate British cable show, and not haute cuisine?
In my own defence, never before has Capt Mike opted in favour of take-out over something I've made the effort of preparing myself. He's always game to try new things, and I like to challenge our palates with new flavours as often as possible. But tonight's dish was a complete disaster. Bland. Pale. The salmon looked poached, not baked. The baby spinach lost all of its chlorophyll. Describing the seasoning as "discrete" would be generous. Only the English could make salmon taste bad. And me following their recipe, apparently.

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Low-fat cheese

I accidentally bought reduced-fat provolone at the deli the other day. I don't make a habit of buying low-fat or sugar-free stuff, because usually the not-so-bad fats and sugars are replaced with unpronounceable man-made chemicals that quite frankly scare the crap out of me.

Anyway, not noticing that I had made this mistake, I took my low-cal cheese home and made a sandwich that tasted like absolute crap.

Why, oh why, would you voluntarily eat something so flavourless and rubbery? The slice of cheese on my sadwich purportedly had 25% less fat than a normal, yummy slice of provolone. So, why not just eat 3/4 of the amount you normally would? How much provolone does the average person eat in a day to warrant the production of such an absolute piece of garbage? When did humans become so stupid as to sacrifice quantity over quality when it comes to food consumption?

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No, it really doesn't taste anything like sugar

So, I'm a mentor. I am volunteering with a program called Go Girls!, which aims to promote the values of acive living, healthy eating, and good self-esteem among 12- to 13-year-old girls. In my experience, and in the experience of the people at Ophea, who administer the program, 12- and 13-year-old girls are at a pretty high risk of developing negative habits and negative self concepts. So, for the next seven weeks I am spending my Friday afternoons playing games, eating snacks, and hanging out with a group of 8th graders from a local public school.
This entry emphasizes the snack portion of the program. You see, it's my responsibility each week to provide these girls with yummy, fun, healthy snacks to eat that don't taste "healthy" or look like rabbit pellets. Last Friday's pita chips went down fairly well, as did the carrot sticks, but the hummus and raita dips were met with a chorus of "why can't we eat Canadian food?" Ignoring the fact that we will, at some point, be addressing the idea of Canada's multicultural nature and the importance of experiencing the wealth of diversity we have in this country, their comments alerted me to the fact that what I think is a tasty treat (hummus), is not what a tween thinks is a tasty treat (chips and melted cheese from a jar). They want junk food. So, in the spirit of compromise, I went looking for some low-calorie brownie recipes (that I plan on serving with fresh fruit).
As open-minded as I like to think I am, I am not a fan of artificial sweeteners. I basically think they are evil and taste like soap. But I was willing to give Splenda a try, given its apparent ability to be used in baking. So, I went out and bought a box and made my hip-friendly junk food. The result? Brownies that taste like.... soap. Splenda does not look like sugar. Splenda does not melt like sugar. And Splenda sure as hell does not taste like sugar. It tastes like an artificial sweetener. (Duh.)
Now, I am not naive to the origins of Splenda. I know that it's not a natural sweetener. Mother Nature does not strip sugar molecules of hydrogen and oxygen atoms and replace them with chlorine. The food scientists at McNeil Nutritionals do that. But if you're going to establish an entire brand identity on the idea that a product tastes like sugar, shouldn't you try to make it.... taste like sugar? And maybe you could make it look a little less like an illicit substance while you're at it.

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Taste sensation

Necessity isn't the mother of invention. Procrastination and absentmindedness are.

I decided that I wanted to have berries, yoghurt, and granola for breakfast in the mornings. Because I live in the Far North, berries this time of year are pretty expensive, so I opted for the flash frozen ones, since it's all the same to me anyway. I just figured I could defrost them when I needed to. Wait, change that - I just figured I'd remember to defrost them when I needed to.

In all the rush this morning, I didn't take them out of the freezer before walking Dexter. I was forced to add frozen berries to the vanilla yoghurt and granola, and race out the door to work.

By the time I got to work and settled in for my breakfast while answering e-mails, the frozen berries had defrosted slightly, but had frozen up bits of the yoghurt. The result? Kind of a crunchy, fruity yoghurt sundae, and absolutely delicious.

I should forget to defrost things more often (as long as they're not chicken.)

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Happy Thanksgiving

It tasted just as good as it looked.

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On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese...

Copious Quantities of Quintessential Currie Concoction Consumed

For some reason, our family likes to think it's a little Italian. Special occasions are marked with lasagna and (or) spaghetti and meatballs. (To understand the and (or) part, you need to eat at my Uncle Russ's house. Thirty pounds of meat are considered to be a serving for 6.) When I was little, my dad used to tell me stories about his life as a kid growing up in Sicily, which he didn't. I was a gullible child. I also believed that my dad was once a little boy from Trenchtown, Jamaica, and that he taught Bill Cosby how to dance.
But I digress...
Tonight was spaghetti and meatballs night. Made famous by the aforementioned Uncle Russ, pretty much every member of the Currie family has tried to recreate his mouth-watering recipe. Sauce that simmers for days on end. Meatballs that melt on the tip of your tongue. Tonight dad came about as close as he ever has, and our belts have the new notches to prove it.

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PC Animal Crackers

Here in Ottawa (and a lot of other parts of Canada), we have a grocery store called Loblaws. The store brand at Loblaws is known as "President's Choice". Who the President is, I am not entirely sure, but he seems to be a foody, and a bit of an industrial spy. Most of their products are eerily similar to major brands. One of their newer products is in their Organics line — President's Choice Organics Chocolate Animal Cookies. That's right — chocolate. I decided to buy a box to see what they were like, and if they'd remind me of the old Barnum Animal Crackers I remember.
Upon opening the box, I immediately noticed a difference in the variety of cookie-shaped animals. Elephant: check. Camel: check. Monkey: check, but no pants this time. Bison: check.....wait a second....bison? Okay, we can let that one slide. Then I saw the goat. The anatomically correct goat. He (and I am pretty sure it's a he) has a very visible dangly bit. The picture is a bit blurry, but you get the idea.

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