In 2012 my eldest will be turning 7. He was born shortly before the original incarnation of this blog was – back when Mrs. Foodie and I thought it would be fun to blog about all the great food we found in our favourite restaurants and our efforts to recreate those dishes at home.

Time flies and boy do things change! With 4 kids under our roof, we don’t make it out to many restaurants now-a-days, and with 6 people stuffed into a little urban kitchen – there isn’t a lot of room for wowing the diners (besides, we don’t have many diner parties anymore either!)

Not that I’m complaining about any of it (okay, maybe I complain about the tiny kitchen a bit… er, a lot) but life seems to increase in pace each year, and with each kid, and we never seem to have time to do the things we had planned on doing.

…hence the decidedly sparse number of posts over the past couple of years.

But, 2012 is going to be a year of change – big change. Trust me, I know about these things.

For us, we’re about to put an offer on a big (really big) century home in a quiet little town, across the road from a nice little river. And this big home comes with a big kitchen (really big!) Once all the initial excitement died down around here, Mrs. Foodie and I began to talk about all the great things we could do with that kitchen (procrastinating from the packing and cleaning that needs to be done around our current house of course) – and one of the things that we both kept coming back to, was the relaunch of our sadly neglected, but not quite forgotten food blog!!

So this is a new beginning. Our focus will change around here a little. We are trying to feed a family of 6 every night, while still keeping food fun, adventurous and healthy. We do things a little different, and I’ll be posting again shortly to talk more about that – and updating our About page.

We’re about to launch on an exciting new chapter in our lives and we are looking forward to sharing some of those stories with you – and we hope you’ll share some of your food adventures back with us here!

Also, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has visited over the past year – visiting an almost dry well. Our traffic is surprisingly good despite our neglect, and we’re looking forward to providing better content again soon!

The Canadian Foodie

• Herbs
• Spices

Herbs

Basil

Available as - dried crushed leaves and stems.
Color - light green
Flavor - pleasant, mild, sweet, distinctive

Use - All tomato dishes, peas, squash, string beans, potatoes, spinach; French and Russian dressing or sprinkle over salads; bean soup, pea soup, beef soup, Manhattan clam chowder; broiled lamb chops, venison, beef, lamb and veal stews, veal roasts; shrimp, shrimp Creole, boiled and steamed lobster; spaghetti sauce; scrambled eggs; soufflés.

Bay Leaves

Available as - dried whole leaves.
Color - light green
Flavor - very mild, sweet, distinctive

Use - Pickled beets, beets, boiled carrots, boiled artichokes, boiled potatoes vegetable soup, fish chowders; lamb, beef, veal, venison, poultry, fish -stews; boiled or steamed shrimp and lobster; chicken casserole, boiled chicken; pickled meats; brine for smoked meats; pot roast; boiled pork; meat gravies; marinades.

Mint

Whole Color - green
Flavor - distinctive, sweet aroma
Flaked Color - green
Flavor - same as above

Use - Jelly, ice cream, custard, fruit salad, fruit compote; frostings; split pea soup; lamb and veal roast sauces; cottage cheese salad; white potatoes, cabbage, carrots, celery, snap beans; tea; mint sauce.

Oregano

Whole Color - green
Flavor - distinctive, strong
Ground Color - olive green
Flavor - same as above

Use - Pizza pie, spaghetti sauce, meat sauce; Swiss steak, beef stew, broiled and roast lamb, pork and veal, poultry; gravies; stuffed fish; cheese spreads; beef soup, bean soup, tomato soup; butter sauce for shell fish; cream and tomato sauces; vegetable juice cocktail; onions, peas, white potatoes, spinach, string beans.

Parsley Flakes

Color - green
Flavor - distinctive, mild

Use - Soups; salads; coleslaw; meat, stews, fish, poultry; sauces; all vegetables; omelets; potatoes.

Rosemary

Whole Color - green (looks like a pine needle)
Flavor - distinctive, delicate, sweetish

Use - Roast and broiled lamb, beef, pork, veal, game,poultry; salmon; deviled eggs; cheese sauces; sautéed mushrooms; boiled potatoes, green peas, squash; creamed seafood; chicken soup, split pea soup.

Sage

Whole Color - olive green
Flavor - distinctive, positive

Use - All pork dishes; meat, fish and poultry stuffing;brown sauces; cheese spreads; consommé, cream soups,fish chowders; salad greens, French dressing; Brussels sprouts, onions, lima beans, peas, tomatoes.

Tarragon

Available as - Whole and Ground
Color - green
Flavor - distinctive, fresh, pleasant

Use - Marinades for meat, butter sauce for steaks; poultry; salads; omelets; fish and shellfish; vegetable juice cocktail; chicken soup, consommé, fish chowder, tomato soup; vinegar; broccoli, asparagus, beans, cabbage, cauliflower.

Thyme

Whole Color - gray-green
Flavor - distinctive, pleasantly penetrating
Ground Color - light olive green
Flavor - slightly stronger than Tarragon

Use - Fresh tomatoes, tomato spice, salads; poultry stuffing, croquettes, fricassees; fish chowders, gumbo, vegetable soup; shirred eggs; all meats; seafood sauces; artichokes, beans, beets, carrots, mushrooms, onions, potatoes.

• Herbs
• Spices

Spices

Anise: Seed Whole and Ground

Color - brown with tan stripes
Flavor - delightful sweet licorice aroma and taste

Use - Coffee cake, sweet breads, rolls, cookies; fruit compote, stewed apples, preserved fruits, all fruit pie fillings; licorice candies, sweet pickles; beef and veal stew; cottage cheese.

Cinnamon

Available as - Whole, Ground

Whole
Color - light brown
Flavor - distinctive, sweet, spicy

Ground
Color - light brown
Flavor - similar to above, sweeter and slightly stronger

Use - Buns, coffee cake, muffins, spice cake, molasses cookies, butter cookies, cinnamon toast; custards, tapioca, chocolate pudding, rice pudding; fruit pies, broiled grapefruit, apples in any form, stewed fruits, pickled fruits; heated spiced beverages, hot cocoa and chocolate drinks; sweet gherkins; sweet potatoes, pumpkin, squash.

Cloves

Available as - Whole, Ground

Whole
Color - dark brown
Flavor - distinctive, spicy, sweet, penetrating

Ground
Color - rich brown
Flavor - sharp, spicy, pungent

Use - Ham, boiled tongue, pork roast; pickled fruits; preserved fruits; stewed fruits; apple, mince and pumpkin pies; beets, baked beans, candied sweet potatoes, squash; hot spiced wines, hot tea; spice cake; sweet gherkins; rice pudding, chocolate pudding, tapioca; bean soup, beef soup, cream of pea soup, cream of tomato soup.

Crushed Red Pepper: Spice

Color - bright red to orange
Flavor - hot

Use - Pizzas; sausages; Italian specialties; wherever heat and spot color are desired.

Nutmeg

Ground Color - copper
Flavor - distinctive, exotic, sweet

Use - Doughnuts; eggnog, custards, puddings; whipped cream, ice cream; fried bananas, stewed fruits; spice cake, coffee cake, cookies, pumpkin pie; steamed and glazed carrots, cabbage, spinach, snap beans, squash, onions, sweet potatoes; meat loaf.

Paprika

Ground Color - red
Flavor - distinctive, very mild

Use - Poultry, ham, goulash, fish, shellfish; salad dressings; vegetables; gravies; cheese, Welsh rabbit; canapés; deviled eggs; stuffed celery, cream soups, chicken soup, chowders.

Black Pepper

Whole Color - dark brown
Flavor - distinctive, pleasant spicy bouquet with palate-tingling flavor and enduring after-taste.

Ground Color - varies from cream to black
Flavor - same as above

Use - Almost all foods, except those with sweet flavors. If you are preparing a non-sweet dish that “needs something” try a little pepper first. It is used universally to add sparkle to foods, including: Pickles; soups; poultry, meats; fish; shellfish, game; sauces, gravies, marinades; salads; eggs; cheese spreads; vegetables; spiced vinegar.

Saffron

Available as - Whole and Ground
Color - predominantly maroon
Flavor - distinctive, exotic, concentrated (not strong, yet a little goes a long way)

Use - Rice; rolls, breads, buns; fish stew; bouillabaisse chicken; chicken soup; cakes.

Turmeric

Available as - Whole and Ground
Color - orange (used mostly for its color)
Flavor - mild, slightly bitter

Use - Pickles, relishes, prepared mustards, salad dressings; creamed eggs, fish, seafood; to color rice dishes where saffron is not used.

Also, eventually I will be trying to create a page for every single Farmers’ Market, complete with pictures and helpful information. If you would like to help with this process and have any information about or photos from your local Farmers’ Market, please send them along to:

CanadianFoodies@gmail.com

Back to Farmer’s Market Page

No really – first I told the kids that they were getting a fancy spinach pastry for dinner, the reaction?

See for yourself:

But I quickly recovered! “Just kidding! It’s Veggie Pockets!” it worked:

Don’t ask… let’s just call them Pockets. Okay? Good…

We buy most of our vegetables at the Farmers Market when possible and therefore, in any season other than winter, we eat a lot of whatever is available. Lately that’s been Fiddleheads (now over unfortunately), asparagus, small eggplant, spring radicchio, swiss chard and baby spinach.

This is a new recipe for us, and we love it (in fact, we’re going to repeat it tonight!) It is really easy and quick to prepare (which is important with 3.9 kids underfoot) and for a ‘fancy’ meal the kids loved it.

Spinach, Eggplant and Ricotta Pastry Pockets

• Prep Time: < 15 minutes
• Cooking Time: 25 minutes
• Difficulty: Easy
• Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

1                   small onion, diced
1 tbsp          butter
1 tbsp          olive oil
1                   medium eggplant, peeled & cubed
4 cups         spinach
2 tbsp          of your favourite dried herb
1 cup            ricotta cheese
1 package   puff pastry
1                    egg; beaten with a little water

Set your oven to 400.

Drop the butter in your favourite deep pan and heat until bubbly.  Add the diced onion and cook until soft (5 minutes – don’t brown). Add the olive oil and then the cubed eggplant and mix. Once the eggplant is soft (it will change colour too), add your herb – tonight we used a mixture of oregano and dill, but you could add basil or lemon thyme; I’ve even made it once with cumin and coriander to give it a bit of a curry flavour.

As soon as you’ve stirred in your herb mixture, drop in all of your spinach and heat, stirring occasionally until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat.

Remove your puff pastry from the package and cut into 4 equal squares. Ration out equal parts of the eggplant/spinach mixture into the middle of each square and add a healthy dollop of Ricotta cheese to the top. Use the beaten egg to dampen around all the edges of your pastry square and start folding the corners up to the middle, one at a time, pushing them together to seal any ‘cracks’.

Place the ‘Veggie Pockets’ on a lightly greased baking pan – we use a pizza stone, which I highly recommend! – and cook for 15 – 25 minutes, or until the tops of your pastry pockets are golden.

Eat and enjoy!

* Update – June 17, 2010 – I made too much filling the first time around (I’m crazy like that sometimes), so we made this again last night.  This time we mixed it up a little and shredded a carrot into the vegetable filling; adding a nice balance to the colour when cutting into it with a fork!

Let’s start the new year with a confession… I pretty much neglected the CanadianFoodies blog in 2008 (I’m sorry CF blog! I still love you!)

I didn’t stop eating, or loving food, I didn’t lose my passion to create food, write or share our experiences with you… or anything else like that

What I did do was try and cope with being busier than I ever have been before.

Floods and children, increasing demands at the office, our first major garden and all the while trying to not just survive, but improve life for our kids… you know, that whole life thing…

But it’s a new year, we’re back and this year our focus is once more going to change, or at least shift a bit.

This year, anyone who has stopped by in the past will notice an increased emphasis not just on food, but on healthier, greener, local and organic foods and the ‘greener’ lifestyle that we’ve been attempting to adopt over the past few years.

Mrs. Foodie and I have always eaten well (in a ‘healthy choices’ sense), but like almost everyone else, even we were guilty of the odd quick and easy processed foodstuff for times when time was in short supply (a couple frozen lasagna’s were a definite staple within our deep freezer) But, when we started having kids we began taking a hard look at everything that came into the house.

Foods with transfat were the the first things to go (and Mrs. Foodie felt the pain when our last microwave popcorn was finished).

Then, over the course of a year, we made choices to minimize foods heavy in sodium and saturated fats, we stopped using the microwave, stopped buying grocery store inst-meals and our occasional trips to the local farmers markets became a weekly event. In fact, in the summer months 80 – 90% of our produce comes from a farmers market.

We made a lot of headway that first year (2005) but the next year brought child #2, followed a year later by child #3 (yup, 3 kids in less than 34 months!) and we struggled to maintain our momentum forward.

But heare we are in 2009, the first decade of new millenium is coming to a close and through experience or wisdom the changes that we started 3 year ago have truly become second nature and we’re ready to take our ‘green’ life to the next level.

What exaclty does that mean?

Honestly I’m not 100% sure where the final destination is going to land us, but I do know the direction we’re heading.

The focus of this blog will continue to be food, (we’ll be posting a new recipe/meal of the week column shortly)

and we’ll continue to investigate the back stories and histories of the foods we eat.  But now, in 2009, we’ll start to focus on food as part of our environmental impact, our carbon footprint. We’ll look at the choices we want to make and followup with the ones we’re actually able to follow through with.

And that’s just the first step of the journey…

I’ve pretty much run out of produce (except for lettuces and radish which we pulled from our own garden this week) and am dreading having to put in a visit to the grocery store to buy their ‘fresh’ product.

I’m not sure why Saturday mornings are becoming difficult (3 kids under 3.5 years old) but we’re having a hard time getting out of the house in time to make the markets.

I think this week we will visit the Eco-market at Hempola farms. We’ve been talking about it for a year, but Friday nights come and go and we always forget!

Ack – a note from the tech side of my personality… Apparently Hempola Farms haven’t updated their site since 2004! The good news is their Eco-Market will be up and running again in the spring of 2005! Doh! I missed it! Come on Hempola, I know farms aren’t always thought of as being part of the most tech-savvy industry, but try to make at least ANNUAL updates to your site if you are going to go to the trouble of having one!

The 2008 garden is a little below 25 X 30 feet, or ~850 square feet.

Biggest pests so far:

• Mosquitos – Installed bat boxes and spray on repellent
• Ants – Don’t know what to do about this menace!

Grown:

We’ve planted the following:

• Corn
• Eggplant
• Various Heritage Tomatoes
• Ground Cherries
• Various Peppers (green, red, orange etc)
• Jalapeño
• Horseradish

• Turnip
• Radish
• Peas
• Beans
• Parsnip
• Various Carrots
• Various Potatoes
• Various Lettuces
• Various Radichios
• Cucumbers
• Various Onions
• Garlic
• Pumpkin
• Cantaloupe
• Broccoli
• Rhubarb
• And not necessarily in that order (I’m probably forgetting something too!)

So please ignore any short term randomness as I disable plugins, upgrade and (hopefully not) troubleshoot. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program shortly!

Thanks for your patience.

* Update (15 minutes later) – Upgrade complete. If you notice any further randomness, it is completely my fault!

I took a few days off work to celebrate an extra long holiday weekend (and my birthday – yay me!-) and that generally means a little more time to plan a nice meal.

And in typical fashion, I went with a few new dishes…

Thursday night meant Breaded veal in a rich mushroom gravy (a hunters-style gravy) and lemon beans (with lemon zest and more mushrooms) .

I’ve never actually cooked veal before and it was has been one of those items on my cooking to-do list for awhile. I know, veal isn’t exactly uncommon, the reason I’ve never cooked it before is actually that I am much more of a vegetarian than a carnivore. Oh, I love my BBQ, never fear… but I generally follow a meat-centric meal with several days of veggie-centric foods.

So, first time cooking veal it was!

The Veal

I choose a scallopini cut , figuring it would be easy to manage (as long as I didn’t overcook it!) and breading was acheived through a simple 3 bowl method (dip in bowl of flour, followed by dip in a bowl of milk & egg, followed by a dip in breadcrumbs). Veal was then cooked for a very short period of time (5 ish minutes flipping once).

Sauce was a combination of freshly sauteed mushrooms in a rich-dark gravy. (writing this is making me hungry!)

The Beans

This was a simple recipe:

About a pound of beans were boiled just long enough to soften.

1 Fresh lemon was zested (grate the outside layer of peel into a bowl!) and juiced.

About 1/4 lb of button mushrooms were sauteed in olive oil(about 5 minutes with one stir in the middle!)

Once the mushrooms were ready, beans and lemon (both zest and juice) were added to the pan along with pepper, and a dash of dill and basil; and the whole thing was mixed over medium heat for a few minutes.

Thats it. The entire meal took about 20 minutes to prepare AND cook and was delicious!

Served with salad (which we always have pre-prepared) and fresh bread!

Next time I’ll try and remember the photos!