PB and BB

This morning I had toast made with homemade bread, peanut butter, bacon and bananas!  Yum. Yum. Yum!

Simple but oh so good! 

Bacon + Caramels = OMG!

Tonight I made something that I have wanted to make for a LONG time!  Creamy caramels with bacon pieces in it!  Very yummy except the bacon all floated to the top!??  I am going to dip some in chocolate to see how they turn out.

My Favorite Breakfast

Almost every morning I have some form of porridge for breakfast.  I LOVE PORRIDGE!  This morning I had some bananas that needed using up so I decided to add one to my breaky.

Todays porridge consists of oat bran, ground flax seed, bran, rolled oats, and quinoa.  I sliced bananas and put them on the bottom, topped with the hot porridge and toasted walnuts.  It was kinda like eating banana bread!

I really like adding Quinoa, pronounced keen-wah, to my porridge.  Quinoa is an ancient grain that has been grown in South America for thousands of years and was called the "gold of the Incas."

Quinoa, is not a true cereal grain, but rather the botanical fruit of an herb plant. It is treated as a grain in cooking. The grains are small yellow flattened spheres, when cooked, it has a pleasant crunch.

Quinoa is gluten-free, high in fiber and a complete protein, meaning it has all nine amino acids. Quinoa also contains high amounts of lysine, manganese, magnesium, iron, copper and phosphorus. Due to quinoa being a complete protein, it is an excellent food choice for the gluten-free vegan.

Try some in your next bowl of porridge!

Valentine's Dinner

Our Valentine's Dinner this year started with my favorite.  Seared scallops, pureed sweet potatoe and corn succatash.

Then we had lobster risotto.  I made lobster stock with the shells to use as a base for the risotto.  Once the rice was cooked we added lobster chunks, a bit of lemon zest and fresh parm cheese.  Syd helped me by spending the 20 minutes to stir the rice while I prepared the rest of the meal. He's such a sweetie.

Dessert was kinda silly.  Ice cream sandwiches!  lol  I noticed there was a cake mix in the cupboard that really had to be used so I made "cookies" with it.  I used less water then the recipe called for to make a thicker batter.  I then put a scoop of ice cream between the cookies and Voila!  Ice cream sandwiches!  lol

Sunday Breaky

This morning we had brown sugar bacon waffles and fried potatoes for breaky.  Pretty great for a Sunday morning. 

The brown sugar bacon is just that.  Bacon sprinkled with brown sugar and baked in the oven. 

I then made waffle batter and added some of the chopped bacon to it.  Then cooked them up!  Next time I will add more bacon to the mix.  It was good it just needed more bacon. Good thing I had cooked extra bacon for on the side. The sweet salty combination is delicious!

Comfort Food Blackbox

Yesterday we had our final practical in Culinary Trends class.  We had to choose a comfort meal; a main and a dessert, from our childhood and revamp it to be a meal you could potentially sell for $35 in a restaurant. 

Below is my main dish.  Meatloaf rolled in a tea buscuit dough, parsnip/potatoe puree and broccoli sauted in garlic and shallot.  The sauce is simply tomato soup, Campbells of course.  In the meatloaf I also added sauted cremini mushrooms, garlic, shallots and thyme.  The crust is light and flakey.  Which is great because it doesn't normally turn out perfect!  lol  I had decided to change my biscuit recipe a couple of days before. Good thing I did!

My dessert is a chocolate peanut butter tart, raspberry coulis and whip cream. 

My super amazing roommate and I tied for highest mark in the class for our dishes! So it was a pretty good day.

Double Potato Pave, Chicken and Veggies

Wednesday was a PD day at school....so that meant a day off. For supper we made chicken rubbed with butter, cumin, corriander, cinnamon and good old S & P.  The brussels sprouts and carrot and parsnips are cooked with garlic and onions.  If you have never tried brussels sprouts this way you HAVE to!  Slice the sprouts and saute with garlic and onions.  They are delicious!  Nothing like the B Sprouts of your childhood.

The potato pave is basically like a scallop potato but after cooking you cool and weigh down to press it tightly together. You can then reheat it by sauteing for a bit. I layered sweet and white potato together added cream and butter and baked in the oven.

Raw Tarts

In class we are studying healthy eating.  Vegan, vegetarian and raw food diets among the mix. Obviously a  raw diet consists of uncooked foods.  These tarts are unbaked.  I made these raw tarts to share with the class.

This tart is pureed mango poured into a crust of ground hazelnuts mixed with agave nectar to bind it together.  This was very tasty.  Fresh. 

And this one is avacado pureed with cocoa and agave nectar.  The texture is good but the cocoa left a funny taste.  It has the same crust as the mango tart.

Seafood Blackbox

For our seafood cooking class we had to do practical exam modeled after a blackbox competetion. We each received a 1.5 pound trout and depending on which group you were in either sea scallops, jumbo shrimp or a whole lobster.  We also had list of ingredients that we were allowed to use.  We had 3.5 hours to prepare and present our appetizer dish and then 15 minutes later our entree dish.  It was really interesting to see how different all the foods were. 

This was my appetizer; mini lobster cakes with a lemon aioli.

My main dish was asparagus, truffle mashed yukon golds and maple brandy trout.

Below are pictures of my collegues presentations.  Its interesting to see the variety in these!