Who Doesn't Love Granola Bars?

Mmmmm ... granola bars. I love them, my kids love them and we go through them quickly.  I had always thought about making them, but the recipes I saw either seemed way to chunky and almondy (don't love almonds) or not enough surprises (I like chocolate and marshmallow bits what can I say?).

My friend Katie - mother of FOUR! by the way - slipped me this recipe (click link or see below) for home made granola bars while visiting last winter.

My homemade creations entering le oven

Mmmmm ... golden, toasted heaven!

These granola bars are so good. Just by tasting them you can tell they are much more healthy than the store-boughts, not to mention there is a sense of pride when you pull out home made bars for your kids ... and even better on a play date ;)

Enjoy!

P.S. "Katie" also mentioned that she triples the recipe when she makes it and freezes what she doesn't need.


GRAINOLA BARS
(Canadian Family Winter 2012)


Ingredients:

2½ cups quick-cooking oats (not instant)
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
½ cup chopped raw almonds, pecans or pistachios
½ cup chopped dried cranberries
½ cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips
⅓ cup whole wheat flour
¼ cup ground flaxseed
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
¾ cup canned pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
½ cup liquid honey
¼ cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
Directions

1.Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a 9 x 13-inch baking pan with parchment paper, letting the paper overhang on two opposite sides (so you can use it as a sling to pick up the granola bars after baking).

2.Combine first 9 ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well. In a medium bowl, whisk together pumpkin, honey, butter and vanilla. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients. Mix using a wooden spoon until dry ingredients are coated with pumpkin mixture. Make sure there aren’t any dry oats in the bottom of the bowl! Stir, stir, stir!

3.Pour the wet granola mixture into the prepared pan and spread it evenly to the edges. Using your hand, press down firmly on the granola so that it’s tightly packed in the pan.

4.Bake on middle oven rack for about 25 minutes, until top turns a light golden brown and feels dry to touch. Remove pan from oven and cool completely on a wire rack. Lift cooled slab of granola from pan by holding on to parchment paper and transfer to a cutting board. Using a large, sharp knife, cut the granola into 16 bars, about 1½ x 4 inches each. (Tip: Press down with the knife to cut the bars and avoid a sawing motion.) Wrap bars tightly in plastic wrap and store in an airtight container, either at room temperature or in the fridge.

Wow! That Was Easy.

Seriously couscous, where have you been all of my life?

Source

Now before y'all think that I have been living under a rock and have never heard of couscous before, let me clarify. I have had couscous, enjoyed couscous, see couscous in cook books and on menus at restaurants, but it was never somethign that was prepared for me growing up, nor that I have, up until tonight, cooked for myself.

I think my one couscous memory that sort of stereotyped the food for me was that of my older sister coming home from Trent University and being all proud to cook the fam a couscous/parsley/ something salad. Being that my tastebuds were not what they are today (it was 20 years ago) and given the type of salad it was I sort of pidgeon holed it.

Well, I have met my miracle food and greatest gift to time-crunched dinners. Add couscous to boiling water, wait five minutes and voila. Seriously? That's it? No waiting for thirty plus minutes like rice?

MMmmmm.... I added mint, feta, pomegranate, vinegar, OJ, pistachios and it was delicious.

Do you have any great ways to serve couscous that you enjoy? or better yet that your kids enjoy?

Mmmmmm ... Cookie Balls

Who knew adding crushed up cookies to cream cheese and dipping it in chocolate could be so good? I mean based on the ingredients that I just mentioned , how could it be bad?

 Have you tried cookie balls? I was just introduced to them- easy delicious, different, tons of variations, and perfect for almost every occasion.

 For a whole bunch of cake ball recipes , including these:

Peppermint Oreo Cookie Balls

 these:

Melting Snowmen Cookie Balls

 and these:

Nilla-Banana Cookie Balls

 visit Kraft's website.

Mmmmm, enjoy!

He Knows What He Likes & It's Not What I'm Cooking

My youngest has a habit of dipping anything he is eating into anything he is drinking.  It makes for an interesting meal time and a gross cup clean out when all is said and done. I usually can't stand it after a few dunks and move his cup out of reach.

This week, he tried something new:  he decided to put everything on his plate into his bowl of yogurt that was also sitting on his plate.

The result:  A bowl of yogurt with a drizzle of honey, plus cucumbers, plus crackers, plus summer sausage slices.  Funny how he won't eat a meal I slave over that (in my opinion and everyone else's sitting at the table) is delicious, but that he will stomach through his above-mentioned combo without so much of one of his usual, "yuck!"s.

Anyhoo, hope you're enjoying a nice peaceful meal time today with all your little ones eating everything that is put in front of them.

Giving Thanks for Fruits & Vegetables

My husband and I had our first Thanksgiving at home, just us with our kids, in eight years.  We both have very large families and Thanksgiving traditions but for a variety of reasons, things were not as norm this year and we got to be at home. It was a nice change and we thoroughly enjoyed cooking our very first turkey.  Or rather, my husband cooked the turkey and did a PHENOMENAL job. Thank you Jamie Oliver for helping us out yet again.

A recap in pictures:

Our Turkey, Jamie's recipe here

Pumpkin and Butter tarts ready for the oven ... mmmm

Leftover Asian-Inspired Turkey Salad
Jamie Oliver Recipe here

 At dinner time, we asked the kids what they were thankful for and my eldest responded with: " ... the fruits and vegetables that we eat and that the dinosaurs don't live here anymore."  

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

What Do You Cut Your Pizza With?

Undoubtedly, your family consumes pizza at least once a month, if not once a week like mine.

A couple of years ago, my younger sister was visiting during one of our weekly pizza rituals. While I was getting some things ready for dinner, my sister asked me where my scissors were. Thinking nothing of her question, I told her and then carried on with what I was doing.  It was only once we were seated at the table and my sister began to cut our pizza with my kitchen scissors that I let out a bit of a shriek ... or more like a "what the heck are you doing?" (insert some big sister tone and dismay).

Thinking I knew everything, I handed her the pizza cutter and chalked it up to her being a bit crazy and still in college. Later that year on Christmas morning, my husband and I received this handy gadget:

Pizza Scissors
Source

These, for those of you who do not know, are pizza scissors.  Turns out, my sister isn't crazy and there is such a thing. They are not plain old kitchen scissors mind you, but nonetheless they do exist and are now a Friday night staple in our home. They are super handy and just as easy as a pizza cutter. And with the larger spatula-like piece, they make lifting the pieces a lot easier.

Have all of you heard of these? Great Christmas idea for any parent, cook, college student ... or person really. Who doesn't like/eat pizza?

Anyways, this post is dedicated to my "crazy" younger sister who teaches me lots of great stuff and makes really yummy food in the kitchen. xo

Two Cakes in Two Weeks

We just passed birthday season in my house where both of my boys have birthdays within eight days of each other. It's a bit crazy with multiple cakes, presents, get togethers and phonecalls, but throw in the start of JK and nursery school and it elevates to insanity.

We are through it now, thus it is time to share with you my cake creations. To date, I have just done some homemade cakes with a knife and some candy from the bulk barn being my only tools to decorate with. This year I borrowed all the fancy icing tips from my sister-in -law and I was really happy with the results.

My youngest really likes Winnie the Pooh, so naturally the cake had to sport his favourite honey-lovin' bear:

My now four-year-old requested an anklyosaurus (that's the dinosaur with the club on its tail for those of you wondering) cake leading up to the big event, but then made a last minute change to Batman. "Not just his face Mommy, I want the whole body on the cake ..." Great! That's not hard at all! ... I settled for waist and up.

I thought the designs turned out pretty well, especially Batman's abdominal region :) But I still haven't mastered how to get the plain white background/base icing on the cake smooth so you can't see all of my knife strokes. Oh well, that can be next year's goal.

This week's goal is reintroducing exercise into my life in order to fight the consequences of ingesting so much cake and butter icing.

 

I Love Cheese

Like most females, I adore cheese. There aren't too many types that I don't enjoy, except for maybe the blue genre. My taste buds haven't quite "matured" to that level yet I guess.

Recently at a girls' weekend, my friend E. introduced us all to Halloumi cheese - have you heard of this? It is a cheese, originally from Cyprus and very popular in the middle east. Click here for a wikipedia link. Anyways, the thing I loved about this cheese is that it doesn't melt when it is cooked. At first, you may think that this is a negative , but then imagine this:

Yes, you can use it on your kabobs on the barbecue and it actually stays in tact. Kabobs just got a whole lot better with the addition of cheeeeeese.

When on a skewer, it kinds of looks like chicken. Here's a close up:

It doesn't have a super strong flavour and the texture is unique. All I can say is that it kind of squeaks when you chew it. I know, sounds a bit weird, but you'll understand once you try it.  And when I told my kids it squeaked, they tried it a few times so that was a bonus too!

I bought it at Longo's in the deli section.

Let me know if you have tried it? Like it? Have any other ideas for uses.

Jamie Oliver ... Indian Style

I have decided to put a bit more effort into some of the meals I make for my family during the week.

Recent meals have been lacking any sort of inspiration, exciting flavours  - same old, same old.  You do what you have to do to get it on the table, but it is nice to have a bit of pride once in awhile when you serve up the plates.

This week I was cooking out of Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes book. The great thing about this cook book is that each page is a recipe for an entire meal, not just one part of it. For example it will explain step-by-step how to cook the entire meal and in the end you have a main meat, salad, side veggie and usually a dessert or fun drink. Sound a bit over the top for the mid-week rush?  That's what I thought, but Jamie walks you through, literally step by step, in order of what you have to do - prompting you to even turn your frying pan on (so it's ready for the third step that you will come to in 10 minutes). 

Honestly, in approximately 30 minutes from start to finish, I created this:

Source

(This is not my photo - I forgot to take one. But I can honestly say, that my meal looked 90% like this one ... maybe even a little nicer :) )

This wonderful meal was Jamie's steak Indian-style, spinach & paneer salad, naan breads, mango dessert.

The only thing that I have found takes a bit longer when attempting these new dishes is a bit of extra grocery shopping planning, but it's worth it if I can serve this little number instead of trying to pass off KD with tuna as a delicious and unique entree.

So what interesting recipes have you been trying lately? And what is your favourite local summer produce?

Fairy Cakes for End-Of-School Festivities ... and Giveaway Reminder

It's the time of year when school is ending, summer is beginning and there are lots of celebrations - class parties, Canada Day, birthdays, bachelorettes, baby showers, 4th of July - and there is no better way to celebrate, in my opinion, than with a cupcake.  And we all know, nothing beats a really awesome cupcake Mmmmmmmmm ... (and nothing is worse than a really bad, dried out cupcake with gross icing).

So here it is, an awesome cupcake recipe for all those occasions, by Nigella Lawson.

(I used this same recipe to make cupcakes for my son's first birthday. You can search Nigella's site for icing or use your own.)

Animal-themed cupcakes for son's
1st Birthday

Nigella's Ultimate Fairy Cakes

Ingredients

• 130g softened butter
• 130g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 130g self raising flour
• 4 tbsp milk (any)

Method

Serves: 12

1. Preheat the oven to 190C, 375F, gas mark 5.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar until creamy and pale. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with the vanilla. Whisk into the butter and sugar mix.
3. Sift half the flour in, and fold. Then add the milk and mix in well. Fold in the other half of the sifted flour.
4. Spoon into the paper cases and put into the oven for about 25 - 30 mins until golden and crisp on top

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GIVEAWAY REMINDER: Helen from Meringue Inc. has generously agreed to provide C&CS readers with a 15 % off discount (use Coupon Code cc15 at checkout) as well as giveaway a $50 gift certificate to one lucky reader.

To qualify for the giveaway, you must:
-be a follower or email subscriber of this blog AND
-visit Meringue Inc. and then come back to C&CS and leave a comment here letting us know what your favourite print is

 *Contest closes Sunday at noon. Good Luck and Happy Month of June!

Wow Him With Your Carrot Cake

This carrot cake is the absolute best. Got the recipe from a family member and it is to die for. Put it to the test this weekend and got the MIL and the FIL approval on it. It was so good that their was only the below picture left when all was said and done after a dinner serving and a breakfast! serving. What?

Put it this way .... June Cleaver would have died to get her hands on this recipe so she could serve it at all of her important ladies' functions.

Might be a good time to try it out this weekend for Father's Day.  ENJOY!

 

Elsie's (AWESOME) Carrot Cake

CAKE:

3 cups of grated carrots

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup of oil

1 1/2 cups sifted flour

I 1/4 tsp baking powder
I 1/4 tsp baking soda
I 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Beat eggs and add sugar and oil. Sift flour and mix with baking powder, soda, salt and cinnamon. Fold dry mixture into liquid mixture, add carrots and mix well.  Bake in greased angel food cake bundt pan for one hour at 300F.

ICING:

4 oz cream cheese room temperature (1/2 package of 250g container)

2 cups icing sugar

1/4 cup butter melted
2 tsp vanilla
1 tbs lemon juice
I cup grated toasted coconut (optional, I don't usually use)

Cream cheese well, add sugar and beat well to blend mixture. Add
melted butter, vanilla and lemon juice. Spread on cake. Sprinkle with coconut.

**when I did this recipe I used low fat cream cheese. Still tastes great and works fine, but the icing is a bit more runny so if you're looking for a thicker icing, stick with the regular version. I also did not use walnuts or coconut for personal preference.

Friday's Fabulous Mom: Laurel MacDougall from Ducks in a Row

Cashmere & Carrot Sticks fabulous Mom for this week is Laurel MacDougall. Laurel has a wonderful blog - Ducks in a Row - that is a "must visit" for all of you out there.

_______

I am Laurel MacDougall.  I have 3 darling children - my oldest daughter will be 9 next month, my son is the middle child and he is 6 and my youngest daughter is 3.  I've been married to Tom, a geo technical engineer for 12 years and we live in Colorado.  Tom works very hard and I am a stay-at-home mom.  I teach piano lessons out of our home to 12 students, plus my own kids.  I love to blog, run and exercise, read, make my home a special place, organize and de-clutter everything, and try to keep us all healthy and active.



Our fabulous Mom Laurel and her family



How does a day start for you and what’s being served for breakfast?

I just wrote a post about our breakfast routines, click here to view it.  A typical day for me usually starts between 5 - 5:30 am and goes something like this.

Favorite bedtime story(ies) currently on the must-read list for your little ones?

I am not sure we have must-reads.  We visit the library about once a week and we fill up a basket of books.  I also organize our books by month.  This helps us rotate through all the books we have.  My oldest usually reads on her own and she is into Harry Potter right now.  My middle son is just starting to be an independent reader and my youngest loves any book.  We usually do have some Dora ones from the library that she loves to check out.

What’s on your bedside table right now?

Oy, I have way too many books on my nightstand.  I just finished Mindless Eating and found it fascinating.  I've been trying to get through the Chronicles of Narnia all year.  I always read my scriptures.

Tip or Trick for getting those daily vegetable servings in

I think if there was a tip that was always successful, someone would be a millionaire!  My first piece of advice is to be an example.  I eat salads almost every day for lunch and my kids see that.  I always serve vegetables, usually a salad, at dinner.  It's not really an option - they have to eat it.  They usually wait for me to say "eat your veggies" but they don't usually complain and know they have to eat them and why.  I also make sure there are veggies that I know they like.  I.'s favorite is lettuce, G. likes beets and cucumbers and broccoli, M. likes carrots.  I asked my kids what advice they have and my oldest say "drench them in ranch - they're way better that way."  We don't do that, but I guess that might work.

Any words of advice for keeping all the clutter and toys from overtaking?

My biggest piece of advice is to not have so much!  My kiddos have their favorites, but getting something new is a VERY special occasion!  Second, have a place for everythingand make sure you put the toys away together several times to teach them where they go.  If there isn't a specific place (it helps if it is labeled) then they are going to end up all over the house on the floor - guaranteed!

Something special unique thing that you do for your family that you hope they remember fondly in the future

Most of what they do, I hope they will remember.  Building memories is a big motivator for me.  Our favorite times are Family Movie Nights on Friday nights.  We make pizza together and watch a movie.  We also have Family Night every Monday night.  I am not sure how unique those are though.  I have found that my kids are just as happy, if not more, when we spend time together.  They love going to the park, playing in our back yard, building Legos - probably more than going to a movie theater, going out to eat, or spending a lot of money.  They do talk fondly, though, of our Disney world trip that we took last year.

Your go-to family meal that you know will be loved by all, eaten by all and serve some nutrients too!

Tacos - everyone customizes how they want it.  My youngest has a ton of allergies and tacos allow her to eat gluten, egg and peanut free.  My son loves meat, but not cheese - so that's how he makes his.  My oldest thinks tacos are "awesome."  My husband eats them with everything on them and I eat them more as a salad.   They're always served with lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, black beans, ground turkey or chicken, cheese, sour cream and tortillas.  They are quick and everyone eats them.  In fact, we are having them for dinner tonight! 

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Thank you so much Laurel for being one of our Fabulous Moms - it's a well-deserved title.  Please do take the time to check out Laurel's blog - Ducks in a Row - where you will learn even more amazing stuff about this woman and her family.

Reminder to everyone that the giveaway for this week ends today at noon with winners being announced either this afternoon or on Monday (depending on my schedule :)). Click here to learn more about the giveaways and here for information on how to enter - hurry!

Date Night With Ward?

Do you think June and Ward Cleaver scheduled date nights?

My husband and I try to book one every few weeks, usually an evening during the week - dinner, Chapters, movie, a sport. If not, it seems it is just so easy to get caught up in the go go go and every conversation has to do with the to-do list, upcoming dates and events or, of course, the kids. And it is just so easy to plop down on the couch because we're both so exhausted. Not that there is anything wrong with doing that from time to time, but it doesn't exactly score big in the bonding department.

Last week, Friday's Fabulous Mom Erin Wahba mentioned that she and her husband schedule date nights at home after the kids go to bed and make dinner for just the two of them. I like that idea. In fact, we have talked about it, but have just never gotten around to it. (Note: add to to-do list)

This week, I cooked (in my opinion) a really delicious meal - Grilled Vegetable Quinoa Salad. I think I am the last person on the planet to taste Quinoa (seems to be a super popular food these days) and because I am so in the dark, I was the one in the grocery store asking for "Kwin-oh-ah," not "Keen-Wa" as it is actually pronounced. Oops.

Anyways, back to the salad - it's delicious, a bit spicy, pretty easy to do and perfect for an at-home date night.

Gathering the ingredients*

*note the truck that appears in this picture was on my counter because it had recently been banned as the noise it made while being zoomed around the house was driving me CRAZY!

Voila

 If you are planning an at-home date night with hubby this week, try this recipe out - thanks Canadian Living!
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GIVEAWAY REMINDER:  Only one more day to enter to win a $40 gift certificate to Buy Green Skin Care (deadline is Friday at noon).  All you have to do is be a follower/email subscriber of this blog AND

 

1) send your favourite C&CS post to a friend (and copy me on it) OR 

2) post http://www.cashmereandcarrotsticks.blogspot.com/ to your facebook or twitter and tell me about it OR

3) visit http://www.buygreenskincare.com/ and leave a comment back here telling us what you would use the gift certificate for

Thank you to Brenda at Buy Green Skin Care!

I Caved ... I Bought Yogurt Tubes

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan

All I could think of was this quote when I did it.  "It" being I bought my sons yogurt tubes (or whatever they're called). (Something tells me my great-grandmother would have no idea what a grape-flavoured yogurt tube would be.)

I am not a big fan of the gimmicky food. You know the bright colours, the television characters, weird shapes, individual packaging and whatever else they are using these days to rope in the young.

My belief (and probably that of June Cleaver's as well) is that food should have as little packaging as possible, be bought because you want to eat the food not something that is being advertised on the outside and be healthy (the more they have to do to it before you eat it, the chances are it's not that great for you).

Anyways,  my son loved the thought of purchasing the "tubes" and eating them ... but truthfully, once the initial novelty of drinking yogurt (instead of eating it) and packaging that reminded him of eating a freezie was over, he was neutral.  The running to the fridge and excitement over the option of yogurt dissipated and the tubes had lost their cool.

I have vowed that I will restrict "tubes" to vacations or special occasions and went back to the old standard - gasp! yogurt in typical yogurt containers. My kids like yogurt as it is, so really, there's no reason to be buying (and succumbing to) the bells and whistles.

Now only if broccoli and spinach came in tubes and grape flavour ;)

Note:  No offence intended to any yogurt tube buyers out there
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In other "month of June" news .. have you entered to win the $40 gift certificate from Buy Green Skin Care? If not, what are you waiting for?  Click here to find how you enter.

Help & Food Are On The Way

How many of you have heard of Grocery Gateway?









Grocery Gateway is a grocery-delivery service. Yup, you order the goods online and magically, some guy is kindly dropping off those same goods at your door the next day.

For some this may seem a bit lazy. I mean although grocery shopping is not the favourite activity, it's not that bad. But for others, say those carting a newborn baby in one of those bucket seats that weighs way too much as well as a toddler in the rain or snow, this service is a life saver, stress saver, and all around God send.

How it works?  You log onto the Grocery Gateway website, sign up and then shop til you drop.  It takes a bit to get used to how they list their foods and the quantities that are shown, but there are all sorts of tools to help you out so that you can, for example, save lists of foods that you order all of the time so that you can just add them to your cart each time without having to search for them again.  Once you're all done, you review your list, tell them how you'd like to pay, pick a delivery time any time from 6 a.m. till later in the evening (two hour windows so that's not so bad) and then you are good to go.  You can even go back in and edit your order up until a specified cut off time.

Your groceries are delivered by a big truck, friendly person and in cardboard boxes. If you are lucky enough to have "Robbie" as your delivery person, you will be overwhelmed by his zest and friendly service. My son looked forward to his visits.

If, after the fact, you find anything wrong with your order, simply call their customer service line and they will help out - they have always been super helpful to me.

I found the prices to be reasonable. The delivery fee was only $10 (I think it has gone up since), but they often sent out coupons for $5 off delivery which helped out and made the extra cost minimal.

Just because you're stressed and juggling, doesn't mean you have to go hungry!  If you find yourself overwhelmed and utterly freaked out by the thought of braving the grocery store, I urge you to give it a try ...especially during bad weather and the winter.  I think I am now past my stage of needing grocery gateway on a regular basis but I found it incredibly helpful during the extreme juggling stages.


(Sorry to those of you outside of the GTA, this post may not apply, but I'm sure there are similar services of another name in your area that can be found.)

Mommy, I Smell Something In Your Mouth

You can't get anything by my three (almost four)-year-old.

Not even a quick bite of chocolate mint ice cream after you have put him to bed.

Our bedtime routine, like many, involve multiple trips back to reassure, hydrate, hug, etc. and without a doubt, if I or my husband have ingested anything whatsoever in between checking back with my son, we are greeted by,

"Mommy, I smell something in your mouth ... what you eating?"

And then usually he gives his best guess, which ten times out of ten, is wickedly on target.  Tonight it was ice cream .... our response was of course that we just brushed our teeth ;)

He has also nailed me on chocolate, wine and ju jubes. Always the good stuff that would just make him yearn even more to be awake and scarfing tasty edibles down with binge eaters Mom and Dad.

I always remember just as I'm leaning in, trying to hold my breath in time, but he's quick and he's good and like I said, knows his smells ... especially when it comes to protecting his Easter basket of goodies.

Happy late night nibbling!

Edible Easter Nests (by Nigella Lawson)

This is a super fun, not bad tasting and really cute sweet to make with the kids at Easter/spring time.  The recipe - Easter Nests - is by Nigella Lawson and can be found in her Domestic Goddess book.  They look like macaroons, but are not.

Basically the recipe is consists of:  

Chocolate

 + Shredded Wheat

+ Mini Eggs

... and voila - the cutest little Easter nests!

The recipe:

Easter Nests
(From Nigella's Domestic Goddess book):

This makes 5 nests, so increase as needed.
7 oz milk chocolate
1 oz bittersweet chocolate
2 tbsp unsalted butter
4 oz shredded wheat
about 25 mini eggs for decoration
1 baking sheet, lined with oiled foil

Melt the chocolate in the microwave for about 2 minutes.  Crumble the shredded wheat into it and mix.  Form a nest shape about 3 inches in diameter, don't worry if it doesn't look like it will stick together, it will as it cools.  Leave to cool until set, then fill the centre with the mini-eggs -about 5 per nest.

Recipe Source

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Can You Bring An Appetizer? YES I Can!

I meant to post this during the holidays but could not find the electronic copy of the recipe and was too lazy to type it out - sorry.


If your family/friend gatherings are anything like mine, everyone usually tries to bring something to contribute - an appetizer, dessert, side, etc.

I'm usually asked to do an appetizer which is not my favourite because I can never usually think of anything inspiring or original and then end up bringing something typical and fattening.

Well, not anymore!

Enter: Canadian Living January 2011 and .... 

The Edamame & Roasted Tomato Canape 

I brought this appy to my family Christmas and it was not only VERY delicious (if I do say so myself), it was relatively healthy and VERY well received. Compliments to Canadian Living for an awesome recipe.

The picture above looks a little bit like a jumbled mess but the picture doesn't show it quite right. It's a nice edamame mixture on a funky cracker, topped with a roasted tomato, feta cheese and fresh mint. It results in a party of different flavours and textures in your mouth that is quite delicious and worth a second (or tenth) trip to the platter for more.

See recipe below or click here for electronic Canadian Living Link:

Ingredients
1 1lb lb(454 g) (454 g) frozen shelled edamame, (about 1-1/4 cups/300 mL) 1/2 cup(125 mL)  shredded fresh mint1/4 cup (50 mL) extra-virgin olive oil1 clove of garlic, minced 3/4 tsp (4 mL)  finely grated lemon rind2 tbsp (25 mL) lemon juice 3/4 tsp(4 mL)  salt36  gluten-free crackers or whole-grain crackers1/2cup cup (125 mL) crumbled feta cheese, (optional)

Tomatoes:2 cups (500 mL) cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tbsp 25 mL)  extra-virgin olive oil1 pinch salt1 pinch pepper1 pinch granulated sugar

Preparation:

Tomatoes: Toss together tomatoes, oil, salt, pepper and sugar. Bake, cut side up, on parchment paper–lined baking sheet in 300°F (150°C) oven until shrivelled and dry in centre, about 1-1/2 hours.

Meanwhile, in small saucepan of boiling water, cook edamame until tender, about 5 minutes. Drain, reserving 1/4 cup (60 mL) of the cooking liquid; let cool.

Rinse edamame under cold water; transfer to food processor. Add half of the mint, the oil, garlic, lemon rind, lemon juice, salt and reserved cooking liquid; purée until smooth.

Spoon generous 1 tsp (5 mL) purée onto each cracker; top with tomatoes, remaining mint, and feta cheese (if using).

P.S. sorry if the ingredient portion is not formatted well ... it's giving me troubles for some reason

Every Vegetable Counts Right?

Like most people's kids, mine aren't crazy about most vegetables. Thank goodness for broccoli because my three-year-old loves it for some reason and we eat it about four times a week. The search is still on to find a vegetable that my one-year-old loves ... I'll keep you posted.

But I found this recipe for Squash Muffins by Jamie Oliver and tried them last week.

Delicious, loved by both kids and a great way to use up squash and get some extra veggies into the kids. Every vegetable serving counts right?

A few notes:  The recipe refers to a food processor, but I just grated the squash by hand and it worked fine, didn't do the frosty icing that was mentioned and they were still sweet enough for the kids, AND replaced some of the oil it called for with yogurt.

Mmmmmmmmmm!



Where Do The Christmas Pounds Come From?

In case you're wondering where our extra few pounds post-holiday season come from ... take a peak at this nutrition label taken from a package of shredded coconut? Specifically the calories and FAT!! 

So what if there is a bit of protein in there, read the FAT line again!!

WHAT THE??!!

I love macaroons ("chocolate yummies" in my house) and this sheds a whole new light on my jeans and why they fit the way they do right now? Yikes.

Here's to pina coladas and macaroons!

... just a little picture to keep you on your resolutions.