Jubilations

So last night I had the pleasure of going to Jubilations dinner theatre.  We saw the Big Boom Theory.  I have to say the acting and the vocals were so awesome.  The songs that were picked matched the plot perfectly and the actors were even in character during the songs.  My favourite is when Lenard sang a backstreet boys song with backup vocals by Sheldon and Howard, complete with choreography that was amazing.  (It kinda helped that he was pretty hot.)  I also loved noticing that Howard kept changing his belt buckle, that was an awesome touch.  But to get down to why I'm writing ... the food!

The food was awesome!  They were able to accommodate my allergies with no trouble at all.  I called the afternoon before and they were very good about taking all the information.  When I got there the waitress was expecting me.  I had soup!  I usually only expect to get the main course and perhaps a salad.  They made me a special soup.  From what we could figure out it was pumpkin with turnip and perhaps some carrot.  For spices I believe there was nutmeg and coriander and perhaps cumin.  Delicious.  Then I also got salad with a balsamic dressing.  I had a choice of entre!  I could have the beef, the chicken or the tuna steak.  I chose the prime rib.  It was cooked to a beautiful medium.  It had gravy and horseradish.  It also had carrot, snap pea, red pepper and baby potatoes to accompany it.  Then to top it off I got desert as well!  I even had a choice!  I could choose fruit cup or apple pie.  I went for the pie.  It was sweet.

So, on the allergy friendly side Jubilations is very highly recommended.  On the entertainment side, also well recommended.  Even recommended for eye candy, though the actor was not overshadowing my date ;)

http://www.jubilations.ca/jubilations/cal_whatis.html

Gound beef at Mom's house

I remember as a child that we had ground beef all the time.  I'm not joking.  We would eat ground beef in pasta sauce on spaghetti.  We would have ground beef with tomatoe soup on macaroni - we would call this one More.  I would usually eat More with a stick of celery as a spoon, the spoon would gradually get shorter as I ate.  I would use about 3 spoons for a meal ;).  Mom would make homemade hamburgers using some stone ground oats and using this lovely tupperwear hamburger press.  She would also make frikedella, a Danish meatball. That recipe usually had oats, some onion and a bunch of other items that would make it not so appealing to me.  Tacos!  We would also have tacos with ground beef.  My sister and I got really good at cooking ground beef and breaking up the chunks as we stirred.  It was also a talent at cooking it from frozen without ending up with a giant block of meat that was burn on the outside and frozen on the inside.  The trick with that was to let it just turn colour, flip it, and then scrape the cooked bits off with the edge of the spatula.  Repeat about 10 times until the frozen bit was so small that you could break it into little bits with the edge of the spatula.  Make sure to keep breaking up the other bits as they were cooking or you'd end up with big lumps.

When I was staying with my parent's last fall Mom and I made a few meals using the standard block of frozen ground beef. 

Episode 1 - ground beef, bragg's soy seasoning (or maybe it was balsamic vinegar), frozen broccoli, and red peppers in one pan.  Thickened with a bit of corn starch.  On some of my favourite flat rice noodles from the Asian section of Superstore.

Episode 2 - Ground beef, chopped celery, perhaps some spices (not sure what she used) on a bed of spaghetti squash.  The parents had the beef mixed with tomatoe sauce.

 

Ground beef has many possibilities.  Don't forget meatballs and meatloaf!

Simple meals

Meals don't have to be complicated.  They can be simply 1 starch, 1 veg and 1 meat.  Yummy.

Here are some examples from my last year:

 

Beef, carrots from mom's garden, asparagus on a bed of spinach

(I don't see rice although I'm sure it was there, knowing me)

Pork, yam, asparagus

Quinoa, stirfry veg, salmon. 

Likely have bragg's soy seasoning on the stir fry.

 

Sticky rice (cooked with apple juice and cinnamon), white fish (salt, dill and lemon baked in foil), roasted red peppers and zucchini (using olive oil and salt) on a bed of spinach. 

Yah this last one was a bit fancier though still only 1 rice cooker and 1 tray in the oven.

 

Now this one IS easy - leftover BBQ pork, 1 can of baby corn, leftover quinoa.  Boom.  Dinner.

 

As it feels like summer is coming ...

As today it felt like summer was finally going to come back.  As I write this I may actually have a bit of colour in my cheeks from being out in the sun on my breaks from taking a course at work.  25 degrees and sunny on May 5th in Fort McMurray?  Yes please!  It reminded me of the great meals I had last summer sitting out on the patio. 

I hope I can enjoy this sort of meal in a few weeks when I am back home (and hopefully it will be this gorgeous out too!)

Salad version 1 - I love using sweet chili sauce as a dressing

That would be marinated pork, with my homemade Vietnamese bbq sauce

Salad version 2 - mmm cucumbers

Homemade hummus with red pepper and paired with green tea :) 

Check out the jickama (got at CO-OP), I had to find it after I tried it in Mexico

Christmas Smorgasbord

I grew up in a house with one dane and mom of british and scotish descent.  We tried to blend the traditions at Christmas.  To honour the Scandinavian tradition we would open one gift on Christmas Eve with the rest being opened on Christmas morning. 

We would also have a Danish Smorgesbord on Christmas eve followed by a full turkey dinner on Christmas Day. 

So what is a smorgasbord?  It's a feast in many courses.  There are traditional sandwiches that you can make.  We have this lovely cookbook from the Danish museam which outline some of the different sandwiches. (I might add some detail later when I'm back home.)  Needless to say it's full of rye bread, white bread, cheese, tomatoe, mayonnaise, hard boiled eggs, Italian salad, deli meats, frickedella, ramoulelle... notice a pattern?  Most of which I cannot eat.  Surprisingly I was able to enjoy with some minor modifications.

I stuck to one sandwich and modified it in the following way:  Earth's Oven corn bread, prosciutto, cucumbers soaked in vinegar (a traditional Danish thing, tangey and quite lovely), and daiya cheese loaf in jalapeño pepper.

Merry Christmas! (yes this is a very belated post, I know that it's May)

Return to blogging

So, I have gone on a bit of a hiatus when it comes to this blog, but I'm back :)