Yummy Food Recap - Vol. III

I was a bit busy on Monday and Tuesday, so this post is coming out two days late this week. 

Let's see... I've been eating terrible food lately so it's almost embarrassing to write about it.  Just remember that it's summer, and that means grilling season, so please don't judge my eating habits too much.

I'd like to start by recapping the votes to last weeks poll.  It asked how many times a week you all eat take out:

22% - Not at all
44% - 1-2 times
11% - 3-4 times
22% - 5 or more!

I originally said 1-2 times but I think I might have grabbed it twice more than that... whoops! :)

Once again, here is my "Executive Summary" of the week's suppertime meals:

Tuesday - AUCE Ribs *
Wednesday - Chicken Salad w/homemade Raspberry Vinagrette
Thursday - Souvlaki Stirfry
Friday - Hamburgers & Hot Dogs *
Saturday - Salmon en Croute
Sunday - Pork Tenderloin *
Monday - Hot Dogs *

I've come to realize that I can't ever live again without a BBQ.  The meals with a "*" are all bbq-slathered grilled meats and were amazing. 

I had been bugging Josh for weeks about how I wanted to go to Montana's for All You Can Eat Ribs.  So on Tuesday out of nowhere after work I pitched the idea and we went.  I decided that I wanted the Pork Baby Back Ribs and Josh went with the Beef Ribs.  We actually did a little research beforehand because we weren't sure about the different types, and their subtle differences (aside from coming from different animals).  Normal people just get whatever the hell they want, but when we eat out we have a rule that we can't order the same thing.  That way, we get to try out more of the menu.  It didn't really make a difference for us because we didn't really share all that much with one another - we were so happy with what we had that we didn't feel the need to try the other type very much.  When they came out with Josh's it looked like something out of the Flintstones:

Apparently when you order beef ribs, they only bring out 2 at first and I can see why.  It was a giant bone with about 10oz-12oz of meat hanging off of it, all sticky and chipotley.  Here's a candid shot of me with my huge 3/4 rack of ribs that they brought out for me first:

Not only did they come with 1 side, but they came with 2!! AUCE Ribs + 2 sides??? Madness!  The bucket you see out of the corner of the lens is the Bone Bucket.  Josh had 3 ribs in total and I had 1 and 1/4 rack.

Moving on from that, because I could actually talk about them all day, Wednesday's salad was great.  Every now and then we like to have a nice, big salad to break up the week and this time we thought we'd try out our own dressing for the first time.  I am going to buy raspberry dressing from now on if I want it.

Next up was Stirfry, ever boring, on Thursday.

We had a bit of fun on Friday when we headed over to our good friend's Krissy & Terry's house for a BBQ.  We bought some frozen Prime Rib burgers from Dominion and had those with some Monterrey Jack Jalapeno cheese - YUM!  They had all sorts of yummy BBQ snacks and hot dogs for their guests - you guys know how to throw a BBQ!   I also wore a cool hat that Josh Prince (another friend of ours) graciously let me try on:

Saturday we followed Gordon Ramsay's <3 recipe for Salmon en Croute:  Salmon wrapped up in butter puff pastry mmmm!  Between the two slabs of salmon you put whole grain dijon and a butter that you make with lemon zest and dill.  We first tried this recipe out when Josh's parents were in town and it was delicious.  It's my favourite meal to cook, especially now since I've discovered that you can buy PRE-ROLLED pastry!  Until now I've struggled trying to roll out improperly thawed bricks of pastry with an empty wine bottle, this newfangled pre-rolled stuff is killer!

It doesn't look like much, but it is amazing.

The tenderloin was good, but at this point I was starting to get a bit sick of eating whole slabs of meat.  I made some roasted sweet potato and grilled asparagus. 

Remember those Jalapeno Cheddar Sausages from my old post?  We had the last two on Monday night with two regular hot dogs:

Shoutouts this week go to: Oreo Cheesequakes from Dairy Queen, Spice 2.0 Doritos and New York Fries

My favourite thing this week was by far the Ribs, I was such a mess eating them that I had BBQ sauce stains on my face that I hope no one noticed at work the next day.

Yummy Food Recap - Vol. II

Another week has passed and I have another recap of the meals I've had this week.  I found myself paying attention this week to my meals because I knew I would have to write about them tonight.  Here is an Executive Summary of this weeks "delicacies"...

Tuesday - Souvlaki Stirfry *
Wednesday - BBQ Burgers & Sausages
Thursday - Lasagne
Friday - Fish & Chips
Saturday - Roast Dinner *
Sunday - BBQ Hot Dogs
Monday - BBQ Steak *

Okay, so apparently we like to eat red meat a lot, especially on the BBQ.

Three of the meals we had involved meat purchased from Costco (see *'s).  The steaks we had today were great, about 12oz each and cooked to an awesome med-rare.  I have slowly over the past year been eating my steaks rarer and rarer, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.  Med-rare will probably be the limit for me though, I hear it's not as good for you when it's cooked less.

The hot dogs, lasagne, stirfry and hamburgers are items that don't require further explanation - they are what they are.  Though I would like to elaborate a tiny bit on the sausages... These are not your ordinary Italian sausages.  They are Cheddar Jalapeno smoked sausages and they are probably the most flavourful sausage I've ever had in my life!  When Josh and I first tried them we started to writhe on the couch in bliss, you'd think I was exaggerating until you also took a bite of these spicy, juicy sausage of joy.  Sobey's.  $8.99.  Omg.

On Saturday we decided that we would cook the roast that was sitting in our freezer for the better part of a month.  Before we stuck it in the oven I pretty much crusted it with Keg Steakhouse Seasoning (also a purchase from Costco).  It was a goooood idea!  If you ever get a chance to buy some, you should,... unless you can't eat a lot of salt, then you shouldn't. It's salty but it's delicious on meats, and even on homefries.  We had some Stuff n' Such with the roast, as well as mashed potatoes with green onion, mashed turnip, rosemary seared carrots - it was really yummy.  The carrots were my favorite part of the entire meal (I used a Gordon Ramsay tip!).  Just so everyone is aware, this is not my plate of supper - Josh hates the taste of potato and drowns it in gravy.  I would never abuse potato like this:

Moving back in time to Friday now... I decided that I would take Mom & Dad out for Father's Day, but before the big weekend rush.  The whole day I was psyched because Dad had chosen Sequerra's (not sure on the spelling...) and I was 100% in the mood for an eggroll or four.  When we picked them up after work he had changed his mind!  So for the first time ever I got to "eat in" at Leo's fish and chips.  I've had Leo's lots of times and it's a pretty great fish and chips joint.  We all had a "medium" which ended up being a 2-3 piece fish and chips.  Strange place though... they only accept cash or credit card - no debit!  Wacky.

One meal I didn't mention earlier was the mean breakfasts we had this weekend.  On Saturday we went to Sobey's nice and early because we knew exactly what we wanted for breakfast - french toast!  We wanted to use our leftover ricotta cheese from the lasagne.  Click here to see the recipe we used.  Here's how they turned out...

This one was Josh's.  His only had the egg mixture on the outsides of the bread, so the cheese melted and absorbed into the bread.

As you can see with mine, the cheese is a damn mess, dripping out everywhere and being a pain.  It's because I dipped all sides of my bread in the egg and then put the cheese in the middle.  It couldn't absorb because of the fried egg :( Yummy though!  Josh said mine looked like a moth.  The red stuffs is "Double Fruit" raspberry jam - worth the buy.

On Sunday we made a spontaneous decision to go to Bagel Cafe for breakfast.  I was there once before with my friend Melissa for Momash when she came back for a short visit from overseas.  Momash was our special date day for while she was back from Norway.  The name is a mix of our nicknames "Momo" and "Ash" :)  Anyway, I had a meal called "The Weekender" - typical scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hashbrowns toast and coffee.  Josh had a Bagel Benedict, featured below:

That is pretty much it for this week.  Some other short food shoutouts go to Sweet Chili and Sour Cream kettle cooked chips and Fruit & Nut bars.

Any suggestions for this week?

Yummy Food Recap - Vol. I

I'm new to blogging, finally pushed over the edge through my new job that focuses on promoting all that is social online media.  I am going to start a weekly blog on Monday nights focusing on my culinary adventures of the previous week.  My hope is that some of you might share some of your food stories with me as well, because I love all that has to do with eating and food (as any of my friends will tell you).

I'm going to start with Friday night, June 11th.  My boyfriend Josh and I were settling in to watch the final disc of the Lord of the Rings trilogy: Return of the King.  We had been watching the trilogy all week long and decided to finish off the series with a bottle of wine and some scallops.  It was our first time really cooking them and we seasoned them with the status quo of salt and freshly cracked black pepper.  Not too shabby! 

Saturday morning we were both pretty pumped to have a greasy breakfast.  Josh nursed his hangover (compliments of Sir Glenfiddich) while he made some bacon and sausage for breakfast sandwiches, and I got to toasting the english muffins.  Alas!  Mould on my muffin (only MY muffin).  Saturday Breakfast = fail.

Saturday night proved to be much more enjoyable as my friend Melissa decided that she wanted to invite myself and a few other close friends for her birthday.  She was cooking for us and by the end of the night I was approximately 4 scallops, 10 mussels, 1/4 of a chicken and 2 1/2 pieces of cake heavier.  Thanks Melissa!

Sunday was different, it was the first time in ages that I've been afraid to cook something.  Crab cakes were on the menu and it was our first time cooking with it.  I followed a recipe of Alton Brown's (if you don't know who he is, he's the guy in the Welsh's Grape Juice commercials!)  Even though I followed the directions it was pretty sloppy looking.  Josh suggested we try cooking one of the sloppy cakes, and seconds into beginning to fry the water in the cake made the cake disintegrate, and the oil splattered up onto my eyebrow.  At this point I promptly squealed and told Josh he would have to cook the rest.  We added panko and an egg to the mix, hoping that it would bind a bit better and it did.  The rest of them came out great and we enjoyed them on top of mixed greens and home fries seasoned with Keg spice, a chipotle mayonnaise aioli and lemon juice - it was delicious.

That all brings us to tonight, Monday's, supper.  We were in the mood for something spicy again (apparently the chipotle's from yesterday weren't quite enough) so we decided on tacos.  But not just any tacos!  Hard-shell tacos morphed with soft-shell tacos - the mighty gordita!  I won't say more about them other than that they were amazing and that three were enough to satisfy my usually unsatisfiable appetite.

A shout-out goes to my mom, Kathleen, for making cold plates earlier this week for us, too.

I think my favorite thing all week was probably the crab cakes, followed in close second by Melissa's amazing feast.  Now I just need to figure out this week's menu :)