Yummy Food Recap - Volume 15

It has become apparent to me that I fail at Roman Numerals (see previous blog entry title), so I am switching to regular numbers.  Welcome to Volume 15 of the Food-a-holic Yummy Food Recap!  I have some fun recipes to share with you this month and some delicious new treats that will be sure to make you drool :)

Executive Summary

Sunday, May 15th - A&W Breakfast, Montana's

Monday, May 16th - Maple Soy Ginger Salmon on Jasmine Rice

Tuesday, May 17th - Striploin with carrots, caramelized onions and 'shrooms, and Ziggy's mac and cheese salad

Wednesday, May 18th - Adirondack Red Wing Burgers ala Rachael Ray

Saturday, May 21st - A&W and Pita Pizzas

Sunday, May 22nd - President's Choice Street Style Frankfurters

Monday, May 23rd - Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Wednesday, May 25th - Home Style Pizza and Garlic Fingers

Thursday, May 26th - BBQ'd Burgers

Friday, May 27th - Roast Beef

Saturday, May 28th - Pancakes from Scratch!  BLT's, Wine and Cheese, and McDoubles

Sunday, May 29th - Feature Recipe!

Monday, May 30th - Almond Chicken Guy Ding

Tuesday, May 31st - Subway Breakfast for Free! BLTs and  Home Made Portabella Tagliatelle

Wednesday, June 1st - Mexican Night and Wine with Chocolates

Thursday, June 2nd - Little Penguin + Goat Cheese Mini Pitas + Pepperoni, Baby Bells and Mustard on Crackers

Friday, June 3rd - Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Goat Cheese Grilled Cheese, T-Bones and Home Fries

Saturday, June 4th - Sweet and Sour Chicken ala Rachael Ray and Pretzels

Sunday, June 5th - Mille Feuille and Pain au Chocolat and Chili

Monday, June 6th - Ribs and Cream Cheese Brownies

Wednesday, June 8th - Breakfast by Dad and Burgers

Thursday, June 9th - Smoked Meat Egg Sandwich and Shrimp Stirfry

Friday, June 10th - Feature Restaurant! 



Sunday, May 15th 

My last blog entry was foiled by a mishap with my phone.  The pictures I had been taking were not appearing in my phone's gallery.  Then for some reason, one day they just appeared after I deleted some old ones - success!  The last day of Josh's parent's visit from Gander we went to Stavanger for some Costco meats and we had breakfast along the way at A&W.

Bacon and Egg Sandwich, with Boyce's French Toast in the Background

Later that day we had lunch at Montana's and I've been having a hard time ordering anything other than their Chipotle Chicken Burger.  Josh's meal looked great, too!

Josh's Chicken Smokehouse Wrap

My Honey Chipotle BBQ Chicken Sandwich - I swear it's like a Chicken Burger made of Wings

Monday, May 16th


We are fortunate enough to enjoy large quantities of Costco meats when Josh's parents go to Costco, because they share a portion with us - Thanks!  We scored some amazing salmon fillets so we cooked some up with Jasmine rice.  We eyeball the amounts for the sauce on the salmon:  Soy Sauce, Minced Garlic and Maple Syrup.  Always use a non-stick pan for this because the maple syrup tends to caramelize and stick to the pan otherwise.  Yum!

Paired with some Carrots, Onion and Green Pepper this Salmon is delicious!

Tuesday, May 17th

Steaks are a must for every Costco trip - they are just so big and thick who could realistically pass them by?  Vegetarians I guess.... but that isn't me :)   We cooked ours up with some mushrooms and onions, carrots and a side of Ziggy's Macaroni and Cheese Salad.  That salad, to me, is the ultimate BBQ side.  I'd love to hear what sides you like with BBQ!

Tasty Roast Supps!

Wednesday, May 18th

I've had this meal before and it turns out great each time - Red Wing Burgers!  I found the recipe in a Rachael Ray magazine a while back, and now every time I see ground turkey this is what I think of.  I love burgers and something about this one makes me feel a lot better about eating them.  There is a nice amount of veg packed into each patty and they are much healthier than the beef versions (which I still love of course).

Here are the veggies I sautee that then go into the burgers: Carrots, Celery and Onion

Patties with veg

Fry my babies!  Just look at all that hot sauce!!

Side View - the English Muffin is key*

Ohh yeaa - that's ranch and relish

Saturday, May 21st

As you can see, Burgers and A&W are weaknesses of ours.  We hit up the Churchill Square location for some tasty Teen Burgers

Teen Burgers Mmmm

Later on for supper we opted for Pita Pizzas  -  nothing quite hits the spot like they do

Note: Our new-ish pizza pan!

Sunday, May 22nd

It might have become evident to you that we aren't being very healthy eaters this month - it is so hard to stay on track!  This next item is equally nasty for your health:  These PC Street Style Franks are huge, and give you a lot of "hang over" off the bun, which we both think is key to a good hotdog.  We BBQ'd these with some Bold BBQ sauce

And here are the bad boys themselves, dressed up with raw onion, bacon, relish, mustard and ketchup

Monday, May 23rd

We prepared and ate supper at the house of two great friends this day, as part of a new way we could all hang out as couples.  I had a lot of fun getting the ingredients ready the day before with my bff Krissy with a trip to Costco and Dominion.  We made Pulled Pork sandwiches on tasty ciabatta buns, with crispy fries on the side.  Here is the tasty dish!

Check out that thick BBQ sauce smothering the pork - YUM!  We toasted our buns with cheese, too.

Wednesday, May 25th

Instead of making our dough from scratch, we tend to like to use these thin crust pre-made ones that you can buy in packs of 2 at Sobeys, near the deli section.  They are great and less messy than making them yourself, and because they are not frozen I don't feel so bad about using them.  We made one pizza and one garlic fingers.  Usually we just spread butter and sprinkle granulated garlic on our garlic fingers, but this time we had some fresh garlic and used that instead - it was SO much better!  Despite the fact that we smelled of it for about a day, we are never going back to granulated again for garlic fingers.

We topped it off with tonnes of Mozza and some chopped bacon

The pizza was a mix of vegetables you'd normally see on a Deluxe pizza, plus some amazing pepperoni.

Yep, that's a LOT of cheese!

Good Gods! :D

Thursday, May 26th

I swear writing this blog sometimes is embarrassing, due to the amount of times BURGERS pop up in our lifestyle.  Yet, here I write again, despite my shame that we ate more burgers.  These ones were particularly delicious, yet cheap:  Calgary Stampede Beef Burgers.  Purchased at Sobeys, these were thin burgers that charred well on the grill.

Plain Jane Burgers

Friday, May 27th

Roast is something we only really get to enjoy once every month or so, and each time I manage to overcook the darn thing :(  I liked the sides anyway!  My favorite side is always the stuffing, this time we used chopped assorted nuts, fresh sage (that my daddy bought me, yay!), onions, mushrooms and butter.  We had Yorkshire puddings as well as carrots and baby potatoes, too.

T'was alright, though I am ashamed of the beef :P

Saturday, May 28th

Lately I've been eating a lot of oatmeal for breakfast, so I wanted to make the switch to Pancakes for a while.  We didn't have pre-mixed stuff, so I tried making them from scratch for the first time.  I got a good recipe online which worked great - I'll use it again in the future for sure.

Yummm!  These are about 6 inch pancakes

For lunch we took advantage of the fact that we had those ciabatta buns from Costco and had some BLT's.  Nothing hits the spot like a BLT!

Pickles!!!

That evening we visited two good friends for a birthday and to see their new home for the first time.  There I enjoyed many a snack, but my favorite combination was Wine and Cheese... with a special twist!

Cheesies make the perfect accompaniment to wine, it seems!

We didn't really have supper that night, and we were feeling late night munchies by the time 11:00 rolled around, so we went to McEsso and got a McDouble each, with extra pickles - sooo good.

Nasty?  Yes.  Delicious?  Hells Yes.

Monday, May 30th

We had been moving away from recipes in the past weeks leading up to this date, so we tried to bring back some stability to our weekly menus with a tasty Almond Chicken Guy Ding recipe we found in a magazine.  We didn't have enough almonds alone, so we subbed in some walnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts too.  Celery, Carrots, Broccoli and Mushrooms accompanied the chicken on a bed of basmati rice.

I love the color in this

Now with the chicken added and on the rice

Tuesday, May 31st 

We marked our calendars for May 31st because Subway was giving away breakfast sandwiches and coffee for free!

The lids on their coffee are the first I've seen like them - LOVE them!

Josh's Sandwich - we both got the same things: Sausage, green pepper, jalapeno, and southwest sauce

My Sandwich: on a Flat Bread!  Same toppers but I liked this one much more than Josh's

That night for supper we had some ingredients leftover from our Feature Recipe. The meal was Alfredo Portabella Tagliatelle - YUM!  Josh cooked the entire thing himself:

"Meat" and Veg of the dish

Drying our Pasta

Finished Product - Delish!

Wednesday, June 1st

Our next date with our friends to cook meals together came with a Mexican twist: Tacos!  We also got to visit their adorable puppy again, Boomer, who we absolutely love!  We had chicken and beef tacos, as well as Old El Paso Mexican Rice.  I had never tried the rice before, but it was a hit!  I wish there had been more of it because we wolfed it down so fast hehe!

Leaning Tower of Taco

Our Spread

Josh relishes his dessert!  Chips Ahoy never go out of style ;)

At our visit to Wine Fest back a few weeks ago we purchased a yummy sparkling strawberry wine called Banfi Rosa Regale and we finally bought some chocolates to have with it: Lindt Hazelnut Chocolate

The chocolate bar was so thick the hazelnuts were whole inside of it!

Thursday, June 2nd

I love wine, wine wine wine, here it goes down, down into my belly!  And the wine featured on this day is a 2009 Little Penguin Shiraz:  We shared the bottle this night over some cheeses, pepperoni, crackers, hot mustard, mini pita breads and goats cheese.

Of red wines, Shiraz are probably my most favorite

Friday, June 3rd

I had some leftover goat cheese from the wine and snacks previously, so I decided to use the rest in a grilled cheese sandwich for our lunches.  It was sun-dried tomato and basil goat cheese, so I used just a tad of mozzarella and made the most delish sandwiches:

Oh yea, and this is home made bread!

Supper was just as extravagant: BBQ T-Bone Steaks and my version of Keg fries.

Looking at this makes me drool

Home made, crispy as hell and no need to fry - just bake :)

Saturday, June 4th

We should really be trying to eat stirfrys more often.  We found a really yummy recipe for a Sweet and Sour Chicken one in a Rachael Ray magazine (of course!).  A good sale on Chicken breasts made this meal possible.

I absolutely love fresh pineapple in meals

We were watching an episode of Parks and Recreation after we ate our supper.  In this particular episode, a character named Ron Swanson was eating a pretzel, and his coworker pointed out that he had mustard in his moustache.  This was enough for us to walk to the mall for a pretzel with mustard.

The Moustachioed Man Himself - Ron Swanson!

We received both Regular Mustard (in packets) and Hot Mustard

Sunday, June 5th

My cousin Laura (who I might as well call my sister) went to St. Pierre and Miquelon with her French Immersion class.  Luckily for me, she was taking pastry orders!  We received 1 each of a pain au chocolate and a mille feuille.

Mille feuille is layers upon layers of sweet goodness, and pain au chocolat is like a chocolate filled flaky... this is of course MY definition and probably far from correct haha!

We made Chilli for supper that night using an Epicure Cha-Cha-Chilli seasoning packet - if you like chilli, this is a quick and easy way to prepare your meal.   The only other thing I always add to my chilli is a tablespoon of Cocoa Powder (once you try it with cocoa, you will never want to go without it!)

We enjoyed this with a side of toasted homemade bread - compliments of my aunt Paulette - Thanks!

Monday, June 6th

My red meat intake for this month as certainly reached an apex, I feel like summer and the opportunity to grill always does that to me.  We cooked some Ribs on June 6th and made some BBQ sauce that was featured in an NLC magazine called "Occasions" (which are free, fyi).  It's based with Rickard's Dark beer, with balsamic vinegar, rosemary, tomato paste, etc.  It was delicious on our ribs and made our apartment smell delicious!

So Sweet, Savory and Sticky!

That evening I met up with some of my friends to go over some things for a wedding we are all part of in a few weeks time.  I decided to make some brownies themed to the color of the wedding party's dresses: Green and Brown:

The green portion of the brownies is actually cream cheese that I dyed green and swirled with more brownie batter on top

Wednesday, June 8th

I visited my parent's one day after an interview and my Dad treated me and my Mom to some breakfast for lunch.  I miss homestyle cooking by my parents - it's always the best!

I much prefer breakfast in this format then on a bun!

Later that day we dipped into our evil burger habits again and did some grilling while it was still nice outside, finishing off the pack of burgers that we bought earlier in the month.

The size of Josh's hand in this picture almost makes the burgers look like itty bitty sliders!

Thursday, June 9th - Smoked Meat Egg Sandwich and Shrimp Stirfry

Here we are, down to the final meal of this entry.  No sooner had I just said that my favorite way to have breakfast was on a plate and not a bun, then I have breakfast on a bun!  This time it is a little different: instead of bacon or sausage, I had some smoked meat and mustard!  Actually very delicious:

I seared the smoked meat for just a moment to give it a little crispiness

Supper saw us eating shrimp stirfry with Sweet Thai Chili sauce on Basmati rice.

We cheaped out and used some frozen bagged veg for this meal - sometimes you just don't have time!

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Food-a-holic's Yummy Food Recap #15!  We said goodbye to Roman Numerals, hello to burgers and to making pasta fresh!  In my search for a job this month, I've even mentioned this blog to a few employers... that can either go good or bad depending on what they think of my eating habits, haha!  Here's hoping they have as much a desire for food as I do!

Be sure to check out our latest Guest Blogger, Shawn Sieiro, as he hashes out the inner workings of Apple Cinnamon Raisin Dumplings and how to make them.

Shoutouts go out to Belly Button Candy, Mint Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream, Mustard, Copious amounts of wine, shameful late night KFC, s'mores, and you! :)

Belly Button candies - the only place in town I have seen them is Longs Hill Convenience

Mint Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream - ohhhh yeaaa