Edibles

Eating more yams

by Carol Browne on February 8, 2012 · 3 comments

in Edibles

I have been reading about the healthy goodness of yams lately. Apparently they are full of Vitamin C and potassium and fibre. It’s also supposed to be one of those foods that makes you feel full and satisfied for a long time after eating it. So, I did a search of the giant online cookbook and made this delicious yam salad tonight. I didn’t have any pecans, but substituted in sunflower seeds. It turned out lovely – it’s very comforting when it’s still warm. Most delicious. We’ll take this crunchy salad for lunch tomorrow.
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Boiled oranges

by Carol Browne on January 26, 2012 · 1 comment

in Edibles, General

First, you boil the oranges.

Tonight I made some kind of crazy clementine cake. I actually made 2 versions – one with ground almonds and one with regular flour. I had to try this recipe out because I have a little shin dig to bring a cake to next week and wanted to try something a little different, but wasn’t brave enough to bring an untested boiled orange cake for everyone to try. Also, I’m going to a potluck tomorrow night and those poor guys can try out this cake. If it’s a bust tomorrow, then I’ll go back to my old standby, One Bowl Chocolate Cake. I’m just hoping this cake’s not too dry. My last couple o’cakes were on the dry side, or, as my mom says, “stroke your throat!”. I’ll let you know the dryness factor tomorrow.
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Chinatown during Chinese New Year

by Carol Browne on January 25, 2012 · 0 comments

in Edibles, Festivities

Today’s post will mostly revolve around fruit, specifically Chinese fruit. My new buddy, Annie, picked up some frozen durian fruit in her travels. I didn’t take a photo of it because it was just in a package. Besides, the important part of this fruit is not how it looks as much as how it smells. WHOA. Now, I had heard that this fruit actually smelled of POOP, so before the package was opened, I was all, “YES! Please let me try the durian!” because I wanted to say I ate the poop fruit and liked it. A few big fans of the durian assured me it tastes delicious, but smells like doodie. I was so ready to like it. Instead, I learned:

1) Everyone perceives durian differently. Some people love it immediately. Some people just don’t ever love it.
2) Sadly, I don’t like the poo fruit. I really wanted to. But the fruit was just really weird.
3) It didn’t even smell like poo to me. Instead, it smelled like gasoline. Other people in the office commented it smelled like dirty socks, but no turd smell.
4) Durian gives me onion breath.

Tomorrow Annie is bringing in more fruit for us to try – a fruit called, longan. It looks like a miniature version of lychees. I’ll show you and give you a review of that fruit tomorrow. Welcome to the fruit review! I’ll be here all week.
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Sewing and baking and laughing

by Carol Browne on January 21, 2012 · 1 comment

in Edibles, General, Sewing

YES! It was Saturday…I had no plans except to sleep in (check!) make some more blocks (check!) and make some kind of treat. I made some parsnip soup a couple of days ago – I can hear my sister gagging from here – but it was delicious! I made a little rice and soup for dinner and then vegan gingerbread cookies for dessert.

I followed his video recipe, and I must admit, I was a little leery. There’s hardly any ingredients in the recipe and 1/2 a cup of maple syrup? How is this going to work? Also, you only bake them for 5 minutes. I wasn’t expecting it to work, but I was very, very wrong.
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Chocolate Spaghetti

January 4, 2012

I found this jar of chocolate spaghetti at the fancy gourmet store yesterday. Look! It’s made in Belgium – home of The Farting Pig! I will happily support the country who is responsible for making that little pig and that catchy song. I used the entire jar on the top of the vanilla cake with [...]

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Glossy icing

December 24, 2011

I made some sugar cookies for Mike to take to the office after seeing this super easy recipe for glossy icing. Spoiler alert – it’s corn syrup! You mix corn syrup with icing sugar and a bit of milk, and voilà! Pretty, shiny icing. I love how it looks.

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It’s that time again…

December 4, 2011

It’s baking time, that’s for sure. I’ve got a party to go tomorrow and I’m bringing 3 dozen cookies. I finally found a recipe to use up nearly a whole box of candy canes. I had the candy canes with red and green stripes, you can see the green flecks in the cookies. Hooray! They [...]

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Nutballs, anyone?

December 1, 2011

A couple of months ago, the people over at California Walnuts sent me a lovely gift baskets full of walnuts, a nut cracker, a cutting board other goodies in exchange for a blog post…WITH the possibility of winning a recipe contest. WEWT! My mom saw the blog post and emailed me a recipe that I [...]

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The apple bum – or is it a bum apple?

November 20, 2011

I hereby dedicate this photo to my buddy Lysa, over at the Red Spotted Patch, because I know she likes bum shaped fruit just as much as I do. I’m pretty sure you could imagine my delight when I found this little bum apple at the Red Apple Mart on Saturday afternoon. I could barely [...]

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Nerd Stew

November 18, 2011

Mike’s in love with his new game, Skyrim. Oof. It’s super nerdy with quests and monsters and dragons and going for long walks in snow and riding horses. He LOVES this game and is always playing it on the TV – it’s an XBOX game. Part of this game includes buying food and making dinners [...]

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