Birthday Favorites: Food

Hey, Friends! It’s that time again – this week is my birthday, and it’s tradition around here to share everything I’m loving right now, and the things that have made this last year enjoyable/delicious/successful/positive in any way.:)

Leave a comment sharing YOUR favorites, and you’ll be entered in a draw for a prize….

Today we’re talking about food! I love talking about food. I love making it, photographing it, studying new recipes for it, and…EATING it!:)

Here are my favorite things to eat right now:

Breakfast: Baked Apple Pancake

I will always and forever love my green smoothie for breakfast – I told Anika this morning that when I’m an old lady in a nursing home, she needs to come bring me green smoothies.

BUT. If I’m going to eat anything else, this baked apple pancake is my new favorite. I kinda made up the recipe. I cut up three apples and fried them in lots of butter and cinnamon, and then dumped them into a 9×13 pan once they were soft. Then I mixed up this pancake batter, and poured it over the apples. I baked it at 350 until it felt firm to the touch, about half an hour.

Lunch: Salads!

I don’t really have recipes for these – I just kind of throw together whatever looks good. I love having tons of fresh vegetables and herbs on hand, and making it a really filling salad with chicken or avocados and cooked eggs. I love experimenting with different oils, seasonings, and dressings.

Supper: Chip Potatoes

This is something I made up this last winter, and everybody in our family loves it, so we keep making it. So simple – just slice up potatoes super thin, cover it with chunks of butter and lots of sea salt.

Bake it at 400 for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes start getting all brown and crispy.

Best Restaurant I Ate at This Year: Buccacino’s!

A few weeks ago, I was going out for dinner with a friend, and we couldn’t decide where to eat. I was in the mood for something new and different – the fantastic food on my trip to Ottawa had left me craving something exciting. We quickly googled gluten-free restaurants in Winnipeg, and chose Buccacino’s. It’s so delicious, I can’t wait to go back!

Besides the fact that I’m in Food Heaven whenever I can eat gluten-free pasta, I also was quite impressed with the reasonable prices.

New Recipes:

Because I’m constantly trying new recipes, it’s hard to choose just one favorite, so here are a few that we’ve been enjoying, in case you’re in need of some new ideas!

Best Ever Beef Stew

Veggie and Brown Rice Noodle Bowl

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Blender Muffins

Energizing Protein Power Salad

Your turn! What are your favorite foods, recipes, and restaurants? I want to hear all about it!:)

35 Days of Favorites: Supper

This post is part of a series called “35 Days of Favorites”, in honor of my 35th birthday. You can read more about the details here…

Oh, what to share for my favorite main course dish?

My true favorite is actually the same as Ben’s, which means I already shared it here. We loooove this casserole, but our girls DO NOT! Guess what we’ll eat all the time once they’re grown up and moved out of the house?!

Until then, my next favorite might be this vegetable dish:

I make it as a side dish (it goes really well with salmon), or add chicken to serve as a one-dish meal. It can be made in a foil packet and grilled on the BBQ, or it can be baked in the oven during the winter. Very versatile, nobody complains when we eat it, and it’s what taught our girls to like green beans! It’s pretty and colorful, and has a bunch of different vegetables in it:

Potato Vegetable Dish

5 potatoes, sliced
2 cups carrots, sliced
2 cups green beans
1 cup chopped red pepper
4 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp. chopped dill
salt and pepper
1/2 cup butter, melted

Layer vegetables in a casserole dish. Mix garlic, dill, salt, pepper, and butter together, and drizzle over vegetables. Bake at 350 for an hour.

Just thinking about it is making me hungry – going to make it for supper tonight!

Okay, you’re turn! What’s your favorite main course?

34 Days of Favorites: Supper

I have always been a recipe girl.

I learned at a young age that if I followed the recipe on the page very closely, it wasn’t too hard to make food taste good. I never strayed very far from what was written on the page.

But marrying Ben started to change all that.

His family never uses a recipe. They just figure things out as they go along. Ben cooks the same way, and there are some things that just taste better when he makes it. He knows how to give flavour to things.

When I developed some food allergies, I had trouble finding recipes to fit my specific needs. I had to become more flexible and able to adapt recipes to fit my needs. I started to learn how much fun it could be to ditch the recipe and just wing it.

Then last year, for my birthday dinner at a restaurant, I had the best pasta dish ever. Although I could never make it taste the same at home, I sure tried.

The result is a pasta dish we make regularly around here. It is my favorite thing to make and inhale. Er…I mean, politely eat in small, delicate bites.

We tried to come up with a name for it together as a family, and for awhile we called it “The Amazing Adventures of Pete Pepper and Billy Broccoli”, but that’s kind of a long name, and it fizzled out. Now we just call it “That Pasta Dish”.

So, without any measurements (because now we’re all casual about that kind of thing around here!), I share with you my very own pasta recipe:

Pasta (we use rice noodles, because we do that gluten-free thing around here)

Steamed broccoli and peppers

Grilled Chicken, cut into small pieces

Olive Oil

Salt, Basil, Garlic

Cook your pasta, steam your veggies, cut up your grilled chicken, and mix it all together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together oil, salt, basil, and garlic. Pour over the pasta mixture and mix it all up.

Um, and that’s it. Very, very simple. Not really all that impressive, but I love it and could eat it forever.

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Now it’s your turn! What’s your favorite food to eat for supper? Do you use recipes or fly by the seat of your pants? (I guess that’s not a very kitchen-appropriate expression, but you know what I mean!)

 

 

Saved!

My mom always taught me how important it is to cover the bottom of the oven with tin foil, for easy cleaning. What she didn’t tell me is that it also helps for rescuing supper, after it has dumped all over the inside of the oven.

I thought that I had destroyed our meal, but thank goodness for tin foil! We just scooped it right out of there, and my oven is still clean!

Good as new!