Taco Spaghetti

Who doesn't love tacos or spaghetti. This one-pot dish combines both. This is a great week night meal with hardly any clean-up afterward.

Cold Brew Coffee

 

It is that time of year I start to crave cold brew. I have tried many recipes and contraptions and I have found that this is the easiest and tastiest. All you do is steep ground coffee in cold water for 24 hours and voila you have cold brew. You will need a fine mesh strainer, cheese cloth and a jug to store the brew in. Then add ice and cream and you are good to go. Much more affordable than buying it from the coffee shops. The process of steeping the coffee for 24 hours creates a sweeter less acidic drink than  "iced coffee". You can scale up or down the recipe to suit your needs. Store cold brew in a sealed jug for up to 2 weeks. 

Cold Brew Concentrate:

8 oz. (227 grams) ground coffee
4 liters cold water

Directions:

In a large container/jug combine ground coffee with cold water.

Give it a stir to combine, cover, and allow to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours.

Layer a fine-mesh strainer with cheesecloth and place over a separate container. Slowly pour the steeped coffee through the strainer, allowing all the liquid to run through.

Place the coffee concentrate in the fridge and let it cool.

Store cold brew in a sealed container for up to 2 weeks. 




PERFECT COLD BREW COFFEE


Fill a glass with ice, then pour in the cold brew concentrate until your glass is three-fourths full.

Then add:

2 -3 tablespoons half and half

Or

Condensed milk

Or

Granulated sugar


Or

Baileys Irish Cream

Or

All of the above! Lol

 

 I don't particularly like bagels from the grocery store or from the various fast food outlets. They are dense and gummy, fills the void but nothing else. My first introduction to bagels was back in the 80's at a little bakery on the west side of Edmonton called the Bagel Bin. These bagels were freshly baked daily right in the bakery.  Oh those were the days my friend. Sadly, little mom and pop bakeries such as the Bagel Bin are very few and far between. I probably would have to go to New York or Montreal to get a good bagel now. 

So I went on a little quest and I think I found a winner from Sally's Baking Addiction.  These bagels are a little crispy on the outside but very tender and chewy on the inside. What I love about this recipe is that you have the option of making the bagels on the same day or you can make the dough the night before and then store it away in the fridge overnight. Then, in the morning you have fresh bagels for breakfast. Toppings and flavours are endless. My favourite bagels are "everything" and jalapeno cheddar. 

One recipe yields 8 bagels. These bagels freeze well.

 I love garlic but hate mincing it, but I don't like to buy pre-minced garlic as it contains unwanted preservatives and stabilizers. I like to buy a bunch of bulbs of garlic and mince my own and then store in freezer to have at my fingertips. The hardest part is peeling the garlic but put on a good podcast or some great music and the job is much more enjoyable. Once all the garlic is peeled it is minced in the food processor. I add a little olive oil to the garlic and pack into little plastic containers and store in the freezer. I keep one container in my fridge and when I am out I know I have a good supply in my freezer. My future self is always so grateful. 

Homemade Frozen Diced Hashbrowns

Ultra Processed Food: "It's not food. It's an industrially processed edible substance". Fernanda Rauber



I read a really interesting book this winter called Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken. He explores how Ultra Processed Food ( UPF) impacts our bodies and the planet. An easy way to know if a food is UPF is to look at the list of ingredients and if you don't recognize or you couldn't find the ingredient in a home kitchen than it is UPF.
So with this in mind, I read the frozen diced McCain hashbrown list of ingredients that I had in my freezer. I like to make hashbrown casserole at Christmas or for brunches etc. I never looked at the ingredient list. I just assumed there would be the usual cast of characters like potatoes, fat and salt. Well was I surprised to find there was 25 ingredients. Yes 25 ingredients. These little potatoes were filled with colours, sugars, starches and stabilizers to just mention a few. I couldn't with good conscience buy these hashbrowns ever again. I also couldn't find another brand of diced hashbrowns that would work so I decided to make my own. These homemade hashbrowns have 3 ingredients, potatoes, olive oil and kosher salt.
They were easy to make and tasted better too.
Please read the ingredient list of all the food you buy and avoid UPF as much as you can.



Ingredients McCain Diced Frozen Hashbrowns:
Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola And/or Soybean And/or Cottonseed And/or Safflower And/or Sunflower And/or Corn), Modified Potato Starch, Wheat Flour, Rice Flour, Modified Corn Starch, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Salt, Dextrin, Corn Flour, Baking Powder, Yellow Corn Flour, Sodium Phosphate (to Retain Natural Colour), Sugars (dextrose), Xanthan Gum, Corn Starch, Potato Starch, Autolyzed Yeast, Modified Cellulose, Guar Gum, Natural Flavour, Natural Beef Flavour (wheat And Milk), Citric Acid, Caramel, Annatto. Contains: Milk, Wheat

Chocolate Cake

 

This is my favourite go to chocolate cake. It is moist and very quick to mix up. It is frosted with a simple buttercream icing. I like to make it in a 9x13 inch baking pan but if you want to make it extra special you can make it into a layer cake. 

Pork Ribs with BBQ Sauce

My family loves ribs and so do I, so I am always on the hunt for the perfect rib recipe.  This recipe comes from one of my favourite recipe blogs "Recipe Tin Eats", so I had to give it a try. The ribs are rubbed with a simple spice mixture and then wrapped and left in fridge for a few hours or overnight. The ribs are then slow cooked in the oven for a couple of hours until they are nice and tender. Just prior to serving the ribs are slathered in a delicious homemade BBQ sauce until they are brown and caramelized.