Happy Spring Equinox and a BIG Kitchen Day!

The first day of spring has arrived! Despite the snow, the sun is out, it's above zero every day now and everything is gradually melting. My mood is boosted each morning when I wake up. 

I'm so happy to say that I am continuing the three-dog-walk. :) We went into the woods today along one of the snowmobile trails, but didn't get far because I kept sinking.

So yesterday was a big kitchen day for me. Maybe it's the spring weather...I have no idea, but I think I bit off a little more than I could chew lol...I started with homemade yogurt because we have a fruit shake each morning and it's not a routine I want stopped just because I run out of yogurt!

Alex and I bought each other a nice popcorn maker the first Christmas we were together. I love this thing, but honestly, it's a bit of a pain to clean. We'll never go back to other methods of popping corn though. I use coconut oil and with some clarified butter, you'd think you were at the movies! But I pulled this out of the dusty shelf to make crackerjacks!

I've had this in mind since before Christmas actually but never got around to it. Alex downloaded a good movie yesterday so I wanted to have a popcorn movie night. This is the caramel sauce.

If you love popcorn and caramel and Crackerjacks, do yourself a favour and make these Homemade Crackerjacks!!! They melt in your mouth but they are crispy at the same time! Oh my gosh, they were amazing! Good thing they're sweet because they would have been all gone in 15 minutes. Since Alex is allergic to peanuts, I used pecans and they worked really well!

The next thing to make on the list was homemade sausages. I had a 1 1/2 pound pork tenderloin thawed and I found a great website that had a lot of sausage recipes on it. Ever since I got my handy dandy little meat grinder with the sausage attachment I've wanted to try it out!

Ewww!!! I have to say I was a little squeamish when I touched these! When we went out to get groceries on our anniversary last week, we talked to the butcher and he sold us these hog casings for $3.00. Trust me there is enough in here to make 100 sausages. He told us to keep them in salted water in a cool dark place. He sold us the smallest amount he could and we knew we weren't making 100 sausages! I came to terms knowing most of this would be thrown out, it's too bad it doesn't freeze, once it's prepared it has to be used within a month.

Homemade Sausages. The verdict? Not worth the effort and money! We got SIX sausages from that $8 pork tenderloin. See the sausage patty? That was what got stuck in the meat grinder attachment! I love my little meat grinder, but it's no good for sausage making. I'm glad we tried though because down the line if we can afford a better sausage maker, I'd love to make my own again! It was a two-man job though with that little grinder, the casings kept slipping off. Anyway, I don't regret trying, they are in the fridge right now, setting and flavour-mingling. I'll put them in the freezer for our next European hot dog night!

Next up was Nutella Cigars. For New Year's Eve 2016, I made some appetizers with phyllo dough. I'd put the rest in the freezer and really wanted to use it up. These are very nice, and the Nutella kind of sneaks up on you! These are salted so the sweet and salt go very well together! Very yummy with coffee! :) See that ziplock bag to the left of the picture? That's my homemade pastry bag. I've hinted that I want a REAL one for a gift one of these days! I made meringue mushrooms for my Yule log cake last Christmas and the ziplock was a beach to use, let me tell you. I'd like to do more creative baking so I think Alex got the hint!  :))

For dinner, in my effort to keep using up the phyllo dough, I made Chicken Phyllo Bundles with mashed carrots. This was BEYOND delicious!

Most of the recipes I make aren't too complicated. These weren't either. The chicken breasts are stuffed with a mix of Feta, Parm and parsley. Then they're wrapped in the phyllo and baked. (Just a note on "best before dates"...my Feta had a best before date of March 6th. I'd forgotten about it. When I opened it up, it was fine. No weird colours, no bad smell, the brine was still watery and in the end it tasted amazing. I've learned over the years that things DO last beyond the "expiry dates", so always give things a second chance before tossing them!)

I took a closeup (a little blurry) of the chicken to show the stuffing. The parsley seems to have disappeared though. This is a definite keeper recipe! And you know what? I STILL have a third of the phyllo dough left!!! It's in the freezer again for the next round of phyllo recipes!

Today I'm taking it easy. It's going to be a slow-cooker meal, Coq au Vin. Do you freeze leftover wine? I do! White wine, never because I love to drink it. I love red wine too, but I never feel like drinking it when there are leftovers and I hate to waste, so I just put the bottle in a plastic bag, loosen the top and freeze it. I need a cup and a half of red wine for dinner, so my half bottle from Valentine's day will do it. I'm not a fan of "cooking wine"...which basically means an inexpensive vintage. I really think you can taste the quality of the alcohol you use in cooking so I always make sure whatever I use in my food, I won't turn my nose at to drink! Thawed wine still has the nice flavour and is definitely drinkable, but it's a little watery so it's best used for cooking :)

Everyone is enjoying the sunshine! :) Jack and Oscar often sleep back to back with each other. So today I'm going to clean up the porch a little. It's time to take in my winter decorations and think of something for spring! I'm also going to plant some herbs for my window garden. One chore I'm not looking too forward to though is trimming and filing 54 little doggie nails. Alex does the cats and I do the dogs. I did get a small Dremel last month though. One of the ladies at the shelter showed us how easy it was to use with all the tips to keep the dogs safe, so I'm going to try that out today.

I hope everyone has a great day today! Thanks for reading. :))

Sunny Sunday :)

I'm so happy today! It's the first day since December that I was able to take all three dogs on a walk together :) This really does make me very happy because I love seeing them explore and enjoy themselves. It's always hard for me to leave Jack at home in the winter, but he's not quite the winter-lover as the two huskies are!

Pretty Marlene. She gets bored quickly and while the other two were looking for something in the woods, she decided to take a break.

And they saw something!! I can barely see it in the photo but there is a little brown rabbit there in the woods. It's on the very right side of the photo to the right of that tree trunk. If you want a better view you can click the photo to make it bigger. Jack and Charlie saw the rabbit, that's for sure! How exciting! It brings me a lot of joy to make their lives fun :)

Here's another picture of the river. I love this photo for three things: 1. you can see the sun rays, 2. the little trees in the center "island" are covered with ice and look so pretty in white, and 3. to the left of the white trees, you can see the steam coming from the river. This is a nice little town though it would be nicer with less people :) I think I can only dream about having a little waterfall and river on my own property in the future! Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky!

Yesterday was baking day. I made a loaf of my No Knead Bread. But as you can see, I couldn't wait for it to cool...it's so yummy with butter melted on it!! And I made some Blueberry Muffins too. I'm terrible with giving credit for recipes. I try my best, but a lot of the time I pull out old recipe printouts that I've just copied and pasted onto my Word program. So all I can say is that this muffin recipe likely came from the Williams Sonoma website! They're never word for word because I change things up as I try new recipes.

We had to finish up the last of the fresh lettuce and spinach so I made a Chicken Cesar salad. It's so delicious with the garlic bread and a glass of wine!

This is a familiar scene...Jack burrows his head under our covers after dinner each night for a pre-bedtime nap. He's still wearing his hoodie :) 

Today is a big kitchen day for me!! I'm making the crackerjacks today, some Nutella cigars made with phyllo dough, and if the pork is thawed enough, I'm attempting sausages! I think that's it...isn't that enough? :) I'll post about this tomorrow! Enjoy your Sunday my friends. :) Today is officially the last day of winter, even if it's just in theory, I'm glad spring has sprung! Farewell to winter, I'm quite sure we will meet again. :)

Papas Fritas and Irish Coffee

Despite not being Irish, we still decided to have some Irish Coffees yesterday :) My boyfriend made that amazing foam again that doesn't seem to melt away ever, I don't know how he accomplished that! He had his Irish coffee with Baileys and I had mine with Kilbeggan whisky. Kilbeggan is my favourite Irish whisky. It's not very "peaty" (or smoky) like a lot of the other brands and it's got a bit of fruitiness to it. We both had a splash of Irish Mist on top. Only problem is we had them at 10pm so we were up until 3am forcing ourselves to try to fall asleep! I thought the alcohol would cancel out the caffeine...not so.

For dinner, I wanted to try to have some kind of potato dish! :) I didn't really go Irish, I went with Papas Fritas instead! It's the thought that counts lol...these are SO DELICIOUS. I make mine with chicken to make it a full meal instead of just a side dish. I'm still happily using my window-garden chives from last summer!

It's another sunny winter day today. It's just a shame that all we can hear outside is the vroom vroom vroom of snowmobiles, it kills the solitude! Two more winters of this and that's it! :) I wish we could manage a way to buy sooner, but realistically we have to pay off some big debts first and no matter how you crunch the numbers, it won't be before 2019.

The river is really flowing. The sun is starting to melt things very nicely, that waterfall is really loud, but I love the sound!

Charlie and Marlene decided to take some snow naps this morning!

But my little fella Jack didn't want anything to do with the winter! I put his hoodie on and he tolerated me as he posed for some pictures :) This is Alex's old hoodie that I turned into a dog hoodie for Jack. What are you all up to this weekend? I have some baking planned and I hope to try out a recipe for homemade Cracker Jacks (minus the peanuts!).

Fondue And Black Squirrel Visit

It's such a beautiful sunny winter day today! What a difference from the last few blizzardy ones. I'm so grateful for the sun, that "drip drip drip" that used to annoy me at times now makes me happy because I know that if the roof snow is melting, so is the snow on the ground!

Yesterday we had the leftover Mexican Lasagna that I'd made the night before so I don't have any delicious menu pictures to include today! Tonight we have to eat that pork tenderloin that's in the fridge! I had a potato dish planned for St-Patricks, but we'll have that another day. We will definitely be having Irish Coffees for dessert/digestif though! I have a wee bit o' Irish in my blood, but my roots are mostly Scottish. Still though, I love to create in the kitchen so any holiday or special day is an opportunity for me to make the day unique and fun! Any special menus planned?

Every month, my boyfriend tries to get me a new or used cookbook. Even though this one is used, it's new to me! A lot of these are out of print or just not available anymore so we buy a lot of used books on Amazon. Sometimes they're as low as a dollar and you just have to pay $6 for shipping. So this month I got a Fondue book! It's so wonderful! It's the same author who wrote my Comfort Food and Breakfast Comforts cookbooks.

There are four sections. My favourite is the Cheese fondues. Then they have Fried fondues (where you use oil to cook the meat), Hot Pots (which most people, including us call Chinese fondue) and Dessert fondues - oooh the chocolate possibilities! He's not ensuring any kind of weight loss giving me cookbooks like this I'll tell ya. :) We love fondues...I see lots of them in our future! We do however, need a good ceramic pot for the cheese and dessert fondues. We have a stainless steel one we already use for hot pots. I'm excited about this cookbook!!!

Look who was at the bird feeder today. A beautiful black squirrel. We used to see them a lot but in this area, they are kind of rare, they're so pretty!

I had to get a close-up of his tail because it's just wonderful. Our bird feeder has been a little slow lately, we are always seeing the usual little chickadees and the squawky Blue Jays. We get more variety of birds and critters when spring starts, but it's nice to see someone different visiting for a change! :)

After The Blizzard and Mexican Lasagna

To get down the driveway, I decided not to fight the snowdrifts and I put on my snowshoes. There is no point struggling through knee-deep snow if I don't have to! I just wanted to clear a little pathway just in case we get our delivery today. Alex and I are very loosely contemplating shoveling the rest of the driveway...later. :)

The blizzard left a lot of snow and a lot of damage, but we were lucky at home that no trees fell down in this area. Nature is tough! The sun was desperately trying to pop through this morning when I took the huskies for their 45-minute walk, it's about a mile and a half walk each morning and I'm loving it. It's hard to get myself into the snowsuit though, but once I'm out, I want to keep going! Walking in the winter is more challenging and I have to stretch after each walk now or I feel it in my legs and lower back. I can't wait for the weather to get better so I can take Jack with us and walk much longer through the woods!

But the girls do need their walk every day, especially Charlie or she gets that depression. We have a nice covered bridge here over the river, it gives the town a little quaint village feel to it! But tomorrow is Friday and the town is very quiet for now...soon all the weekenders will invade with their loud snowmobiles and ignorant "boom boom boom" of the car stereo, sigh. We can't control other people, just our own reactions to them, so we choose to hibernate even more on weekends!! The knowledge that buying our little quiet property in about 2 years time keeps me patient through the weekend noise!

Last night was supposed to be Chicken Cesar Salad, but once again I veered from the menu plan. Gosh, this free-spirit spontaneous meal attitude I've had lately is making me edgy lol...we both preferred some comfort food so I used the chicken to make my Mexican Lasagna instead.

A little indigestion was worth it lol...tonight is supposed to be chili night, but I think we'll be making a pork tenderloin instead. I've mentioned before that we love to eat comfort food, but once in a while we need some clean eating to balance everything out! I think I'll make the Apricot Brandy Glaze with it, it was so delicious the last time I made it!

*****

Do you ever have a "I wish I could change X" moment?  These are just random thoughts I'm having today...I was doing so well with my eating. I started to take a spritz of Rescue Remedy before each meal and it relaxed me enough that no food got stuck. Last night though, I had a small issue with a piece of chicken getting stuck at the base of my esophagus...no matter how many times it happens, I feel scared and traumatized. So I was thinking "I wish I could change my uncontrollable anxiety and PTSD so that I can relax enough so that I don't feel frightened every time a meal is coming up"...but then it's a pipe dream, I can't, I've done every test, tried every medication, done every therapy...the only "possible solution" (medical term apparently) is a surgery that will keep my esophagus "valve" open to my stomach. Sure, no food will get stuck ever, but acid will definitely make it's way up all the time I was told. It's no solution for me, but what can I do, this health problem is with me for good, has been since I was 8 years old - at least that's my earliest memory of food getting stuck.

Is there something you wish you could change, that you know deep down you just have to live with? Deep thoughts on a Thursday afternoon lol...

Wonderful and Scary Day!

Thanks to my friends for the nice anniversary wishes yesterday!! It was so nice to feel special like that...gush. It will take me a few days to catch up on your blogs!

We had a very nice day yesterday. We started off the morning in the sunshine. There was some snow in the forecast for the evening, but our outing was planned for the afternoon, so we figured we were safe...anyway, more on that a little later! I made Alex's grandma's signature "Toast-ettes". This is a variation on the toad in the hole. Alex's side of the family is French Canadian, though he was brought up in the States, and we live an English life here. His grandma didn't pronounce the "t" at the end of toast, so we call them "tosettes"...yummy!

I have so many food allergies and intolerances...so I make mine without the yolks. They're so good. The toast itself tastes almost like melba toast around the edges!

We went out after breakfast because we wanted to get some anniversary gifts for each other. It has sort of become a tradition that we get fishing gear! We decided to buy these ice fishing rods, see how tiny they are? We will eventually use them for ice fishing, but in the summer we will use them for small crappy fishing. We're building our collection! We just need to find some reels.

We also got some new insulated rain boots for spring and fall fishing. They were on sale so we took advantage of the lower price. So..while we were in the store, the weather got really bad. What started as a sunny day with snow forecast only to begin after 8pm, turned into a white-out blizzard - NOT what was in the forecast and we were a 90 minute drive from home. We hurried to get the food we needed for dinner, then started back at dusk in a blizzard. Alex doesn't drive yet, so it was up to me and I have to say my hands are still sore today from white-knuckle driving for 2 hours.

I went onto Google Maps to take a print screen of this hill. This is the ONLY way home unless we backtrack for two hours, then take the other way, which would total 5 hours. It's beautiful going up the mountain in the summer, but last night...it was frightening. The onslaught of snow, the cars skidding, ice, lack of road clearing...see the exclamation mark? That's where we got stuck. Thankfully I made it just beyond that point so I could slide back into someone's driveway (thank you to those people for having a clear driveway!). I actually started crying from fear because people were all over that road, it was so dangerous and we nearly got hit a few times. We were stuck there about half an hour, waiting for the trucks to clear and sand and even then, in the lowest gear with my foot to the floor, we only inched up as the tires whirred. Things go through your head in situations like that...the pets are alone, what if we can't make it home, what if the car slides down into the lake or the river or what if some yahoo with a four-wheel drive and an impatient attitude hits us...I heard stories this morning of people stuck ALL NIGHT in their cars on the highways near Montreal - what a disaster.

We were both traumatized from that. It was really scary folks. We don't have studded winter tires, just the regular ones, and a front wheel drive and the lack of control was terrifying. We agreed that we will try to put the thousand dollars aside as soon as we can to get new winter tires that are studded because we aren't ready to buy a new car with four-wheel drive, and we do live in the mountains so winter is going to happen whether we like it or not! The fishing boat might just have to wait a few years now sigh...but our safety is so much more important. But we made it home safely - much later than planned, the dogs needed to pee and we needed a drink when we got back! This is a nice Moscato wine called Nivole, it's sweet and we relaxed, listening to the Jack Benny radio show, sipping on wine! Jack Benny is a master comedian...I'm so glad these radio shows are available on You Tube, this kind of comedy doesn't exist anymore.

We honestly didn't feel like cooking, but we agreed that we can't let what happened ruin our plans. We really wanted to celebrate our 4 years together, so we tackled the recipes together which was so nice! The appetizer was a Tuscan Tomato Soup that was really fresh and yummy!

For our main course, we had more appetizers :) I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but we had Steak Tartare - well Alex did. I used to eat this and LOVED it, but my fear of beef getting stuck in my esophagus outweighs my desire to eat this lovely appetizer. Yes, it's raw meat, that's why we know it's not for everyone! For me, I made a Smoked Trout Mousse with Orange and Chives.

For dessert, we thawed out the other half of my birthday cake! That Ferrero Rocher yummy cake. There is just a little bit left! The meal was so delicious and we stayed up intil 4:30am watching a series called Alone. It's just about people being dropped in remote locations all by themselves to see how long they can survive fending for themselves, we are hooked on it and had to force ourselves to turn it off for some sleep. But we were kind of riled up from the trauma of that drive home.

We woke up to about 2 more feet of snow this morning and it's still going! We had to shovel out just to give the dogs a place to "go". I say this every March when spring seems to be arriving. "We ALWAYS get a horrible snow storm around St-Patty's Day". And we got it again this year! It never fails.

Jack didn't last long outside but the girls loved being in the snow, watching me shovel for them lol...now I'm headed back to bed, after very little sleep, to watch more tv shows with Alex...we have no intention to take the car out ever again in any type of snowstorm, no matter what special day it falls on! I remember the days of commuting to work and back and I'm so grateful that we have built a life together that doesn't require back and forth driving to an office. Simplicity and planning...despite the scary experience from yesterday, I feel lucky to be living where I am and having my loving relationship and my wonderful fur family. Can't take any of that for granted!

Ham and Cheese Crepes, Lacy Hash Browns

I took this photo of Alex in the summer of 2013, during the first year that we met. He taught me how to fish and we spent many evenings by the lake together! Today is our 4-year anniversary so I will be posting a short blog post today because we have lots planned! 

As per my plan, last night's dinner was supposed to be blueberry pancakes...but just to show how spontaneous I am, I changed things up MAJORLY.

We had ham and cheese Crepes instead :) That IS a major change for me!! Same basic meal but I really wanted to use up some Monteray Jack cheese I had from last shopping cycle so I stuffed the crepes with ham and cheese and let them sit in the oven for 10 minutes or so to melt. I also made some Lacy Hash Browns from the Williams Sonoma Breakfast book - YUM! Those potatoes are delicious but my gosh, you can taste the butter...they'll be a once in a while side dish that's for sure.