Battle of Ingredients #14 BBQ in the Thunderstorm

The summer is officially here and the weather has been beautiful with a heat wave of sort, more like humidity that swept through this past week as the thunderstorm just refused to roll in. Of course, Phoebe and I ended up choosing the day for the Battle of Ingredients on the day that the thunderstorm did hit. The thunderstorm did give us the perk of having a nice cool breeze. The husband was a champ and toughed out the rain under our car port to be the grill master. Summer BBQ is always a theme with us and we did try to keep things a little different and give some variety.

Drinks

As a change in pace, especially since I also found out that I had overtime on Sunday, my friends brought in the lighter coolers for our drinks and chose a mix pack for Smirnoff Ice which had the Classic, Wild Berry, Raspberry and Orange. These ones are always light and fun. Its been a while since I’ve had a Smirnoff Ice so it definitely brings me back to the early days when I first got introduced to the whole drinking alcohol business. Back to this choice, it was really refreshing and fruity and suitable for the general shindig.

BBQ Food

Phoebe

Mushrooms, Corn & Zucchini

Coca Cola Marinated Chicken Drumsticks

Phoebe bought over some mushrooms (mini bella & fresh shiitake) along with zucchini and corn to grill as our veggies. At the same time, she did a take 2 on last year’s coca cola chicken wings except this time she used drumsticks and had marinated them for 2 days beforehand to hopefully get the coca cola flavor more prominent. While the drumsticks still didn’t have the cola taste being exceptionally standout, it still had a really nice flavor to it.

Kim

Chicken and Veggie Skewers

Bacon-wrapped Sausages

My contribution went to two very basic options. The first was the bacon-wrapped sausages which I had planned for last time but didn’t end up doing so here we go. It turned out as it would to be quite good since you can’t really go wrong with sausages and bacon combo (at least to me). Chicken and Veggies skewers composed of chicken thighs, zucchini, bell peppers and Spanish onion. We also decided to try a new barbecue sauce and bought the Joe Beef one. They turned out really good as well.

Dessert

Nothing for dessert tonight and we chose the healthy route of having fruits which I obviously forgot to take a picture of. Next time, I’ll have some other plans.

That’s it for this Battle of Ingredients!
July is a busy month (as explained in the last Weekly Adventures post HERE), so we are working out some place to dine out instead.
Battle of Ingredients should resume in August (we are working out availability…). 

Goodfood Recap #29

And we are here with a slightly late Goodfood recap! But its a nice change in pace from the overload of movie reviews that I’ve been writing up!

No fancy picture today since the program I use is having some issues it seems. Either way, this box had some interesting recipes and one repeat recipe that I (of course) forgot to take a picture of. Let’s check it out!

Haddock
with homemade Romesco sauce & roasted fingerling potatoes

There’s this love we have for eating haddock which we only have when we make it in these boxes since the recipes are always so unique. This one is definitely outside of what we would usually cook at home. I had no idea what Romesco sauce is but it was really good especially when matched with the fish. Its nice also because everything were so nicely flavored but also nothing too strongly flavored also. We’ve been going for more normal flavors so this really did fit into our meals quite well.

Hoisin-Glazed Chicken Breasts
with spicy pickled vegetables, sticky rice & garlic peanuts

As usual, I’m always into the more Asian cuisine sort of meals. However, there is this fascination that Goodfood has with pickled vegetables. Its not a bad thing since its the alternative I have for eating raw vegetables. Although, I’ve built back the tolerance slightly to eating raw veggies here and there, I still prefer my vegetables cooked. However, other than the pickled vegetables, the chicken was pretty nice. Sometimes with hoisin glazed, it can get a little salty but this recipe worked pretty well.

Roasted Chicken Thighs
with root vegetables and fennel slaw

This is the repeat recipe and since I was so busy with the Festival du Nouveau Cinema, I had my husband do the cooking for this one. He did a fantastic job and gave it 5 stars simply for the cooking experience and how the house smelled. Plus, the recipe itself was a good one as well. You can see my first impressions of it back in this recap HERE.

Toulouse Sausage, White Bean & Cherry Tomato Cassoulet
with Salanova Salad

Finally, the first cassoulet in Goodfood that I think I’ve seen. I’ve never had one before so this recipe was the filler for the previous box but we knew that we needed it due to the busy week that I had anticipated. With that said, this one turned out pretty good. The meal is very tasty. The toulouse sausage in particular was the highlight of the meal. I’m not a big fan of white beans to begin with. Lentils and that sort of stuff is never my favorite food to eat but the spices and flavors worked well together so it was a pleasant surprise.

That’s it for this Goodfood recap! 
Some nice discoveries! I can’t say that anything in particular stood out as one that we would repeat other than the one that we did choose to repeat. 
The haddock however might be the choice for one I’d try again though. 

Dinner: One Pot Chicken and Sausage Pasta

Efficient meal solutions are my favorite thing to look up. The one that has caught my eye recently are all those one pot meal recipes. Its always felt very weird even if the idea does work. The coincidence of the situation was that we had sausage and chicken that needed to be cooked and a crazy amount of pasta so I decided to find a Pinterest recipe which didn’t actually happen that matched with I wanted but found a similar one so used it as a guideline.

One Pot Chicken and Sausage Pasta

This is the recipe that I used as a guideline to see how it all worked: http://www.number-2-pencil.com/2015/10/15/one-pot-cajun-chicken-and-sausage-alfredo/

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic, minced
4 chicken drumsticks, skin removed and meat separated from bone
4 honey-garlic sausages, cut in pieces
1 zucchini, chopped
dried pasta
chicken broth
salt & pepper
olive oil

1. Heat olive oil in a large cooking pot over medium heat.
2. Add chicken, both the bite size pieces and the bones to the pot. Season with salt and pepper. Brown the chicken.
3. Add in the sausages to the pot and cover the pot so it can cook through.
4. Add in the garlic and cook 1 to 2 minutes.
5. Add in chicken broth and dried pasta. The broth has to cover the meat and pasta. Add water if not enough broth.
6. Stir the ingredients together and bring to a simmer.
7. When it simmers, lower the heat. Cover and let simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.
8. Make sure pasta is cooked. Remove the pot from heat.

The one pot experiment was pretty successful. What makes things that simmer or bake in the oven really great is that you can set a timer and walk away to do something else. In terms of cooking, it still takes the same amount of time if you did it all separately, except here the bulk of time is on preparation and it frees up a little more time as everything cooks are about the same time. I would love to try this with some variety.

Have you tried doing one pot recipes?

Cabane à Sucre: Érabliere au Palais Sucré (Mont Saint Gregoire, Quebec)

After a few years ago’s little sugar shack incident that left quite the sour taste in our mouth, which you can find here, my girl friends and I decided to head out to give it another try but of course, at another location. With that experience in our pockets, we made sure to get how everything worked here before even beginning the meal. I’m getting ahead of myself already.

Let’s get ready to sugar off! 🙂

Érabliere au Palais Sucré

The site itself was really nice. There were some farm animals to look at. There were also swing sets around a little fire and a playground area for the kids. Inside a house was a the tir a sirop which is a little maple syrup thing that I’ll show you later. We had a bit of time to walk around while we waited for our table to be available since we got there a little earlier than the reservation. It was a beautiful day so made the walk very enjoyable.

Now for the meal!

 

Pea Soup

Main meal

In the main meal, there’s the scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, sausages, fried potatoes and cooked potatoes, coleslaw, beans, and the crunchy thing. Most of these have maple syrup already but you can always add more maple syrup since that is the point.

Dessert

All the desserts had milk so I couldn’t have any of it but my friends said that it was incredibly sweet so it was very filling as well. There’s some sugar pie and mini pancakes and little cakes and the pudding.

Finally, after we left, it was time to use the ticket for the “tir au sirop” which is maple syrup on ice and you use a popsicle stick to roll it up to eat.

This is actually one of my favorite winter highlights and I love it a lot. Its pretty awesome. And this tasted really good. It is pure maple syrup so every place has a little variety and I like this place’s quite a bit.

A quick little outing but its always fun with my girl friends. It was a ton of fun and the meal was pretty good. Most of all, the service was very good. Our waitress tried her best to even offer options for the dessert when she knew that I couldn’t have any. I always appreciate these little gestures.

A fun little outing!
Have you been to Sugar Shack (aka Cabane a Sucre)?

Unboxing & Recap: Miss Fresh #6

Remember last Unboxing/Recap of Miss Fresh I said I had another box coming soon? Here it is!

Miss Fresh
(Week of November 29th)
Note: There is as usual 4 recipes but they forgot to include one of the recipe cards. Luckily, the recipe is available online.

GNOCCHIS WITH BRUSSEL SPROUTS
pine nuts, red onions and parmesan

Gnocchis with Brussel Sprouts (without cheese)

I’m going to admit that I’ve only ever had gnocchi maybe once before this time so I wasn’t exactly sure how to cook it and my version was the cheeseless version. My husband had the actual version with cheese sprinkled on top. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy with this recipe. I think the flavors were a bit complex or maybe I just didn’t make it correctly. However, my husband’s actual version tasted good so I think the cheese adds a nice balance to it. If I were to make this again, it might be without apples and more finely chopped onions. Other than that, the brussel sprouts and gnocchi itself was perfect, plus, pine nuts added a really nice touch to it.

The take away from this recipe other than making gnocchi is that brussel sprouts are fantastic made in the simplest way possible: over-roasted seasoned with salt and pepper.

CHICKEN BREAST WITH APRICOT SAUCE
served with Squash Couscous

Chicken Breast with Apricot Sauce

If you all know me well, you know that I love chicken. It is one of those things that determine why I could never be a vegetarian. I have to admit that I chose this box for having this apricot sauce recipe because I just wanted to learn how to make it. I don’t use couscous ever unless its in these boxes. This one uses a Israeli Couscous and actually, much to my surprise, the squash couscous had a bit of heat that matched well with the tarragon and apricot sauce on the chicken. This is really tasty! I love the recipe a lot.

Biggest takeaway from this one: Chicken breast covered in foil baked in oven helps retain a lot of tenderness in the meat. We have always struggled with chicken breast being too dry after its cooked, so this could be a good solution in the future.

SAUSAGE AND POTATO PAN ROAST
with Spinach and Tomatoes

Sausage and Potato Pan Roast

Both my husband and I deem this the favorite recipe in this Miss Fresh box. The sausage tasted great. Its a normal everyday meal but super easy to put together as its just putting everything into a pan, seasoning a little, very little preparation as well and pop into the oven. I love efficient recipes and I ended up actually making this one for lunch one day over the weekend and it was super great. Even better because my Saturdays are always busy running around taking care of stuff so making something that tastes good and is quick and easy is extra plus.

SWEDISH MEATBALLS
on Basmati Rice and Napa Salad

Swedish Meatballs

The highlight of the main reason of why I got this box was for Swedish Meatballs! Sometimes, it is the reason I head out to IKEA. I was hoping that it’d turn out as it should. To be honest, these ones didn’t taste great but I have a feeling it is my own fault. In these recipes, the biggest issues I have are when it explains the simmering and whatnot. I feel like its hard to judge how much sauce is there and the portions and time frames sometimes don’t work well for me. However, this recipe could be just because I chopped the onions a little too big and there was just too much. I’m not an onion fan to begin with and the only way I enjoy a dish is when the onion is chopped really fine but I’m not good with preparation in the kitchen. It is a work in progress. I honestly blame myself if this didn’t turn out as it should.

Overall…This box turned out okay. I mean, we had two really great recipes and two that were decent but could be better because I pinpointed where my flaws were and I honestly think it is my approach that needs to change than anything else. However, if the lovely team at Miss Fresh do read this. Please remember to triple check that all recipe cards are enclosed. I was cooking the chicken via my phone. Its a bit more hectic because my phone’s screen will shut off after a certain amount of time and I don’t have the best memory so I like to triple check before doing anything. Just a minor detail, you know, but improves the experience when it isn’t overlooked.