Noms 'N Stuff

Blueberry Cream Cheese Breakfast Sandwich

This wasn’t agreat success. In theory, blueberries and cream cheese melted together sounds awesome, but in practice when all you have is whole wheat bread it doesn’t taste too great. The “recipe” calls for frozen french toast bread. I don’t know if that exists in Canada or if it’s one of the many awesome culinary delights that only Americans are privilege to but I just used regular bread and eyeballed the rest. 

I used about 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries, two heaping tablespoons of plain cream cheese and 1 tsp of icing sugar. It’s a wonder I didn’t go into a diabetic coma after I ate this, although I did lay down shortly after. We’ll say it was unrelated. 

Mix the cream cheese and the icing sugar and add in the berries. I grilled my bread first and then made the sandwich and heated it in the pan until the blueberries thawed a bit. 

I wouldn’t call this a complete failure, I think I just need to find a sweeter bread (if that exists?) to complete my morning sugar coma. Until then I give it a solid B. 

DIY Owl Halloween Costume

I love Halloween. I don’t mess around with Halloween. I go all out with my costumes, and never half-ass it. I have dressed up as an 80’s work out instructor, a tourist, Sue Sylvester, Ke$ha, Garth from Wayne’s World and that’s just the last few years. 

This year, due to scheduling, we had to have our Halloween party after Halloween. I had already gone as Wayne and Garth with my friend Emily and decided that for our Halloween party on the Island I wanted to do something cute. Garth was fun, but I basically looked disgusting all night and wanted to look like a girl instead of like a gender-confused stoner. I decided I wanted to be an owl. I trolled through Facebook posts the days following Halloween and was very concerned I would see another owl among the loofahs and Toddlers & Tiaras, but thankfully only a seven year old on Steven & Chris ripped off my costume. Only the unemployed like myself watch Steven & Chris so I was relieved and pumped about my costume. I was going to make my costume, and it was going to be wonderful. 

I actually didn’t think I would be able to pull it off, but I researched DIY owl costumes on the world wide web and found a few sites for inspiration. I tweaked it a little bit but the end result was pretty awesome in my opinion! 

Supplies:

Fabric - I bought an assortment of fabric so that my owl would be visually stimulating. I went to Fabricville and dug through the discount racks. I bought 1 m of three different types of fabric; mustard yellow, plum & a cute brown patterned fabric that I could use reversibly. I had a TON left over but the minimum for these bolts was 1 m and it only cost me $12 so I was ok with that. I also purchased two bundles of scrap fabric that I think were $1.50 each in a rust color and an orange color. With some sharp fabric scissors I was ready to peace out of Fabricville and its overwhelming-ness. I popped into Value Village and picked up a jersey sheet in an oatmeal color as well. My feathers were complete!
Base: I looked at Value Village for a pillowcase to use as a base but I didn’t care for any of the ones there so I bought a pack of oatmeal colored jersey pillowcases from Wally World for $7.97. 

I also bought Fabric Glue and a package of earth-toned felt while I was there. I was good to go!

I created a feather template using some card stock that I had. I used it to cut out squares of fabric and then stacked 2-4 pieces on top of one another to cut out the feathers depending on the material. It took me about an hour but I did it while I was watching TV (and again, being unemployed I had oodles of time on my hands) so I barely even noticed.

Ta-da!!

To prep my pillowcase I cut a hole for the neck and arms. Then I started to glue. A couple of the tutorials I had found suggested sewing the feathers but I don’t have a sewing machine and hand-sewing was not an option for me. I’m crazy about Halloween but I’m not that crazy. Although if you had a sewing machine it would be mega easy- just line up the feathers, pin and run them through your machine. I laid mine out before hand so that I didn’t end up with colors beside one another (ok maybe I’m a little crazy). This fabric glue (Beacon brand) is cray and I barely used any at all for the entire costume. 

Next- my owl mask! I didn’t want to be confused for…whatever this could be confused for so I wanted my mask to be perfect. It was seriously SO easy to make. First I again cut out a template using card stock for my “face”. I used it to cut out two pieces of felt, one brown and one tan. The second piece of felt I just kept cutting around until it was the same shape as the first but just a smaller version. I cut out a beak using my mustard colored fabric, and circles to go around the eyes. Texture texture texture! To truly make it a “mask” I cut an old brown elastic headband and with a couple stitches and some glue attached it to the mask. It probably took me twenty minutes to do this part!

I just wore burgundy tights and tan flats and was good to go!
I did put a lot of eye make-up on, using my golds and some glitter just because I knew I wouldn’t be wearing my mask all night. I teased the crap out of my hair and used a Bump-It or two to make my “nest” of hair.
Voila! Done.

Inspiration here, here & here. 

Buffalo Cauliflower with ranch dipping sauce

Cauliflower is not my favorite. Not even close. So when I saw this post pop up on Pinterest and I conveniently had some lonely cauliflower in the fridge leftover from a veggie tray I thought it would be perfect to get….well whatever goodness cauliflower has to offer (just kidding, I know they’re full of anti-oxidants and fibre and all of that good stuff). I wouldn’t say they turned out perfectly, I don’t think I let them cook long enough but our damn smoke alarm has been going off all week so I just couldn’t handle the noise anymore and decided they were done.

We had everything we needed already in the house so it was great! The recipe I found was GF & vegan so the woman used rice flour which we obviously didn’t have. That may have also been the reason they didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked since we just used regular whole wheat flour. 

Batter:
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 cup of water
Dash of hot sauce (Franks is our brand of choice- we put that sh*t on everything)

Mix the bater up and dip the cauliflower (obviously not the whole head, after it’s been broken up into bite size pieces) in the batter until it’s coated evenly. Place it on a cookie sheet lined with parchment and sprayed with cooking spray.
Cook at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with a mixture of half and half Franks & canola oil (we used 1/4 cup of each and had some left over so it really just depends on how much cauliflower you’re using). Put them back in the oven and let them crisp up a bit. Mine didn’t crisp up which is why I think they should have cooked for longer! I dipped them in ranch and they were seriously pretty good!

We also had our lettuce wraps again *addicted*  

Dresser Re-finish

I normally just post recipes here for friends & family but I thought that since I’d done a couple DIY projects lately I would write about them. 

First up is my dresser re-finish. Last spring I bought a dresser off Kijiji for $100. It was a huge, antique looking dresser that I thought would look perfect in our bedroom. I had priced new dressers from anywhere between 500 and 900 dollars knew I could do it for way cheaper. This project in total cost me $200 which I think is a steal of a deal! I drug it out over a few months because I was super busy this summer withweddings and work but I finally finished it last weekend with lots of help from my live-in handyman!

Supplies:
An electric sander - it will make your life much easier I promise
Sandpaper - different grades for the differentdetails

Paint- the paint we used had a polyurethane agent already in it to prevent scratches on the paint. The gentleman at Home Hardwaresuggested it to me when I told him I was painting furniture.I’ve noticed little dings on the top ofthe dresser already so I would probably add another coat of the pure polyurethane just to make sure it’s durable.

Brushes - I had a large paintbrush and a couple smaller brushes for the smaller details. Buy good quality brushes! Don’t cheap out!
Hardware - pulls are expensive. My justification was that I got the dresser for cheap so if I splurged on pulls that it was ok. I did compromise and got the crystal knobs I loved for the smaller center drawers only (at $6 each) and bought pewter handles ($3.99 each) for the larger drawers.

Draw liners - these are optional but the wood inside the dresser splinters easily and I didn’t want it to pick my clothes. I picked up a roll at Winners for $7.99 and I had enough to do all the drawers except one of the small drawers. Unfortunate, but I’ll deal with it. 

First I got Jason to take all of the hardware off the drawers and dresser itself. They were ugly brassy pulls that I knew would have no place on my beautiful dresser. 

Then the sanding began. This is by far the worst part of the re-finish. It’s SO tedious and wood particles get everywhere. I had to immediately shower after I finished sanding. Jason did all of the large, flat areas with his electric sander and I did the small details with sand paper and a sanding block. I got discouraged a lot because it seriously took so long but here is the finished product:

I can’t find my actual before picture because it was taken on my old iPhone but the finish on the wood looked like this:

After we sanded the dresser we realized it probably wasn’t even worth the $100 we paid for it. While the frame of the dresser itself is made with good quality lumber, the sides and drawers are made with thin chipboard that splits easily (as we discovered when trying to drill new holes for the pulls I bought.

After sanding Jason filled in the existing holes in the drawers with wood putty and sanded them down so they were level. Then the painting began! Yay!

I cranked some tunes and got three coats on the dresser in one sunny afternoon.

Then I hit a rut. Well to be honest, Mother Nature hit a rut. It rained and rained and rained all fall. So the dresser sat in the garage for almost a month, still needing another couple coats of paint and missing some hardware. My lovely man friend took care of the paint on a nice weekend when I was in NB and the dresser was ready for some hardware!

This part was tricky. Because we had filled over the existing holes with wood putty, we had a fresh slate to drill for our hardware. What we didn’t expect was that the holes we needed to drill would overlap with the covered up holes. Also the larger drawers had a bit of a wave to them, so the longer pewter pulls didn’t lay flat against the wood. After some cursing and lots of measuring, we finally got the pulls on the dresser. My advice? Keep the original screws from the original hardware. That way if the screws that come with your pulls are too short, you have the originals to either use as a guideline when purchasing new screws, or you can simply use the originals!

                                           So very happy with the finished product!

Unfortunately the mirror that came with the dresser is tarnished and broken so I’m not able to use it. It will be going in the garbage pile for spring clean-up. I knew this when I bought the dresser but thought it could be salvaged. So now I’m on the look out for an antique looking silver mirror, which I’m sure I will eventually find at Winners or Home Sense! 

Ground chicken lettuce wraps

I’ve been seeing lettuce wraps on Pinterest and in various magazines for the past little while. I didn’t really think it would be something I would like, as I’m not a huge lettuce fan to begin with. I’ll choose spinach over iceberg or romaine any time! After talking with Jason about cutting down the amount of carbs we’ve been eating (we go through loaves of bread and bagels like nobody’s business) I thought I would give them a try. 

These ones I found on Pinterest, and are supposed to be a knock off of lettuce wraps you can get at an American Asian chain restaurant. They are absolutely phenomenal! I’ve made them twice in the last week! 

Recipe:

Ground chicken (or turkey would work also)
Lettuce (the outer leaves of Iceberg or full Romaine leaves, we’ve used both)
1 medium onion, chopped very finely
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
Ginger - I used two cubes of the frozen Toppits brand (these are amazing for herbs you don’t use often enough to keep it fresh in the house)
1 Tbsp sesame oil (I used olive oil both times because I didn’t have an sesame)
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp peanut butter
1/2 Tbsp water
1/2 tsp honey
2 tsp of garlic chili sauce *
1 can of water chestnuts, chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup chopped peanuts**

*Note: - don’t buy the VH1 garlic chilli sauce. It’s full of sugar and calories and basically defeats the purpose of making this dish. We opted for the real deal- Vietnamese Huy Fong Foods (made in Cali, not exactly the real deal but it has 0 cals, 0 g of fat and less than 1 g of sugar compared to the 70 cals and 12 g of sugar the VH1 sauce carries- whoa!)
 
**Note - do not send your man friend to the grocery store to get peanuts. He will come back with an enormous bagof peanuts that need to be shelled which will take you at least twenty minutes to get this much: 

Using a large frying pan, cook up your ground meat with the onions & a dash of salt and pepper. Once the chicken starts to brown add in your garlic & ginger. 

Meanwhile (at the muthaf*%kin prom) combine your sauce in a small bowl- soy sauce, rice vinegar, water, PB, honey, oil & garlic sauce. Heat in the microwave for about 25 seconds and stir until the PB is dissolved and everything is mixed well. Add to the pan. Once chicken is browned add water chestnuts and green onions.

Spoon into your lettuce leaves and top with chopped peanuts before eating!

And Instagram it because it’s pretty!

Blueberry Coconut Muffins

This is a lengthy post just because baking involves a lot of steps. Which is why I never do it. Sigh. However I promise you that these muffins are worth it. 

Jay’s brother worked for a blueberry…farm? orchard? this summer and so one day he showed up with a massive bag of fresh wild blueberries. YUM but what shall we do with them all? I made multiple smoothies and still had a ton left so I decided to search for a blueberry muffin recipe that was semi-healthy. 

I don’t remember where I found the recipe for these blueberry coconut muffins, so if you stumble across this blog while trolling the interweb I’M SORRY that I didn’t give you credit. Call the blueberry muffin police.

1/4 cup unsweetened coconut
2 tbsp + 3/4 all-purpose flour
2 tbsp + 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp canola oil
1 cup whole wheat flour or pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 egg + 1 egg white
2 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla or coconut extract (I used vanilla)
1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup buttermilk OR if you don’t have buttermilk add 1 tbsp lemon juice to 1 cup milk

I doubled this recipe and froze some, I think it made about 20 muffins?

Heat your oven to 400 degrees. 

In a small mixing bowl combine coconut, 2 Tbsp of all-purpose flour, 2 tbsp brown sugar. Drizzle with 1 tbsp oil. Set that delicious crumbly topping aside for now.

In a larger mixing bowl whisk 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt & cinnamon.

In another mixing bowl (why I hate baking, too many damn dishes and my sous chef gets pissed) whisk 1/2 cup brown sugar, tbsp oil, egg + egg white, buttermilk (or milk + lemon juice) and vanilla. 

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir. Add blueberries. 

Spoon mixture into greased muffin tins and top with the coconut mixture. Press it gently into the muffins so it doesn’t fall off. Bake for 20 minutes. 

Lemon Garlic Shrimp Linguini

I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest (ha) and thought about it today when I got home from work around 6 (dang soccer season) and was scrambling to throw something together before the hypoglycaemic crazies set in. It’s easy peazy and requires very few ingredients, all of which I had at home! I made some minor adjustments just because there’s only two of us and I didn’t have EXACTLY what was listed (not enough butter, no fresh parsley, only one lemon, etc.). I’ll give you my version because I personally think the amount of lemon suggested is a bit much! Ours was delicious so I would stick with this :)

Here is what you need:

Shrimp (the recipe calls for Jumbo shrimp but we just used the minis and it was fine, we just used more, about 1/2 the bag)
Linguini (1/2 a box)
1 lemon
Parsley (if you have fresh- 3/4 cup, if not I used about 1 Tbsp)
A generous shake of crushed red chili flakes
Salt & Pepper
6 Tbsp Olive Oil
5 Tbsp butter (I only had about 3 because that’s all we had left and it was fine)
NINE cloves of garlic, minced (I’m glad I’m not working tomorrow)
Fresh Parm

Bring salted water to a boil in a medium sized saucepan. Add your linguini, a Tbsp of olive oil and some salt. The recipe called for 1 Tbsp but I don’t like to eat a lot of salt so I used probably a tsp.

At the same time (multi-tasking like a boss) heat your butter and olive oil in a large, deep skillet. Add your garlic and cook for about one minute. Then add your shrimp, parsley, salt and pepper. If you’re using uncooked shrimp cook until it’s pink, otherwise just cook until some of the moisture evaporates. 

Remove from heat and add 1/4 cup lemon juice- I used the Real Lemon because that’s all I had but obviously fresh lemon juice would be better. Also add the zest of one lemon, and 1/2 lemon very thinly sliced. Add your chili flakes. 

Drain your pasta and return to pot. Add in the shrimp and sauce and give it a good mix! We added some fresh parm as well!

This dish was so good and I was so ravenous that I didn’t even get to take a picture! So you’ll have to settle for the one that accompanied the recipe (I certainly didn’t take it). You can adjust all the ingredients depending on your taste- less lemon, more lemon, more garlic, less garlic…you get the picture!! ENJOY :)

One Pot Chicken Asparagus Skillet

Sobeys “Inspired” magazine is seriously a great resource for recipes. I find SO many of my favourites in it, recipes that I use over and over again. This recipe drew my attention because we already had most of the ingredients. The one thing I would do differently would be to use the bone-in chicken thighs as the recipe suggested instead of boneless chicken breasts. Other then that it was a quick weeknight dinner that I’ll definitely make again!

4 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed
1/2 tsp of S&P
2 tbsp canola oil
1 onion diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 tsp fresh Thyme
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
3/4 cup chicken broth
3/4 cup water
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 tbsp capers, drained
12 White Petites potatoes, halved (I used red potatoes because I’m convinced the kind listed in this magazine do not exist
1 lb asparagus
2 tbsp minced parsley

Head 1 tbsp of the oil in a large deep skillet. Add your chicken and cook until golden brown (10 min). Transfer chicken to a plate.

Reduce heat to medium. Add remaining oil. Add onion, garlic, thyme and cook, stirring often about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with flour and cook for 1 min. Stir in chicken broth, water, lemon zest, juice and capers and bring to a boil. Add potatoes, cover and reduce heat to medium-low & cook about 10 minutes.

Add chicken to skillet, cover and cook about 20 minutes. Lay asparagus over chicken and cover until asparagus is tender (7 minutes). Sprinkle with parsley.

I found this really easy because once the chicken is cooked you just add things and keep stirring. It takes about an hour to cook but I found it very easy!

I used fresh thyme but I don’t know that I would next time. Sobeys only sells very large packages of fresh thyme and you only need 3/4 tsp for this recipe. I believe the remainder is still in my crisper, probably rotting. I’m sure dried thyme would work just as well!

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

Yes. This was as good as it sounds. 
I found this on Pinterest…ohhh Pinterest and it’s SO easy that you must try it right away. Perfect for a nice fall morning…which is when we had it! Lazy Saturdays are da best.

What you need:

Bread - I just used plain whole grain Wonder Bread because I don’t like a thick crust on my french toast
3/4 cup canned pumpkin
3 eggs
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

This recipe is for FOURTEEN slices of bread (and really who cooks that much french toast) so half or quarter the recipe if you’re just feeding a couple people and don’t want to waste the mixture. 

Whisk everything together. Dip your bread in the mixture and place it on a well greased pan/skillet/grill etc. 

My first couple batches I didn’t cook long enough so they were really mushy and quite frankly really nasty. So cook the french toast for a very long time, until it’s crispy. I just used a dash (really, very little) maple syrup (local of course) and a sprinkle of powdered sugar. SO good!

http://www.5dollardinners.com/erins-pumpkin-pie-french-toast-5-dinner-challenge/ 

Cheesy Sweet Potato Goodness with Greek Yogurt Dip

I saw these babies on Pinterest a while ago and have been meaning to make them but just kept forgetting to pick up sweet potatoes and parm every time I was at the grocery store. They’re a little time consuming but so yummy that they’re worth it!

2 sweet potatoes
1 cup parmesan
1/2 cup egg whites
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/4 tsp pepper

Peel your sweet potatoes (or ask your man friend to do it like I did- there is nothing I hate more than peeling vegetables…except maybe peeling skin off chicken. And dishes.)

Grate them with a small grater (I used a handheld one) over a bowl. 

The blog I found this recipe on said to squeeze out the moisture in the sweet potatoes. No wonder these suckers never crisp up in the oven! They have SO much water in them it’s insane. I felt a bit like I was squeezing all the sweet potato goodness down the drain but you win some you lose some.

Add the rest of your ingredients.

Spray a wire rack with cooking spray and place over a foiled baking sheet. 

Using your hands, scoop the mixture up and make a patty, pressing flat onto the rack until you have no mixture left. 

Cook at 425 for about 30 minutes. Make sure your rack is in the middle of the oven so they cook evenly. When they’re crisped up- they’re done!

I also made a Greek Yogurt dip that was linked to on the original blog post. I think if I were to do it again I would be a little unhealthy and sub the yogurt for mayo- keeping the same spices. I make a curry mayo dip for my sweet potato fries so I think it would go well with them.

1 cup plain greek yogurt
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cumin

I served it with my maple dijon chicken recipe I found on Pinterest and while I wouldn’t say they went perfectly together I wasn’t complaining! 

Cheesy Sweet Potato Patties
Yogurt Dip