Cupcakes Of Pure Evil

I've decided that Pinterest is an evil evil site. I mean, really. I'm on Weight Watchers right now, and I'm baking these things.   I saw them, and I knew that I just HAD to make them.

They're just so easy, and that's mostly why they're evil. All you need to make these are:  cookie dough (I used chocolate chip), a bunch of Reese peanut butter cups, and brownie mix.

That's it.  Spooooooky......

The instructions from the original post state,

"Preheat oven to 350, smoosh 1.5 squares of break-apart refrigerated cookie dough into the bottom of each well.  Place Reese cup (or an Oreo!) upside down on top of the cookie dough.  Top with prepared box brownie mix, filling 3/4 full.  Bake for 18 minutes."

OK, so here's what I did.

I mixed up a batch of my own chocolate chip cookie dough (from my Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookie post here, but without the bacon), bought 24 snack-sized peanut butter cups (which are a little smaller than regular ones) and prepared two boxes of chocolate fudge brownie mix.

**NOTE TO SELF:  Do a better job of spraying the pans with cooking spray.  More on that later.

The picture above says it all, really.  Cookie dough, then peanut butter cup, then brownie mix.  It's really as simple as that.  I ended up baking them for more like 22 minutes, because the brownies on top weren't quite set at the 18 minute mark.

When I removed them from the oven, I decided to let them cool for a while before attempting an extraction from the muffin pans.  Good thought, but a better thought would have been to do a better job greasing those suckers up first.  Oopsie.

Extricating the yummy cupcakes from the pans was arduous, to say the least.  The first one I took out looked like I'd sat on it (I hadn't, in case you were wondering).  Still tasted amazing, but not so much with the pretty.  The picture at the top of this post was my third attempt.  I had to gently saw up and and down around the edge of each one with a wet knife to get them all out.  Took a while, but it was worth it.  Yummy, but they're just so darn rich.  I challenge anyone to eat more than one of these at a time. 

A Little Sauce on the Side (Ribs), or, Taking a Bit of a Ribbing

One night a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting at home reading when Dar came home from doing the grocery shopping. After taking her coat and boots off, she looked at me and said, "I bought some presents for you..."

"For me???? You shouldn't have..."

Dar then rummaged around in one of the grocery bags and proceeded to pull out a package of pork tenderloin, and a rack of pork side ribs.

My baby loves me.

Now, as incredible as it may sound, I had never cooked ribs before. I don't think that there's a specific reason for this, but I think that the lack of a BBQ grill is one of the factors. Turns out, the oven is fine place to cook your ribs. As with most things in life, it's not the equipment that matters, it's what you do with it.

Ahem.

Since I have spent a serious amount of time watching the Food Network, I have come to believe that the best way to cook ribs is 'low and slow'. This means that the ribs should be cooked at a low temperature for a longer period of time. This method results in very tender, fall-off-the-bone meat which, really, is what I look for when I order ribs at a restaurant.

The cooking instructions on the package said to cook the ribs at 375°F (190°C) for about 75 minutes. Hmmm... no. If I wanted pork chops, I would cook pork chops. SO, I did a little research online and decided to go with the slower route and try cooking them at about 250°F (135°C) for closer to three hours.

But first... the marinade. Oh yes. Since I was completely winging this anyway, I decided to marinate the ribs overnight with a dry rub first, then baste with a smoky BBQ sauce while they cooked.

The dry rub I used was as follows:

GG's Wonderful Rib Rub

Mix together in a medium-sized bowl -
About 10 cloves of garlic, crushed and finely diced
Equal measures (around 2 tbsp each) of:
- freshly ground black pepper
- kosher salt
- brown sugar
- cumin
- chili flakes
- cayenne
- paprika

Yummy.

I cut the rack into two pieces, rubbed this wonderful stuff well into the meaty side of both pieces and placed them, meat to meat, in a Ziploc baggie. I let them sit in the fridge overnight so the flavours could marinate and co-mingle and stuff.


Cooking them was pretty simple, really. I put them on a Pampered Chef stoneware pan (love the stoneware) and covered them with some smoky BBQ sauce I picked up at the One-Of-A-Kind Show in Toronto back before Christmas. Into the oven they went at 250°F (135°C) and I just let them cook, checking them every 30 minutes or so to make sure they hadn't dried out and to baste them with some more sauce.

We actually popped out to run a few errands while they were cooking and when we got back the whole apartment (and most of the hallway) smelled AMAZING. At about three hours of cooking time I took them out and tested the meat with a fork. Not quite fall-off-the-bone, but pretty close. The meat was cooked all the way through, was very tender and smelled wonderful. Close enough for rock-n-roll as far as I was concerned.

The hardest part was letting them cool down a bit before getting right in there. The first half rack disappeared pretty quickly and I had the other half for dinner the following night, much to the chagrin of my Facebook friends after I posted the pictures.

Taking Some Pizza For a Spin

In July we had our annual family BBQ party at my parents' cottage. It being a potluck affair, I was expected to bring some sort of food item. They didn't have to twist my arm. However, I was faced with the problem of cooking something that was different than my previous summer offerings. I talked it over with Dar, and originally thought about making some sort of pinwheel sandwich but wasn't terrifically enthused until I thought about making pinwheel PIZZA sammies. I checked the internet for recipes, but was only really concerned about how hot to have the oven and how long to cook the little suckers. Turns out, the general consensus is 400F (205C) for 15 minutes. OK.

Now for the toppings. I decided to keep them vegetarian as I have some family members who are veggie, and it just makes it simpler. This of course meant - no bacon. Oh well, there'll be other times and other pizzas...

...what was I saying? Oh yeah, the toppings.


I first sauteed some sweet red peppers and red onions in some olive oil and crushed garlic. Gotta have the garlic. While they were cooling, I tackled the pizza dough.

I actually went to the trouble of buying a couple of balls of pizza dough instead of going with my first instinct - easy-peasy Pillsbury all-you've-gotta-do-is-unroll-it pizza dough. But NOOOOOOO.... I had to get 'authentic'. Not a mistake I'll make again. If I ever use real spin-it-around-your-head-while-trying-not-to-hit-yourself-in-the-face pizza dough, it'll be because I made it from scratch.

Anywayyyy....

I mixed the two balls of dough together, and finally wrestled them into some semblage of a pizza crust and placed it on my plastic wrap-covered upside-down baking sheet. The plastic wrap is supposed to make the rolling up part 'easier'. We'll see.

After spreading a mixture of cream cheese and pesto on the pizza crust, I added some nice black olive tapenade, and then the cooled veggies.


On top of that, I added (as it turned out, not quite enough) shredded cheese then took a step back and thought over how I was going to tackle rolling up this squidgy, gooey yummy thing.


Turns out, it's a lot like rolling up a sleeping bag. You've got to keep tucking in the middle of the roll to keep it aligned with the outside edges as you roll the thing up. Plus, you've got to be careful that you don't tear the dough. D'oh!

So, OK. I got it rolled up and fully wrapped in the plastic, and it looked like this:


Nice, right? I thought so. In to the freezer it went, and there it stayed overnight. Why, you ask? Well, let me ask you this - have you ever tried to slice room-temperature raw pizza dough? I bet you haven't, or if you have you know that you just end up with a pile of yucchh on the table. Slicing it when frozen is so much easier.


After that, it was into the 450F oven for 15 minutes, or until the cheese started to bubble. These can be served hot or cold, and they taste fantastic. Next time though, I'll use a lot more cheese, because they tended to fall apart pretty easily.

Bacon Makes The World Go 'Round

So I've had this particular recipe burning a hole in my consciousness for about a year now, and this past weekend I finally got around to it. Those of you who are familiar with this blog will know about my views on bacon as the perfect food and of my efforts to use it in my cooking in as many ways as possible.

Here's one for ya - Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies.


There's really only one thing to say to that: "Ooooohhhh yeahhhh...."

Now, I know that I am not the first to discover these gems of chocolate porkulence, but I just may be their biggest fan. Yes, I just may...

The first step in this endeavour was, of course, to make the bacon bits. This was my favourite part, but you knew that didn't you? I had two frying pans going at the same time with a growing mound of crispy bacon piling up on the table. Not too shabby. 'Course, it made the entire apartment smell like bacon for about three days afterward. Normally this would be a good thing, but Darlene and I have both been trying to watch what we eat just lately and there's nothing that kills your resolve like a bacon-flavoured apartment. heh.

So that was my task for Friday night. We were heading to Niagara Falls the following day to hang out with some friends and I'd promised to bring a batch of these cookies with us. I figured that it wouldn't take very long to put everything together on Saturday morning as long as the bacon was ready to go.


Other than the bacon bits, this is yer basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, so it was pretty straightforward. The cookies came out smelling WONDERFUL, and were cooled and ready to go by the time we were ready to hit the road.

Now, the recipe for the glaze calls for Maple Extract. I looked, but the grocery store I was in wasn't very good, and they didn't have any. Being pressed for time, I improvised. I figured that since the bacon I bought was already maple-flavoured (Oh yes. This is a good thing.) that maybe it wasn't so important to have maple flavouring in the glaze, too. So, I just used a full tablespoon of the vanilla extract instead.

OK. Now we come to the good part - tasting the little suckers. We each tried one, and although I really liked them Dar wasn't sold. She didn't actively DISlike them, but it was more of a 'meh' thing. I decided I needed to try a second one just to verify my findings. You will like them. I promise you.

The thing is, you can't taste the bacon specifically. You get a sense of the saltiness of the bacon, which nicely balances the sweetness of the chocolate. And of course the cinnamon glaze on the top adds an extra 'oomph' to the cookie.

We had to stop on the way to Niagara at my cousins Ted and Sue's place to drop off a saxophone I'd borrowed. That's a story for another day, but suffice it to say we brought the cookies in and had them try one. After the initial, "Bacon? And chocolate? Really?", they both tried one and seemed to really like them. I was feeling optimistic, as so far three outta four ain't bad.

When we got to Eliot and Claudia's place in Niagara Falls, the first thing we did (after cracking a beer of course) was to bring out the cookies and let everyone try one. It was pretty much unanimous. Bacon cookies good. GOOOOOD....

Now, a word about the rest of the food. The first thing we noticed when we pulled into the driveway was a medium-sized smoker sitting in front of the garage. We had been told that (six pounds of) pulled pork was on the menu for that night, but what we didn't realize was that Eliot had also prepared a brisket for the smoker as well. Damn. It was difficult waiting for the meat to be ready, because we could smell it cooking from the back yard.


Here's Eliot sampling his masterpiece. Diet? What diet? We're talking PULLED PORK here, people.

With the oven-baked potatoes and the best gol-durn brisket I've ever tasted AND salads and bread, we really didn't do a whole lot of moving after dinner. It was great.

Oh yeah, the cookies. Here's the recipe. Once again, I don't remember where I got it, so if you recognize it let me know and I'll credit you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

The Cookies
1 C butter, softened
2/3 C packed brown sugar
2/3 C granulated sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2½ C all-purpose flour, sifted
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2 C semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips (or whatever kind you like)
2 C bacon bits
*NOTE* If you want to make your own bacon bits (which I recommend), it takes approximately 2 lbs. of bacon to make 2 C of bacon bits.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4.
Beat together the butter, the sugars and the vanilla until smooth.
Beat in eggs one at a time, until the mixture is creamy.
In another bowl, sift together the flour, the baking soda and the salt.
Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir together. The dough will be slightly soft.
*ANOTHER NOTE* The recipe I used suggests that for a 'cakier' cookie, you should add another ½C of flour, but the ones I made (with 2½ C of flour) were nice and light, so govern yourselves accordingly.
Add in the chocolate chips and bacon bits and stir to combine.
*YET ANOTHER NOTE* The recipe suggests putting the dough in the fridge for at least an hour, but I didn't 'cause we were in a hurry. Didn't seem to affect them.
Place parchment paper on the cookie sheet.
Roll a walnut-sized ball of dough in your hands, place on the parchment paper and flatten slightly with two fingers.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the dough starts to turn golden brown.
*AND STILL ONE MORE NOTE* For soft chewy cookies, it is very important that the cookies NOT look completely done when you pull them from the oven. If they look golden brown all over, those cookies will be crunchy when they cool. I'm speaking from experience here.
Allow cookies to cool on a rack while you ready the glaze.

The Maple-Cinnamon Glaze
2 C powdered (icing) sugar
1 tbsp maple extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp cinnamon
enough water to make a thick glaze (I used about 3 tbsp)

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together until smooth and creamy. If lumpy, use a whisk.
Spread a small amount of the glaze on the top of each cookie.

Cross-Border Holiday Weekend

So about a month ago, we here in Canada celebrated Victoria Day weekend. Or, as it's commonly called - May Two-Four. Some would say that this is because Victoria Day is traditionally observed on or about the 24th of May, but we all know the truth, don't we? Yes we do - a 'two-four' is a case of twenty-four bottles of beer. 'Nuff said about that.

So, we finally have some beautiful weather, it's a holiday weekend, and what do I do? That's right - I go to Michigan.

Huh?

Y'see, Darlene's great-aunt just turned 90 and there was a big birthday blow-out, so we went to where the party was. Just so happened it was in Pontiac. Hmmm... it's always the last place you look.


Well, after the party, a stay in a pretty nice Best Western just off the interstate and a trip to the Detroit Zoo, we headed home. On the way home, Dar suggested stopping to eat at a little place in Mexicantown right near the Ambassador Bridge call Xochimilco. For those at home, that's pronounced "so-she-MIL-co".

Xochimilco is a cool little Mexican restaurant that was absolutely packed when we got there. So much so that we had to wait in the lounge and have a few drinks before a table was available. Not really a hardship, as we'd spent the day wandering through the Zoo, so we were ready for some cold ones.


We were seated at a long table, and chips and salsa were dropped on the table immediately. Yummy. Of course, the whole point behind the 'free' chips and salsa is to make you thirsty and thus buy beer, so we did. They really didn't have to twist our arms. I ordered a Negra Modelo beer (hey, when in Rome and all that) and surveyed the substantial menu.

We started with some guacamole, because it's one of my favourite things. It was pretty close to the best guac I had ever eaten. That title goes to El Sol Restaurant on The Danforth in Toronto. It's our favourite Mexican restaurant in the city. This stuff was still fantastic, though. Since I was feeling ravenously hungry after our busy day and because everything on the menu looked great, I ordered a combo plate. Combination Plate #3, to be exact.

"And what exactly is Combination Plate #3?", I hear you ask... well I'll tell you.


THIS is Combination Plate #3. Ohhh yeahhh....

The plate had one soft beef taco, a steak burrito and a cheesy chicken enchilada along with rice and refried beans. Everything a growing boy needs. It was yummy, but damn was it a lot of food.

Having said that, I still wanted dessert so I ordered a cherry empanada. I guess I was picturing yer basic fruit pie that you can get in a corner store, but what I got was the behemoth of empanadas. Feast your eyes...


I tell ya, after polishing off that bad boy, I was well and truly full. It was a good thing we still had an hour in the car, because I needed a nap. Sadly, that was not to be as I was the one doing the driving. Ah well. It was a good weekend.

Finally Back At It.

Ok, so I've been neglecting the blog. Certain contributing factors including, but not limited to, Facebook, apathy, moving to a new apartment, have resulted in me not posting anything since back in September.

I have now remedied the Facebook part of the equation by recently ditching all of those stupid time-sucking 'social networking'-type games and by removing all of the people on my friends list who I had added for no other reason that to increase my crew or mafia or clan or whatever. So, if you're still on my Facebook friends list, there's a good chance I've either actually met you or have had at least several conversations with you via e-mail or telephone.

As a result of all of this, I'm seriously backlogged with stuff I'd like to post, and with folders full of pictures from things I've done over the last six months. I will now be getting to these things so please stay tuned.

Things to watch for over the next little while:

* Our recent Victoria Day weekend excursion to Michigan
* Gallumphing Around China (yes, THAT China)
* A new contributor to the Blog - my fiancée Darlene.
* And hey, I might even cook something...

The Weekend From Hell, or The Worst. Move. Ever.

Well, the move happened. Eventually. Turns out we hired the worst moving company in the city. Who knew.

Buckle up, it's going to be quite a ride.

First of all, because of a family emergency out of town, the move had to be pushed back from September 13/14 to September 27/28. No problem, as we both still had our old places until the end of the month. Dar called the moving company and made all the arrangements, and was told that two guys in a big truck would arrive at her place on Saturday morning at 8:00am. Sounded good to me.

The plan was for them to pack the remainder of her kitchen stuff, load the truck with her stuff and then come to my place. They would then load my stuff, proceed to the new apartment and unload everything into the new place. Done and done. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

That's not exactly how it happened.

Naturally, when moving out of a high-rise apartment building (as Dar was doing), arrangements have to be made to reserve an elevator so that your stuff can be loaded out as quickly as possible. Of course, being the end of the month, there were others moving out on the same day who had also reserved an elevator and consequently, the elevator was booked solid.

They didn't show up at 8.

At about 8:45am, I was still at my place frantically throwing the last of my stuff into garbage bags and anticipating the arrival of the truck for about 10am. I got a call from Dar to tell me that they hadn't arrived yet, and that she had called the moving company to investigate. Apparently, the boss had no idea where they were, but assured her that they would be there soon. Uh huh.

Dar had reserved the elevators for 8:00am - 10:00am, and the window was rapidly closing. Another phone call at about 9:30 reveals that the boss still doesn't know where the guys are, but assures us they'll be there soon. Are you sensing a theme here?

They didn't show up at 10.

The elevator reservation time has now passed, and Dar is on the phone to the super, trying to make alternate arragements about the elevator. Turns out, the people who have reserved the elevator from 10:00am - noon had their truck arrive early, so they were done already. As long as our guys arrived fairly soon, it would still be OK.

They didn't show up at 11, and this is the point where the day started seriously to go downhill.

In addition to getting stuff ready for the moving truck, I had been loading my car with things that I didn't trust them to move. Things like my bass and my electric piano, the remainder of my hockey card collection that hadn't already gone to my brother's place for safekeeping. Y'know, stuff like that. To do this, I had to pull the car up in front of the house and park it with the four-way flashers on while I loaded it. Somewhere around 11:30am, I come outside with an armload of stuff to find the neighbours across the street standing beside their car and staring at mine.

I was greeted with, "Is that your car? I've just run into it, and we need to exchange information."

Crap.

I walked around to the other side of the car, and sure enough, she'd backed the SUV out of her driveway, failed to see my car, dented the hell out of the front passenger-side door and broken the side mirror. The only damage to the SUV was a broken tail-light.

If this is starting to sound like a rant, I apologize, but there's still more. Oh yes. Please bear with me.

So, fine, we exchanged information, I used some packing tape to re-affix the side mirror, finished packing the car and drove to Dar's to see what the hell was going on there.

I arrived at her building at about 12:30, and on my way in I meet her with the movers (let's call them Lenny and Squiggy) in tow, who had only just arrived themselves. Their excuse for showing up four and a half hours late? "We couldn't find the place."

Right. In this day and age is this still a viable excuse? I don't think so.

Anyway, the entire day's schedule was now completely out the window. The move that we thought was going to be over and done with by 4pm, is just getting started at 1pm.

But wait, there's more.

As the guys were finishing loading Dar's stuff into the truck, we're told that there's not enough room for all of my stuff, and that we're going to have to stop at the new place and offload some of it BEFORE going to my place. When asked why, they responded, "We didn't expect so much stuff, and we packed the truck wrong." Lenny and Squiggy had now become Lloyd and Harry.

What could we do? We went to the new place and dropped some stuff off. We had to sweet-talk the super at the new place, because we'd now missed our window there as well. AND, we had to tell him that we'd be making another trip in a few hours. He wasn't pleased, but said no problem.

So, instead of unloading everything from the truck like a normal person, they unloaded what they figured was just enough stuff to make room for my stuff. Turns out, they along with us were watching the day slide slowly south, and didn't want to lose the little leverage they had against us finally losing it and refusing to pay. This wasn't going to happen, but they didn't know that.

So it's now getting on for 6pm, and we're at my place loading my stuff. We'd already missed the technician who was supposed to set up our phone/cable/internet at the new place, and we're really starting to get pissed now. About halfway through the load-out, we're told that again, there's not enough room in the truck for all of my stuff and we're going to have to come back for the rest of it.

Idiots.

Now Dar's on the phone to the company demanding a refund or discount or something, because of course we're paying these guys by the hour, and this will mean three extra trips that we shouldn't have had to make. The boss is now seriously cheesed with Lloyd and Harry and tells us that he's willing to work something out.

The night dragged on, and included such highlights as a yelling match between our guys and some other people who were also moving in to our building, and who we apologized to afterwards. On top of that, as 10pm rolled around, Lloyd actually had the balls to start whining about how late it was getting, and that they had a one-hour drive ahead of them after they were done.

By 11:30pm, we just wanted them out of our place. They finished shortly afterwards, and the deal we worked out with their boss had us paying for 7.5 hours on a twelve hour move. It was the only bright spot in the day.

Gallumphing To A New Location

Well, it's official. In a couple of weeks, I will be abandoning my underground lair for more spacious digs. I've been inhabiting the lair for about six years now, which has been great, but I'm ready for a change. The prospect of having some natural light in the place is nice, not to mention that Dar will be there, too. Co-habiting after so long on my own (and for that matter, on her own) presents its own set of challenges, but I'm looking forward to it.

For about a month now, after finally finding a place, I've been as busy as a one-legged man at a butt kicking contest. She has too, but she has a lot less stuff than I do. The last time I moved, my collection of stuff had been pared down to a fairly manageable size, but after living in one place for six years, I was astounded at the sheer volume of crap (um, I mean 'valuable collectibles') that I've amassed. Every morning for the last two weeks, I've been loading the car with at least a couple of boxes of stuff to be dropped off at Goodwill on my way home. The thing is, my place is still looking as cluttered as ever. Sheesh. I've packed six file boxes full of books that I'm keeping, and got rid of two more boxes, and I still have almost two full bookcases.

One good thing I did was to buy a large CD wallet which holds 224 CDs and booklets, then dumped all of the jewel cases into the recycling bin. It's amazing how much space those things take up.

Side note: Thank you to whoever carted away the CD towers (with a note reading, "FREE - Please Take Them") that I left on the street in front of the house. They were gone in less than two hours.

For a move, of course, one needs boxes and lots of them. Both Dar and I have been harassing our respective offices' Mailrooms for empty file boxes and printer paper boxes. I have also been staking out my local LCBO (that's the liquor store for those outside of Ontario) for boxes, and have made out like a bandit there, too. A mistake I made on one past move was to pack all of my stuff into a few large boxes, which then needed two people each to lift them. I almost threw my back out trying to heave a television-sized box full of books onto the truck. Ah well, live and learn.

The major challenge in this move is going to be the actual moving date. We take possession on September 15, but the place might be ready before then. You see, the current tenants move out on the first of the month, and then the place will be completely renovated before we move in. This means a completely new bathroom, new floors, new fridge and stove, and new kitchen cabinets. Nice. If the place is ready before the 15th, we can move in early which is what we're aiming for. Y'see, this year September 15 falls on a Monday, which means that we wouldn't be able to move until the Wednesday or Thursday, which I had already booked off work anyway as it is my birthday (yay!). We can't do it the following weekend, because I'll be out of town with the boys for our annual Golf Weekend, which we'd arranged months ago. Ideally, we'd like to move the previous Saturday or Sunday (the 13th or 14th), because then we could hit up our friends to help out. We could probably handle it ourselves if need be, but the thing is - we'd rather not. And, it's more fun with more people. We have to wait until a week before the 15th to hear for sure when we can move in.

Does anyone need some spiffy IKEA bookcases? Seriously. You can have them if you come and take them away.

Great Googly Moogly, Look At That Burger

On the spur of the moment, Dar and I went out for dinner at a place called The Yellow Griffin in Bloor West Village. This place boasts "at least 35 burgers" on the menu, and they're not lying.

I had been there once before with some friends about three or four years ago, and had been meaning to go back, so I'd been talking up the place to Darlene. She said "well, why not right now?" She's so smart. Why not indeed?

You can get almost anything you want on your 8 oz (!) burger in any combination, and if that isn't enough, you have a choice of 8 kinds of patty, including salmon and bison. There is also a vegetarian patty for those so inclined.

Of course, what would a burger be without a side order of something tasty? The choices are many and varied (check out the menu here for more details): "Grif-fries, sweet potato fries, fresh greens, traditional coleslaw, red baron kraut-slaw, the Village potato salad, Zucchini Sticks, Breaded Pickles or our awesome breaded onion rings!" Also, you can upgrade to poutine for an extra $2.75. Ah, poutine, that evil evil delicacy. They have three varieties to choose from, but I went right for the Hogtown Poutine which is fries, cheese curds, brown gravy and bacon.

Despite the allure of the "English Breakfast Burger", which comes topped with (to quote the menu) "Buckingham baked beans, HP Sauce and crowned with a royal fried egg. Jolly good!", I went for the New Mexican burger, which comes topped with salsa, guacamole, peanut butter, shredded sweet potato and chopped coriander. Oh. My. God. Sounds weird, tastes fantastic. Dar wasn't sold on the idea of peanut butter on a burger, but I let her try some, and the look on her face was priceless. "Oooooh," she said, "that's GOOD."

Darlene got the Cheezzzy Triple Cheese burger, which comes with "Lots’a feta crumbled under mounds of melted mozzarella and cheddar …it aint easy bein’ a cheesy triple cheese", and the onion rings. There were only 5 onion rings on the plate when it arrived, but they were HUGE.

Here are some examples of the more unusual offerings:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Big Apple Deli
Empire sliced cinnamon apple, caramel black treacle, Swiss cheese and Mannyhanny coleslaw

Reuben Burger
Slices of Pedro’s Pastrami - who’s Pedro? ole’Kraut-sauerkraut, topped with smoked Gouda cheese

Kung Fu Burger
Hay-ya scallions, Fu-man-chu peanuts, Kung Pao nut sauce and kick in some mozzarella

The tag-line on the menu reads: "Our burgers take 20 minutes to cook, but it's definitely worth the wait for the very 'un-fast-food' taste!" Very true. The burgers were phenominal, and the portions are huge. Between the 8oz burgers, the poutine and Dar's onion rings, we were most definitely full when we left.

'Course, we have to go back. Goes without saying, really. I want to try their "Burning School House" burger with chili peppers, red peppers, onions and smoky cheese. Maybe even on a bison burger.

The Yellow Griffin Pub is located at 2202 Bloor St. West in Toronto. You should check it out.

A Little Something I Whipped Up

Last weekend I was sitting at home and thinking about what I should make myself for lunch. Of course, this decision is always largely based on what food I have on hand. As I walked into the kitchen I spied the small bag of new potatoes that I had acquired recently, and which I figured should probably be used up before too long. But what to do with them?

Since I had a bunch of other veggies in the fridge, I decided to make potato vegetable soup. Frighteningly logical, eh? I cut each potato in half, and chopped up a pile of carrot, celery, green onion and garlic cloves and dumped everything into a pot. I added a spoon of bacon fat (a little goes a long way), some salt and pepper, some chili flakes (gotta have the heat), some basil and oregano and just enough water to cover everything.

After that, I brought the liquid to the boil, then turned down the heat to medium-low and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Tasted it, added some more pepper and chili flakes (ooh yeah), and let it simmer another 15 minutes. Since I didn't want the potatoes to turn to mush, that's as long as I cooked it.

It turned out really well, and was nice and spicy. The only thought going through my head as I ate (besides "Mmmmmmm...."), was "I should have made more".

Getting Silly At Czehoski

You, I'm sure, have been waiting with baited breath to hear about my outing to Czehoski last month. And, I'm also sure, you are anxiously awaiting the promised photographs of said meal. Well, here it is and here they are.

Neither Darlene nor I had been to Czehoski before, so despite seeing the pictures on the website were unsure as to what to expect. When we arrived, we were seated at a booth just beside the kitchen. This is not as bad as it sounds, as Czehoski has an open kitchen setup, and we got to watch the four kitchen staff going full-tilt boogie for the hour or so we were there. It was really kind of neat.

We both started off with a beer. For me this goes without saying, but Dar doesn't drink much beer so it was something a little different for her. I would like to tell you what kind of beer I drank, I really would. However, I can't remember except for the fact that it was Austrian, it was tasty, and I'd never tried it before. Darlene had a strawberry-flavoured number that wasn't bad at all.

The first challenge of the evening came when we realized that the menu they placed in front of us bore very little resemblance to the menu we had scouted on the Summerlicious website, or in fact, the menu posted on the Czehoski website.

This meant of course, no Satan On Horseback (salted pork belly wrapped in double smoked bacon) for me. Instead for an appetizer, I went for the Poutine with Bacon Gravy.

For those of you not familiar with this gem of French-Canadian cuisine, it is french fries with cheese curds and brown gravy. Normally it would be chicken gravy, but they had to be evil and serve it with bacon gravy. Oh my god was it good. It was a large partion, too.

Darlene ordered the Mission Figs stuffed with chutney and wrapped in double smoked bacon. Do you sense a theme here? We were a little put out when it arrived, because they really should have said Mission FIG with chutney, etc etc. There was only one of them, but it was one of the largest figs I've ever seen. I don't have a picture of it, because I'm a far better cook than photographer, and the picture I did take was out of focus. Oh well. The fig was delicious. I was allowed a small taste, and the bacon really complemented the fig (you are SO good looking).

For the main course I had a rough time. When going to these events, I like to stretch myself and try new things, but the two menu items that kept jumping into my face were the char-grilled burger and the flatiron steak cooked sous vide. When we asked the waitress her opinion on the matter, she said,

"Oh, try the steak for sure. It comes with a gorgonzola cream sauce that's just silly!"

Silly, eh? I'd never heard a sauce described quite that way before so, intrigued, I ordered the Flatiron Steak with gorgonzola cream sauce and mixed greens. You'll notice that in the picture at the top of the post, the steak came with frites (pronounced 'freets'). Apparently, the steak is normally served with frites, and they had changed it to mixed greens for the Summerlicious menu. However, she said that the kitchen staff was prone to serving it with frites anyway, so she would put a note on the order. Well, when the order was up, sure enough, there were frites with it, so she gave me the mixed greens as well. Not that I object to frites you understand, it's that I'd just polished off a large plate of poutine.

Darlene really had no problems with her selection, and ordered the Truffled Brie hand-made Pierogies with crème fraiche and riesling braised sauerkraut. Yeah, I thought it sounded pretty good, too.

I don't know if any of you have ever had pierogies made with brie before, but damn. They were really tasty.

OK, I have to tell you about the steak and the silly sauce.

First of all, I tried the steak by itself. I ordered it medium-rare, and it was the most tender steak I have ever eaten in my life. It practically melted in my mouth. I find myself saying this a lot lately, but it was a superly cooked steak. Now, normally the gorgonzola sauce would be something I would cross the street to avoid, not being a fan of stinky cheese, but since I was supposed to be stretching myself, I tried it. It wasn't bad. It was creamy and tangy and set off the steak nicely. I don't know if it was silly or not, but it was yummy.

By this point, we were both getting rather full, due to the deceptively large portions, but still had dessert to go, as it was part of the prix fixe menu. I ordered the Chocolate Terrine, and Dar ordered the Lemon Polenta Cake.

Not much to say about the terrine, except that it was very very creamy, and very very tasty. The lemon polenta cake, now that was interesting. It's exactly like it sounds - a cake made from polenta, and flavoured with lemon. Not something I've ever seen on a menu before, but I liked it. Not quite cornbread, not quite lemon loaf.

The sevice was fast and friendly, the food was excellent, and the bill came to about $100, including taxes and tip. Not bad at all.

Czehoski is located at 678 Queen St. West in Toronto. You should check it out.

Anticipation

Summerlicious has come to Toronto once again, and once again the girlfriend and I will be tasting some prix fixe menus at some VERY nice restaurants around the city. Tonight we're going to Czehoski on Queen St. West.

This is a new restaurant that has opened in an old building, and they've kept the original hand-painted sign. The original Czehoski was a neighbourhood butcher shop and deli that apparently was also the site of some of the city's most notorious card and craps games.

It had been sitting empty for quite a few years, and I remember riding past it on the streetcar on my way to work and noticing the wooden sign with the large block letters - CZEHOSKI, and wondering what the place was. The new restaurant, after about two years worth of renovations and restorations, is a very hip-looking place with lots of hardwood and original brick.

The dinner menu being offered for this event is set at $35. It's really interesting, and I'm going to have a tough time making choices. Here it is:

$35 Dinner (plus taxes and gratuity)

mixed mushroom soup with truffled whipped cream
or
baby arugula and walnut vinaigrette salad
or
a cheesy tart: organic quark cheese and semi-dried tomato tart
or
smoked miso poutine
or
mission figs stuffed with chutney and wrapped in double smoked bacon
or
satan on horseback: salted pork belly wrapped in double smoked bacon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
chargrilled burger of naturally raised beef, cheddar and our own milk-bread buns
or
quinoa, white bean and chickpea veggie cheese burger
or
smoked ricotta gnuddi and squash gnocchi with marjoram
or
banger and mash
or
truffled brie hand-made pierogies with crème fraiche and riesling braised sauerkraut
or
roasted black cod with bouillabaise, chickpea frites and shredded fennel
or
black rice risotto with artichokes raw and cooked, and an onsen egg
or
cumbrae farms flatiron cooked sous vide with lemon-dressed roquet
or
roasted little chicken with lemon-thyme spaetzle and vervaine and pepper jus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
praline crème caramel
or
michel cluizel chocolate semifreddo
or
lemon white chocolate parfait

It's a hell of a selection, and possibly the largest variety I've seen for any of the over 130 restaurants participating this summer. I particularly like the look of the 'Satan on Horseback' appetizer selection. A restaurant after my own heart.

I'll post a recap tomorrow, and I might just take some pictures this time.

Yet Another Use For Bacon

Here's a quick snack idea using simple ingredients.

I never get tired of finding new ways to incorporate bacon into the food I cook. I think I may have mentioned this fact before once or twice, but I've always been told to write about what I know and I KNOW that I love bacon.

My new favourite "toy", as it were, in the kitchen is Pillsbury Crescent rolls. I've found that pretty much anything tastes better wrapped in flaky pastry.


I cooked up and crumbled a bunch of bacon, shredded some imitation crab legs and some havarti cheese, along with some salt, pepper and garlic powder. Then, I just mixed it all together and spooned some of the mixture into each piece of pastry and folded them into little packages. If you can't find the imitation crab meat (or the real stuff, if that's the way you roll), then cocktail shrimp would work just as well. In fact, it doesn't really matter what goes in them as long as the mixture isn't too wet, and the edges are sealed with maybe a little air-hole so your yummy snacks don't turn into little grenades in the oven. Trust me on this one.

Baked them according to the package instructions (or until they looked golden brown on top), et voilà! - snacks. I used some nice grainy mustard as a dip, and had them with a bottle of beer.

Pesto Is The Best-O

For the last few years, one of the birthday presents I've received from my parents has been cooking classes at the Culinary Arts School of Ontario. Though these classes are exactly that, one day (well, three hour) classes, the amount that I've learned has been very helpful in my day-to-day cooking exploits. Knowing something as simple as the proper way to chop vegetables has both sped up my food prep time, and reduced (but not completely eliminated - that's another story) the number of nicks and cuts I inflict on myself with my brand-new, very sharp 7" Santoku knife I got for Christmas from my girlfriend. It's very nice. But I digress.

The last class I took was entitled 'Classic and Contemporary Sauces', and oh my god, did I ever end up with some good food at the end of that class. The chef gave us a choice at the beginning of the class; he said,

"You will get to take home a little bit of everything we make today, so we can do this two ways: either you guys can make the sauces yourselves, in which case we'll get about six done, OR you can watch me make sauces and help out, and we'll get about twelve done."

We took Option B.

Yes, I know, it's supposed to be a cooking class where we're the ones doing the cooking, but we all (10 of us) acted as sous-chefs and were more involved than we thought we were going to be. The sauces we ended up with included (but were not limited to) Hollandaise, Alfredo, Chocolate Ganache (oh yes), Three-Pepper Veal Reduction, and Pesto.

Ah, pesto. It's simple, really. All you need is fresh basil, salt, good olive oil, garlic, pine nuts and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Then blend everything until smooth. How can you go wrong with a list of ingredients like that?

We got right into it, and ended up making a vat of pesto. Seriously, it was a vat. Everyone in the class went home with a huge plastic tub of pesto under their arm, including myself. As far as I'm concerned, pesto goes with everything. At least, I used it with everything. Mmmmmm... pesto...

A few days after the class, I stopped in at the Grocery Palace on my way home from work, and they had some really nice-looking artisanal pizza bread for sale in the bakery section. I immediately thought "Pesto Pizza!", and went about finding the rest of the ingredients that I thought would go well with the pesto sauce.


I settled on the following:

thick layer of Pesto Sauce
Chicken legs, baked and shredded
red onion, roughly chopped
green olives with pimento, sliced
more garlic cloves
mozzerella cheese, shredded
mediterranean cheddar with olives and sundried tomatoes, roughly torn
fresh black pepper

I baked it at 400F for about ten minutes, until the cheese was bubbly and slightly browned. Served with a nice bottle of white wine, that was a great meal.

There's Nothing Like A Free Lunch

I was treated to lunch today. The department I work in hosts a team lunch every month or so, and this time around we went to Akasaka restaurant for some Teppanyaki.

Although I quite enjoy Japanese cuisine in general, and sushi in particular, I had never before experienced a Teppanyaki meal. The concept is simple: as Wikipedia will tell you, the word "teppanyaki" is derived from teppan, which means "iron plate", and yaki, which means "grilled". That's exactly what happened. Everyone sat at a counter around two large metal griddles, and they cooked the food in front of us. Very cool to watch.

The lunch menu was pretty reasonably priced (although that wasn't a concern today, huzzah huzzah). The dinner menu, however, gets a little pricey when you start including items such as Angus beef, Filet Mignon, or King Crab legs. Mmmmmm.... King Crab legs....

There was a choice of ten set lunch specials (check 'em out here), or you could be brave and order à la carte. Each special starts off with miso soup, a green salad, and the daily maki, which they happily upgraded to California Rolls upon request, and rice and grilled vegetables are included with the meal.

I went for Special H, which is Beef Sirloin Steak, Shrimp and Salmon. Yummy. The salmon took no time at all on the smoking-hot cooking surface, and was a little crispy on the outside while still being perfectly cooked in the middle. The addition of salt and pepper, and some oil (which the chef ignited producing a ball of flame and a suitably impressed 'ooooohhhh' from the crowd) produced a nice flavor and texture.

The shrimp were really good. Again, they took a very short time to cook, and within minutes were on my plate. They disappeared rather quickly.

The sirloin was fantastic. The chef put the steaks on after asking everyone how they wanted them cooked (mine was medium-rare), and then proceeded to remove most of the fat and gristle before cooking it further. I have to admit, my first thought was "Dude! You're cutting off the best parts!", though I didn't say that as, well, he had a really big knife in his hand. I needn't have worried, as the result was a small pile of sirloin nuggets that were some of the tastiest pieces of meat I have ever eaten. Along with some soy sauce and a little wasabi (loooove the wasabi), I was a happy camper.

The meal finished off with a nice pile of julienned vegetables (bean sprouts, carrot, zucchini, red bell pepper) that had been cooked with some garlic and oil, and for dessert there was ice cream.

The choices for the ice cream were: ginger, chocolate, vanilla or green tea. Feeling as if I'd been adventurous enough for one day, I went with the chocolate. It's always a solid choice in my opinion.

Now, a word about the picture at the top of the post. This is taken from the Akasaka website, and is a picture of their Beef Roll. This was a very cool thing to watch being assembled, as it took less time than the shrimp to cook. The chef took a thin slice of the beef, placed it on the grill, immediately flipped it over, placed a small pile of roasted garlic, green onions and some other stuff on top, rolled it up, sliced it with the spatula, and placed it on a plate. Seriously, it was that quick. My co-worker who was sitting beside me ordered it, and I heard him say "oh, here comes the beef roll". I looked up to see the chef place the meat on the grill, looked down to take a bite of salmon, then looked up again, and it was on his plate and he was eating it. Neat.

This place is definitely worth a second look, as the lunch specials run from $8-$16, which includes everything. I walked out of there feeling full, but not overly so, as has happened in the past when the gang goes out for Dim Sum. So tasty, yet so easy to eat waaaay too much.

Now it's time for a nap. Unfortunately, they frown on that at my office (who knew?), so here I am bravely soldiering through the rest of the day with a double espresso sitting beside me.

Winterlicious 2008 - Truffles Restaurant

Every winter the city of Toronto holds an event called Winterlicious, which presents the average person the opportunity to dine at some very fine establishments on the cheap. Over a hundred restaurants in the Toronto area present prix fixe menus, so someone like myself can actually afford to dine at a high-class joint (heh) such as Truffles Restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel. This place has earned the CAA/AAA Five Diamond award for the fourteenth consecutive year. Nice.

Oh, yes. For the princely sum of $35 apiece plus wine (plus taxes and gratuity), my girlfriend and I sampled some VERY fine food.

The set menu is as follows:

Butternut Squash Veloute
w/ Spiced Apple Relish, Bacon Chantilly
OR
Warm Dates Stuffed with Goat Cheese
w/ Bitter Greens, Pistachios, Blood Orange Vinaigrette
~~~~~~~~~

Organic Carrot & Chestnut Cannelloni
w/ Parmesan Snow, Watercress Emulsion
OR
Pan Seared Atlantic Salmon
w/ Green Lentils, Golden Beets, Mustard Vinaigrette
OR
Beef Bourguignon
w/ Truffle Pomme Puree, Red Wine Jus
~~~~~~~~~

Baileys Crème Caramel
w/ Bruleed Bananas, Vanilla Espresso Caramel
OR
Warm Molten Chocolate and Raspberry Cake
w/ Cashew Nut Ice Cream

I had the Veloute, the Salmon, and the Crème Caramel. My lovely companion had the Dates, the Cannelloni, and the Crème Caramel as well. The waiter commented that not many of the Winterlicious guests had not chosen the chocolate. Hey, what can I say, we know what we like.

Quite simply put, the Butternut Squash Veloute is the best soup I have ever eaten. Full stop. It was smooth and creamy with small chunks of apple, hints of cinnamon, and topped with a dollop of cream and a perfectly cooked slice of bacon. And you know how much I like my bacon.

I took a chance with the entree, as I don't normally go in for either salmon or beets, but I thought "What the hell, you only live once". I'm glad I did, because it was absolutely delicious. There was a thick slice of golden beet with a mound of lentils, and the pan-seared piece of salmon on top. My god it was good. I'm even re-thinking my previous stance on beets, and how I don't really like them that much. I guess it's all in the preparation.

I'd been looking forward to the Crème Caramel ever since I first saw it on the menu on the website. Crème Caramel is (along with Crème Brûlée) my favourite dessert, and I was hoping for something magical. It was OK. It was perfectly prepared, with the brûléed bananas and the caramel sauce, and was very tasty, but I guess I'd been building it up in my head to be something mind-blowing, and it was only great. It seems weird to say "only" great, but that's how it felt.

Unaccustomed as I am to fine dining, the service was pleasantly impeccable. I guess the staff was motivated to get us in and out, but our reservation was for 9:00pm, and we were in the car by 10:05. It was nice, actually. As soon as we were finished one course, the server was there to clear the dishes, and to present us with the next one.

You may notice that there are no pictures with this post. I couldn't quite summon the nerve to take a camera with me to the restauarant. There were others taking pictures while we were there, and it didn't seem to be an issue, but I was just as happy to simply enjoy the meal without worrying about that, too.

Including the very nice glasses of Chardonnay (me) and Merlot (her), and my four-dollar cup of coffee (!), dinner was $120 with taxes and tip. Not bad at all.

Winterlicious 2008 runs from January 25 - February 7.

A Little Golf And A Lot Of Meat

For the last five years, three of my friends and I have spent a weekend at my parents' cottage in the late summer. Ostensibly this weekend is a golf weekend, and we do actually play golf, but it's mostly an opportunity to hang out, relax, and eat LOTS OF MEAT.

The four of us all know how to cook to some degree or another, but with Rob in charge of buying the meat, and because he gets it at the St. Lawrence Market, we always end up with a bit of an extravaganza on our hands.

Here is an exerpt from the e-mail thread going back and forth the day we left.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hello all,

Our meat is procured. The total bill came to $192 for:
1. 2 4lb chickens and 1 slab of bacon ($31)
2. 1 lb smoked wild salmon ($24)
3. tub of cream cheese ($7)
4. wedge of apple smoked cheddar ($6)
5. 4 1lb USDA Prime Delmonico steaks ($85)
6. 100 pepperettes ($34)
7. dozen bagels ($5)

We shall eat like kings -- bloated, constipated kings.

Rob
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Keep in mind, this food is for two days (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon). Oh, Mylanta...

Over the last couple of years, we have streamlined the meals somewhat. We found that cooking a full fry-up breakfast in the morning, though tasty, took up too much time when we had to make an 8:00am (or 7:30am, DAVE...) tee-off. In addition, we would drive everyone in the surrounding cottages crazy with the smells of bacon and coffee at 7am. Mmmmm.... bacon and coffee... So, with an eye for speed, breakfasts are now bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon. Oh, and the requisite Breakfast Caesar. Gotta have your vitamins.

Lunches are mostly easy meals that can be cooked on the grill. Fire GOOOOOOD. This past year, I made up some of my Stuffed Mozza Burgers, which we ate with relish. Among other things. Ah, I kill me. These lunches are a very laid-back process. As we have just finished playing a round of golf, and as we are all in our 30s (though Dave won't be for next year's trip, heh), and most importantly, since we are ON VACATION, a little bit of sitting around doing absolutely nothing is a welcome part of the day.

Then there's the snacks.

Did I mention the snacks? The core snacking ingredient of every one of our golf weekends are pepperettes from the St. Lawrence Market. We got a hundred of them. No, really, one hundred. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, pepperettes are small, dry, pepperoni sausages that come mild or hot. We normally get fifty of each. For some reason, they just seem to go really well with beer. In addition to the meat snacks, there's the Hickory Sticks, the Clodhoppers, and other random goodies.
Dinners are the main culinary focus of the weekend. Saturday dinner is normally more of a production than Friday's, as we all drive up after work on Friday, and we're still getting settled in.

This year, Rob outdid himself with the meat purchasing. Upon his arrival, he presented us with four, 16 oz., USDA Prime steaks. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. We grilled those bad boys up, cooked a huge pot of mashed garlic potatoes (half of a 7 lb. bag) with chunks of crispy bacon in it and did up a big pile of vegetables in tinfoil right on the grill. Nice. That was without question the best steak I have ever eaten. There are no pictures of the steak dinner, because as soon as they came off the BBQ, we inhaled them. It wasn't pretty.
The pictures you see are Saturday's dinner - Beer Can Chicken. This was Rob's brainchild, so I guess he gets the credit, seeing as he bought the meat, prepared the meat, and cooked the meat, while almost burning himself several times. The Food Network's version of the recipe for this can be found here, though it's really not that difficult.

Take a whole (not too big) chicken, remove the giblets, pat the outside dry. Rub the chicken with a little oil, then rub the chicken inside and out with your favourite dry spice rub. Then take a can of beer, empty out about half of the beer(I find the best way to do this is drink it :-{>), then set the bird down on top of the can. Cook on the grill , or in the oven at 190C (375F) until the juice runs clear when stabbed with a sharp knife (about 1 - 1 1/4 hours).

We cooked two 4-lb chickens in the oven, as the BBQ wasn't big enough. The tricky part in all of this was to move the birds around in the oven without knocking them off of their precarious beer can perches (please refer to picture #2). Rob eventually had to wrap the oven mitts in aluminum foil so that he could actually handle the birds without knocking off any of the spice rub. Ingenious, really.
The menu for Saturday dinner looked like this:

Beer Can Chicken
Grilled Mixed Vegetables in tinfoil (onion, green onion, red and orange bell pepper, radishes, garlic cloves, butter, salt, pepper, ground chipotle pepper)
Sauteed Mushrooms
Roasted Asparagus
Mashed Garlic Potatoes with Crispy Bacon

What a weekend. All I could think about on the way home was, "I think I'll have a salad".

Mmmmm... Brownies

OK, so I've been away for a while. Partly due to a crazy summer schedule, and of course, partly due to apathy, but I'm back now. No, really.
Although I didn't get too ambitious in the kitchen over the summer, one of my few culinary exploits concerned chocolate. And cheesecake. And more chocolate.

The recipe is a result of the World Nutella Day event I participated in back in February, and is courtesy of Mary at AlpineBerry. It can be found here.

The family summer party/picnic/softball game was once again held at my parents cottage, and of course, I was expected to contribute something tasty to dinner. It's always a challenge for me to come up with something interesting (and different from past years' contributions), and that will survive the hour-and-a-half drive north.

In the past, I have made some spicy samosas or other similar appetizers, but this year I thought that I would make a dessert. Enter the brownies.

These are not only brownies, they are CHEESECAKE brownies. And they're not only cheesecake brownies, they're NUTELLA cheesecake brownies. The bottom half is a nice chocolatey brownie mixture, which includes a few healthy dollops of Nutella. Mmmmm... Nutella... The top layer is a chocolate cheesecake concoction, which also contains - you guessed it - a few healthy dollops of Nutella. Then, as if that wasn't enough, I topped the incredibly decadent, and really quite evil, brownies with some shaved white chocolate.

The only problem with making two pans of evil cheesecake brownies, is that after bringing one of the pans to the cottage party, I was still left with a whole pan for myself.

Now, I can hear you saying, "but Ian, how can that possibly be a problem?" While I realize that most of you would welcome this kind of 'problem', I've been on kind of a weight-loss kick just lately. I've found that eating a whole pan of brownies by oneself (while immensely satisfying), is really not conducive to actually LOSING weight. Lots of extra sit-ups were required. Now... I say 'required', but not really 'performed'. There's a hitch in that plan somewhere... hmmmm...

So, as I mentioned before, the summer was a bit slow for me cooking-wise, but I'm back at it and will try to post more often than once a month. Cheers!

A Walk In The Woods

Once again, it all came down to momentum. Most of my really good walks take place after I get off the streetcar on my way home from work, and this time was no different.I just felt like walking. I had no plan, no destination picked out, so because I was facing east when I got off the streetcar, that was the way I went. I walked along Queen St. until I got to Glen Manor Drive. One of the best things about Glen Manor, besides being in a fairly swanky neighbourhood, is that there is a series of parks and nature trails leading from Queen St. all the way north to Kingston Rd. This is where I headed.As I walked up the path, I was struck by how quiet is was. Here I was, not a hundred feet from the bustle of Queen St., and all I could hear were birds and the barking of a few dogs.Having passed through the first little park, I crossed Glen Manor Drive, and walked up into the second park, which among other things is apparently a very popular dog park, as there were several people out with their canine companions running around (the dogs that is) and enjoying the late afternoon sun. Halfway up is my favourite feature of this particular park - the wooden foot bridge. There is really nothing special about this bridge, but as a child I remember thinking that it was so cool to see something like this smack in the middle of an otherwise bustling urban neighbourhood. Of course, I didn't phrase it in my mind quite like that at the time. It was more like, "Cool... a wooden bridge...".On through park number two, and I arrived at the most interesting part of this trek; the nature trail. This is less of a park, and more of a path through a wooded ravine. When I was in high school, this was a popular spot to come to hang out, or have a smoke, or whatever, with a fair expectation of privacy. I was happy to see that there was a small brook running beside the path, and it actually looked clean and didn't have any crap floating in it. Always a bonus.It had been years since I'd walked through here, and once again I was struck by the sense of stillness and apart-ness from the surrounding city. I could just see the tops of the houses through the trees at the top of each side of the ravine, yet could not hear any street noise.Occasionally, I would pass someone walking their dog, or who was just out for a walk, and we'd nod or say "hi" as we passed, but for the most part, I was alone in the woods. That sounds a lot scarier than I meant it, considering that it was 6:30pm, and still essentially broad daylight. As I crossed the foot bridge, I saw what I can only describe as a gnarly tree. "That tree is totally gnarly" I thought, and so I had to get a picture of it.On my way up and out of the ravine, I stopped to turn around and look back at the path. I stood there at the top of the stairs, and just enjoyed the view. I find it amazing that there are still places like this in the city, when sometimes it seems that undeveloped natural land in the city of Toronto is becoming a thing of the past.

Aaarghhh - And I Mean That.

It's now 9:45pm on Sunday of a long weekend, and I'm in the office. I've been here since 9:00am, and I'm starting to feel a little crispy around the edges. My department has been working on a hyper-important yet still very silly project all weekend, and now I've had enough.

I'm tired, I ate WAY too much catered food, and I'm tempted to find a quiet corner in the nice air-conditioned computer room and catch a few ZZZZs.

They tell us that we'll out of here before midnight, but I really don't think THAT's gonna happen...

Despite the witty name of this Blogsite, I'm trying my best NOT to gallumph around the office like a grumpy grizzly bear that's been woken up from hibernation two months early. Ahhh... hibernation...

Speaking of the catered food, we got a bunch of potstickers and salad and submarine sandwiches and stuff for lunch. All very tasty, but the problem was that we didn't get lunch until about 1:30pm, and then dinner arrived (lots and lots and lots and lots of pizza) at about 5:30pm. It felt like I was eating solidly for about five hours straight. Did you know that you can get broccoli on a pizza? I mean, I knew that, but had never actually seen it. It just looks wrong somehow.

Oh, great. Now I'm babbling.

I don't think I'll have to come in tomorrow (holiday Monday), but again, at this point in the evening all bets are off. Thank god for taxi chits - at least my ride home is taken care of.

Whenever that may be.