President's Choice Holiday 2011

I recently received the holiday package of samples from the Holiday Insider's Report . How beautiful is the container the PC products came in? Kudos to the marketing team that put together this campaign - it's brilliant!


It made me think about those timeless memories that we all have about the anticipation of holidays. Sit back and think about what those are for you. Do you remember your growing up years and the etched in stone traditions of the holidays? Do you have young children that you're creating new memories with? Wouldn't you love to just be able to put time in a bottle?



The rituals of the holidays include family, friends and equally as important is the food we enjoy and share. I don't know about you but for some reason, this year feels like it was a total blur and I can't figure out how it's getting to be Cbanukkah and Christmas again. Every year I make myself entirely crazy over prepping for the holidays. Not doing it this year. Well, at least I'm going to enlist some help. I'm thankful to be able to have a large variety of food products available at reasonable prices that are either ready to go or require minimal preparation.

So many delicious looking new and tested ideas for entertaining. When I'm going through new products to review I generally like to take everything out, check each item individually firstly for how appealing it is to me and would be to my family and secondly (and equally important) I check the ingredients. While I was doing that I came upon one item that it been the only product I'd received, I would have had a smiling girl for the whole day. For those who don't know me, I have a wierd and wonderful connection to all things peanut butter. I'm wierd and the peanut butter is wonderful.


Peanut butter pretzels with white candy topping - oh my gawd!!!! In my opinion, this is a treat that should be available to everyone during the holidays and beyond. I know it will be in my home.
The second thing that immediately caught my attention was a bottle of Memories of Morocco.
I like to buy chicken when it's on sale. I marinate and freeze it in zip lock bags and defrost it in the fridge with the marinade day before. Memories of Morocco is an ideal marinade for this. The combination of sweet and spicy with the fragrance of Moroccan spices is hypnotic. I shared the bottle with a neighbour who is from the Middle East and her evaluation was the same as mine. Her comment to me was "why bother making it at home; this is terrific". That's the whole message with the new PC products; if you've got a product that's not hard on the wallet and fills a need while saving you your precious time I can't find an argument to not buy it. See how easy it is to put together a great meal in minutes.

I'm happy to share some of the newer branded PC products with you;
Do you enjoy a dark roast cup of coffee?

or a decandent Dulche de Leche decaf

or try something you might never have even thought of ...

Looking for some quick and easy appetizer ideas? How about Blue Cheese with Walnut Canapes?




Timeless melba toast that works with so many toppings:

with Goat Cheese and Cranberry (my personal favourite)

or just plain Goat Cheese

While you're busy in the kitchen and wrapping gifts, don't forget to keep yummies on hand for the kids;

Give yourself some munchie treats while you're at it.

You're not going to stop creating old family favourites but instead of slaving over so many different varieties, give yourself a break with some of these ageless treats AND get the kids to chip in - isn't this what memories are made of?







Who says you can't add chocolate chips :)

Now if I could find an elf that would wrap everything for me, life would be complete. There are the gifts for the concierge, the mailman, newspaper boy/girl, friends down the hall, teachers and hairdressers to name just a few. Who wouldn't enjoy some of these'




(I love that the biscotti has a COR that makes it kosher/dairy. A fabulous Hanukkah gift.








I can see this post is getting very long but I still have much to share. Stay tuned for further posts on making memories with President's Choice.

Preserving Bruschetta

As I was getting my tomatoes ready to preserve tomato sauce, I realized that a fair number of them weren't ripe yet.  I set the unripened tomatoes aside and decided that I would find another recipe to use them in later.

It didn't take long for me to find this Bruschetta in a Jar recipe.  I pinned it on my Pinterest account and by some magical online word-of-mouth Pinterest process, 43 people ended up repinning it!  Guess I'm not the only one who thought preserving bruschetta mix sounded like a good idea!

Bruschetta in a Jar

Adapted from Ball’s Bruschetta in a Jar recipe

Makes: 6 half pints

Ingredients:

• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp dried oregano
• 2 Tbsp dried basil
• 2 Tbsp dried parsley
• 1 Tbsp rosemary
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 7-8 cups diced tomatoes

Directions:

1. Heat water to simmering in your boiling water canner (or any pot large enough to place the jars in the canner and have the water 1-2 inches above the tops of the jars). Get your lids simmering in a small pot, and set the bands aside.
2. Pour hot water into your clean jars and let them sit until you’re ready to add the tomatoes.
3. Mix the garlic, wine, vinegars, water, seasonings and salt in a saucepan and bring it to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes or until all the flavors are combined.
5. Pour the water out of the jars, and fill with your diced tomatoes, leaving a 1/2 inch headspace.
6. Spoon the hot vinegar mixture over the tomatoes, leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. Remove any air bubbles, wipe the rim, put the lid on and twist the band on.
7. Place in canner and make sure the water is 1-2 inches above the tops of the jars.
8. Process for 20 minutes. Remove from the canner and let cool.

Verdict: It's really nice having these on hand -- I've already taken some to a friend's potluck.  Everyone seemed to like it.  Personally, I found the flavour of vinegar to be a bit strong.  Giz made the same recipe, but forgot the balsamic vinegar.  She doesn't find hers to be too vinegary.  So, maybe I'll limit it to white wine vinegar next time.  That will also cut back a bit on the sweetness from the balsamic vinegar.  Plus, I'm kind of skeptical that the original recipe includes balsamic vinegar because it looks way too clear.

Preserving Tomato Sauce

In my last post, I talked about some lessons learned related to growing tomatoes.  But, I think I left out the biggest lesson learned:  grow plum tomatoes!

Plum tomatoes are used in so many recipes that it is easy to find ways to use them up.  Not to mention that I spent quite a while trying to figure out where to buy a bushel of plum tomatoes, including contacting local farmers, Loblaws and Farmboy. Some of the prices are a bit hard to take, knowing that Giz is able to find a bushel for $20 in Toronto. In the end, I went with the 1/2 bushels sold at Parkdale market for $15.

On our first tomato day, Ron (whom I've mentioned before, here) set out to can tomato sauce.  We started by washing and coring the tomatoes.

Next, we scored the tomatoes by making an "X" shape at one end of the tomatoes and blanched the tomatoes to peel them.

We had enough to make a double recipe of this tomato sauce:

Seasoned Tomato Sauce

Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving

12 cups chopped ripe plum tomatoes (about 6 lb/3kg), unpeeled

1 cup chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried

1 tsp granulated sugar

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp red wine vinegar or lemon juice

1/2 tsp pickling salt

1. Combine tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, sugar, pepper and bay leaves in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan.  Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat and boil gently, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 1.25 hours of until very thick (note: you can determine your preferred level of thickness).

Press through a food mill or coarse sieve; remove and discard seeds and skins.  (Note: I didn't do this because I wanted a diced tomato texture and had already removed the skins via blanching).   Add vinegar and salt to pulp.    

2. Prepare jars in water canner (I let my jars sit in a rolling boil for about 20 minutes).  Remove hot jars from canner and ladle sauce into jars to within 1/2 inch (1 cm) of rim (headspace).  After reading about tomato sauce separating here, I was careful about only removing jars one at a time and then replacing the filled jar to the water canner while filling the remaining jars.  Process for 35 minutes for half-pints (250mL) and pint (500 mL) jars.

Makes about 7 cups (1.75 L).  I got about 6- one litre jars from a double recipe.

Note: the above picture was taken the day after I canned the sauce.  When the jars have cooled and the lids have sealed, I removed the rings.

Since making these 6 litres, I made another double recipe with a separate half bushel.  Then, I went to a friend's place and showed her how to make tomato sauce.

I made the tomato sauce in September and I've since used a couple of jars. The flavour is great and it is quite a treat to have sauce on hand that is home-made.  Next year, I plan to make more so that I don't have to eat it sparingly to ensure that it lasts the winter.