Quesadillas & Sweet Potato Chips with Lime

Only a small handful of friends even know that I have a food blog. Usually when I take pictures of food around friends, they just chalk it up to me being strange.  But, when I invited friends for dinner a couple of weekends ago and started taking pictures, they immediately said, "Do you have a food blog?"

Uhhh....what?  I'm just taking pictures...why would you assume that I have a...what are they called....a food blog?

Yeah.  I'm not a good liar.

For this meal, I wanted to be as close to vegan as possible.  I knew that my guests would eat dairy products when out at friends, but I'd really prefer to make my guests feel as comfortable (and unconflicted) as possible when eating at my home.

As an appetizer, I served some melba rounds with preserved bruschetta.  Everyone that I serve this bruschetta to seems to really like it.  Personally, I'm not a big fan.

For the main, I wanted to do something interactive.  I think it sets an informal tone while allowing guests to customize their own meal.  This is particularly useful when you have guests that have food restrictions and are fussy eaters.  Of course, you don't get the 'wow factor' that you might get when you put down nicely plated food or even set out a large dish for a family-style dinner.  But, you can always add in these elements in your side dishes or for the dessert.

For the main, I prepared a mise-en-place of ingredients for quesadillas.  The selection of ingredients included black beans, mushrooms, shallots, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, chipotles in adobo sauce and vegan cheese (Daiya).  

Daiya is a Canadian-based cheese company that is known among vegans as being one of the better options.  It started appearing in Ottawa a couple of years ago.  It melts up well, tastes good and you wouldn't even miss mozzarella if you use it.  

The picture of the quesadilla is a bit shoddy -- due to time constraints.  But, basically, we put one fajita shell on the pan, flipped it after a minute and then added the desired ingredients.  Then, the second fajita goes on top. After a couple of minutes, we carefully flipped the whole thing.  I'd also recommend putting a lid on the pan while it cooks just to get a bit of steam to the cheese.


I think it went over well.  The only issue is that it wouldn't really work if you had a lot of guests because each quesadilla basically requires its own pan and you don't want people eating at different times or eating cold food while they wait for others to finish.

In addition to the quesadillas, I went with Noble Pig's Sweet Potato Chips with Lime.

Easy to make and tasted great!  I thought I might have too much with two pans of thinly sliced sweets potatoes (about 3 large).  But, they shrank down a fair bit and I'm sure if I had made more, they would have been eaten.

My guests brought a nice salad (no picture) and the meal was great!

The dessert was a bit more of an experiment. I thought it would be a calculated experiment to make trifle, which everyone loves, but use soy milk.  But I learned the hard way that soy milk doesn't work with regular instant pudding mixes the same way that milk does.  Apparently animal fat (found in milk) is required for the pudding to actually thicken up.  It probably didn't help the thickening issue that I also bought kosher instant pudding to make sure that it didn't have any gelatine in it.  Next time, I'll buy a vegan instant pudding mix.

In the end, I had to head up the milkshake-like mixture and add a lot of cornstarch (mixed into water).  Even then, it didn't thicken up until it cooled down in the freezer.   Thankfully, it worked out (despite burning some of the vanilla pudding when trying to get it to thicken.  Maybe a bit more of a creme brulee flavour than usual, but still very tasty!

I'll leave you with a photo of a recent knitting project that I completed.  A free pattern of this leaf-patterned baby blanket can be found here (if you're a Ravelry member).  The photo on the left is before blocking and the photo on the right is after blocking.

; \

Healthy Eating with President's Choice

Vacation is over and I got back home just 2 days before Passover. Panic. Somehow we managed to pull it all together; it was a total group family effort and I must say I'm proud of how diligently everyone worked to make it all happen. While I was away I received the newest Insider's Edition from " President's Choice .


I'm happy that we're focusing on healthy and conscious eating. President's Choice is expanding their Blue Menu line of healthier choice foods that now has over 400 items in the line. PC's Insider's Report has included a wealth of healthy tips created by the Blue Menu panel comprised of a dietician, a doctor, a chef and two working moms. The benefit to having these tips is that you not only learn how to read the packaging more effectively by having visual markers that tells you what there is more or less of in the product (i.e. less sodium, higher fibre, less fat etc.) The tips also tell you why it's important to have more or less of things.

For example: "Why Reduce Sugar? Sugar is a simple carbohydrate that occurs naturally in fruits vegetables, milk and milk products. Products with naturally occuring sugar, such as fruits and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals, while refined sugars found in processed foods like candy, soft drinks and syrups lack nutrients, have few nutritional benefits and are considered empty calories."

The tips in this edition of the Insider's Report have kept this edition around the house for a whole lot longer than other editions. I've had a chance to sample a couple of the products. Both Almond Milk and Quinoa are items that I normally have in the house so happy me. My morning generally starts off with a fruit smoothie and I love my smoothie with almond milk.

Take a banana, a few strawberries (fresh or frozen) pour in some almond milk; add 1 Tbsp of flax seed, a tsp of omega 3 oil and voila - refreshing and a healthy way to start your day.

I knew I wanted quinoa for dinner; great opportunity to try the black and white quinoa, something I hadn't tried before.

1 acorn squash, baked
1 pkg. PC quinoa
2 cups water
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion diced
1 cup dried cranberries (or craisins)
1 cup chopped mushrooms beet leaves chopped drizzle of blood orange balsamic vinegar

1. Turn oven on to 350 F 2. Cut acorn squash in half, take out seeds, sprinkle with a little olive oil and turn upside down on to foil lined cookie sheet. Bake until soft and carmelized (about 30-40 minutes)

3. In a medium saucepan cook 1 cup of quinoa to 2 cups of boiled water. When the quinoa comes to a boil, turn down to medium low and let simmer, covered for about 12 minutes. Take off the heat and fluff with a fork.
4. Add onion to warmed olive oil and cook until the onions soften. Add the remaining ingredients except for the blood orange balsamic vinegar.

Yummmmm. Go out and get some quinoa and experiment with it - you'll love it!!!

Canadian Lentil Contest: Best in Baking

Remember these cupcakes?  They're the Red Velvet Lentil cupcake that My friend, Ron, and I blogged about here.

I was beyond excited to get a mid-day call from Ron while at work letting me know that we had won our category (Best in Baking) in Canadian Lentil's Recipe Revelation contest.  Click on the e-book below to see some of the submissions and the four winning recipes: