Green Potatoes and Ham

Green Potatoes and Ham? or would it sound better as Creamy Avocado flavored Potatoes and Ham? This is actually an Evan Edwards original (my 6 year old son). One night I had made garlic mashed potatoes as a side for dinner. The kids were having Avocado (since they don't like my garlic mashed potatoes) as their side, when Evan said "Wouldn't it be funny if you mixed the Avocado in your potatoes?". But I didn't think it was funny, I thought that the smooth creaminess of the Avocado would go great in mashed potatoes. It turns out that I was right and it makes for a funny looking, but great tasting side dish. I'm keeping this one of file for St. Patrick's day ;)

Ingredients:
4 - Medium Potatoes, peeled, chopped
1 - Avocado, chopped
3 - Cloves of Garlic
2 - Tbsp Butter
1/4 - Cup of Milk

Directions:
Boil Potatoes until Soft

Chop up Avocado

Chop up Garlic

Add the Avocado and Garlic to Potatoes

Mix with milk and butter (or whipping cream)

Serve with Ham and Corn

(Green Potatoes and Ham)

Sweet Tzatziki

Sweet Tzatziki? What the heck is that? This recipe is more of a failure than something new and amazing but I'll take more about that at the end.

It was a nice afternoon and while looking in the kitchen for a snack, I noticed that I still had a bunch of naan bread and I thought it would be nice to go with a dip. I could have went for a store bought dip but it was the Holiday Monday so I decided to try making a Tzatziki.



Ingredients:
3 - Cups Plain Greek Yogurt
3 - Tbsp Lemon Juice (or juice of one lemon)
2 - Garlic Clove, minced
1 - Large English Cucumber, diced (the long, skinny ones)
1 - Tbsp Salt (for salting cucumbers)
1.5 - Tbsp Fresh Dill

Directions:
Peel cucumbers, dice and sprinkle with the teaspoon of salt (draws water out). The first recipe I saw said to spin the cucumber in a Colander to get out some of the water. Tried it and it didn't work. It just added to my dish pile. (Read "Skip the Colander Step")

Spread the cucumber out on a baking sheet, covered between paper towels.

Paper towel on top.

Put another baking sheet on top and press down to squeeze out the juices. Another thing I though of just now is that you could try to squeeze out the juices in your hands over a strainer. I have to do that with spinach when making my spinach dip.

This is what it should look like after you've been pressing it for a bit.

Chop up the Dill.

And the Garlic.

Get out the Lemon Juice.

Add the Dill, Garlic, Lemon Juice, Salt and Pepper to a Food Processor.

Notice anything funny about that last picture? I didn't have the blade in so when I put the cucumber in next, I couldn't put the blade back in. I dumped the contents into another bowl (more dishes), put the blade back in the food processor and then poured everything back into the food processor.

Process until smooth.

This is where things started to go wrong. All the recipes I looked at before called for 3 cups of Greek Yogurt. In my efforts to balance price with fat percentage I ended up grabbing the "Vanilla" flavored Greek Yogurt instead of Plain.

And the second mistake was that I only bought one package, 2 Cups, instead of 3 Cups worth so now I was short Yogurt.

Put the Yogurt into a large bowl.

Mix the processed mixture and yogurt together to get a nice creamy thick consistency. Or in my cause, without enough yogurt, it's a runny mess :(

Then comes the fun part, Tasting! Because the Vanilla flavor was so strong in that yogurt, it completely over powered the dip with a sweet, almost treat like taste. I have to admit that the Tzatziki undertones were really good so I can tell that if I had made this properly, it would have been really good! I'm going to try making it again but this time I will use the right amount and right kind of yogurt and try to squeeze the cucumbers out a bit more.

They can't all be amazing recipes, I guess I'll add this one to the Cooking Fail pile but I will post an update once I try making it again to see if it's actually good when made properly. Or if anyone else gives it a shot and it works out, then please post about it in the comments.

Spinach and Tomato Pizza

I was at Costco the other day and the large bags of Naan Bread were on for $3.99, these are the Naan breads that I use for my Onion Pizza so I decided to grab a bag. At the same time a super large bag of Spinach was on for $2.99 and I figured I could make some spinach salads this week. When I started on dinner that evening I saw the large bag of spinach and thought "I can make a spinach pizza!" I did some quick googling, saw some images and decided to go for it. This is what I came up with.

Excuse the lack of photos, I had to make this in a hurry as everyone was hungry and I was making my onion pizza and the kids plain pizza's at the same time.



Ingredients:
1 - Naan Bread
3 - handfuls of spinach, chopped
1 - Tomato
1 - Cup of shredded cheese (I used 1/2 cup old Cheddar and 1/2 cup Mozzarella)
1 - Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 - Tsp dried basil

Directions (1 Pizza):
Pre-heat the oven to 350. Cook the chopped spinach on the low-medium heat until wilted a little bit.

Slice up your tomato.

Using a small bowl or container combine the olive oil and basil, mix together. Brush the mixture onto your naan bread.

Top the naan bread with spinach, tomatoes and cheese. Place in Oven for 10 - 12 minutes.

Remove from oven, cut into pieces and enjoy :)

Fusilli with Basil, Tomatoes and Avocado Sauce

One of the cool things about my Runners World subscription is that there are often recipes that are simple to make and taste good. The August 2014 addition featured a dish called "Fusilli with Basil, Tomatoes and Avocado Sauce". This is my attempt at it.

Ingredients:
1/2 - Box of Fusilli Pasta
2 - Cups of Cherry Tomatoes, halved
1/4 - Tsp Salt
1 - Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 - Cup packed Fresh Basil leaves, chopped
2 - Avocados, halved and pitted
3 - Large Cloves of Garlic, chopped
1/4 - Cup lemon juice
1/2 - Cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 - Tsp Pepper

Directions:
Bring a large pot of water to boil and cook pasta until tender. Remove from heat and reserve 1 cup of the cooking water. Drain pasta, cover and set aside.

In a large bowl, add tomatoes and sprinkle then with salt.

Add basil and oil, toss to coat then set a side.

Scoop the avocado into the empty pasta pot and mash with a potato masher. The avocado should be ripe or it won't mash very well (that's what happened to me...)

Add garlic, lemon juice, pepper and stir in the pasta water until you create a light sauce. Careful as you don't want it to be too runny. I think I only ended up using about 1/4 - 1/2 a cup of the pasta water.

Add in the tomato basil mixture.

Add pasta and mix everything together

Scoop onto a plate and top with Cheese.

Because my kids have a habit of not liking something new just because it's new, I cooked up some chicken breasts to go with it for my dinner,

The funny thing is that the kids liked this salad (I was really surprised!)

Watermelon Smoothie

I saw this recipe come in on my RSS Feed (TastyFavoriteRecipes.com) and I was like "I have all those things and this will take like 5 minutes to make!".

Ingredients:
3 - Cups diced seeded watermelon, chilled
1 - Cup frozen strawberries
1 - Tbsp lemon juice (I would cut this back just a little bit)
Pinch of sea salt

Directions:
Combine everything in a blender but make sure you put the watermelon first or there wont be any liquid to help the strawberries blend - yes I know this from experience. Blend until smooth, garnish with an Orange slice or Mint leaves.

Garlic Scapes

I think Garlic is absolutely amazing and I pretty much use it in everything that I cook. Now that we are at the end of June, I've cut the Scapes off my Garlic. What are Garlic Scapes? They are the central stalk which goes straight up and usually makes one or two loops. If they are not harvested, they will flower. When they flower, it pulls the nutrients from the garlic bulb and shrinks it. Since I'd like the bulbs to grow as large as possible, I cut off the Scapes.

In the fall I planned 7 cloves but only 4 made it through the winter. This is my 3rd or 4th year with this line of Garlic. The Garlic bulbs have to be planned deep enough to avoid the froze / thaw cycle that can damage them. As you can see in the picture below, the one on the left is doing really well and the one on the right looks really small. It could be a combination of the depth and that I recently expanded the garden a little bit so the soil over there might not be as good.

Here's a close up of the good looking one. The Scapes have already been cut off and come July I will stop watering these completely so the bulbs can mature. Then sometime between the end of July and mid August, I'll harvest the bulbs and have my fresh Ontario Garlic!

Now... I just need to figure out what to make with the Garlic Scapes. I could use them as seasoning, I could do a pesto or maybe I'll look up some other ideas for things that I can do with them :)

Slab of Bacon

It's no secret that I love bacon and it's also no secret that I'm a huge Simpsons fan so whenever I'm cooking up bacon, ribs or ham this quote from the Simpsons comes to mind.

(Lisa)  "I'm going to become a vegetarian"
(Homer) "Does that mean you're not going to eat any pork?"
(Lisa)  "Yes"
(Homer) "Bacon?"
(Lisa)  "Yes Dad"
(Homer) "Ham?"
(Lisa)  "Dad all those meats come from the same animal"
(Homer) "Right Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!"

One day while looking through the meat section at Central Fresh Market, I was checking out the middle isle which usually has the larger hams and what I would call "weird meats" (only because I have cooked with them yet) when I noticed the slabs of bacon. I just so happened to need bacon for something that I was cooking but I couldn't find it on sale and I wasn't about to pay $5.99 for a package of it (it should be around $3.99). The colouring and fat level's looked really good, better then I normally see for pre-sliced packaged bacon, so I decided to give it a try. I have to tell you that I've been hooked on the bacon slab ever since! I love the convenience of it too, I can slice off 3 or 4 pieces for my morning breakfast, wrap it and throw it back in the fridge. At first I thought slicing it would be a pain but it really wasn't that bad and I'm actually getting pretty good at cutting thinner slices now but I kind of like them a little thicker.

One other thing that has helped add to the convenience of all this is the "Bacon Wave". I got this little item for Christmas and I first I didn't really use it but once I started, I couldn't stop. I put my slices in, stick the stick through each end, put it in the Microwave (I like Microwave bacon over fried bacon) and it done!





I can drain the bacon grease into a cup for easy disposal and then I pull the bacon off the rack by grabbing onto the sticks so no more oil burns.



Bacon has never tasted so good! The picture below is what my normal breakfast would look like.

2 Large Eggs - 140 Cal
1 Toast (not buttered) - 90 Cal
1 Processed Cheese Slice - 110 Cal
3 Slices Bacon - 200 Cal
540 Calories

And then I'll have a small glass (1 Cup) of milk to drink. The Bacon slabs that I'm buying go for $5.99 per pound and the slabs I pick are between $9 - $12. Next time you are in been of bacon, give it a shot and let me know what you think!