Quick Kung Pao Chicken

Kung Pao Chicken is one of my favourite take out dishes. An order of Kung Pao and Ginger Beef and I'm happy. While I still haven't perfected a ginger beef recipe, I decided to try this quick and easy kung pao. I also decided to up the spice in this recipe a little. If you don't want it as spicy, just reduce the amount of the garlic chili sauce that you add.

Beef and Mushroom Stew

There's something so great about a nice hearty stew on a crisp fall day. For some reason this recipe didn't call for any red wine, which really had me confused. Not to worry, I found a way to incorporate it into the recipe. On that note, when cooking with wine, the old saying 'that wine is only good for cooking' is really bad advice. You want to cook with wine that you like to drink, because the flavour of the wine is what sticks around after the alcohol is cooked off. I would go one step further and suggest that you plan to serve the same wine from your recipe with the meal. Just make sure you have enough for the recipe, prep and dinner!

Sunday Night Dinner - Black Bean Rice Bowl

In an attempt to get back into cooking every day I spent half an hour yesterday going through recipes I'd cut from magazines but have never tried, and made a meal plan for the week (taking into account our schedule for the week). I wrote about how planning can be so helpful when dealing with hectic schedules in this post here about 2 years ago. It always comes down to planning, and in the fall when things are getting busier it becomes so much more important. I also get really excited about trying new recipes and eating good home cooked meals every night. Tonight's dinner was not a disappointment, it was easy and quick, with just enough leftover for lunch tomorrow. A couple of modifications could be made if you wanted - tossing some cubed chicken with the spice mix and cooking that together would add a bit more protein, or adding some shredded cheddar cheese on top would also be good. However, the way the recipe is below does make it vegan, if that's your thing. Either way, we will definitely make this one again.

Crunchy Garlic Chicken

Ever since we finished our 30 Days of Dinner challenge, we have been terrible at cooking and eating at home. October has been terribly busy, which hasn't helped. So today I decided I needed to make something for dinner that wasn't macaroni and cheese or stir-fry (my two go-to meals). This recipe is super easy, and you just need to do some veggies or a salad on the side and you've got a great meal. I will admit, I might have been steaming too many veggies for baby purees today, the cauliflower was a tad over done. Good thing I had made a quick cheese sauce to cover that up!

Thanksgiving Dinner for 2.5

We have hosted a number of Thanksgiving Dinners, some smaller with 6-8 people, and some with over 20. The last one we hosted was in 2011, and was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. You can read about it here in Turkey with Some Tears. Last year we decided not to host as I had just come back from a pretty intense work retreat (which I had planned and executed) and was still feeling early pregnancy exhaustion. So we ended up going to the Pinnacle Hotel Lobby Restaurant for their Turkey Dinner. It was good, but not the same as sharing turkey with friends and family - and no leftovers! This year, being incredibly busy with school exams and a business plan project, I just didn't have it in me to try and host once again.

We thought about just skipping it altogether this year, however it is Molly's first Thanksgiving so we wanted to do something. Cooking a whole turkey for 2 people is a little much, plus all the sides. So we have decided to remake a dinner we did for Christmas in 2009, when we were stuck in Vancouver due to this little project I was working on called the Olympics. It's perfect for 2-4 people, so I wanted to post it today, in case anyone out there doesn't have a dinner to go to, but wants to do something to celebrate that's a little easier than the whole turkey and fixings.

Sunday Night Dinner - Spicy Sausage and Rice

Now that our 30 Day Dinner Challenge is over, I've been really enjoying coming up with recipes based on some of the leftover ingredients we have in the freezer and cupboard. It's difficult at times for me to blog these recipes because I am notorious for not measuring or timing anything. So with a warning that all measurements and times are approximate, here is our Sunday night dinner from this week.

Chicken and Blue Cheese Pasta

We had a couple of friends over for a games night, and I put together a charcuterie platter from some of my favourite shops on Granville Island. I had not been in probably a year, and it was great to get back to Oyama Sausage - which finally has a ticket system for taking your orders! I also visited Benton Brothers Cheese and asked the nice young man at the counter to suggest a couple of cheeses for a platter - a hard, a blue and a brie/camembert. The service was great, and he had me try each cheese before making a decision. I decided to go with a milder blue, as not everyone is a huge fan, and wanted something soft and creamy. His suggestion, a Saint Agur Blue, was perfect, so I bought a larger piece in order to have some leftover to cook with. This recipe came together nicely with ingredients I had on hand, and according to Brent was something he would be happy to have ordered in a restaurant.

Butter Tart Slice

I'll admit that I've never made butter tarts before, however I have made these many times before. This time they didn't turn out as well as in the past, and I think it may have been the sugar I used. The recipe calls for brown sugar, and I used yellow. The sugar itself is a little finer, and I think using regular brown sugar would have been better. Reviews from classmates and Brent say they are great, so I decided to post the recipe.