Quick Coffee Cake

When I was younger I was always confused about coffee cake, thinking it was coffee flavoured, when in fact it's really just cake that goes really well with coffee. I had a group meeting for school Sunday morning, and decided since we were all having to get up early and meet, we should at least enjoy a little treat to kick off the day. I had never made this recipe, and it is pretty simple, and calls for ingredients most people have on hand. As a bonus, it is quick enough to make spur of the moment if you ever have last minute coffee or tea guests.

Sunday Night Dinner - Quick Sausage Cacciatore

Another weekend of classes, and so I put Brent in charge of Sunday night dinner. After deciding to go for drinks after a long day of Financial Reporting I got home just in time to put the little one to bed, and Brent had prepped everything for dinner. Unfortunately I forgot I was sending him out to pick up a baby backpack carrier I'd purchased from a swap site, so I ended up finishing up the dinner myself. The recipe said it was a '20-minute' dish, but that must have been a typo, since the instructions clearly make it take at least 30 minutes. Easy enough to put together, and made enough for dinner tonight with leftovers for lunch tomorrow, which is great for the start to a very busy week!

Mushroom Beef Bundles

For those of you in Ontario, I do hope that you try and pick up the LCBO Food & Drink magazine when it comes out. When I first moved to BC I missed it dearly, until my mom got me a subscription. I had no idea, but at the time, if you lived outside of Ontario, you could get the Food & Drink delivered to your door! And what a fantastic magazine - great articles, fantastic recipes, and lots of entertaining tips and ideas. I just checked, and now they have opened up the subscriptions to anyone in Canada or even Internationally - click here for more info. They also have a lot of their recipes available online at http://www.lcbo.com/fooddrink/.

A few years ago Brent made a recipe from the Autumn 2009 edition, and it turned out great. So when we were having some friends over for a simple Saturday night dinner and games night, I decided to try my hand at the recipe. They were fantastic and this is a recipe you could really play around with. Next time I might do a chicken pot pie variation.

Sunday Night Dinner - Mini Meatloaves

I've made mini meatloaves before, and in the past I've cooked them in muffin tins with mashed potatoes on top. This recipe I tried is from the March issue of Canadian Living, and unfortunately the timing was really off. The recipe also includes herbed potatoes as a side, and I had everything timed out perfectly so that the meatloaves, potatoes and the pea's I was making would all be ready at the same time. However, the meatloaves took twice as long to cook. I think I will do this recipe again, but will follow the modifications I made below. The original recipe called for 8 mini loaves, I would divide them into 12, and each serving would then have 3. Same amount, but I think they would cook much quicker. Overall still a pretty quick recipe to put together from beginning to end, as long as you prep everything before turning on the stove or oven!