The Foodie Files

I've been thinking for quite some time about what else I want to talk about on my blog. I've long discussed my love of travel and I've talked about my adventures in recipe testing, but something I've been playing around with in my mind is finally coming to fruition.

As someone who loves food and dining out, I've been lucky enough to try a number of restaurants in and around St. John's. With the Newfoundland food scene really having taken off over the past few years, there is a diverse selection of restaurants out there, offering all sorts of food. I thought it was time I added my thoughts on restaurants around town. Will anyone read them? Maybe. Will anyone care? Maybe not. Is it an excuse to dine out? ...Maybe again. But as someone who is curious about food and how flavours blend together, and as someone who is always looking to try out the next big thing in town, why not??

That's why I'm going to really launch the Foodie Files part of my blog. While I'll still talk about recipe successes or favourite cupcake shops, I'm going to begin writing about my experiences with restaurants around town - my favourite dishes, apps that are must-tries, desserts that are to die for and so on. As someone with food allergies and sensitivities, I also think I'll bring a bit of a fresh perspective when it come to dining out, and the must-ask questions that one should bring up when dining out with a food sensitivity.

So stay tuned, the first Foodie File is coming up soon. Watch this space!

Nice is nice this time of year

I spent a few days in Nice, France this time last year. My best friend's sister has lived there for a couple of years and always raves about how beautiful it is, so I've wanted to see if for myself for quite a while. When planning our trip, my girlfriend and I wanted to travel to a couple of places we'd never been before, so Nice, France and Florence, Italy made the cut.

Arriving in Nice, we spent a couple of days wandering around the city, exploring some historical spots and taking in the beautiful scenery. Something else we did was a pastry baking class. Our teacher was actually a chef who'd been on Masterchef France!

I really enjoyed Nice. The architecture, the food, the atmosphere - it's somewhere I'd like to spend a bit more time in the future. I have a sneaky feeling I'll be back again some day.

Baking with bananas...and Nutella

Even though I try to eat one a day, I'm not the biggest fan of bananas. I usually eat them dipped in some kind of cream cheese or yogurt dip, but at the end of the week there are often some bruised bananas left in the fruit basket. As someone who hates wasting food but has such a hard time eating them anyway, I try to use bananas in baking. With four bruised 'nanas left over last week, instead of making a banana bread that I would give away to some grateful family members, I wanted to try something different. Being on a Nutella kick certainly helped - after all, bananas and Nutella go great together in crepes, why not in a muffin?

That's exactly what I did: Banana Nutella Pecan muffins. After combining all my ingredients and adding a swirl of Nutella to the muffins just before I popped them into the oven, these beauties turned out wonderfully. Again, though I'm not a fan of bananas, the smell of those muffins baking was incredible, and I didn't mind it filling my apartment.

                     

            

I definitely count this recipe as a baking success, judging by how quickly the muffins were devoured at a family gathering later that day!

So, if you have some bruised bananas that you're looking to transform in some way, I highly recommend this delicious recipe from The Novice Chef - I don't think you'll be disappointed!

Christmas is coming...

A month from today it will be Christmas Day. As it's my first Christmas on my own in my own little apartment, I went out and bought a tree last night and put it up this afternoon. It's not decorated yet, but it's a start. I'm looking forward to buying all the lights and bulbs to decorate it, and to buying other Christmassy things to make my little apartment nice and festive.

With the first of December only days away, I'm trying to get more and more into the Christmas spirit, and get my Christmas shopping underway. There are presents to be bought and wrapped and cookies to be baked in the coming weeks! My countdown to Christmas is finally underway!

Baffled by Almond Butter

Being allergic to peanut butter and sometimes feeling left out when people say how delicious it is, I decided to buy some almond butter to see if it was similar. I planned to make cookies and use it with other yummy foods...but I stuck the jar in the back of the fridge and forgot about it.

A month or two later, I was at the grocery store and thought, "y'know, I should try almond butter. I'll bet I could eat that with pretzels or fruit or bake it into cookies...yeah, I'm gonna get a jar." Completely forgetting about the gigantic jar already in my fridge.

So now, I have two big jars of almond butter...and haven't done anything with them. What's a girl to do?

Do you eat almond butter? What do you eat it with? Or do you bake with it or add it to a dessert? Share your go-to recipes please, as I'm looking for any ideas!

Saturday mornings

Do you have a regular Saturday morning routine? Do you get up and have a To Do list that's a page long? Or do you usually sleep your morning away, trying to recover from last night's night out? (Yeah, I know you, you're doing the latter.)

This morning I'm up rather late but I'm determined to get a blog entry in before I tackle the To Do list. With my Twinings Lady Grey in hand and cookies baking in the oven, I'm on my way to a successful Saturday. 

How about you?

Elizabeth and Nancy's Transatlantic Cooking Adventures!

In my first blog post of the year, I talked about 2012 being the Year of Elizabeth (Again), and the different resolutions I want to keep during that time. One of those resolutions was to learn to cook more.


Being a big fan of Jamie Oliver, I own a bunch of his cook books, like any proper fan would. One of my favourite books of his is  "Jamie's Food Revolution" - a collection of recipes for even the most basic of chefs (like myself.)


I sat down to lunch one day a few weeks ago with my good friend Nancy. She's currently working on her Ph.D at Oxford, and was about to fly back to England to begin a new term. I told her of my plan to work my way through a lot of the recipes in Jamie's book, and the more I talked about it, the more she liked my plan. The more she liked it, the more she wanted to do it herself, until finally, Nancy decided that she, too, wanted to try some of the recipes.



From our talking and planning, we agreed to have a weekly cooking date, where we would make the same recipe, me in Newfoundland and Nancy in Oxford. Of course, being the arts students we are, we can't do something like this and not document it. So I decided I would write about it on my blog, and Nancy would keep a photo journal.


 Our first cooking date was yesterday, so in the next few days, I'll be updating with a blog post, summarizing our adventure. Check back again soon!

New Year, New Me (and possibly New You?)

Now that we're into the second week of 2012, I thought it would be a good time to lay out some new resolutions. I'm sure we all make the usual "I'll do more of this, less of that" kind of thing, but how many of us actually stick to it?

I'm betting (and I'm including myself in this) that the majority of us don't stay committed to our New Years resolutions. I wonder how long it takes for us to forget about them or give up on them? Well, I'm hoping to change that this year.

Since this is The Year of Elizabeth (Part 2), I've made a couple of...promises to myself, shall we say. A couple of "more's" and one or two "lesses". Let's see if I can stick with these for the next 355 or so days:


1. Learn to cook more: One of my best friends is currently completing her Ph.D in England, so since she's 5,000 kilometers across the Atlantic, Skype is pretty much a Godsend in keeping in touch and being able to interact with her. Cooking is something that I'm becoming more and more interested in over the past year and a half, and she has also expressed an interest in mastering some new recipes.

So, we've made a pact (Yes, a pact, Nancy, that makes it sound more official) to have a weekly Sunday night Skype date where we both make the same recipe, 5,000 kilometers apart, a new recipe each week. If only there were some way to have a judge taste test our creations...we're very competitive, you see. I have a feeling Jamie Oliver's cookbooks are definitely going to be well used this year. Even if the pact doesn't quite stick, (because, y'know, she's writing her Ph.D and I've just started a new job as a PR coordinator for a busy marketing firm, so we might be a bit busy at times...) I'll still be testing new creations and sharing them on my blog.

2. Spend less: This could mean any number of things. Spend less money, spend less time watching television, spend less whatever. If I'm going to make this my best year yet, I don't have time to waste, or money to spend on trivial things. So, if I want to accomplish some financial goals and lifestyle goals, it's time to spend less.

3. Read more: Having done an English degree in university, I've always been a big reader. But when life gets in the way, especially when it comes to my job, reading for pleasure tends to take a back seat. I had wanted to read more this year anyway, but having now joined a book club hosted by one of my girlfriends, I'm going to have to read at least one book a month in order to keep up with the club! Here's hoping there are some good reads in my future! I've already finished one book so far this year, and I'm starting my next today: P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley. I've heard good things about it from a reliable source (my favourite former English prof) so I'm very excited to begin tonight.


4. Worry less: I have a problem: I'm a big thinker. I think about a lot of things and then think some more about them, and when I'm finished....I go back and think again. And then...I just might think it over, one more time. Again.

Sometimes my thinking is more so worrying: worrying about oversleeping, worrying about getting a document written in time, worrying about being late for something, worrying about upsetting someone. This year....I'm going to learn to chill out. Worry less. Think...well, not less. But over-analyze less. This one will definitely be a challenge for me, because how do you stop yourself from thinking?


And so, there you have it. Four rules, resolutions, guidelines, goals, whatever - that I'll hopefully be able to stick to, keep up with, follow - over the next year. Wish me luck!

Have you made any resolutions for 2012? Share them with me!

Adventures in Baking

I like to talk about a number of topics on my blog, one of which is food. Whether I'm sharing the story of meeting my favourite chefs, or divulging where to find the most delicious pasta in Toronto, or indulging in gourmet foodie heaven at a TweetUp, I like to talk about food every once in a while.

And why not? It fuels us, sure, but there's something about the joy of food - the preparation, the look, the smell and of course, the taste, that makes us all enjoy at least one of those elements. It can be a conversation starter, something that brings friends and family together, and an adventure to go on all without leaving your kitchen.

I'm a big fan of the website Pinterest - basically an online bulletin board where you can "pin" things that you like. For some reason, I got the baking itch tonight, and I needed to bake - not wanted to, needed to.

I didn't want to make the trek outside in the cold, so I looked up an easy recipe on Pinterest for simple chocolate chip cookies. I came across this one, the "Best-Ever Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies", on Kelsey's "Apple A Day" blog. Well, if a cookie is called the "Best-Ever"...then I have to find out for myself.

In a relatively short amount of time, my cookies were

mixed

rolled

and baked!

And what goes best with fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies? A nice tall glass of deliciously cold milk. Perfect for a chilly autumn night! Do you have any easy recipes that you love?

*Be sure to check out Kelsey's blog for more great recipes! There are some delicious looking dinners there!