49 posts tagged “food”

Blood Orange Madeleines.  Recipe from the thick, glossy, free, Food & Drink magazine put out by the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), which has given me great results with every recipe I've tried from it.

Despite my doubts about the orange puree,

which tasted bitter by itself (ever chew on orange peel?), added to the sweeter batter,

it seemed to work. 

Let me also say that I'm glad I paid the extra $4 for the non-stick pan.  Saves greasing and flouring all the little grooves.  And they pop right out with a little nudging.

Then when you half-dunk them in dark chocolate for a finishing touch, they rock.*

* There's a texture to them that's like when you have orange zest in a recipe, so I was aware of little bits of peel.  After I finished one, I had a very slight bitter peel aftertaste.  The recipe says that using a blender is better to puree than a food processor.  Well, I had a food processor, so that may have been it.  They're still damn good.

Cinnabon Minibon and crispy bacon.  Last time I was decadent, I just had the Minibon, but I got logey in the mid-morning because I hadn't had any protein.  Problem solved this time.

I'm now fueled to start another day of writing.  25 minutes on, 5 minutes break.

I've just turned two of my fellow writers in this writing group on to the addition of bacon-flavored popcorn seasoning (that I brought from home) to their made-from-a-box macaroni and cheese.  It's the only way I ever eat it now.

Here they are, red-sprinkled and ready (there are three containers).  Now I have to write for 2 more hours before I head off to the barbecue.

Sorry, Jaypo, I didn't use your frosting recipe after all.  I found most of a can of cream cheese frosting in the fridge and since I am trying to make time to write as well, I went for the convenience.

The simple red sugar sprinkles do look quite fine on them, and suggest what's inside.  The main dish at this barbecue will be red, too:  tandoori chicken.

When I have ten different kinds of cupacke sprinkles and none suitable for the red velvet cupcakes I want to bring to a barbecue today?  I do not wish to use pastels, or orange stegosaurs, or teddy bears.

The only ones that have any red in them are Christmas holly sprinkles, or a confetti kind I don't have enough of.  I'm off to the supermarket for eggs anyway, and will scout more sprinkles there, but generally, the stores here are crappy for that stuff.

Update:  This is what I ended up with (only different packaging - I bet they've been on the shelf for years).  It was the only choice other than more pastels.

The cashier saw me paying for eggs, cupacke lines and this, and asked "What kind of cupcakes are they going to be?"  "Red velvet," I said.  She sighed.  "Like it wasn't enticing enough already."  So I had to tell her I had a special Kentucky connection to get the cake mixes.

Been having too much fun to post since Wednesday, I guess.  Here's a photo from one of mine and Cappy's adventures from earlier in the week -- taking Jackie the cat to the vet for her post-surgical checkup.  She was as good as any of my cats (and better than some) with the exception of a huge stress pee on the weigh scale right after I took her out of her carrier.  She hid behind the fan on the counter while we were waiting for the vet, but then let me cuddle her and hold her for all the pokey-proddy stuff. 

She's been very sweet and loves to be petted.  She purrs when petted in the cage, and rolls around and rubs her cheeks up against the bars, etc.  She did have another big stress pee when I wrapped a towel around her and brought her into the living room to sit with us on the couch one evening, so there's still some socialization to do.  The red couch of fabulousness missed the hit, luckily, and all the pee went down my shirt and leg and into my slipper. 

Thursday was my first ever baseball game, with tickets from a lawyer my office uses for great seats to watch the Reds beat the Jays.  Here was our vantage point:

Row 18 behind home plate. 

And look, they opened the dome!  Here it is, in progress.

 

I had a lot of fun.  What cracked me up were the 10-year olds behind us who trash-talked every player on both teams like it was their paid job.  But they also had encyclopedic baseball knowledge, just like I imagine Cappy did at that age. Cappy was still working the strategy around the sacrifice bunt when I heard the one kid behind us explaining it to his friend.  Anyway, I had a blast and I'm all ready to do it again today as Cappy treats me to Phillies vs. Jays.  He's in his Phillies cap (and yes, he does know how to wear it properly, M------l and cranky), and he's going to get me a retro Jays cap.  Yes, there will be pictures.

I'm out of time to continue this post, since it's nearly time to leave for the game.  Catch you later, after the Jays beat the Phillies yet again.  

No, I didn't get one of Cap'n and I looking goofy in our bike helmets.  (Actually it was only me, he didn't look nearly as goofy.)

We biked six miles out and same again back to Oak Bluffs, today, a mere drop in the bucket of a Hotrod ride.  Since I've frequently been photographing our food, here's what we picnicked on when we stopped on the big rocks at the harbor.

That's roast chicken we had for dinner last night and smoked gouda on the crackers.  And angel food cake we made as well (from a mix -- this is vacation after all).

We saw another cormorant or two, but hardly a gull.  To a Torontonian like me, it's very odd to be at a waterfront and not be harrassed by gulls when they see you have food.

I was playing around cropping photos of our bikes snugged up against each other above the rocks where we ate, and I came up with a couple of compositions that interested me, so I thought I'd share several.

The original uncropped photo:

Here's the first crop I did, cutting out the van, but trying to keep in the dramatic rocks:

Here's the second crop, which I like better, because of the sky, even though it hardly shows the rocks:

Then I thought, why not crop it right down to show the bikes, all cuddled up together cutely, and that's when I finally saw the gull in the picture:

Here's a zoom for you:

I love finding these details I didn't even know were there when I took the shot.

When we last saw our intrepid vacationers, it was cold and rainy.  Tuesday came out bright and sunny, and it's staying that way. 

 Highlights from the last couple of days:

 Enjoying fresh local cod two different ways the night before last.  Mine was baked, with garlic mashed potatoes and the Cap'n's was fish and chips (the most addictive fries I've ever mooched).

 

Yesterday, we walked the trail through Sheriff’s Meadow and around the Sheriff’s Pond protected area, and caught this family of swans and cygnets.  I didn’t know I even got a clear photo till I got back to the house and uploaded them.

There is such a thing as a free lunch.  Cappy's mom had been given a gift certificate from a local cafe and she and her boyfriend never used it so they left it for us.  We used it for lunch at Espresso Love (motto:  "Feel the Love").  Cappy had a turkey club and I had macaroni and cheese (gouda and gruyere) with prosciuttio and token side salad.  I cannot resist anything with prosciuttio. 

Really good food and the coffee Cappy had sent him into such raptures, he had to buy a bag of the beans (La Minita was the label for the blend).  (We also noticed a blend called Grumpy Monkey and both thought of Cranky.)

After lunch, we walked out to the beach and the Edgartown lighthouse. 

More birds worth watching.  Seagulls were diving for scallop shells and then flying high over the stonework surface around the lighthouse, dropping the shells to break them, and then snarfing the scallops inside.  It was very cool to watch.  Here’s one shell, freshly lunched on. 

Then there was this guy, I’m not sure what he is, but he joins my bird-in-silhouette collection with the raven from the Grand Canyon.

 

Late afternoon was hammock-time. It’s a double hammock, but we didn’t bother futzing with the camera timer to get a photo of us together in it, so here’s each of us in turn, for posterity.

 Last thing in the evening, we went to the Newes of America pub, where you can collect wooden nickels for every draft beer you buy.  When you get up to 500 nickels, your name goes up someplace, and when you get another 500, you get your name put on one of the chairs in the pub.  So it’s something only the locals and regulars can accomplish.  Cap’n’s mom is going for her second 500, so anybody who comes to use the house helps her out by consuming beer for the cause (except non-drinkers like me).  It used to be two nickels for a tall one (25 oz.) and one nickel for a short (dunno what size that is), but after we sat at the bar and Cappy told the bartender he recognized him from a previous trip up, he got four nickels for his first tall one, and then the good-guy bartender slid us five more just because.   (He was also a good-guy bartender because he happily, even gratefully, switched the TV over the bar to the Daily Show for us at 11.

 

And some other fun pix – a bear bench downtown (if such a tiny place can be said to have a downtown), and another bench with penguins on it.

 

And finally, more lawn bunnies (the real kind) for the bun-crowd.

 

 Now we're off biking on today's adventures!

 

 

I went out for dinner with friends tonight.  This is my favorite thing at this restaurant.  I like how they serve it in a wide, shallow bowl so you have as much caramelized surface area as possible.

Anyone know what that fruit is they've garnished it with?

1.  It's a box (formerly full) of Tim Horton's donuts at work today.  (Aside:  I keep telling Cappy that he needs to have certain quintessential Canadian experiences the next time he comes up here.  A visit to Tim Horton's for the donuts, and a meal at Swiss Chalet  (It's not really Swiss) for the classic quarter chicken dinner with fries -- it has to be the fresh cut fries, not the cop-out baked potato or rice.)

2.  Someone has determined they will not be the last one to take a portion of something.  One of the donuts has been cut in half, because someone didn't want a whole donut.  Some further person decided they could not possibly have an entire half donut, and then cut that in half.  People, please!  Make the commitment already.  This is not the typically Canadian part, though.  The typically polite Canadian default is the "I can't take the last piece of anything, that would be greedy" attitude.  So notice there's one whole donut left.  Nobody wants to be a hog and take the last donut.  So, sometime after this photo was taken, someone took half the last donut.  Someone else cut it in half (now we're down to quarters again), to leave half of that for someone else.  And I shit you not, when I was leaving tonight, I saw that yet another someone had cut that into half again, leaving an eighth of a donut so as not to take the last piece.  Jesus H.  When I brought in lemon cookies a couple of weeks ago, someone broke the last one of those in half so they wouldn't be taking the last one.  Take it already!

It's one of the more embarrassing things about my fellow Canadian citizens.  And now you know our dirty little secret.