Culinary Countdown to Summer – Lemmon Blueberry Cake

I think I got this recipe out of a magazine… I don’t exactly remember, maybe Canadian living or some other such thing that was at my doctor’s office. I DO know that it’s delicious and really easy to make! Which is huge for me because while I am really into eating cakes, I am not overly fond of making them.

You will need:

1 cup fine cornmeal
1 cup flower
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 lemon
1 cup yogurt
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup frozen (or fresh I guess if you’ve got them around!) blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 and oil 9 inch round cake pan.

Whisk together dry ingredients and set aside 2 tbsp of it.

In another bowl zest lemon and add wet ingredients.

Fold together wet and dry ingredients and pour batter into your cake pan.

Coat frozen berries in that extra 2TBSP of dry ingredients you left laying around.

Then gently fold berries into cake batter. If you want to be all Martha about it and make it look nice you could deliberately place and submerge the berries… But I think it’s weird when food looks all deliberate like that so I don’t!

Bake 35 to 45 min… You know, till it’s done.

Culinary Countdown to Summer: BBQ’d Jerk Tofu Kabob With Fresh Mango Salsa

Somewhere along the line I lost my recipe for Jerk tofu! Luckily by scoping out and comparing a few recipes on the internet I was able to remember everything I put in it, but not all of the exact amounts, so I will list all of the herbs and spices and you can play around with the ratios and make your jerk marinade to taste. (I very rarely measure my spices anyways)

Also note that while the marinade is of my own creation (though loosely based off a number of different recipes), the mango salsa is pretty much verbatim out of the REBAR modern food cook book (a MUST have in my opinion)

Marinade ingredients:

1-3 hot peppers – pick your poison! Anaheim or jalapeños can pack some spice in larger quantities, but just one scotch bonnet or habanero would pack a wonderfully powerful punch for more adventurous diners! (ALWAYS wear gloves when handling something as potent as a habanero pepper and be sure to wash up afterwards!)

1 large red onion, chopped

3-5 green onions, chopped

5 cloves garlic

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 cup orange juice

Juice of 1 lime

Fresh thyme

Fresh grated ginger

Nutmeg

Allspice

Cinnamon

Salt

Pepper

Mango salsa ingredients:

2 mangos finely diced

¼ red pepper finely diced

¼ red onion, finely diced

1-2 hot chilies, Serrano chili is suggested, but others can work too!

1 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp chopped cilantro

Other ingredients:

1 extra large block of extra firm tofu

4-6 rounds of naan or other flatbread

Combine all marinade ingredients in a food processor and puree until smooth.

Cut a large block of extra firm tofu (or some chicken if you’re into that kind of thing) into 2 inch cubes and put on skewers. If you are using bamboo or other wooden skewers remember to soak first!

Place skewers in a large bag or other container with your marinade and place in the refrigerator for a few hours, or overnight. Note: you can choose to skewer after you marinade, some prefer to, but I don’t like digging through my marinade to find tofu chunks, so I marinade on the skewer!

To make your mango salsa, chop all ingredients into a fine dice or larger chunks depending on your preference. Combine into a large bowl.

Have your man slave bbq skewers until tofu is golden brown on the outside. Just before you are ready to take skewers off the grill, brush a small amount of olive oil onto flatbread or naan and heat on grill for 1-2 minutes.

Serve Tofu skewers on warm flatbread with mango salsa and lettuce or any other fresh veggies you would like.

Culinary Countdown to Summer: Edemame Salad

I actually got this one from Alton Brown’s ‘good eats’, (only I always at least double the garlic in all of Alton’s recipes. He never adds enough in my opinion!) one of my favorite shows for sure!

This salad is packed with protein and is therefore great for vegetarians.

Because it can be served chilled or at room temperature it’s great for summer picnics, bbq’s and potlucks, and leftovers are great for lunch if you’re brown-bagging it.

You will need:

2 cups frozen edemame
1/2 cup corn (2 ears)
1/4 cup diced scallion
2 cloves garlic minced
1 TBSP olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 fresh chopped tomato
1/4 cup chopped basil leaves
1 TBSP red wine vinegar

To make:

1)Combine edemame. Corn, scallion, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper on 13 by 9 baking sheet.

2)Roast for 10 to 15 min or until browned at 400 degrees F. (oven works fine, but we all know that the word ‘roast’ really means bbq!)

3)Cool in refrigerator for at least 30 min.

4)Add fresh tomato, basil, and vinegar and toss to combine.

Culinary Countdown To Summer Sundays

Do you hear that? That tiny background buzz that has come over the bald Canadian prairie? It may be the wind, after all, this is, as I mentioned just a second ago, the bald Canadian prairie! But it’s different, warmer than the wind that’s for sure, and uplifting! It’s in the wet splash of car tires on the melting road, and the musky smell of dead grass poking out from under all that snow! It’s the buzz of summer on its way!

I love this time of year, for me this is resolution time! January, while the official ‘new year’ is always so bitterly cold a depressing that it is really hard for me to look forward and feel energized, because let’s face it, in January the rest of the year is still stuck somewhere after February, and February is stuck under quite a few feet of snow.

Mid-late March though? Mid-late March is an excellent time for looking forward and feeling energized and making hopeful resolutions, as the oppressive weight of the dark winter cold is melting away and flowing in babbling steams down the sewer drains and out to wherever it is that sewer run off goes.

The sickening pulse of the morning after Saint Patrick’s Day is also pretty helpful in stealing ones resolve towards positive changes in their lives! Not that I get to have hangovers anymore, but I do have vague memories of them.

One resolution I’ve made for myself is to spend more time on this blog. And I figured a good way to do this would be to have a challenge or series or some other such thing as a kind of assignment for myself to keep the words flowing.

It seams like a really good idea, but the reality is that more than a year after starting the Grace in Small Things challenge I’ve only completed 37 of 365 entries. And after only one actual contribution to (w)rite-of-passage I have all but given up on having any real time to devote to something so creativity intensive.

So what fun thing can I come up with that will equal content without being labour intensive and something that requires a bit less than 365 days worth of time commitment?

How about a culinary count down to summer? Because when one does nothing but watch endless hours of food network TV between diaper changing and breastfeeding, there is no shortage of really awesome cooking ideas!

I am going to start off with something easy, because I really like to cook but have no patience for anything overly fussy everything I make is easy! But this one is particularly easy, it’s the quintessential taste of a hot summer afternoon, tasty homemade lemonade with a ginger twist!

It’s simple really; Find a bunch of lemons, some sugar and water and you’re laughing! Well, not exactly but pretty damn close, you will need:

4 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice

4 cups simple syrup – (equal parts water and sugar)

Frozen grated ginger

Lemon zest

The 1^st step is to create simple syrup by heating equal parts sugar and water in a large sauce pan. As your syrup is heating grate in your ginger and lemon zest, don’t worry about measuring it out, just add as much or as little of each as you would like.

Once that has heated to a boil, you can add your fresh lemon juice and set aside to cool. Once cooled simply add 4 cups of water, some ice and tada! Yummy ginger lemonade.

Once you have your lemonade there are an infinite number of delicious things that you can do with it. Like adding Grenadine to make your home-style lemonade into home-style pink lemonade.

Das Piper suggests you add Gin. . . Lots of gin, and some club soda, to make yourself a Tom Collins.

Tangy Time Sugar Cookies. . . Just The Thing To Ruin Any No Fun Diets This Winter

Yesterday morning, Das Piper took Oliver for a little walk leaving me alone at home for the first time in 2 months. Instead of pacing and worrying like I wanted to do, I made these cookies instead.

1/4 cup Butter
1 TBSP vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cup unbleached flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 lime

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

2) With a whisk, cream together room temperature butter, oil, and sugar with the zest of your lime until it’s nice and fluffy.

3) Add in your egg and the juice of your lime.

4) Mix in your flour and baking soda to make a nice sticky dough. If, like me, you don’t have a fancy electric mixer it’s easiest to mix the flour in a little bit at a time.

5) Drop balls of your dough onto a cookie sheet (about the size of a loonie is best) and press them down with a fork. Remember to leave space for the cookies to spread! Bake for exactly 8 minutes, then let cool on a wire rack.

For Christmas I think I am going to try and work with the green tinge that these cookies have because of the lime and make some red and green pin wheel cookies.

How do I do that?

Dye half of the dough red with food colouring, then roll out both colours into 1/4 inch thick rectangles. Stack the two sheets of dough one on top of the other and give it a roll or two with the roller to make sure they stick together. Roll the stack into a log like you’re rolling sushi then chill it in the refrigerator for an hour or so. Cut into rounds and place on you baking sheet and bake.

I’ve never tried that with this particular dough, but I am sure it will work out like it does with other sugar cookies. (I made some pink vanilla pinwheel cookies for my god daughter a while back and she loved them.)