Maple Salmon

This was a spur of the moment, what am I going to do with this salmon to make it interesting recipe. Here's what I came up with.

Salmon Fillets (I used 2 - recipe can be adapted for more)
1-2 tbsp melted margarine
1/4 cup maple syrup (I just used my regular pancake syrup)
dill

Heat the oven to 350*. Place the salmon fillets in a shallow baking pan. Pour margarine and syrup overtop. Sprinkle with dill. Cover with foil and bake until fish flakes easily (20+ minutes).

(FYI - that's squash, mashed potatoes and creamed corn on the plate too)

Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

I wanted to make something different than our usual Saturday morning pancakes (shocker I know!) and had some fresh blueberries in the house that were calling to be baked up. My kids love muffins and I haven't made them in a while, so why not? I played with a Betty Crocker Recipe, changing for what I had in the house. The results speak for themselves. My oldest son ate 6 before lunch (regular size, not minis) and my youngest who will pick fruit out of most things ate 3 without any problem at all. I guess I have to make them again sometime :o)

3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup strawberry yogurt
1 egg
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup Splenda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup fresh blueberries

Heat oven to 400*. Spray a muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray. In a large bowl, beat together the milk, oil, yogurt and egg. Stir in the flour, Splenda, baking powder and salt until flour is all moistened. Fold in blueberries. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups. Bake 20 minutes (or until golden brown). Enjoy!
*I sprinkled the tops with the PC brand Sugar/Cinnamon/Chocolate grinder just before putting them into the oven, which made them even tastier.

Contest Alert!

Hi everyone,

I'm hosting a contest on my book blogging site, Bookworm Kristen. There is an opportunity to win an autographed copy of either Cleopatra's Daughter or the Heritic Queen by Michelle Moran. Check it out here.

Yummy Chicken Pie

First, thank you for your kind comments yesterday and noticing my absence from food blogging. I'm starting to feel more like me with food, but still eating pretty bland and still not cooking as much as I like to. So yes, my blogging will be pretty random still for a while. We've also just moved houses and spent a lot of time picking up food and popping things into the oven. Topping off my busy life, I'm back at work after the summer break and my oldest has started school. He's very excited and loving kindergarten. More on that over at Kristen's Contemplations. Now onto the recipe!
My husband is English originally and grew up on meat pies. I did not. And I didn't really get what he was talking about. Each time we've visited his relatives in England he's happily eat his meat pies and talk about how much he loves them and still I didn't clue in. So we've been married for over 7 years and now I've finally made him his first meat pie.

There are 2 steps to making a good chicken pie - the pastry part and the filling part. You could buy pre-made pie pastry and save yourself some time. I made a 2 crust pie pastry recipe the night before.

2 crust pie pastry

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup shortening
2-3 tbsp cold water

Mix flour and salt together in a bowl. Cut in the shortening using a pastry cuttter until the mixture is crumbly (about the size of peas). Sprinkle with cold water and use a fork to moisten the dough.
Divide the pastry into 2 parts. Gather each part into a ball. Roll out separately into 2 flattened rounds. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for at least half an hour (if you make it the day before like I did, remove the pastry before you need it to soften it and roll it out flat.

The filling part

1/3 cup butter or margarine
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
2/3 cup milk
1 cup peas (I thawed from frozen)
3 carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces
2-3 cups chopped cooked chicken (this is one of those great recipes where a store bought rotisserie chicken comes in handy)

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add flour, onion, salt and pepper and cook until bubbly. Remove from heat and add the chicken broth and milk. Whisk it all together . Add carrots and peas. Put the saucepan back on the heat and heat until boiling. Boil for one minute. Remove from heat. Add chicken and set aside.

Pre-heat oven to 425*.

Roll out pastry. Ease into 9x9x2 pan (I used a corningware casserole dish instead and it worked just as well. Pour chicken mixture into the dish. Cover with the remaining pastry.

Bake for 35 minutes, serve and enjoy!

Sweet Potato Salad

At the beginning of the summer we went to our church picnic. Everyone is asked to bring some sort of salad. One of them was the most delicious potato salad I'd ever had. The problem was, I didn't know who brought it and couldn't get the recipe. A few weeks later, we were at a Canada Day BBQ at a friend's place, the same salad was being served. My friend Erin was the creator of this masterpiece. I asked what she did and got a couple of ideas to make something similar. I have yet to get it as perfect as hers, but this one was pretty good.

2 sweet potatoes
6 small/medium potatoes
1 small onion
6 eggs
1/2 cup coleslaw dressing
salt and pepper to taste
parsley to sprinkle

Peel sweet potatoes and potatoes and cut into cubes (Erin makes her cubes a lot smaller than mine). Boil until soft. Boil eggs until hard boiled. Dice onion.
Cool potatoes and eggs. Remove shells from eggs and slice or dice, depending how you like them in your salad.
Mix everything together in a salad bowl. Sprinkle with parsley to decorate.

Chicken Quesadillas

These are my very plain version of chicken quesadillas. They can be spiced up and revved up with veggies, but baby's not having any part of it right now. They were still very tasty (and loved by my kids which was wonderful!)

2 chicken breasts, cubed
1 can of chickpeas
1/4 cup sour cream
(optional 1/4 cup salsa)
(optional - chopped veggies - peppers, onions...of your choice)
1 cup Monteray Jack Cheese
8 flour tortillas

Pre-heat oven to 300*. While the oven is heating, fry the cubed chicken meat in a little bit of oil until browned and cooked inside. Set aside. Drain and rinse the chickpeas. Place them into a mixing bowl. Add sour cream. Using a hand blender, blend until somewhat smooth. (Add salsa to the mixture and mix in if using). Take out 2 cookie sheet. Place 2 tortillas on each. Spread 1/4 of the chickpea mixture onto each tortlla, until each tortilla is covered. Divide the chicken evenly amongst the tortillas as well. (Add veggies if using). Grate the Jack cheese over each tortilla. Cover with another tortilla. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, allowing the cheese to melt and the totillas to crisp up (watch they don't burn!). Remove from oven. Use a large knife or a pizza cutter to cut into 4 or 8 wedges per tortilla 'sandwich'. Serve with salsa, sour cream or guacamole.

Eating in PEI

We vacationed once more on PEI this summer. Quick, what do you think of when you think of PEI? Anne of Green Gables? Lobster? Mussels? Oysters? Potatoes? All of the above? None of the above? Maybe you aren't even sure where I'm talking about...
PEI stands for Prince Edward Island. It is Canada's smallest province and sits in the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of New Brunswick (where I live) and Nova Scotia. You can get to PEI by ferry (from Nova Scotia) or via Confederation Bridge (from New Brunswick). Confederation Bridge is one of the world's longest bridges (12.9 km).
PEI is known for 2 things, tourism and food. They are great at both. Most of the island (it seems)is covered in potatoes. The waters surrounding the island have are some of the best seafood waters in the world. I have a love for both potatoes and seafood, so we're all good.
The campgrounds we stayed in are very close to the tiny community of Malapeque. Malapeque Bay harvest some of the finest oysters in the world (and ships all over). (http://www.aquaculturepei.com/pei_cultured_oysters.php). I was tricked into trying an oyster shot last year (not my thing) but my husband loves them! You take the raw oyster, open it up (with an oyster shucker), add a little lemon juice and seafood sauce and shoot it down. Here he goes:


More to my liking is one of Canada's best ice cream places, Cows. Not only does it have wonderful ice cream, it has a great clothing/souvenir line that parodies popular music, movies and TV featuring cows. Lightening Mooqueen, Cows in the City, CSI (Cow Scene Investigator)...you get the idea. (http://www.cows.ca/index.php)



Yes we bought him a replacement, in a cup this time :o)

Something we wanted to do last year, but didn't and made sure to do this year was visit the Cheese Lady. The Cheese Lady originally comes from the Netherlands. She used to make cheese for friends as a side in Amsterdam and brought some of her starter over when she immigrated to Canada. Specializing in Gouda (and every sort of Gouda you can imagine) she makes her cheese on site from milk from her cows. She supplies to local farmers markets on the Island.


Back to the seafood. Do you know what it's like to go to PEI pregnant and therefore limited as to which seafood you can eat? No lobster, no smoked salmon, no shellfish...(okay, I snuck a few mussels, because let's face it - they are mussels! Yum!) . PEI supplies 70% of the world's mussels. We went on a boat cruise one afternoon and saw rows and rows of mussel nets (more like netted socks than big nets). The originally catch the mussels as baby mussels in the netting and grow them until they are ready for consumption - it takes up to 2 years. You can read more about mussel fishing here http://www.aquaculturepei.com/pei_mussel_industry.php


Of course you can't not mention lobster fishing when you are talking PEI. The fishing season was over in the parts of the water we were at (still open in other parts as the lobster migrated), but our boat cruise had an educational trap set out. We caught two. Too bad we had to throw them back :o)

Well, that about wraps up my little food tour of PEI. I hope you get to visit there one day :o) It's a really beautiful spot and a lot of fun!