Long Time No Post

Alrighty, so I haven't exactly been all that regular with posts here lately, but I swear I have a great excuse: contrary to conventional wisdom, pregnancy has done ridiculously lame things to my appetite, including serious nausea that has lasted throughout, heartburn, and cravings for Mcdonalds, once a food I ate annually, usually at a stopping point somewhere on the highway...
Into the home stretch now though, and although I still can't eat a whole lot at a time, at least I feel like I've been eating things that make much more sense. Right now I'm very into blueberries - this is great, since it also happens to be blueberry season, so I' m going through them like they're going out of style, on cereal, with balkan-style yogurt, in smoothies, in handfuls, you name it!
The picture is my dinner tonight - Yum!

Meatless Mondays: Reducing your Carbon Footprint

I remember the first time I made a connection between meat and the environment: I read in Carl Sagan's Billions and Billions how the methane emitted from cow farts contributes massively to greenhouse gases.
Since then I've tried to consume less meat, in an effort to lower my personal impact on climate change.
Bill Chameides post this weekend for the Huffington Post adds yet another compelling reason to reduce your meat consumption: Water use. When you see the numbers added up in this way, who the hell would want to eat another burger?
Pass it on, reducing your consumption by one day a week isnt that hard, right? So let's all give it a try. In case you aren't the altruistic type, remember its also much healthier for you, and easier to digest too!

Got Rice?

My question is, similar to the gas crisis, aren't "speculators" driving up the costs quicker than necessary by anticipating a shortage?
As always, classy writing (and timely) by the KW Record...
More from CBC news

Edamame mmm-mmm

I tried a new brand of edamame that I found this weekend at T&T, after Argie and I had a long debate in the freezer aisle about the merits of buying shelled versus unshelled, although in the end it turned out we were talking about the same thing, just saying it differently (for the record HE was wrong...ahem...)
I bought Wel-Pac shelled edamame in the one kilo bag. Result: delicious! I'm including a pic of edamame I have eaten in the past, because, well we went through these ones so fast, and I was on the phone with my mum at the time, and plum forgot to take a pic :)

You Are What You Eat

It's always a good idea to know what you are eating, and to be mindful of what you eat, and now there is an easy way to keep track of what you eat every day, EATracker, from the Dieticians of Canada website.
You enter all the food you have eaten for each meal and snack on any given day, and there is also an activity tracker for any exercise. Based on the data you input, EATracker gives you a nutritional and overall health assessment based on Canada's nutritional guidelines. One problem I have found with this site is that it's difficult to list food accurately if you eat food that isn't traditionally north american (for example, I couldnt find a listing for bok choy). In addition, other foods surprised me with their absence, who doesn't eat butter tarts? or Fruit smoothies?
While far from being perfect, I think the main benefit of this site is to make us more aware of what we should be eating, and who couldn't use that, especially with summer fast approaching..

mmm Pocky

The Kitchener-Waterloo area has a few Asian grocery stores, like New City Supermarket and Ben Thanh Supermarket (not to be confused with the similarly-named restaurants) that are generally adequate for our cooking staples (cheap veggies, fish sauce, etc.)
About once a month or so though, Argie and I like to do a run down to Mississauga to T&T Supermarkets, at Central Parkway. T&T is enormous, well organized, and in my estimation, cleaner than your average Loblaws chain store.
One of our favourite things to do at T&T is to search for new and unusual products, or new takes on some of our favourites. The candy aisle is especially interesting for fun discoveries.
One of my favourite treats to keep in my desk at work is a box of Pocky
and I always try and grab a new flavour each time we go. Some of the tried and true flavours that I've had include Green Tea Mousse, Almond Crush, and Milky Coffee. Pocky is basically a pretzel stick that is covered in a different flavoured candy or savoury coating.
If you haven't tried Pocky, I suggest you do, then ask yourself that age old question: If you were Pocky, what flavour would you be??

Tea-se Me

I am just getting over a rather nasty cold (hopefully the last one of the winter!), but it's such a beautiful day, I thought, even if I'm homebound with the sun shining outside, I can bring a little lovely spring to me!
I have had a bag with Lychee Jasmine flower "performing flower tea" in the tea cupboard, waiting for just such a day.
Argie has had this kind of tea before, at a bubble tea place up in Markham, so I've seen it in action, but that doesnt mean it wasn't as cool doing it at home.
When you put the tea in your cup (I recommend a see-through cup so you can see the action), its a small, dense ball. Slowly it blossoms, and the aroma is lovely as it expands in your cup!
We got this particular kind at a local tea shop in Waterloo, Distinctly Tea.

Spice up your home cookin'

Argie and I live in an apartment building, but we are lucky enough to have a relatively large balcony with our unit (much larger than our TO digs, anyways). This is the time of year I like to start thinking about what I want to have in our balcony garden.
For the most part, we plant edibles, because, well, we're obsessed with food. Its nice to have some flowers in your garden, but to me there's nothing sweeter than the sight of a tiny yellow tomato blossom!
Balcony gardening is challenging, you have to think about space, lighting and keeping things organized. Luckily there are plenty of resources out there that give plenty of advice and inspiration!
There is a definite trend toward greening small urban spaces, and for some ideas on how to get started, check out BalconyGardener ; Urban Gardening ; for the international urban greening movement: City Farmer
For us I like to keep things simple, and fairly low maintenance. My usual balcony suspects are cherry tomatoes, basil, lemonbalm, and mint (although last year we also had bell peppers and even and eggplant!)
Use your imagination then get dirty! The best tomato you will ever taste is the one you grow yourself :)

Ah! Spring is in the Air

The days are getting longer, and the light spilling in through the windows is making me think about what we eat at home, and where it comes from. We try to eat locally whenever possible, but during the winter, its difficult to find fresh produce in southwestern Ontario.
In the fall we try to load up on certain "seasonal" hard-to-finds, like bell peppers, etc. We clean and prep them and keep them in the freezer so they can provide a tiny bit of colour during the dull winter months.
For anyone trying to be more mindful of what they eat, I would highly recommend reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This book documents Kingsolver's family's year of living off the land. Of course for the average family, especially here in Canada, this extreme a lifestyle change is not feasible, but the book provides lots of great suggestions for how we can all reduce our negative impact on the environment, and even come to enjoy and appreciate our food even more.
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Saturday March 22

We're having people over, so we decided to see if we could do some home cooking for them to enjoy. So far on the menu, we're planning to do Lumpiang Shanghai, Pork Adobo Ribs, Chicken Barbecue Skewers, and Turon.

We're going to see if we can use new recipes, or do a take on old ones for this foray.

The first one up is pork adobo ribs.


I like doing things simple. So a lot of the recipes are easy.

• Cut up the ribs length-wise, stick them in the crock pot, add a few cloves of garlic, minced and peeled, a 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar, and 1/2 a cup of soy sauce.

• Set the crock pot on high, and let the ribs cook for about 6 hours (or until tender, I like it when the meat almost falls of the bone).

• I added some green onions to the top for added flavour and scent.

• Finally, stick 'em in the oven and broil it for about 5 minutes, just to dry it out a bit.

Next up, is chicken skewers. I like to mix my chicken up between dark and white meat, to add more flavour.

• I got 4 chicken breasts, and 4 de-boned chicken legs.

• Marinate (or in this case cover) the chicken in a mixture of garlic, parsley, olive oil, and salt (which mixed in a food processor until paste-like).

• Cut them into bite sized cubes, stick them onto wooden skewers (cover skewers in water for at least 4 hours prior to this), then add to a barbecue.