Delicious oven tomato sauce

A friend of mine recommended making tomato sauce this way so I thought why not test it out whilst testing out my homemade gnocchi!

First off turn on your oven to 180 degrees

What you do if you’re 3-4 people is take a oven tray put oil in it and cut up the tomatoes into halves or quarters! The skin should be facing upwards and they should be fully oiled!

Then put the tomatoes in for 30 min! The oil should look brownish once it’s taken out! If not pop it back in for a couple of minutes..

In the mean time chop up some garlic and onion.

Take out your tomatoes again and toss the garlic and onion mixture onto it, placing it back into the oven for 5 minutes.

Once that’s done you can take it out of the oven again and mix it all together, you can also take off the tomato skins if you want!

And that’s it! Extremely easy to make, tastes delicious and I will surely make it again!
Also spice as pleased!

Tomatoes in the oven

Tomatoes out of the oven

Adding the onion and garlic and more olive oil

The final outcome! I forgot to take a photo of just the sauce!

Easy peasy gnocchi feeds me

A bunch of my friends on Instagram have been making gnocchi so I decided that it can’t be that hard and that I’d try it out!

Little did I know I’d be right and this will probably become one of my favorite go to recipes!

The recipe I followed said it was for four people... what a LIE so I’m going to triple the portion for you and say that’ll be four to five portions.

You will need:

750g potatoes
360g plain flour

That’s IT!

What you’re going to do is
1) peel the potatoes, cut them into smaller pieces and boil them in water for about 15/20 minutes
2) once they’re soft enough squish them (like you’d be making mashed potatoes)
3) slowly knead in the flour, only adding more once it’s completely gone
4) once the dough is soft (not sticky) roll it into a ball and cut it into four pieces
5) roll these pieces into long strips and cut them into smaller pieces
6) these you can then squish with a fork! Not completely as you still want them to be fluffy
7) get a big pot of water to boil
8) add the gnocchi, not all at once though! Bit by bit!

You’ll know they’re ready when they float to the top!

I served these gnocchi with a super delicious tomato sauce which I’ll be posting about in another post!

Good luck and Bonne appetite

The potatoes 

The dough

Rolled out dough

The cut up dough 

Before the boiling

The boiling

With the sauce (recipe in the next post)

Bonne Appétit

Hummus for days

What is up?! 

Who else has been trying out new recipes during this quarantine? I'm currently in Sweden so there is no actual quarantine going on but I am being especially careful! 

I decided to make some hummus because it's a beautiful day out and I love hummus! I mean who doesn't?

I don't remember where I found the recipe I used but here it goes! 

1 1/2 cups chickpeas (cooked)
1/3 cup tahini
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice 
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp salt
5 tbsp water (or as needed)

I obviously thought this wasn't going to make a lot of hummus so I decided to double the recipe and tweak it here and there. 

I used three garlic cloves (cuz I love garlic)
and
I added a bit more lemon juice than 4 tbsp.

Once you have all the ingredients together you just blend them! 

And that's that! 

Easy Peasy and totally delicious! 

Here are my step by step photos and end result *drool*

Instant Pot Bolognese

Hi everyone,

It is Friday today but feels like it's hard to keep track of the days. I hope you are staying safe, healthy and mentally hanging in there. I think part of what is hard is all the uncertainty. Sure we can hunker down..but until when? how long? what's next? It's the eerie calm before the storm feeling that I find haunting, and really hope that social distancing leads to a less dire outcome. It's hard to plan for the weeks and months ahead so I am trying to let that go and just take things day by day.

You may find you are enjoying the new pace of life, appreciating the extra time with your kids, or spouse one minutes, frustrated and short-tempered the next.. It's okay to have mixed feelings and have highs and lows. There is no "right" way to feel. We are in this together and it's a great time as any to catch up with friends and family near and far! If you are feeling lonely, sad, scared, or just want to talk, please reach out. Lets stay connected and help pick each other up. Send a text, e-mail, call or face-time, I know I would love to hear from you!

Juliet said it might be a good time to revive this little blog and share some recipes. I don't know about you guys but I have been craving comfort food, hard! We are also trying to make sure we eat lots of veggies (while we have them and use them up before they go bad) so I decided to try my hand at making a bolognese sauce . So after days of eating delicious meals prepared by S (he reminds me), I finally got back into the kitchen.

I adapted this recipe and added in spinach and mushrooms. I recently ordered 1kilos of mushrooms from Roots and Shoots - they are doing deliveries if you live in the downtown core and their mushrooms are the local ones and are so good! As part of the delivery we also got eggs, spinach and beets. I was pleasantly surprised to have pretty much all the needed ingredients, including heavy cream and beef brothwhich we don't usually have on hand. We even had parsley for garnish growing in our little aerogarden. If you don't have all the ingredients, you can definitely adapt it and make it with whatever you have on hand. No instant pot? no problem.  This could definitely be made on the stove top, just leave it on low for a few hours to allow the flavours to develop.

I may be biased but I think it turned out delicious. S really liked it too. We froze some of the sauce to have at a later time. 

Japanese Style Fluffy Pancakes

Guys.. I haven't shared a recipe in FOREVER!! But these pancakes are awesome and when I posted a photo on instagram, a lot of my friends asked for the recipe so here it is! Even S liked them and he's not a big fan of pancakes.

A few weeks ago we took a long weekend and took off via Via 1 to Toronto and then onward to Hamilton and St Catharines. We were there for the biggest storm that the area has seen in a while.. or ever? We actually had to trade in our rental car in Hamilton for a Jeep, because they don't even have snow tires in that area. Ah well, it made for an adventure and was a great weekend seeing friends and family. Anyway, I picked up a magazine in the train station ( Via 1 lounge, one of the perks!) that had a recipe for these pancakes. It said you needed "3x 1 3/4 metal ring molds" (basically cookie cutters but taller). I ripped out the recipe for later, downed some espresso and got settled for a nice scenic ride.

Our first stop was in Toronto and we had a delicious lunch with Jamie in China Town. The dumplings from Dumpling House on Spadina were amazing!!

Sometimes a weekend away is exactly what you need! 

After lunch, Jamie told us about this amazing kitchen supply store that has everything you could ask for! Think of C-A Paradis meets a dollar store or general store. It was amazing and we searched the aisles until we found the moulds. Success!!

The great thing about this recipe is it doesn't make a huge amount. Of course you can double the recipe, but if you don't it makes just enough and you don't have leftovers.

Beet hummus

Happy Sunday! Don't forget to put your clocks ahead an hour? I guess for the most parts your phones will do that for you. I forgot about the time change until now.. but I guess it makes sense as to why i'm extra tired.

This is another recipe from Run Fast Eat Slow that I made last weekend. I've tried the store-bought beet hummus from farm boy and really liked it, so I thought it would be fun.

A few short-cuts that made this recipe come together in 5 minutes:
- I had some cooked chickpeas in the freezer that I'd made from dried ones int he INSTANTPOT - so convenient to have on hand. If you have an instantpot you can cook chickpeas without even soaking them overnight in less than an hour-say what!!! love my instant pot. Canned chickpeas would work too.
- I cheated in terms of roasting the beet- I used "Just Beets" organic packaged cooked beets from Costco. They are awesome to have on hand. I highly recommend them. Alternatively cook up a few beets so you have them on hand for hummus, smoothies, etc..

I cut up a whole bunch of celery and carrots and Stefan made some pita chips to go with these. The cookbook also has a recipe for Chipotle Hummus, that I will try soon.

I highly recommend the butterfly exhibit at the museum of Nature in Ottawa for those who haven't checked it out yet.

Run Fast. Eat Slow

I finally went out yesterday for a run. It wasn't fast. it wasn't glamorous. It wasn't far. But I did it. I'm hoping that as spring approaches I'll get back into a routine of going more and more.

I wanted to share a few recipes with you from this cookbook, Run fast, Eat slow by Shalane Flanagann and Elyse Kopecky. A friend recommended the book and I ordered it, made one smoothy from it and promptly forgot about it. Last week, I was in Victoria for work..with a quick visit to see Daniele, Paul, Skylar (who despite me being scared of dogs, is so cute and the most gentle dog!!) and of course the latest addition- little Brielle.

When your best friend becomes a mom to the sweetest little girl and makes it look easy <3

So anyway, Daniele had the cookbook as well. She actually does run fast and ran almost the whole time during her pregnancy. Yesterday we were chatting on the phone and she mentioned she was going to make these superhero muffins. Very appropriate name for superhero mom, baker, cleaner! Really, I called at 9am BC time and she was vacuuming.. who does that? :P

I realized I had all the ingredients too. So we both made the muffins, and although we are over 4000 km apart, it almost makes me feel like we are baking together :) ! Here is the superhero muffins recipe and I'll be sharing more soon.



Superhero Muffins

These muffins are so moist and are quite healthy. I admit they look a little out there, but hey don't judge a book by it's cover. Stefan ate them right up. He just told me again how good they are.. and asked why they have chocolate in them because It doesn't go well (see note below about chocolate or raisins).

I always laugh when cookbooks have recipes that "hide" vegetables.. like hmm.. these muffins wouldn't fool anyone. if your kid is a picky eater and you want to trick him/her into eating carrots and zucchini, these would NOT be for them. for everyone else, enjoy!!

We are off to see the Butterflies today at the Museum of Nature! Can't wait!

Roasted Carrot Soup

Did you know Ottawa has been the coldest capital in the world for the past few days? yes that's right, colder than Ulan Bator, Astana, Reykjavik, Nuuk and Moscow. And not just by a little. 

It's the perfect time to put on those roots sweatpants, or better yet, stay in your cozy pjs all day and bust out that puzzle that you've been meaning to do, turn on Netflix or just relax. It's also a great time to whip up this delicious carrot soup.

I got inspired for this recipe by Greta Podleski's recipe in her new book, Yum and Yummer ( great cookbook,  I highly recommend it!). We followed the recipe loosely, but used curry paste instead of powder, and used some different herbs that Stefan crushed in his mortel and pestel and then roasted using a torch ( amazing birthday gift I got from Antonella). That combined with roasting the veggies just made the soup that much more flavourful and delicious. If you don't have fresh herbs or a torch no problemo, just use regular dried herbs and it'll still be good.