Manitoba Museum, Manitoba Day, the 142nd anniversary of the province. The whole Cake-ology cake was impressive, not only this little polar bear detail. I bet it tasted better than a bloody seal, too. Happy Manitoba Day, everyone!
Bears eating, eating bears
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Canola calm before the storm
The Manitoba Canola Growers Association hosted the Manitoba Food Bloggers last week at Kelburn Farm, home to the Canola Learning Centre. The event was called Canola Crazy, but it was a light on the crazy, instead a relaxing evening with blogger and industry friends and really, really good food in a beautiful setting. I’m still dreaming about the lobster mac and cheese.
The flavoured canola oils have me thinking about doing some experimenting with canola, too. Chef Michael Schafer at another blog-related event (post coming soon!) talked about canola as the olive oil of the prairies, with cold-pressed canola a worthy rival to extra-virgin olive oil.Chefs from Culinary Team Manitoba were there – maybe a bit less pressure at a food blogger event than their appearance in Germany at the Culinary Olympics in October?
We also painted flowerpots. I think mine is pretty sweet.
A storm was blowing in around the time it was to depart. It held off until I was back home so I was able to enjoy the drama without any real driving drama. Manitoba skies are awesome, aren’t they?
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Planet Cookie
There’s more than one of these cookies, but there’s only one Earth. I saw these cookies here, and thought they’d be fun to make. They were! I feel a little like I should have made granola, or something a little more down to earth for Earth Day, but my sweet tooth and the visual won me over.
I have been thinking more about our habits as a family, however. There are only three of us, but we’re often going in three different directions, so meal planning can be a bit of a challenge, especially considering our individual food preferences (meat-and-potatoes Jeff, pasta Natalie, and almost-everything Claudine). And let’s face it – planning is also work, even if it avoids the “What should we have for supper tonight?” conundrum.
Yesterday marked the launch of the Dig In Challenge By signing on to the challenge, you commit to diverting $10 of your weekly grocery bill to locally produced food, participating in at least two of the 40 activities suggested on the Dig In website per week and attending one of the 20 workshops planned during the next five months.
I think I hit the $10/week with what we spend on Bothwell Cheese alone. I look forward to exploring more of the information available on the Dig In Manitoba site, and sharing a recipe or two.
Happy Earth Day, everyone!
Posted in Dig In Challenge, Food & Drink, Photography
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Happy (Joe’s) days are here again
Another one for the April Food Photo challenge – Fast Food. This was hardly fast, but I knew I wanted to make homemade pizza today. I thought about a pizza from Happy Joe’s, a restaurant formerly found in my hometown and still going strong in other areas of the midwest. This is not a recipe for pizza purists, and true to it’s midwestern popularity, has more in common with the region’s ubiquitous hotdish than pizza. It’s a nostalgia by the slice.
Ingredients:
- Pizza dough (I use the recipe on the Fleishmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast jar.)
- Ground beef, seasoned with an envelope of taco seasoning mix and prepared according to instructions.
- A little tomato pizza sauce, because I had it for the other pizzas I made for my family members who have no nostalgic connection to adding Doritos to pizza.
- Cheddar cheese, shredded
- Chopped tomatoes and lettuce
- Doritos, crushed
- Taco sauce, or salsa
- Sour cream
Directions: Add a light layer of tomato sauce to the pizza crust, cover with seasoned ground beef (there’ll be meat leftover, that you can use for, um, tacos?) Cover with a layer of shredded cheese and bake until cheese is melted and crust is browned at the edges.
Top pizza with lettuce, tomatoes, and crushed Doritos. Add taco sauce and sour cream to taste.
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Sweet life
Foodie Photo of the Day – sweetener of choice. It’s honey. I seem to be on a bit of an abstract theme, but I loved the look of the honey on the paper by the light from the window.
I wrote a feature for Flavours Magazine about honey – I can’t seem to find the story online, but one of the recipes comes up as the top search result at flavoursmagazine.ca. It’s toothache sweet, but a slice of honey pie with the honey-spiced whipped cream and a cup of hot coffee? How sweet it is.
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Light oil
I’m backlogged on my Foodie Photo of the Day, so I’m going for a 2-for-1: kitchen light and favourite cooking oil. This is a bottle of canola oil, catching the light.
Bonus points for a fingerprint and an alien face.
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Pancakes and pajamas
I’m skipping ahead a bit in the Photo a Day prompts to “Who’s cooking” as really, most of the time it’s me. But not today! My daughter, Natalie, and her friend, Madeleine, decided to host a pancake and pajama party. I also realized it was right around one year ago that I began this blog, and one of the first recipes I shared was for banana pancakes.
Madeleine’s cinnamon roll pancakes were one of my favourite variations. Natalie’s holding the squeeze bottle, used to add a swirl of a mix of cinnamon, brown sugar and butter to the pancake. 
They made a lot of pancakes! (left to right) peanut butter and milk chocolate chip, blueberry, lemon, cookie dough, and cinnamon roll. Natalie was inspired to make cookie dough pancakes one day when she looking for something to add to her pancakes, and her eyes landed on the cookie dough in the freezer. Eureka!
A pancake feast. Madeleine, a girl after my own heart, takes a few photos. I should look to see if she has a blog…
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