When I was in University & my parents would bring massive boxes of food up every time they visited, I used to make cornmeal pancakes from boxes of Jiffy Cornbread mix. Lately our local brunch spot has been serving the salmon eggs benny on top of a corn pancake & I’ve been jealous. This morning I decided to make some for myself.

While my version is certainly not as sweet as the sugar laden prepackaged mix, that can certainly be remedied with a bit of maple syrup. These have a pleasant crunch and a good amount of protein from the egg and the quinoa flour. Top with an egg and some sauteed greens, with a bit of creme fraiche and some fruit, or with butter and maple syrup.

(more…)

I made good use of some of the carrots from the massive Costco bag that we keep buying because it’s cheaper than buying the amount of carrots that we would actually generally choose to eat with this carrot salad adapted from the Vegetarian Times. In this case, adapted means that I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t double the amount of nuts & cheese! This simple salad makes a surprisingly flavorful lunch.I feel that the figs could be easily omitted, they mainly add a textural difference, the salad could easily stand on it’s own without them.

(more…)

I’ve been making Indian for the last week or so, it’s so easy to make enough for leftovers and then add another dish every couple of days. I had a small amount of cauliflower that needed to be used up so I made a second attempt at the Parmesan-Cauliflower Fritters recipe from the Vegetarian Times.

The first time I made these fritters I found them very bland, but I wanted to work with the recipe because it was easy, healthy, and the fritters actually held their shape well (which can be alot to ask of a fritter), so I made a note to try them with something saucy and spicey, like Indian food.

This time I added cumin to the mixture, but the Indian dishes I ended up making were new to me and didn’t turn out especially saucey, so the fritters still seemed bland and boring. I finally found thier place though, the next morning, when putting together our lunches for work. I had made a slightly modified version of the Cannellini Vinaigrette that Lydia from The Perfect Pantry adapted from Perfect Tapas, which itself had seemed a bit of a failure at first taste; a bit off tasting from substituting white wine for wine vinegar, overly oiling from perhaps undercalculating the ratio of dry beans to canned.

I paired the Marinated Cannellini Beans with the Quinoa Cakes on a bed of Mache, and the sum was better than all it’s parts. I finally figured out where the Quinoa Cakes belong and the extra oil in the beans became a flavourful salad dressing. A perfect lunch . . .

(more…)

Every now and then I crave some variation on the chocolate & peanut butter theme. Since I generally don’t like to eat a lot of sugar, and most recipes for chocolate & peanut butter confections involve a lot of powdered sugar, I usually end up with a delicious failure since cutting the sugar in half or more completely changes the texture.

I had thought to replace some of the sugar with flour, and went one better today when I made these Peanut Butter Buckeyes using protein rich quinoa flour.

(more…)

After coming across snippets and rumors about an unmelting grillable cheese on the interwebs for a while, I tried it in a salad on a beautiful patio on tourist trap Granville Island. It was called Halloumi, and it was good.

I started keeping an eye out for recipes and came across a few like
Sizzling Halloumi Cheese with Fava Beans, but I could never find the cheese, not even in the snooty $100 bread flown in every morning from France grocery store. Finally, on a long and failed mission which involved walking very far to a closed wine bar last Sunday, I stumbled across a Greek grocer, stumbled up to the cheese counter, and inquired. “You mean Haloom?, It’s in the refrigerator case”.

So I set out to make the Sizzling Halloumi Cheese with Fava Beans from Epicurious.com the next day, arriving home from the dayjob an hour late due to tracking down the fava beans. Luckily I was already planning on reducing the recipe to 4 servings, if not 2, from 6. Where the recipe calls for 1 1/4 lbs of fresh fava beans to turn into 10oz after shelling and peeling, I came out with 4 ounces. Luckily the recipe I was making for the weeks lunches at the same time had left over a bit of a package of baby spinach so I was able to improvise . . . and of course it was good, it was fried cheese!

(more…)