Cravings

Note to self: This beet and goat cheese crostini looks most excellently tasty.  Must buy crostini and goat cheese, stat.

Goodies

We brought back treats for ourselves...british candy is soooooo good!

Tastes like fall

This little buttercup squash is in the oven cooking away as I type. mmmm...

Oh to have a kitchen in one piece

After seeing these I'm mourning the (temporary) loss of my kitchen...

via Smitten Kitchen

Deluxe cupcakes

I always love seeing how people use laser diecutting, and this idea of cupcake wrappers looks too nice to eat!
via Oh Joy!

Tiny pies

This is a small pie that's baked in a jar. You can make these in batches and freeze -- then bake on demand! I think this would be perfect for summery get-togethers with little scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Here's the link with more instructions.

Kitchen for Junior

I'm all over the fact that kids should eat well, right from the start. Here's the über solution (besides demo-ing your kitchen and becoming an über mom, lol) from Pomme Bébé. Stylish, bright, fun, and the food looks tasty!

Culinary inspiration

Daylesford Organic pretty much blows Whole Foods out of the water. They're a grocer specializing in all things natural and artisinal...a very pure way of filling up your fridge. They have 'garden kitchens', an organic 'creamery', an 'estate' where they raise their animals for the 'farmshop'--which is what they call their store(s).

And the packaging...oh the packaging. Just the milk alone would have me racking up a big bill there. Lucky thing Daylesford Organic is in the UK and not here!

Take a look at some of the goodies they have:Geranium and neroli hand wash and lotion.Organic penyston cheese.Semi-skimmed milk.Seville orange marmalade.

Delicioussss

I made the mistake of looking at Bakerella's blog today. Oy, does this look good. It's a chocolate chip cookie pie. All together now...mmmmmmmmmm!

ROYGBV Jello

I saw this photo of ROYGBV (that's red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet for those of you who have forgotten your science classes) jello and even though I HATE jello, I love the way this looks. I can only wonder how long it would take to layer it and get it right. A day or so?

Suckered in by packaging

I found these at the register at Whole Foods. Normally, I'm not suckered in by the last-minute impulse buy, but the packaging for Chimes Ginger Chews was calling my name.
And as they say on their website, 'Chimes gives your mouth that shooting musical experience.'

Sweet food styling

Perfect Bound sent this link to Paul Lowe's fab website of his food/interior styling work:

Ultimate food styling

There's some serious thinking behind these. Who knew that salmon could make some good looking water treatments?

A Sunday out

After all the baby goodness early in the weekend we took a grown up day (lol) and went to go see the auto show downtown. (Not before blasting through some work earlier in the morning...phew!) We have a tradition of having lunch at a teenie hole-in-the-wall mongolian bbq restaurant on Denman before we set foot in auto show (must be well fueled!). This time was no different, and we scored an awesome parking spot behind the restaurant to boot (sun + Stanley Park + weekend = no parking anywhere). I know a few people who read this blog that will drool over this photo:(ps - it was just as good as it looked!)
We went to the auto show after that at BC Place and hiked through the crowds to sniff some cars. Trevor took some time to drool over the BMW booth (actually, we stopped by there TWICE). This is as close as he'll get to a 7 series BMW. Ah, he can dream!

You know the world is coming to an end when...

...chicken fried bacon exists (complete with gravy). My arteries are hardening.

Foodie obsession

Some of you may know that the two of us aren't into wine. We've both tried it, and tried to figure out the hype, but no luck. What we have discovered though, is our LOVE of balsamic vinegars and good olive oils. Others might plonk down $30-40 for a nice bottle of wine, well we'll do that for a balsamic vinegar. And just like wine, you get what you pay for. Recently we splurged on a new balsamic (and an olive oil) from Whole Foods (which has a really good selection) that are sooooo good.

The balsamic is a Gocce Italiane, aged 6 years (not aged that long, but a 10 year aged one wasn't in the budget!), and the olive oil is a B.R. Cohn extra virgin olive oil from California. (The other balsamic in the shot is O Balsamic, aged 10 years, but lower quality than the Gocce.) The Gocce is amazing, acidic and sweet -- almost a hint syrupy. You can tell that this balsamic was given some love over those six years! And the B.R. Cohn is buttery and smooth....mmmm-mmmm!

We can't wait to sample even more when we head to Italy in the fall, I hope FedEx can handle shipping barrels back!

Sushi Fun

I saw these and had to post them!

I think I might be onto a bit of a food theme here

After two YouTube posts of crappy food, and food that doesn't play nice, I figured I should do a post! I made a chicken pot pie from scratch last night (overshot the time it was going to be ready by about an hour and a half...oh well), and I went grocery store today, so I guess there's food on the brain happening. I did have problems in the store though. Now that I'm becoming more aware of all the things that have bad preservatives and crappy ingredients in things, I can't just pick up things that I normally would.

For example: caesar salad dressing.
The issue? Frozen yolk in the ingredients. Frozen yolk from farmed chickens. So that was out, and now I have to find a good home made dressing (which I don't mind).

The next example: oatmeal bars.
The issue? An ingredient list a MILE long. On one of the peanut butter 'high fibre' bars (new at the store), it didn't even contain PEANUT BUTTER. It was made from 'peanut butter flavored chips'. Come on now people, when they can't even use REAL peanut butter in something there's a problem.

And the last example: Special K 'Satisfaction' cereal.
The issue? Call me crazy, but they advertised it right on the front of the box: Contains sugar, soy protein and sucralose (Splenda) to keep you fuller, longer. WTF? Why, if they have sugar in it already, do they need to add sucralose? I rolled my eyes and wandered to the Life cereal instead.

I don't want to become one of these people who pickets outside KFC or wears hippie clothes, I just want to be aware of what these manufacturing companies put in their food. Talk about opening up a can of worms.