The cake worked!

I made a cake for Trevor's birthday today, and for once, it worked out!  I've had some horrible cake failures in the past (thanks to Cynthia for the reminder of the 'brain' cake...LOL!) -- and this cake will not fall into that category.  Hurrah!

(Although there was one thing Trevor noticed, he thinks it says 'Happy Birthday Trevon' since the 'r' in his name comes a tad close to the awesome border effect.  Oh well, you can't win them all.)

No chow mein for you!

Chef Trevor was on dinner duty last night, attempting a chow mein recipe from the noodle bag. Despite all his hard work and proper tools, it was a desperate situation. It was really horrible, and I will fess up and say that it wasn't Trevor's fault...it really was a BAD recipe. The only seasoning came from soy sauce, and when you have 2 tablespoons of soy sauce versus a motherload of noodles, well, it's going to be BLAND. Despite several times to revive it (with fish sauce, oyster sauce, more soy sauce...) we pronounced the chow mein D.O.A at 7pm and scrounged for something else for dinner (toasted bagel for me, Kraft Dinner for the chef).

I think this dinner offense officially starts barbecue season for us. And while thinking of that summertime feeling, I cruised through a few things at Banana Republic and found a few items that would be particularly chic for a outdoor barbecue gathering:Silk halter dress.Bold print wedges.Silver bamboo bracelet.

My favorite blog of the week

I am so glad I happened to click on Adventures of a Food Slut's blog. I could spend far too much time reading through it, but here's the shortened version: she sets out a meal plan for the week, cooks it, and blogs about it! One of my favorite posts so far is about a marshmallow recipe, which I've always wanted to try.

Mmmmmm...

Bakerella has such good ideas for baking yourself into a stupor. I've looked at this photo for days and have been wishing that they'll magically appear on my desk. No luck yet.

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.

Looks what's coming in the mail soon!

Jamie Oliver's new book! Hurrah! It's a must have on my kitchen bookshelf because in this one he's got tips on growing your own veggies and recipes. Good timing number one, because it's almost spring, and number two, because we've recently decided to steer away from the mega-processed meats, especially those animals who are treated very poorly with horrible living conditions (mass market meat). We visited a butcher in town (Heritage Meats) that only carry organic, non-medicated, free run animals that have had good lives. Plus they prepare everything there, which is even better!

We cooked up some steaks last night from there and they were FAB. Amazing flavour, texture and quality. Add in some corn on the cob and some baked organic russet potatoes (which were insanely good...they had a hint of sweetness, which is something I don't equate with a potato).

Too add to all of that, we're going to have a few more vegetarian meals (going to try out some Yves Veggie products), to offset the cost of the better quality meats. It's a good balance, and who needs to eat meat at every meal anyways?

Now to start preparing the veggie garden for the spring. Time to find some seeds!