My Bogs Blog...

So the big 20% off sale starts tomorrow at Shoes for the Soul, and I wanted to get my Bogs boots before they were any more picked over...  But of course I didn't have to worry. Just look at the selection!

Thanks again Ian and Deanna for your contest, and for picking my name!

Busy Few Days

Christmas Eve started off with a wonderful gift! A local shoe store - Shoes For the Soul - had a contest on Facebook where they were giving away a few pairs of Bogs boots. The last draw was Christmas Eve and I WON!!!! I already own a pair, but because of my weight gain this past year, they're a little snug and wearing them all day causes my feet to go numb... I LOVE Bogs boots and think everyone should own a pair! Waterproof, stylish (for rubber boots) and good to 30 below. What's not to love? These are mine, except the top is black, not brown...

So, after the glow wore off about winning a contest, I began cooking. I'd invited 5 friends for dinner, and the menu included an appetizer of spiced nuts, salmon on daikon, and crab dip. Dinner was baked ham, fluffy potatoes Romanov, Jamie Oliver's Brussels sprouts recipe, beet salad and two pies (chocolate cream and pumpkin) for dessert. I was EXHAUSTED by the time I'd finished cooking and cleaning and decorating...

These were Terry's Chocolate oranges that I wrapped in brown paper with ribbon and lace (inspired by Pinterest... I LOVE that website!!!!) and put at each place setting.

 Norm getting fancy with the photography...

 Working my fingers to the bone...

 Salmon on daikon... very tasty and healthy too (recipe below)

So dinner on Christmas Eve was a success and I ate WAY too much... then there was Christmas Day...

 First it was breakfast at Mom and Dad's... our annual tradition of pork hocks on toast. Mom boils the hocks (yes, pig ankles) with lots of garlic and salt and then cleans the bone, skin and fat away and refrigerates them in the broth, which gels (anyone squeamish yet?). Then we eat the cold chunks of meat, with lots of the jelly on slices of Mom's EXCELLENT homemade bread, toasted. And coffee and Baileys is part of the tradition too, which I think is a GREAT way to start any day!

Then it was home to prepare for the family fondue dinner... 

I was disorganized and tired, but it was a success!

The fondue is Norm's and my tradition (it's pretty slow to catch on with my family - this is the first time they've actually shown up for it, preferring turkey in all years past!). I did beef tenderloin with bagna cauda (an Italian dip from oil, butter, anchovies and garlic... DELICIOUS!!), prawns, onions and mushrooms with batter, cheese with bread and veggies and leftover pie for dessert. Nice day. Now my house smells of peanut oil.

Salmon CanapésSELF | December 2010

by Kerri Conan

Pretty-in-pink salmon is loaded with heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Yield: Makes 8 servings Time: 20 minutes 4 ounces goat cheese, at room temperature 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon Sriracha sauce (or more to taste) 12 ounces daikon, cut crosswise into 16 slices (1/4 inch thick each) 8 ounces thinly sliced smoked salmon (or lox), cut into 16 pieces 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives Combine cheese, juice and Sriracha in a bowl. Spread a layer of cheese mixture on each daikon slice; top with salmon and garnish with chives. Per serving (per 2 canapés) 93 calories, 6 g fat, 3 g saturated, 2 g carbohydrates, 1 g fiber, 9 g protein Nutritional analysis provided by Self

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/Salmon-Canapes-362732#ixzz1hlidiOqU

My Husband the Swami

Norm decided four years ago (on his 60th birthday) that he would take up yoga. He does it from a book...

Because he had radiation therapy ten years ago, he has a lot of very tight, stiff muscles in his neck and shoulders, but he continues to impress me with his determination to loosen up. 

He does it in his den at home... 

In our living room...

And against beautiful backdrops when we travel... this is on the hill above St. John's, NL

In Halifax...

In the Rocky Mountains

Beautiful, huh? And the scenery is nice too...

With a random Lululemon employee on the streets of Banff...

My only concern is that he's getting too comfortable wearing my yoga pants. Working on some project...

This  is us making apple juice...

My Tree Story

Many years ago I was single and living in a cute little 2 bedroom rental. I wanted a real tree as I'd grown up with fake trees and they had no scent or character. Now that I was an adult and independent, I could do what I damn well pleased, couldn't I?!  Where the Kootenay Co-op is now there used to be tree sales at Christmastime... perhaps the Rotary Club? I took my hand-me-down-from Mom-K-Car station wagon down there and bought a pretty little spruce. The guy threw it in the back of my station wagon and I drove home, loving the scent and excited about decorating my REAL tree. I was such a mature woman to do this on my own, was I not?

The first thing I discovered upon arriving at home was that I was unable to get the tree out of the back of the wagon. It went in base first, and was all spread out, so when I pulled on the end of it, it got all caught up inside. And the needles were sharp. Fast forward half hour and two pints of blood later. The tree was extracted and in the house. I was breathing heavy, sweating and needed a glass of wine.

Then I tried to put the tree in the tree stand. I discovered that a twenty-three year old girl is not capable of holding up a 75-lb tree and tightening those four screws all at the same time. An hour and two pints of sweat later, I couldn't see out the windows, which I'd fogged up with my sweating and grunting... and probably the swearing too.

By the time I got the tree upright, I could see that it was tilted in a really bad way. I got hammer, nails, and string out and tied it to the wall in 4 different places. I never did decorate it either. And I never had another real tree till I got married. I also drink too much wine now. Stupid tree.

Awesome Video!

All.I.Can’s Kootenay Street Segment Goes Viral

Click on the orange link, and then click on the play button on the picture with the guy skiing in the yellow coat. I love this video... I downloaded the song from iTunes and the cinematography is amazing...

The Best Brussels Sprouts Recipe... Seriously!

Something weird has come over me lately. If you were to ask me if there's anything I can't or won't eat, I would answer (as my family well knows... ask my brother about finding them in his curtains, months after he tried to serve them to me!) parsnips. I hate parsnips. Sweet in a way that no veggie has a right to be, my mom used to add insult to sweetness by frying them in butter. Gross. But the groceries that I bought last week included both parsnips (I made two different lamb stews, and put them in both) and Brussels sprouts. Another vegetable that I tried to hide on the under-the-table ledge until they could be properly disposed of by burying them in sand when Mom wasn't looking...  Jamie Oliver had a Christmas special on last night, and it was BRILLIANT (as he would say). I can't wait to make the turkey his way as well as the roast potatoes, carrots and - believe it or not - parsnips! And this recipe I made tonight, and it was DELISH (also as Jamie would say)...

Who wants to spend ages prepping sprouts when there’s so much else going on? Not me! This kind of thing is exactly the reason I fell in love with my food processor. You just rattle the sprouts straight through it and into a pan with some gorgeous flavours. Done.


Push all the Brussels through the fine slicing attachment of your food processor, then leave to one side.


Add a splash of olive oil and a knob of butter to a large pan over a medium heat. Add the bacon, sage or rosemary leaves and a pinch of salt and pepper and fry for a few minutes, or until lovely and crispy. Add the shredded sprouts along with a good splash of water, then turn the heat right up, pop the lid on and fry for around 4 minutes. You want them to be soft but still with a bit of bite, but feel free to cook them a bit longer, if you prefer. Stir through the remaining butter, then season to taste with salt, pepper and the Worcestershire sauce. Toss everything together, turn the heat off and serve.

Tip: You can make these the day before to minimize stress on the big day. Leave to cool, cover, then whack in your garage or somewhere cold over night, and just cook them for around 3 minutes to warm through when you need them.

Recipe © Jamie Oliver. Recipe from Jamie's Christmas with bells on.

How
• 1kg Brussels sprouts, washed
• olive oil
• 2 knobs of unsalted butter
• 4 rashers quality dry-cured smoked streaky bacon, finely sliced
• 2 sprigs of fresh sage or rosemary, leaves picked
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4-5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Happiness is...

Today is all about seeing the positives in life. So every time I'm feeling fine, I'll add to my "happiness is..." list:

happiness is...

• a warm egg right from my chicken's butt! GREAT way to start the day... just being with my chickens always makes me feel fine. They are funny and so full of character I can watch them for hours
• Norm and Dad out collecting firewood while I sit on the couch and read
• sunshine
• a big batch of Energy Balls (Whitewater Cooks at Home cookbook - 1 cup each chocolate chips, raisins, oatmeal, toasted sunflower and sesame seeds, dried cranberries, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup honey and 2 cups peanut butter... mix with hands and roll into balls... the cookbook says to roll them in coconut at the end, but Norm doesn't like coconut so I use ground flax seed.. .DELISH!!!!! I love Shelley's cookbooks and highly recommend them!).
• 600 tubas

• playing scrabble with my friends
• my iPhone... I LOVE that thing! And the book I'm reading on my iPhone Kobo app... Stephen King's 11/22/63, that man is the best story teller...
• less than 3 weeks till the days begin to get longer again
• Sipping a steaming mug of Oso Negro coffee at 2:30 in the afternoon
• watching General Hospital commercial-free on youtube, and then chatting about it with a FB friend!
• another amazing sunset... that's about 5 in a row now!!
• a glass of red wine
• my favourite supper... a can of tuna in lettuce, red onion, toasted sunflower seeds and slivered almonds, with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper dressing
• husband Norm getting home safe and sound from the hot springs!!

Curried Carrot Soup and Cream of Broccoli Soup

So today is one of those days... I'm miserable and weepy and lethargic. So, what to do? I made soup. The curried carrot soup was to use up the thousand little, little, tiny, deformed carrots that Norm dug up out of his garden and put in a bucket in the basement for me to deal with... so two hours of washing and scrubbing and trimming rotten spots away finally used them all up and yielded enough for a lovely big pot of soup. I used Rachel's recipe as a base, although Norm can't eat food that's spicy so I used a quarter of the recommended curry powder (I only have hot) and no cayenne or salt (the chicken bouillon cubes are salty enough). I also had no sour cream but I love the concept of the spider web and spider (see the recipe for explanation) for serving to kids or company!

Then I made my usual cream of broccoli with cheddar... it seems that most of the soups in the freezer have ham and beans, or lentils and pork hocks, or ham and lentils... we needed some lighter options. And since I'm on holidays till January I have lots of time to replenish our soup stocks! 

Norm just got home from scouting for a Christmas tree with Dad... I get to pick the one I like tomorrow!

Curried Carrot Soup

Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray

Prep Time: 5 min

Inactive Prep Time:--

Cook Time:20 min 

Level: Easy

Serves: Up to 6 (1 1/2 cup) servings

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 pounds packaged baby carrots, from produce section
• 6 cups chicken stock, available on soup aisle
• 1 tablespoon mild curry paste or 1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
• Coarse salt
• 1 cup sour cream
• Plastic condiment bottle or medium plastic food storage bag
• 6 blades fresh chives, cut into 1-inch pieces

Directions

Preheat medium pot over medium high heat. Add olive oil, butter, onions and carrots and saute 5 minutes. Add 4 cups chicken stock, curry and cayenne, and about 1 teaspoon salt to the pot. Bring to a boil, cover and cook until carrots are very tender, about 15 minutes. Place pot on a trivet next to food processor. Process soup in 2 or 3 small batches until soup is smooth and carrots are fully pureed. Transfer processed soup into a large bowl as you work to make room for more soup in the food processor. Return completed soup to the soup pot and place back over low heat. If the soup is too thick, add remaining stock, up to 2 cups, to achieve desired consistency. Adjust seasonings. Place sour cream in a plastic condiment squeeze bottle or into a medium food storage bag. Cut a very small hole in the corner of the bag with scissors. Ladle soup into bowls and squirt a swirl of sour cream around the bowl from the center out to the rim. Drag a toothpick from the center of the bowls out to the edges, forming a spider web design on soup. Pile a few pieces of cut chives at the center of each bowl to resemble green spiders in their webs! Cool!

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How I Cook Chicken... Delish!

Rosa’s Sticky Chicken (Rosa is my Italian sister-in-law)

Rosa made up a big batch of seasoning which included 3/4 cup salt, 1/4 cup pepper, 1/8 cup crushed rosemary (use mortar and pestle) and a teaspoon of garlic powder. All that is more or less...

Then wash the chicken (I use big chickens, about 7 or 8 lbs), pat it dry and rub it with the seasonings. Truss it good, fill a big metal cake pan 1/2 full water and plop the chicken into it. Pour a bit of olive oil on top, followed by a few tbsp's butter. Cook at 450 for 2 hours (maybe a bit less…), turning 3 or 4 times (carefully as the water will be boiling hot) during the cooking time.

Flip the chicken about every half hour. And you need to keep adding water so that there is always lots in the pan. When it's done, after about 2 hours, you cut up the chicken and add a bit of white wine to the sieved drippings and pour a couple of spoonfuls of that mix over the pieces of chicken.