Big Appehtite

One of my hobbies is cooking up new recipes to enter in cooking contests and sometimes I win big. Recently I entered quite a few recipes into contests put on by Maple Leaf through Appehtite and I am excited to share that I won with one of my favourite quick and easy sandwich recipes.

I have shared my winning recipe before, but it's too yummy not to share again, especially when it just made me $1000 richer! Check out my recipe for my Italian Steak Sandwiches on my blog or on Appehtite.

And be sure to check out one of Appehtite's current contests for a chance to win $1000 yourself!

Italian Steak Sandwich

The name of this post might sound deceiving because I don't eat steak, but my sandwich is not made from an ordinary steak. It's made from a seitan steak! Seitan is a vegetarian protein alternative and it might be something fun to try if you've recently made a New Year's resolution to eat meat free more often.

Of course this recipe would also be great made with a regular steak. But they don't call seitan Wheat Meat for nothing, it really is the closest you'll get to vegetarian meat. So maybe giving it a try could be next year's resolution, if you're not ready to give it a go this year? 

From the Vault

I might be taking a break from eating steak right now, but I sure wasn't in the summer. Today's recipe is  one I created in the summer and I have to say that it would be perfect served on anything barbecued - fish, chicken, steak, or veggies. 

This sauce is based on my favourite chimichurri recipe but I've made it wonderfully creamy to make it extra special. I'm not sure if the South American creators of a chimichurri would agree with me about this, but I sure do love it!

Silver Linings

It's the Oscars tonight and I am not the biggest fan of award shows, but I do love the Oscars. I love watching the pre-show to see the amazing dresses (and the not so amazing dressing, if I'm being honest). I love seeing the stars as normal people and watching their joy as they win. And I love making appetizers for my Oscars party. 

I love appy parties and I love themed parties, so when it's Oscar time I rack my brain to get the creative juices flowing. I love to make appetizers inspired by a few of the honoured movies and today's post is one of my choices for 2013. 

Silver Linings Playbook is set in Philly, the land of cheese steaks. Philly Cheese Steaks are not the best food for a party so I made mine mini and they turned out great. Read on for the recipe!

Double Feature

Sometimes flattery gets you everywhere, and flattery won this round of the guessing game for Lesley this month. Lesley guessed my fruitcakes would cost a whopping $74 to make and while she guessed a tremendously high amount, I appreciated her kind words and I realized that if I had used a different brand of brandy, my fruitcake would have cost more to make. Maybe not quite $74, but still...

For Lesley I have two holiday appetizers, an easy Asian meatball dipping sauce and a holiday bruschetta. I think they're both unique and pretty special, just like Lesley. Here are the recipes!

Holiday Bruschetta and Easy Asian Meatball Dipping Sauce

Cooking Club Challenge

You all must know that one of my hobbies is entering cooking and recipe contests. I love to cook and contests encourage me to get really creative in the kitchen by stretching my mind to come up with new ideas. Plus, there's the added bonus of getting a chance to win a prize!

Food Network Canada has a monthly contest where they ask everyone to cook a recipe of their choosing, take a photo, and send the photo in with a short paragraph about what you thought of the dish. 

This was my first time entering the contest and I won! I don't know what my prize is yet, but the day that it will come in the mail will be very exciting! 

You can check out a shot of my winning photo below or visit the Cooking Club Challenge webpage to see my photo and the recipe, Anthony Sedlak's Tangy Short Ribs with Coleslaw and Twice Baked Potatoes. 

I added some fresh apple cut into matchsticks, a touch of sesame oil to my coleslaw, and also folded a touch of blue cheese into my potatoes, but otherwise left everything as the recipe suggested. 

The only thing I don't agree with in the recipe is calling the potatoes Twice Baked Potatoes. At my house they're called Party Stuffed Potatoes, but that's a story for another day...

Cheery Cherries

There are a lot of foods that make me smile when I think of them. Dark chocolate, salty potato chips or popcorn, creamy cheese, or fresh cherries all do the trick for me. 

And when I get a chance to pile some of my favourite foods on top of each other and eat them all at once, I am a really happy girl. Can you guess what two of my favourite ingredients I'm combining today? 

It's not chocolate covered potatoes or cherry brownies, although both sound delicious! It's not cheesy popcorn either, but I might have some of that tonight! 

Today I am combining cherries and cheese! That combination might sound a little out there, but just wait until you taste my Cheery Cherry Relish on a cheeseburger. It's going to taste great!

Viet-nom nom nom

This is not the most beautiful recipe I've shared with you, but the taste of this Vietnamese Beef dish certainly makes up for it. The combination of fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, and lime juice tells me there's a chance that I'm going to get over full after the meal. And there's nothing I want to change about that. 

Something else that I love about Vietnamese food is something that I discovered by accident. I was cooking my rice to pair with dinner and I let it cook a little too long; not so long that it burned but long enough that the rice touching the bottom of the pot was a little crispy. 

I hadn't made enough rice to waste the crispy rice, so I just scraped it off the bottom and stirred everything together, hoping that no one would notice. I noticed, but in a good way! The texture of the crispy bottom rice provided another layer to the dish that I hadn't expected and now I'll try to get crispy rice when I make this dish again!

Big Bites

Some burgers are a such a ridiculous size that I don't think I could ever get my mouth open wide enough to bite into one. Have you seen a menu with a family sized burger you're supposed to slice into eight pizza slice shaped burgers and enjoy as a group?

I just can't imagine wanting to eat a burger so badly that I'd eat the top bun first, then the toppings, then the burger, then the bottom bun. Where's the fun in that?

But as long as it's a really good burger, I think that it's ok to serve a really big burger to your dad on Father's Day. Just as long as it's not so big that he can't bite into it and he really should be able to finish the burger by himself!

Dads want to be challenged and a burger challenge is the ultimate challenge. So let's get cracking and build a bite for tonight. 

Taco Thursday

I feel lucky to have grown up in a home where food was not only plentiful, but also in a home where meals were never the same. My mom didn't plan to make spaghetti on Monday, chicken on Tuesday, pork chops on Wednesday, or tacos on Thursdays. 

She did, however, make most Friday nights Picnic Night. She would lay out a picnic cloth on the floor of the living room and treat us to pizza, chicken wings, or another kind of treat food. Remembering that makes me want to relive those nights, but that's a story for another day...

When my mom cooked, all the meals were different, inventive, and rarely fell into a pattern. I think that's what me want to be creative in the kitchen. This dish reinvents the taco so that even if you want to have tacos every Thursday night, you can still make them different. :)

This was my final lasagna recipe entry into the Olivieri Taste of Home Lasagna Recipe Competition and although it did not place in the Top Ten entries, I was pleased with it. I especially liked how the black bean puree felt like ricotta cheese and the tortilla chips on top didn't hurt either!

Solid Soup

I mean solid as in tasting great, but also as literally solid because today's recipe isn't soup at all. Today's recipe is a lasagna that's based on a soup. 

Luke and I worked on this recipe together, but the idea for it was all his. 

We took all the essential parts of a French Onion Soup and made them into a lasagna. The beef broth from the soup became a gravy style sauce and also leftover beef pot roast. The onions from the soup stayed as onions, we just caramelized them and tossed them in. And the croutons from the soup became garlic bread that we served on the side. 

This is not your everyday lasagna and you don't want a huge serving of it either. It's very rich and very satisfying, but I really craved a healthy green salad on the side!

A Honey of a Meatball

Meatballs are like the chameleon of food because they can act amazing in so many different styles of cooking.

There’s the obvious choice of pairing meatballs with spaghetti and tomato sauce, my brother’s choice of stuffing them with cheese and rolling them with rice, the Italian wedding choice of serving them in soups, and the Hawaiian way of serving them with pineapple for an appetizer.

Meatballs are delicious in all of these ways and more. For instance, meatballs are also great served with a sticky sauce and rice.

Today’s recipe is a simple sticky sauced meatball meal that’s great to put together on a weeknight. But, the best part of this meal is that it doesn’t taste like you through it together on a weeknight.

It tastes special and delicious. Here’s my Easy Honey Garlic Meatball recipe!

Cheeseburgers in Paradise

And if by the title of this post you thought I was going to be making cheeseburgers, you're wrong. 

One of my favourite thing to do when I'm cooking is take one food I love and morph it into a second food I love. 

I've already shown you my Loaded Potato Soup where I used everything I love in a bake potato and made it into a soup. Now it's time to use everything I love in a cheeseburger and make it into a quiche. 

But since cheeseburgers are made individually for each person, I think it's important to make my quiches individual too. And since bacon only enhances cheeseburgers, I think it can only enhance my new Cheeseburger Quiche. 

Flying Purple People Eater

Well I saw the thing comin' out of the sky
It had the one long horn, one big eye
I commenced to shakin' and I said "ooh-eee"
It looks like a purple eater to me

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater)
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One eye?)


You've got to remember singing this song as a child. 


And didn't it make you want to eat only things that were purple? Surely I 
can't have been the only one?


For some reason that song came into my head again and I decided that I 
needed to make an all purple meal. 


I have already tried my hand at making an all yellow meal and it turned out 
delicious. 


I think this one did too. Let me know what you think. 

Roll Back

The long weekend, what a beautiful thing.

While I do know this weekend wasn't a true long weekend, it was almost better than an extra day. It was just such an unexpected treat to sleep in or get something done that I wouldn't otherwise have had time to do. 

Plus, the entire next week is going to feel better because I'll be getting up an hour later, biking to work an hour later, and ok, so maybe getting home an hour isn't so great. But you get my point. There are lots of great things associated with the clocks rolling back. 

One thing you could have done with your extra hour was make Cabbage Rolls. Check out my recipe if you're in need of a great one! 

Ode to Steve

When I think of my brother and food, I think of two things.

Number 1, he eats a lot. Number 2, he likes Porcupine Meatballs.

I'm sure you've heard of this dinner before but incase you haven't, these are the little meatballs rolled in spiky rice with a gooey cheese centre and a tomato sauce.

My mom got this recipe from a neighbour and it's changed over the years to suit our taste buds, but she claims to have named it herself.

Can you believe that my mom thought that the name was hers? I felt bad when I told her I Googled it and saw that thousands of people before her have named it the same thing.

This doesn't change how yummy they are though!

But before I get carried away with teasing my mom, here's my brother's favourite recipe.

My Big Fat Italian Wedding

Really, I am a morning a morning person. But on cold mornings, I am anything but that. 

I hate pulling myself out from under the covers in the morning and feeling a chill on my skin. I'm not even tired anymore, but I feel cold and I don't want to move. 

So on days like today, I try to look on the bright side and think about warm things. 

One of those things is a big bowl of steamy soup. And I love soup. 

I love soup so much that I included one of my favourite warm and cozy soup recipes in my card at a bridal shower this weekend. 

And what could be more perfect for the occasion than Italian Wedding Soup? 

But you're not getting just any Italian Wedding Soup. You're getting my Big Fat Italian Wedding Soup. It's chunky and delicious, and it might even beat out the original version I gave to my friend. 

'Twas the Night Before September

'Twas the night before September, when all through BC

People were full from eating, as far as the eye could see;

The dishes were done by Luke with care, 

In hopes that breakfast soon would be there...

Ok... So my rhymes are not as good as some people's are. I'll stop now before you get mad. 

Sometimes I play around and think I sound great with my rhymes for possible children's books, but my family always holds their ears in pain. And I don't want you to feel like that!

But back to the night before September, something exciting did happen to me on August 31. 

Drum roll please... 

New-dle Salad

Don't you love stabbing your fork into a big bowl of veggies? Enjoying the crisp sound of every crunchy bite? And cool, fresh, good-for-you feeling that you get after eating salad?

Well, this is a salad recipe. But it's no ordinary salad.

And if you answered no to the questions I just asked... you might just love this recipe too. Because this is an Asian noodle salad. 

This isn't one of those healthy creations with veggies on top of veggies, but I think that if you eat enough of those you deserve to enjoy a pile of dressed up, beefy noodles too. 

Plus I always include veggies in my dinner, so there are some token healthy bites nestled between the lovely noodles. 

And even though my dish might not be the prettiest presented dish you've ever seen, try it anyway because it tastes better than it looks!

One Hand In My Pocket...

And the other one is giving a high five.

I still love to listen my old Alanis Morissette CDs and that is one of my favourite songs. Did I get it stuck in your head? 

But Alanis isn't the only one giving out high fives. I definitely give high fives out for these tasty pockets of steak, spinach, onions and mushrooms that I made too. 

Just remember to high five each other before you starting chowing down, or else have a napkin in hand, because these puppies are messy.