Epic Bread Fail

When I moved from Halifax to Charlottetown, my good friend Hilary made me some challah bread as a parting gift.

It's a traditional jewish braided bread. Very yeasty and tastes sweet. I love all breads and was glad to accept it.

The dough gets frozen and you take it out for five hours. It rises and you just stick it in the oven to get some fresh bread! Simple, yes?

Well, a dumbass would put the unfrozen bread on a plate, as opposed to the sheet on which it would expand.

So when I came home, the bread had wonderfully bloated to a nice and plump unbaked bread. And also stuck firmly to the plate. So, I had to pull and fight to get it off the plate. Then, I had to fight to get it off my hands and unto the darn sheet. It got all stretched out and lumpy.

Well, I wasn't gonna throw it away, so I still stuck it into the oven to bake.

Here's the result in ALL IT'S GLORY!!!!


It still tastes awesome, even though it looks like something that died. :)

Scalloped potatos with mushrooms

I'm not very fond of potatoes by themselves, but sometimes get the craving for them. So I figured I'd try something easy. And I had leftover mushrooms that I could use.











My cat thinks she's food. I'm a potato!!













Unfortunately, I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the final result.
Well, you've seen scalloped potatoes before ... so there you go. ;)

Potatoe and carrot soup

Pretty easy, even if you've never made a soup!! And came out delicious!










What you need:

• 3 medium potatoes
  
• 1 onion
• 3 medium carrots
• 1 clove Garlic (fresh is better, but I used garlic powder)
• 5 cups Chicken Broth
• Chili powder
• Oil
• Salt & pepper
• Optional: 1 cup of milk or cream
  

Cut up all your veggies right from the start.
- Slice you carrots.
- Cube the potatoes (the smaller they are, the faster they'll cook).
- Chop the onion.





In your soup pot, heat the oil on medium heat. When the oil is hot, throw in the onion, garlic and chili powder.
Mix and coat.
Sautee the onion for about 5 minutes.






Add the 5 cups of chicken broth and the potatoes. Bring to a boil and keep the mixture boiling until the potatoes are done. They will be tender, but still hold their shape.

Stir often do that the potatoes don't stick to the pot.

When the potatoes are done, use a potato masher or a hand-held mixer. Puree the mixture until you get the desired constistency.


Add the carrots.
Add the milk or cream if you want.

Lower the temperature at the lowest and let the soup simmer until the carrots are tender.

If you added dairy, make sure it doesn't boil and stir often.

Special Guest - Slap Chop with François

My friend in Montreal got a Slap Chop for Christmas and I HAD to film it in action.
He tried chopping apples and ... well it kind of worked.

It was hilarious! :)

French Onion Soup

I'd never done it from scratch and felt like some. This is one of my comfort foods.

At first, I tried making the croutons myself, but I baked them too hard and they were a little burnt. So I threw them out and used some toasted english muffins instead. That was a mistake. It's good for broiling croutons to be absorbant and take in a bit of the broth on which they're sitting. The muffins were too waterproof and came out hard and rubbery. :(

But the soup itself was delicious!

Cabbage Roll Casserole

I thought I'd try something different and see what I could do with cabbage. I never buy cabbage (not too fond of it).

So this is a variation on stuffed cabbage cigars. Basically the same deal, except everything gets shredded and thrown into a casserole dish.

It was all right, but the rice wasn't cooked enough. I can't figure out brown rice, which is what I use. I never get it right.

Oh well.

Mushroom Soup

There is a lot in this recipe that I substituted. It was probably not as good as the original recipe, but it was still pretty darn good. Experimenting can sometimes give good results. This is one of them.

WHAT YOU NEED

- 1/4 cup of butter (I used margarine)
- 1 chopped onion
- 1 cup half/half. (I used 2% milk)
- 2 tbsp of flour
- 1 cup of chicken broth
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- 2 cups of mushrooms (I used regular white ones)


On medium-high heat, melt the butter. Add the mushrooms and onion and let them sautee for about 5 minutes, or until they're soft.







Add the flour and mix until evenly blended. It will make a sticky paste.








Stir in the chicken broth and cook while stirring until it starts to boil.








Add the half-half (milk), salt and pepper.

Bring to the point just before boiling.


TIP: Stir often. Heated dairy will create a film on top or burn at the bottom if not stirred.



Serve right away and store any left-over quickly in the fridge.









You can try it with different kinds of mushrooms. There are many, so try the ones you like!


Click here to link to the original recipe.