Rainforest burritos

OK, I've been wanting to post this recipe since I started this blog and I finally got my cousin's permission to post it... as long as I change the name.  So, I hereby give you *drum roll*... the rainforest burrito!  Rainforests have nothing to do with the burrito, but it's kind of in keeping with what her family calls them. This recipe came from my cousin, who got it from her dad, who may or may not have gotten it from a restaurant somewhere.

This recipe is soooooo yummy! I'm not even an olive fan, but I couldn't dream of these burritos without them! For the boonies cook, it's reasonably attainable (the tomato is the only thing that won't keep for a long time in the fridge), and it's really fast to put together. 

For this recipe, you'll need:

• 1 lb ground beef
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 c. sliced or chopped almonds (preferably toasted)
• 1 apple, chopped
• 1/2 c. raisins
• 1/2 c. sliced green olives
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. ground cloves
• flour tortillas
• feta cheese
• sour cream
• salsa
• lettuce

To make, brown the meat in a large frying pan or wok. Drain excess fat.
Now, add each ingredient in order up to the spices, stirring for about a minute after each addition. 

Heat some flour tortillas - you can do this one by one in a dry frying pan over medium heat.  Don't cook them - you just want them to soften.  Alternatively, you could place them in the microwave for about 20 seconds on high. Or in the oven wrapped in foil for about 15 minutes at 350°F.

Add a leaf of lettuce, then put the meat mix on it. Sprinkle some feta cheese, sour cream and salsa over the whole mess and wrap up to eat. You'll probably need to make this every night for a week because it's so dang good.

Spring rhubarb

Here in the Bulkley Valley, spring has sprung and my rhubarb patch is hastily producing some tangy red stalks to tempt me. One of my fondest memories growing up was sitting on the back steps at my house with a giant stalk of rhubarb and a little yogurt container of sugar. My friends and I would raid the rhubarb patch and dip the stalks in sugar, munching them down during the heat of the day in the shade of the house. The moment I discovered the rhubarb patch the first spring in my new house, I was elated!

Rhubarb is a great local food - easy to grow (seriously, I've never known a rhubarb patch to need maintenance of any kind).  In fact, I'm often completely baffled by the people who try to sell it at the farmers market or Safeway.  Doesn't everyone have a rhubarb patch??

So if you have a rhubarb patch, start raiding it.  Here are some great recipes to make use of that spring treasure!

Rhubarb Currant Chutney

This recipe comes from Epicurious and is wonderful on grilled pork chops, tenderloin or sausages. I'm pretty sure you could easily can this and have it for the whole year too.

• 3/4 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 cups 1/2-inch pieces fresh rhubarb
• 1/2 cup dried currants

Bring the first 6 ingredients to a boil in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the rhubarb and currants and simmer until the rhubarb softens. Serve warm with your choice of meat.

Dal with Rhubarb

This vegetarian recipe comes from Mark Bittman (of How to Cook Everything fame). It's super fast and very, very boonies friendly due to the use of dried staples and seasonal ingredients. In addition, it's vegetarian so you can help save the world just a little bit. I love it, but it's very gingery and tangy so hubby isn't a fan.  However, if you're like me and love a lot of flavour in your food, give this a go!

• 1 cup dried red lentils, washed and picked over
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 4 cardamom pods
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 2 cloves
• 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
• 1 dried ancho or other mild dried chile (optional)
• salt
• 2 tablespoons cold butter or peanut oil (optional)
• chopped fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish

Combine all of the ingredients except the salt, butter and cilantro in a saucepan and add water to cover it by about 1 inch. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat so the mixture simmers gently. Cook, stirring occasionally for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender. Remove the cloves and cardamom pods, and add the salt, butter and cilantro. Serve on its own, or with steamed rice or quinoa.

In case you haven't had enough rhubarb, here's a whole slideshow of delicious rhubarb recipes from Epicurious!

Read the labels

Hi folks,

Sorry for the long leave of absence.  I was out of town, then feeling lazy... but hubby and I are back on the healthy bandwagon, working out, running, and getting the diet back in order. So I thought that instead of a recipe today, I would talk a bit about tricky food labeling.

I was caught by tricky food labeling just yesterday. You see, I've been on a big Greek yogurt kick lately. Greek yogurt is high in protein, low in fat, and extra thick and creamy. We've been buying this brand here:

It's fantastic! Comes in handy single servings for work, a few yummy flavors (honey and lime are my favorites, hubby prefers berry flavors), and comes in a non-fat version too.  Here's the nutritional info:

Note in particular the amount of fat - this is in the regular version, so going non-fat isn't even all that different. 

Problem is, everyone and their dog seems to be on this Greek yogurt kick too, and it sells out in minutes in the local Safeway. So I was home on Vancouver Island last week, and my mom introduced me to a new Greek yogurt:

Note that it says "Greek Style" yogurt. This is important.
Because when I came home and bought a tub yesterday, I ate a few bowlfuls, then read the label:

 Holy guacamole Batman!  66% of my daily saturated fat in a bowl of yogurt?  This stuff is dessert, not breakfast! 

So here's my warning.  Beware of any labels that include the word "style", because it sure as heck isn't authentic.  I'll give the Krema yogurt props for being totally delicious, but with that much fat it damn well should be! 

Ditto with the word "drink" in place of "juice". Juice is liquid squeezed from a fruit. "Drink" is sugar water that may or may not include some form of fruit-based liquid, along with sugar, sugar, more sugar, and sugar.

Have a wonderful weekend!  I'm off to feed some pigs :)

Portable, Good-For-You Porridge

I am NOT a morning person.  Nuh-uh. My goal in life is to wake up as late as possible and still get to work on time.  So it follows that breakfast is not high on my list of weekday morning priorities.  Sometimes toast, most often nothing at all.  I usually just take a lot of snacks to work, and work through them as the day progresses. But once in a while I remember that I can bring a decent breakfast to work with minimal preparation. Instant oatmeal is an option, but I find most of the brands to be sickeningly sweet. So here is a version of instant oatmeal that you can make yourself - you could even prep several of these on the weekend and leave them in your cupboard to grab on the go.

You'll need a small jar with a lid (a 250 mL canning jar works great), some rolled oats, and whatever dry toppings you like on your oatmeal.

Fill half the jar with the oats, and sprinkle on spices of your choice (I add cinnamon and ginger and sometimes cardamom). Then add your toppings (dried fruit, nuts, flax seeds, coconut, whatever). Now close the jar.

When you get to work, dump the whole thing in a bowl, and measure out about 3/4 jar of water and add it to the bowl.  Microwave for 3 minutes on high.  If you like, you could bring an individual sized yogurt or cut up fresh fruit for the top. Voila!  Instant breakfast with minimal sugar or preservatives!  WIN.

Pasta with Tuna and Broccoli

It would appear that posting about my former carb-obsession may have opened the floodgates to more pasta recipes.  Certainly, they've been a go-to thing over the past couple of weeks.  I mean, who has time to cook when there's playoff hockey to be watched? 

So in that vein, I'll present you with another easy and fast pasta recipe that puts most of your favorite food groups in a single bowl. My dad found this recipe several years ago - possibly in Canadian Living Magazine.  You may think it to be a weird combination of flavours, but it works - it really does. And for the boonies cook, it's pretty achievable.  The broccoli can be fresh or frozen, and everything else is canned or dried.

Start by breaking apart a head or two of broccoli and putting the florets in a steamer. Put the water on to boil for the pasta, and put the broccoli on to steam (about 5 minutes once it starts to boil - you want it to retain a bit of crispness).

Mince 3 cloves of garlic and saute them in 2 tbsp. olive oil in a large frying pan until fragrant but not brown. 

Add 2 cans of flaked tuna (drained) to the garlic and stir around. Then add 1 tbsp dried basil (or about 1/4 c. chopped fresh if you have it), and a few shakes of crushed red chili pepper (to taste).

Put about 3/4 c of raisins in a coffee mug.  At this point, your broccoli should be done, so drain the broccoli water directly into the coffee mug to blanch the raisins.  Then add the drained broccoli to the tuna mix and stir. After about a minute, drain the raisins and add those to the broccoli and tuna. 

Toss with the cooked pasta of your choice (I like rotini - it holds on to the tuna better than other pastas), and serve garnished with parmesan cheese. 


Tuna and Broccoli Pasta

2-3 servings of pasta (rotini works well)
1-2 heads broccoli, split into florets
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cans flaked tuna, drained
1 tbsp dried basil
crushed red chili pepper (to taste)
3/4 c. raisins
parmesan cheese

Ginger and Spice Pancakes

Please tell me that you don't use store mix for pancakes...  Pancakes were a Sunday staple in my house growing up, and we always used this recipe from the Five Roses (1960's version) Cookbook.  While they were my favorite breakfast at home, I could never get used to store mix or restaurant pancakes.  They just tasted fake or something.

Pancakes from scratch really doesn't take much more time than pancakes from a mix.  Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients. Mix the two together.  How hard was that?

1 1/3 c. flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cinammon
1/8 tsp allspice
1 1/4 c. milk
1 egg
3 tbsp. vegetable oil
1/4 tsp vanilla

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a whisk.

Measure out milk in a 2 c. or larger measuring cup. Add the egg, oil and vanilla and whisk until mixed together (I keep it all in the measuring cup to reduce the number of bowls I get dirty).

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk until just mixed (lumpy is ok).

Use a ladle or large spoon to drop by spoonfuls onto a hot griddle. I set the griddle at 320 F, but if you use a frying pan, set it over medium to medium high heat. When the edges start to lose that "wet" look, you can flip them.

Serve with maple syrup and butter. yum.


You can also mix this recipe up a bit: take out the spice and add 1 c mashed bananas for delicious banana pancakes.  Or add 1 c. fresh or frozen blueberries for blueberry pancakes.  Or add 1 tbsp cocoa and 1/2 c. chocolate chips to the dry ingredients for chocolate chip pancakes.

And have a wonderful Sunday!

Pasta and Stuff

Once upon a time, I was a carb-monster. I was 100% invested in the pasta-for-energy camp and probably ate it 4 days a week. I still get a little drooly when I see a ginormous plate of creamy pasta and sauce.  However, we all know now that too many carbs can be bad too, and that carb energy?  short lived and liable to make you bonk afterwards.  So the pasta-monster has had to be tamed a little in favour of lean protein and lots of veggies.

Despite all of this, there are some nights when the only thing that will satisfy is a big bowl of tortellini, and I have a million and one recipes for things to add to it.  Today's recipe is based on one from the Our Best Bites Cookbook. This cookbook is probably the most-used recipe book in my kitchen.  I discovered their blog a couple of years ago, and couldn't resist the book when it came out. Anyway, back to the recipe.  I have a tendency, when I'm feeling too lazy to hit the grocery store, to grab everything I can find in the cupboard and fridge, then search for recipes that might suit what I've got.  The other night, it was canned tomatoes, canned artichokes and ground turkey. The recipe I used as a base was the Tomato Artichoke Tortellini from the book. It's supposed to be vegetarian, but I couldn't let a good package of ground turkey go back in the freezer.

Put some water on to boil for your pasta - I like tortellini for this, but you could use anything.

Start by browning the meat in a large pan. When it's lost all its pink, add 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced and stir until it smells all garlicky and delicious.

Add in a can of marinated artichoke hearts, drained and chopped (my artichokes were not marinated, just canned in brine, so I added some oregano and basil and salt and pepper too). Also, add in a can of diced tomatoes, and a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste. Stir the whole lot until it's heated through, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Mix the sauce together with the pasta, and grate some parmesan cheese over the top. Serve!

I love a good one pot meal, and this kind of pasta really does the trick when you need a fast, hearty meal.  Notice that almost everything was canned, and hence, very accessible to the boonies cook! 


Meaty Tomato-Artichoke Pasta
(based on recipe from Our Best Bites)

1 lb ground meat (turkey or other)
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 can marinated artichoke hearts, chopped
1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes
3 tablespoons tomato paste
salt and pepper (and oregano and basil if your artichokes aren't marinated) to taste
Parmesan cheese
1 package frozen tortellini