I took my sandwich in a Ziploc bag today (ok, No Name brand “sandwich” bag) and I felt guilty.  Too guilty.  I’ve tried washing out these little bags to reuse them, but they never really wash properly… or take for.ev.er. to dry.   So, bags-b-gone.  I bought a 3 pack of wrap-n-mats.

I’m having a bit of a food freak-out since reading some information about the chemicals in plastics.  Did you know that Bisphenol A is even in the linings of many canned foods?  Like canned tomatoes??  We eat a lot of canned tomatoes.

If I knew how to can food, I’d probably start.  Well…  in the summer.  Hmm, maybe it’s time to learn.

See the original, Challenger #1 and Challenger #2.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any photo evidence to go along with this post, so you’re going to have to use your imagination a little.

Our third challenger for top crème brulée comes from the Chateau Laurier.  Ooh la la.  After sitting through a rather ho-hum viewing of 27 Dresses, we decided to pick our spirits up with a stop at the Chateau Laurier’s restaurant, Wilfrid’s.  We were pleased to see that the crème brulée offering hadn’t changed since our last visit over a year ago.

They take crème brulée to the next level.  You get a sampler of three crème brulées: maple, whiskey and cherry.  Each is served in an individual espresso cup and presented with a maple cookie, fruit and a dark chocolate “stir stick”.  The maple?   Hands down, it is my favourite.   Each little pot is extremely thick and rich and I could barely finish all three.  But I did.  No crème brulée left behind.

A delicious pick-me-up to start the week.  Try going for dessert after the dinner service around 9pm.   We had a nice table overlooking a snowy Parliament Hill.   Not sure if anything else in town can top this ….

Turns out my “pizza perfect pesto” recipe also does a great job in bread. I was making some soup and thought a savoury bread would be a nice side. That sounds a lot better than “I bought basil at the grocery store and couldn’t recall what I needed it for”.

I used this recipe as a guide, but simplified it even more. They recommend adding flour to your pesto and adding pine nuts separately. Frankly, too fussy. Instead I just dumped a generous 1/3 cup of my pesto into the machine at the second kneading cycle. So.much.easier.

It comes out of the bread machine with a pretty green swirl in the middle.  I think this would make a great summer bread when you’ve got tons of fresh basil.  Ah… summer.

Easy Pesto Bread

• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons warm water
• 3 cups unbleached white flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast
• generous 1/3 cup of pesto
  

1. Measure all ingredients into the bread machine (except for the pesto).
2. Select white bread cycle and light crust
3. Add pesto at the nut/raisin signal or the second kneading cycle.

Nothing says “settling down” like buying a 22 pound bag of flour.  Value size = hot.

I was looking for a traditional Scandinavian spice cookie recipe to test out my new Moomin cookie cutters. I found a ‘traditional’ recipe over at Delicious Days.

This was sort of a disaster. My dough was too wet and I only got one good Moomin cookie before the cookie cutter was all bunged up in dough. Ugh. The rest had to settle being lowly circles and hearts.

Worst of all.. they weren’t even that spicy. I guess I like a bit more zing and zap than the Swedes.

We’re still eating them… but it’s not a keeper recipe.

I was looking for some recipes that use Meyer lemons and happily found this risotto recipe over at 101 Cookbooks.  I swayed a little from Heidi’s version - I used pot barley instead of pearl barley and I omitted the sour cream (sounded too weird).    In the end, I think it turned out pretty well.

I didn’t love it as much as my barley mushroom risotto from last week, but it got a solid “meh, it’s pretty good”.  Maybe it would have been better with the sour cream, but when you’ve just stirred barley for an hour, why risk ruining it?

I wish I had a pressure cooker to cook the barley faster since it takes over an hour to cook the darn stuff.  It’s worth it though.   It is.  Just use mushrooms and not lemons.

You may wish to refresh your memory of the crème brulée by reading the original post and Challenger #1.
Up to bat in our second challenge is the crème brulée from the French Baker / Benny’s Bistro (ou le Boulangerie Français.. mais oui!) in the Byward Market.

We appreciated the COPIOUS amounts of vanilla bean that this brulée brought to the table. Look at it all - vanilla bean speck city! With no fou-fou side dishes, this boastful little brulée stood up tall in its icing sugar shower and said, “Mais oui, mangez-moi! Je n’ai pas besoin de porter un béret pour être français et impressionnant.” (Translation: Eat me! I don’t have to wear a beret to be French and awesome.)

Quel attitude!

The brulée was rich, creamy and had a light crispy top (just how I like it). Also - the wait staff didn’t find it all strange when we walked into Benny’s Bistro asking if they served crème brulée. Not one single Amelie-esque lash batted at this question. Dessert in the afternoon? How civilised! Mais oui!

Boyfriendly rating: 4/5.

We tried to simplify our grocery shopping after one too many groggy Sundays asking ourselves “what groceries do we need this week”? We tried just keeping scrap paper on the fridge to jot down items as we ran out, but we’d always forget something. Like always. For realsies.

So, I started typing up a Master Grocery List (lists are awesome) to keep on the fridge. Run out of milk? Just tick the box. Cat needs food (as if he hasn’t reminded you every.single.hour. that his reserve box of food is getting dangerously low)? Tick the box.

I divided the list into items that we get at the grocery store and ones that we buy in bulk, but feel free to rearrange as you see fit.

Download the Master Grocery List

This recipe was a happy accident. As I was making pizza the other night, I made a mental list of the toppings to use from the veggie basket: cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and onion. Except, when push came to shove (ie. cheese grating) I had completely forgotten about the mushrooms. <silence> Fudge.

Sidebar: We were watching Bridget Jones’s Diary on CBC last night and they muted out the swear words. It felt so wrong.

And we’re back. Ok, so the pizza turned out just fine sans fungi, but we were now left with a real mishmash of vegetables in our fridge. Feeling a bit on the cheap side after the holidays, I didn’t feel like taking these mushrooms to Chef City so I set them on the fast track to Affordableville.

Enter barley.

For less than $2 a bag, we have enough barley to fulfill our bran requirements for months to come. I chose pot barley because it’s less refined than pearl barley. Sure, you have to cook it a scooch longer, but you get a bit more bran. Sweet. God, my 30th birthday is speeding towards me faster than I can say riboflavin.

Mushroom and pot barley risotto

• 5-ish cups of chicken stock
• Dash of sherry (1/8 cup)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup barley
• 1 yellow onion - diced
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 package of mushrooms
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4-ish cup of Parmesan

Method:

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat.  Add onion, thyme and bay leaves.
2. When the onion is soft, stir in barley and add 2 cups of stock.  Cover and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed.
3. In a separate pan (I used a non stick fry pan) add the olive oil, garlic and sliced mushrooms.   Cook for 3-ish minutes until the mushrooms are soft… or however soft you like your mushrooms.
4. In the barley pot, keep adding the stock 1/2 cup at a time and stirring.  I found I used about 5 cups of stock in all.  I should have used a bit more since my barley was a bit chewy when served.
5. Remove the bay leaves and add the mushroom mixture to the barley.
6. Stir in parmesan.

Our first challenger for Ottawa’s Best Crème brulée hails from the Social on Sussex Street. It’s a generous serving and featured vanilla gelato and an orange-fennel confit.

My tasting partner and full-time boy, considered this dessert “too eggy.” I could see where he was coming from, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I didn’t care for the thick crispy sugar crust - too thick and edging into caramel apple territory.

The orange-fennel confit had us a bit confused. Were we supposed to eat the giant pieces of orange peel? After a couple of bites, I decided to forgo the peely parts and focus on the softer parts of the confit. Much better.

Boyfriendly rating: 3/5 (bonus point for yummy side dishes)