The guilt-free part comes with a huge side helping of veggies. I love small sweet tomatoes mixed in with savory mushrooms. I simply fried these up with salt and pepper. Delish!

This was quite simple but delicious and refreshing:

That’s it! I prefer not to add banana to this because it would be very overpowering and I wanted to taste all that delicious mild honeydew.

As a young girl, I grew up going to french school and was immersed in the language at home as well. When I entered my second high school there were no french programs available. But as I was in 10th grade and fluent in french I cleverly set out to take a grade 13 french class in order to “breeze by” in my transition into the new school. What I saw in that class was a nightmare. Young students eager and willing to learn and who thought they were quite advanced at speaking and comprehending the language. But they were barely scraping by on elementary grammar lessons and simple comprehension quizzes. The part that saddened me the most was they believed they were learning something useful and were proficient in the language. This wasn’t their fault however, they were just in the wrong environment.

Now, back to Japanese. What is the right environment, short of flying to Japan and talking to people yourself? Well here is a very great resource for beginners and even higher levels of learning.

Erin’s Challenge! (by The Japanese Foundation)

You can watch real life situations through their videos – including subtitles in kanji, hiragana, romaji and english! It’s all native speakers and the subtitles can be changed on the fly. I’m having a lot of fun watching the videos lately. They’re followed up by vocab with large printed text for easy reading. Even a manga section included if you can’t watch the videos!

Have fun learning!

Zuchinni, Tomatoes, Serrano Ham, Sundried Tomatoes, Olives, Parmesan, Fresh Mozza

Peach Salsa

- 1/2 cup chopped fresh peaches
- 1/2 cup chopped roma tomatoes
- 1/2 small red onion, chopped
- 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
- 1 tsp fresh lime juice
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (fresh! don’t skimp)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper

I planned to roast the peaches whole on the BBQ beforehand but we ran out of propane. I cut the peaches in half and cooked them in a pan; It didn’t have the same flavour but it still worked.

Ingredients

From Chef Michael Smith’s The best of Chef at Home:
8 cups chicken broth
8 slices bacon, thinly chopped
2 or 3 onions, peeled and chopped
4 or 5 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup pearl barley
1/2 cup white wine
a sprinkle or two sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
1 cup grated Grana Padano Parmesan cheese

Pour the chicken broth into a stockpot and bring to a very slow simmer over medium heat.

Meanwhile, in another saucepan, fry the bacon over medium-high heat until it is crisp and golden brown. Pour off about half of the fat. Add the onions and garlic and sauté them for a few minutes until they’re translucent and soft.

Stir in the barley and continue cooking, stirring constantly until the grains are well coated with oil and slightly toasted, about 3 minutes.

Pour in the wine and continue stirring as the barley quickly absorbs the liquid. Begin adding the heated stock, 1 cup (250 mL) or so at a time, stirring constantly to allow each addition of the liquid to be absorbed by the barley before adding more. Because the broth is already hot, the temperature of the barley will stay consistently hot, which, along with the constant stirring, encourages the release of the starch in the barley. In turn, the starch thickens the surrounding liquid and makes it creamy.

Continue stirring in the hot broth until the risotto is tender and creamy. Taste frequently to judge the doneness of the barley grains. It will take about 45 minutes from the time you add the first broth until the rice is done.

Season with salt and pepper and stir in the thyme and cheese. Serve immediately.

Mojito!

The recipe I used is from rumdood.com – an amazing recipe site decided to all things rum.

2 oz White Rum
1 oz Lime Juice
.75 oz Simple Syrup
10 Mint Leaves
2 oz Soda

Pour soda into a Collins glass (in my case, a Pom glass) and set aside. Add all but soda to a mixing tin. Use a muddler to bruise the mint. Whip ingredients without ice (dry shake) and dump on top of the soda in your glass. Add ice and garnish with freshly spanked mint.

Pictured here and also garnished with a cute umbrella. :)

The ingredients

Bacon, Leek, Roma Tomatoes, Watercress, Stuffed olives (pick any kind you like, these are garlic stuffed), Garlic, Spaghetti

First, get all the prepping out of the way. Chop the bacon up and fry until crispy, set aside in a bowl with chopped garlic and sliced olives. Dice the tomatoes into chunks and leave it with the watercress. Chop up the leek into half inch rings and make sure you wash the leeks really well to get all the dirt out from in between the layers. I left mine in the sink soaking in cold water.

Once the spaghetti water is boiling, add the washed leek to the same pan where you cooked the bacon. If you feel there’s too much bacon fat, just remove half of it from the pan beforehand. Let it cook for a few minutes to soften then add the bacon, garlic and olives to the pan. My mouth was watering by this point. You can add this mixture to anything and I would eat it!

Your spaghetti should be done in about 6 minutes. when it is add it to the bacon/leek pan with a bit of the pasta water and toss everything together. Now is a good time to add in the watercress and tomatoes. Just toss everything together until the watercress is wilted. (about 1 minute) I should have cooked this in a bigger pan but I really loved seeing the giant mound of watercress on top of my spaghetti!

Toss the final product with a bit of olive oil, a capful of red wine vinegar and some pepper. Don’t add salt, the bacon and the olives did that for you already. Looks good enough to have seconds. I garnished it with some leftover watercress leaves and some thyme just to make it look pretty.

There’s a new-ish cafe in Guelph called the Joint Cafe, which has quickly become a Saturday morning ritual with my boyfriend. The menu isn’t large but I’ve enjoyed eating breakfast there as it’s less greasy that the usual fare downtown. The food is fresh delicious and plentiful. I could hardly clear my plate – this portion was huge! Scrambled egg with cheese, 2 pork sausages, peameal bacon (very soft, fuwafuwa!), roasted potatoes with peppers, fruit bowl, watermelon slice and sweet salsa in the middle. and TOAST. and tea. yumyum.

This week we did a very big shop at the grocery store and picked up a whole chicken for $6. It was either that or 5 medium sized chicken breasts for $25 – outrageous! The price of chicken is ridiculous sometimes so we opt for the whole chicken more often than not. I thought it deserved the baked lemon chicken treatment. We roasted it with potatoes and whole lemons, salt and pepper. Very simple but it was so delicious and we have so much leftover chicken meat. (great for chicken salad the next day)

Lastly, this is what I popped into the slow cooker this morning! It’s sitting at home cooking right now.. I can’t wait to get home and smell it. (oh yeah and eat it too)

The pork tenderloin was $7, reasonable enough. I threw in half an onion, small mushrooms, 2 apples cut up, splash of molasses, worcestershire sauce, lime juice, vinegar, brown sugar, onion soup mix, salt, pepper and a bit of chinese 5-spice. Just looking at it again makes me hungry, I hope it works out!

I couldn’t resist picking up this cute bunny plate to serve the cupcakes. I saw it and said to my boyfriend “I’m buying these.. I don’t care what you say, I’M BUYING! IT!“. I guess I was very serious! Kinda Cheesy? yes. Adorable? very.

The cupcake batter

Dry: 2½ cups unbleached flour, 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons baking soda, ½ teaspoon salt
Wet: ⅔ cup canola oil, 2 cups water, 2 teaspoons vinegar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

This recipe will make around 20 medium size cupcakes. In a bowl, combine all wet ingredients, in another bowl combine all the dry ingredients. Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet until just combined, it will be a wet batter with no visible lumps.

I used pretty blue and green cupcake liners but if you can also just grease the muffin pan with cooking spray. Fill cupcake pan 2/3 full. Bake at 350 F for 20-22 minutes, until a tooth pick inserted comes out clean. Then you’ll have these cuties:

Ready for Frosting

These would be perfectly delicious on their own! But since it was Easter I decided to decorate. Wait until they’re completely cool before you frost them. In the meantime you can make the cream cheese frosting and toast some coconut for the nest part of the cupcake.

Cream Cheese Icing

250g package of cream cheese
half a stick of butter
1 cup icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla

Cream together the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add the vanilla and mix well with an electric mixer (or just a fork and some muscle in my case), add the icing sugar in batches. You can let the icing sit covered in the fridge for up to 1 day. Put aside until your cupcakes are cool. Toast some coconut in the oven until slightly golden brown. Have fun decorating! Top with some chocolate mini eggs.

Verdict: DELICIOUS