SRC: Oh! You Cook’s Jerusalem Carrot Salad

For February’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Dena of Oh! You Cook!. Dena is a Librarian by day and makes delicious looking Kosher food by night, including this delicious fruit salad, all these AMAZING looking Purim treats and these Moroccan carrots.

It was quite a treat for me to look through all her recipes and get a better understanding of what things one eats on various Jewish holidays. Purim sounds especially amazing with all those sweets.

After much humming and hawing, I finally chose her Jerusalem Carrot Salad, which is an approximation of a salad she had while in Jerusalem.

I pretty much followed the recipe exactly (shock, I know!) except that my spices almost burnt and then turned into these huge really dark brown spice clumps. My guess it’s because I added the honey while it was too hot, causing it to act kind of like sugar when you make candy. I salvaged what I could and added a bit more olive oil and honey whisked with the spices.

The result was decent, but I think I would have liked it better without the cumin as for some reason, I really don’t like cumin (and it doesn’t appear to like me either). On the same token, I didn’t want to leave it out as I wasn’t sure how that would affect the flavor profile of the salad. This salad is fairly delicate with the finely grated carrot, but if you’re short on time coarsely grating the carrot would make it easier to toss.

Dena, it was really fun to spend so much time looking through all of your recipes – you definitely prove that kosher food can look and taste delicious!

Please check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below!

Gluten Free Vegan Valentine Cupcakes

Happy Early Valentine’s Day! In honour of the day of pink, hearts and all things kitsch, I decided to make cupcakes. Pink Cupcakes. Well, they couldn’t be any other colour, could they?

Being me, I wanted them to be healthier(ish), but still tasty. They are based off Cybele Pascal’s Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from The Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook (great book & resource!), but I reduced the sugar and added raspberry purée as a swirl to take away some of the sweetness. Many raspberry swirl cupcakes get you to add sugar to the raspberries, but I don’t think that’s necessary.

These cupcakes work well with or without frosting – just make sure that you don’t add tons of it if you’re trying to reduce your sugar intake! (Don’t take a page from Crave Cupcakes. Seriously. No mountain-high icing swirls for me!)

I brought them to work and my coworkers loved them (“this is gluten free? Everything I’ve ever tried that was gluten free was gross, but this is really good!”) – little did they know that they were also vegan!

I asked one of my coworkers how they compared in taste and texture to gluten ones and she said they were fairly similar and that mine were considerably less sweet, which was a good thing. I take that as praise for gluten free vegan baking!

Gluten Free Vegan Raspberry Swirl Cupcakes

1/2 c. Sorghum flour
3/4 c. Brown rice flour
1/2 c. Tapioca starch
1/4 c. Potato starch
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Baking soda
1 c. Almond milk
1 tsp. Apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. Vegan shortening (I used earth balance, which is unfortunately not soy free, but I needed to use it up)
3/4 c. Sugar (could probably use even less as I found them to be quite sweet)
1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 Tbsp. Powdered egg replacer, whisked with 1/4 c. water
1 c. Frozen raspberries, thawed and mashed (you could purée them in a blender, but why make extra dishes when you don’t have to?)

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper cups (I made 20 mini cupcakes and 7 larger ones, but I think you could easily do 24 mini cupcakes and six bigger ones. This should make about 12 standard sized cupcakes.)
2. Whisk together dry ingredients. Set aside.
3. Measure out your almond milk and add the vinegar. Stir and set aside.
4. In the bowl of a mixer, beat together the shortening, sugar, egg replacer and vanilla until fluffy, about 2 min.
5. Add flour mixture in three parts and almond milk in two parts alternatively, starting and ending with the flour. Beat until smooth.
6. Scoop a but of batter into each muffin tin (about 1/3 full). Add about a scant tsp of raspberries to the mini cupcakes and a scant Tbsp to the large cupcakes.
7. Cover with batter until tins are 3/4 full. Using a toothpick, swirl the raspberries around the cupcake.
8. Bake in oven for ~14 min for the minis and ~20 min for the larger cupcakes it until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
   Immediately remove from tin onto a cooling rack.
9. Frost once cool, if desired.

Raspberry Frosting

1/2 c. vegan margarine
2+ c. icing sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 – 3 tbsp raspberry purée (left over from cupcakes)

1. Beat the margarine until fluffy.
2. Add icing sugar, vanilla and raspberry purée.
3. Beat until smooth. Add more icing sugar or purée to get the desired consistency.
4. Pipe onto cupcakes with a star tip.
5. Add heart sprinkles if desired.
6. Enjoy!

*I found this amount of frosting to be perfect as I managed to ice all of the cupcakes. As you can see, I tried not to add a ton of frosting, so if you want more on your cupcakes, you’ll need to make more frosting.

What are your plans for Valentine’s Day?

Cross Country Skiing

View of Kananaskis Lakes from Blueberry Hill

Ever gotten back into something that you used to do a lot?

Upper Kananaskis Lake – Looking toward the Point and Forks Campgrounds

Cross Country Skiing is that for me. As a kid, we used to go fairly frequently and then I went sporadically as a teenager and adult. However, in the last month, I have gone three times. Mr. Bean and I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade our gear so we’re no longer using secondhand stuff from the 80s. It definitely helps!

It can be so peaceful skiing through the snow covered trees and seeing things like this creek… Plus, now that I’m used to my new skis, I can snowplow with greater control and don’t do the “ahhh!! I’m going to fall – goodbye balance!!” dance while going down hills. Am I the only person who does that?

I am so grateful that I live so close to the mountains and have the opportunity to go out and enjoy them – does it make me weird if I want this warm weather to go away so it’ll snow so I can go skiing?

No twigs or pine needles in my eyes – my safety glasses did their best to replace my broken sunglasses.

Last weekend my mom and I headed out the Peter Lougheed Park and skied up to Blueberry Hill. It was a beautiful and warm day and lucky us got spoiled on the way back – what an amazing sunset to end a fantastic day!

I tried to adjust the colours so they looked similar to what I actually saw – still is nothing close to the real thing!

Have you gotten back into something after not really doing it for a while?

SRC: My Judy The Foodie’s Bean Salad

For January’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Shari of My Judy the Foodie. Shari started getting into the kitchen after her mom (Judy, her blog’s namesake) passed away and as a way of preserving her memories, decided to cook through her handwritten recipes.

After ready through Shari’s story, I really want to take my mom’s cookbook of recipes she copied from her mom when she got married and cook through the whole lot. It might be challenging given my food restrictions, but it would totally be worth it and a good way to remember my Grannie. Perhaps a 2013 challenge?

Shari has tons of delicious recipes – while I was sick, I literally clicked through over 50 pages of her blog because everything looked so good and I couldn’t decide on anything! There are things like her mom’s legendary banana bread, this homemade nutella, these slow-cooked beef tips and this blueberry cucumber feta salad. I eventually ended up choosing her Bean Salad.

It’s not your traditional bean salad as it only has green beans and chickpeas instead of a whole assortment of other beans. I didn’t mind as it was definitely very tasty! I used less marinade/sauce as I am really not a sauce person and added a bit of honey to take away the zing of raw onions/leeks.

Salad
1/2 to 3/4 package frozen beans
1/4 red onions, thinly sliced
3 green onions, sliced
1/3 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 c. thinly sliced leeks
1 rib celery, sliced
1 small can of chickpeas
1/2 c. parsley, chopped

Dressing
1/4 c. white vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil
Juice of one lemon
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. dry mustard (could use 1 tbsp. dijon mustard)
1 tsp. honey
1/4 tsp. black pepper
Pinch of salt

Lettuce Leaves

1. Place beans in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Once the pot boils, drain and rinse with cool water.
2. Place beans in a large bowl with the remainder of the ingredients. Toss.
3. Whisk together dressing (below) and pour over salad. Toss salad to even coat.
4. Let sit for a few hours, stirring occasionally.
5. Serve over leaves of lettuce or plain if you desire.
6. Enjoy!

Please make sure to check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below for January’s Secret Recipe Club!

2012 in Review

Decorations for the Baby Shower I Threw for a Friend – Inspired by InkObsessionDesigns

It’s already almost the end of January and 2013 has already started to pick up, so 2012 almost seems like a faint memory despite it being less than a month ago. Such is life, I guess.

Newborn Shoot for a Friend

2012 was definitely a year full of firsts, challenges and triumphs. I also apparently took way more photos than I thought – as can be seen with the accompanying collages (look at alt-text for descriptions!) I also finished my Photography Certificate of Achievement through SAIT – go figure that procrastinating me has yet to submit my form to get the actual certificate.

Annual Field Trip

In 2012, I got my first “Real” job, watched one of my siblings get married,  Shot a wedding as the Primary Photographer, climbed a 10,000ft Mountain and sent out a Christmas card and letter. You know, small things like that.

House my Family let for my Brother’s Wedding

My Brother and Sister-in-Law’s Wedding

First of all, I learned a LOT at work. Not just technical stuff, but things about myself like how I am more capable than I think I am and that I can survive through embarrassing situations where I wish the floor would swallow me up as have fun to boot!

Okay, I’ll fill you in – at the end of August, I went up to Fort St. John on a field trip and I was so out of it on the first day that I dropped my glass of water on the floor (and all over myself) while at the client’s office. Go me! Despite being super spastic, I ended up having fun, but it could also because I have a tendency to get incredibly hyper when I’m really, really tired. I’ll keep believing the former as it makes me feel better about myself.

Summer Fun at the Cabin

Mr. Bean and I also spent a fair amount of time at the cabin having fires. I ate waaaaaay too many s’mores, but I justify it by saying that I’m making up for almost 12+ years of not eating them. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Vancouver Island

I also learned that I need to be better at taking care of myself. There was a period in June and July (before I went on a glorious vacation) that all I did was work, ride my bike to and from work, eat and sleep. I had no desire (or time) to do anything with other people. Not exactly the best example of enjoying life to its fullest. Or at all.

Friend’s Engagement Photos

While shooting my first official wedding, I gained even more respect for wedding photographers – everything happens SO quickly and you can really only hope that you’re able to capture everything and that it looks good. I was so happy that Mr. Bean helped me!

Friend’s Wedding Photos

I did manage to do a bit of hiking in 2012 – first I went with my parents to Mt. Lipsett in Kananaskis, Piper Pass in Kananaskis with my family while my sister was visiting, the Plain of the Six Glaciers in Lake Louise with my mom (where we saw a huge chunk of ice fall off a glacier – very cool) and to Pocaterra Cirque with Mr. Bean during the height of the larch trees. I LOVE larch trees.

Hiking in 2012 – Mt. Lipsett, Piper’s Pass/Elbow Trail, Lake Louise – Plain of the Six Glaciers, Pocaterra Cirque

My mom and I also went on a backpacking trip into the Skoki area in behind Lake Louise ski hill in Banff National Park. There, we climbed Mt. Richardson – take that, fear of heights! – my first 10,000 ft peak. We had a few issues with weather (hiking in the pouring rain isn’t the most fun), with our camp stove, forgetting sunscreen only to realize that there was some in the care after we went back to the Lake Louise townsite to get more and thinking that sunscreen was lotion, but we still had fun. We also ate delicious dehydrated meals, similar to our previous meals. The area was so beautiful that I convinced Mr. Bean that it would be a good idea to head to Skoki Lodge for our 5th wedding anniversary this year (in the same cabin that Will & Kate stayed in when they visited in 2011!)

Annual Backpacking Trip with my Mom

The year ended well and poorly – we celebrated a wonderful Christmas with both sides of our family and I baked a lot. Unfortunately, shortly after Christmas, I got the flu which eventually morphed into viral Bronchitis. I guess it was okay – it’s only because I was sick that I made all these storyboards!

Night Photography

What are the best moments of 2012 for you?