Recipes and dining — You are in My World Now

Tools to Organize Your Recipes Online

September 15, 2012 by Trish

After exploring this topic I found out how incredibly helpful all the available websites are for making recipes useful. Given that technology plays such a major role in our lives, what better way to employ its attributes than organizing recipes? Many even offer meal planning and grocery shopping venues. On the other hand, for some of us nostalgics, there’s still nothing better than curling up on the couch with familiar cookbooks and locating well-loved yellowed, stained pages describing how to prepare the very best comfort food in the world. But maybe the next generation would appreciate it if I actually took time to put them in one of those amazing helpful organizational tools.

Grocery Shopping on the Fly

I picture a mom with one night for grocery shopping. That’s the evening without ballet, gymnastics, sports, horseback riding, or piano lessons. Since her time is so scarce, and valuable, organization is a must. An additional look at her favorite websites and she not only has favorite recipes, and meal plans, but a grocery list whose items appear as they do categorically from one side of the store to the other. Now if only all that efficiency would just translate into someone shopping for her without charging for the service.

Online Recipe Shower

In recent history, brides have actually asked if there was a way for them to have a “Recipe Shower” online. Not a formal party, but a way to send tried and true “food friends” to the betrothed. This might be a good way for truly busy or out of town guests to “get together” before the wedding. I wonder how it would work; could someone let me know.

Helpful Websites

After researching several websites, it appears the best places to go for organizing those wayward recipes includes places where recipes are readily available to your computer, have menu suggestions, nutrition notes, and make grocery lists from needed items. Mentioned below are various helpful sites. The first ones, to my knowledge are free: Springpad; Evernote (free in most frequently used platforms) and its add-on, Say Mmm; Dropbox; Food on the Table; Our Groceries (free Android app); Pepper Plate Recipe, Menu, and Cooking Planner; and Google Docs. As you know, Google Docs is not exclusively for recipe organization, but does provide useful tools. Other less cost effective websites include: Paprika; Meal Board Meal and Grocery Planner app; Plan to Eat (not free after first month); AllRecipes; Spark People (meal plans and nutrition) and last but not least is Pinterest. Therefore, besides organizing recipes, this myriad of websites, and many more I’m sure, can do everything except actually cook the meals. Sometimes you might even find a chef preparing a meal, or entrée, you find interesting…those are especially enjoyable and helpful for those cooks-in-training.

Vintage Cooks

With online networking and helpful recipe exchange sites equipped with comments on the palatability of various dishes, cooks can drool while they plan. As much as it pains this seasoned chef to admit it, more cookbooks may slowly be finding their way into the antique shops. But I do find it quite gratifying to be able to use both cookbooks and websites; makes for such a well-rounded cook.

Gareth Shaw is a professional chef and writer who loves to blog about everything from the best ways to keep your recipes to tips on serving quick, healthy meals.

My favorite birthday meal

September 8, 2012 by Tricia

Yum. There’s nothing like a delicious birthday meal. It was my birthday on Thursday and while my husband and I didn’t do anything major to celebrate it we didn’t have a very nice steak dinner that night. A lovely barbecued mesquite steak, with steamed asparagus and sweet potato fries.

Then, last night, my mother-in-law, came in to town. We were all supposed to go away this weekend but in the end I decided to stay home. However, since my mother-in-law was staying over last night before she and my husband took a long drive to the Ottawa area she offered to buy me a birthday dinner. She suggested Chinese food.

I’m a little leery of Asian food because I’m allergic to Shrimp and Shellfish but there is a very nice Thai restaurant near us that we’ve had take out from a few times since I discovered my Shrimp allergy and they totally start fresh for my order. They clean their pots and make sure that there’s no seafood or shellfish based sauces in any of the foods items we order and of course no shrimp either. So I feel very safe eating food from their restaurant.

So we ordered quite a bit of food from the Red Chilli Thai Restaurant on the Danforth in Toronto. I think it was forth or fifth time we’ve order food from that restaurant and as usual the food was delicious. I particularly love their Mango Chicken dish. It’s delicious.

There were three of us eating on Friday night and we ordered several tasty dishes. Let’s see, we ordered the Vegetarian Appetizer Plate, steamed rice, Green Curry Beef, Cashew Nut Chicken, mango chicken, and Satay Chicken, and chicken Phad Thai with three spring rolls. Now, because our order was over $50 we got the Pad Thai and spring rolls free. We also got a 10% discount for picking it up and paying cash. Pretty cool.

Needless to say we didn’t come close to finishing the food that we ordered since there were so many dishes. My husband and mother in law left early this morning on their trip and I’m here with a fridge literally full of tasty leftovers! Yum. Yep. That’s what I had for dinner tonight. Thai food. I love it. I could eat this birthday dinner every day.

What’s your favorite birthday dinner?

First time I’ve had a soft drink in 10 months!

July 16, 2011 by Tricia

You know what I did last night? I drank a Coca Cola for the first time in more than ten months. In fact, that’s the first time I’ve had a soft drink or any carbonated beverage since early September 2010.

I had to give up drinking soft drinks and any carbonated beverages last September because I’d started taking a medication for my migraines that has a weird side effect of making several different types of food and drinks taste quite different. For example, carbonated drinks tasted extremely salty rather than however they were supposed to taste. Actually, now that I think of it, anything that was very sweet tasting ended up tasting really salty. No wonder I lost about 15 pounds in a month or so back then!

Food and drink still tastes a bit off on this medication, but it tastes a lot closer to normal than it did ten months ago! Hmmm maybe I should celebrate that fact and go and check out Shari’s berries site and treat my husband and I to some chocolate covered strawberries? Yummy. Yeah, that would be a fantastic celebration of my taste buds starting to act a little more like they should.

For now I’ll just be happy that I can occasionally enjoy a soft drink again. It’s great that I don’t drink them anymore and I didn’t miss it all that much, but I really did enjoy my Coca Cola so it’s nice that I can have one if I really want one.

When’s the last time you had a soft drink? If you drink pop regularly, can you imagine going months without drinking your regular drink?

I’m losing weight again

February 25, 2011 by Tricia

I’m starting to lose weight again. I don’t know why either. It could be because my migraine medication was increased (doubled) about a month ago and unlike most migraine (ie epilepsy) medication it actually has a side effect of weight loss.

Or .. my gradual weight loss could be from the extra stress that I’ve been under over the last month or so. There’s been extra stress here at home and I’m sure that’s affected my appetite to some degree.

I do have one other idea about my weight loss. No it’s not phenphedrine although I”m sure that works for some people. LOL … No I’m talking about Bell Peppers.

Back in September when I lost about 15 pounds in three weeks I had started my migraine medication and I happened to be eating grilled chicken and grilled peppers pretty much the whole month. I think the combination of diet and my new medication caused the weight loss. Bell peppers are certainly known for helping to boost the metabolism and I personally think that when I eat them they help curb my appetite or rather cravings for sweets and carbs. The last couple of weeks my husband and I have been having grilled peppers with our dinner pretty much each night and I’ve found that I don’t feel the need to snack later. Even during the day I have less of an appetite so I’m almost certain that they must lower appetite, or at least my appetite.

I haven’t weighed myself lately and oddly enough I saw my family doctor on Tuesday, the one who weighs me every single time I see her (monthly!) and she didn’t weigh me … so I don’t know how much I’ve lost in the last month, but I’m sure I’ve lost five to eight pounds and since the beginning of January that would bring my total lose to 12 to 15 pounds again. My clothes are getting lose again. Especially this week.

It’s a good thing we like bell peppers! I think we’ll continue the experiment. Maybe if I eat them daily for another month or two I’ll be in bikini shape for summer?

Having fun making bread at home with our new bread machine

February 25, 2011 by Tricia

If you’ve been reading my posts over the last few months then you already know that I’ve sort of been on a cooking spree. I’ve always enjoyed cooking and baking, but over the last few years, other than making dinners, I kind of stopped being creative, however, for some reason, over the last few months I started getting my cooking groove bake and we’ve had lots of delicious treats to eat.

In December I made several types of cookies and special sweet breads. I also made two pumpkin cheesecakes. Yum!

I had been planning on making cinnamon buns and cinnamon swirl bread but we had a surplus of baked goods in the house given that there’s only two of us in the house to eat the food that I make so I had to lay off for a while.

Anyway … this past weekend, Chris and I were in Costco and we happened to be walking down a row that had kitchen appliances. Guess what I bought … yep … a bread maker. I truly enjoy making bread from scratch, but I’ve always been interested in trying out a bread maker. Well .. I guess the price was right so we bought it and by that evening we had our first loaf of white bread.

The first loaf of bread turned out great. It was delicious, but since I’d tried the rapid white cycle i.e bread in less than an hour and a half it was a little more yeasty than I like so I was determined that the next loaf that I made would be for a full cycle with a normal amount of yeast. So … the next day I found a recipe online for a tasty sounding Flax Sunflower Bread that I just had to try. I got to work putting the ingredients together in the machine and then set it to a normal cycle so it took about three and a half hours but oh … it turned out great.

The second loaf of bread was tasty! Actually we still have a little bit left,. As I said there’s only two of us in the house so trying to eat two loaves of bread in as week is a lot and I”m sure we ate more than we normally would because there’s nothing like eating bread when it’s still warm and fresh after it’s taken out of the oven (or bread maker). Oh and that Flax Sunflower bread … I think it’s going to be a healthy bread to keep on hand too … maybe too healthy if one were to eat too much if you know what /I mean ie think colon cleanse hint hint!

This weekend we’ll go out shopping for some rye flours special bread flours (I was using all purpose flour) so any breads I make going forward should be even better and of course with a wider selection of flours on hand I can experiment a little bit more. I’m sure I”ll eventually get around to making that cinnamon swirl bread that I’d intended to make back in December … I mean it started this whole thing. LOL

Do any of you have a bread maker? Do you use it regularly? What kind do you have? The one we bought is a Breadman bk1060 and so far it’s been working well.