Berry Almond Chicken Salad

A friend of mine had been bragging about a salad she had at Wendy’s one day.  She tried the berry almond chicken salad, and she said it was very delicious and full of flavour.  Despite all the junk food I usually blog about, I am also a fan of salads.  My love for fast food salads began almost 10 years ago, when I didn’t feel like eating another hamburger and opted for a gourmet salad.  That decision changed my point of view on fast food salads, because I have been eating them ever since.  I was a little scared of the berry almond chicken salad because in the back of my mind, fruit wouldn’t taste good with lettuce.  But my friend’s high praise for this salad changed my mind, and I bought it.

This salad is amazing, and was even better than how my friend described it.  Besides being delicious it also captures summer in a salad with all the fresh fruit and vegetables.  Although you do have a mix of flavours from sweet, salty, bitter, and tangy they all mix together and work perfectly.  Wendy’s sells this salad for around $9, and after calculating all the ingredients that make it, it’s well worth the price.  Seriously, I tried to make this salad at home and was surprised by how expensive it is to make.

To make your home version of the salad, I have included all the ingredients I used.  I started with a roman lettuce, washed and then cut.  I included fresh cut strawberries, blueberries, chopped almonds, and Emmental cheese (Wendy`s uses Asiago cheese, which is very expensive).  I then added chicken breast strips, from a pre-cooked box (it`s just easier that way).  When I mixed everything together I added a store brand raspberry vinaigrette.  My salad came out the same way as Wendy`s only much cheaper, and with lots of left overs to make it a couple of times again.  I highly recommend this salad to anyone that is bored of the same old fast food, and would like to try something that is delicious but also healthy.

Nachos

When I’m eating junk food I like to watch TV cooking shows on Food Network.  It’s like adding taste-o-vision because you’re not only watching great food, but eating as well.  One night when I was bored and watching youtube videos I suddenly clicked on some dude making an omelette.  I swear he made the best omelette I have ever wanted to try.  It looked so good I even got up and made one myself (doesn’t breakfast food taste better late at night?).  Since that time I have watched many more videos of people making food.  So after doing this for a while, I decided to make my own video of me making nachos.  The ingredients I used are nacho chips (that I lightly toasted), nacho cheese, chili, sour cream, salsa, cheddar cheese, guacamole, and diced tomatoes and onions.

Dude making an omelette:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lc6iJ9gWy8

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlJzh-ZlNHM

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds

I like to tell people I live for inspiration.  Usually this belief center’s around learning new things that make me look at the world with a better understanding.  The inspiration for this post came from my love for van Gogh paintings.  Vincent was fascinated with sunflowers and so I decided to grow some myself to see how lovely they could be.  When I went to go buy the seeds, I picked giant sunflower seeds because I would also be able to harvest the seeds as well.  As a baseball fan I like to eat them whenever I go to a game or watch one on TV.  My favourite flavour is dill pickle flavoured seeds.

I planted the seeds near the edge of my driveway just in case the plant grew too big or attracted wild annoying animals (racoons).  I also planted them in late spring.  They require very little energy to grow so you don’t need to water them as much as other vegetables.    Mine grew to about 8 feet by late August and the flower bloom lasted only about a week.  During that week, everyone who walked by would stare and comment how they loved the flower.  I must say the bloom is impressive and I could finally understand van Gogh’s reason for painting it so often.

The advantage of growing my plant near my driveway was that I could use a light pole for support by simply tying the plant’s stem up against the pole.  Once the bloom started to fade, the head started to sag and I then used more wire to support the head until eventually the head was the only thing sagging.  This isn’t a big deal because the seeds inside of the head still continue to grow.  By mid-September I could finally start seeing the seeds growing, with their slight black stripes.  It wasn’t until the middle of October that I was finally able to chop off the sunflower head and be able to harvest the seeds.  By this time, the seeds looked plump and the back of the sunflower head was black and brown.

I read online and looked at videos on how to best harvest my seeds, and somehow came up with a version I was comfortable with.  I chopped off the head, removed the seeds and placed them in a bucket full of water for about a day, then I dried them on paper towels,  I baked them in the oven for a half-hour, and when they were baked I added a little olive oil and salt.  The seeds tasted really good, and I must have gotten well over 10 bags full of seeds.    While the experience was informative, I think the next time I want to eat sunflower seeds I’ll stick to the dill pickle bag I buy from the store.

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSi-HwkVJeg

Lobster

A local supermarket in my neighbourhood had lobster on sale this past weekend so I decided to stop by and pick some up. I don’t usually splurge on anything, but I do like to spend my money on eating well. All summer long I had skipped local supermarket sales on lobsters, so I was eager to finally eat one.  Little did I know the ones on sale would be mutant size lobsters when I finally saw them. Although the one’s I bought were a little pricey, I just kept thinking that compared to ordering them in a restaurant I was getting a super deal. At the end of the day you only live once, and this meal was a once in a life time experience. Although the lobsters were huge, the meat tasted better than any lobster I had ever had, and it was totally worth every penny!

Butterscotch Pancakes

Today I made butterscotch pancakes with caramel swirl, toasted walnuts, and whip cream on top.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to travel to the US this summer and visit an IHOPS, so I had to make my own at home.  It still came out tasting amazing, and it saved me from not having to travel all the way to Long Island to buy them.  I copied the recipe from memory and now that I know how to make them, I can make them year round, which is even better.

Learning to make chocolate

A while back I went down to El Salvador in Central America to visit some friends and family.  At the house that I was staying at, I noticed that they had a cacao tree growing.  This piqued my curiosity because I had never seen one before, and was interested in knowing how chocolate was made.  I went on the internet to explore and research this information and soon came to the conclusion that I could make it myself.  The basic gist to making it is to remove the cacao beans from the pod, then store them in a bin to ferment the pulp, place them under the sun to dry for several days, roast them in an oven, and then finally decide on which method to process the beans.

This is the most difficult step in making chocolate because chocolate companies use highly sophisticated machines to make chocolate, chocolate liquor, cocoa powder, and cocoa butter.  Though I didn’t have access to those sorts of machines, I did not fret because there are alternatives to making a decent quality chocolate.  Besides, the Mayans were making and drinking chocolate hundreds of years ago using hand-made methods that are still used today in many Latin American countries.

The easiest part of making this chocolate was to remove the cocoa beans from the pods and drying them in the sun.  I had started drying them in the middle of the summer when the days were hottest.  What became difficult was all the hand mashing I had to do to crush and mix the beans together.  Luckily I decided to speed that process up by using a small blender.  As it was mixing, I added sugar and milk to make it more of the familiar chocolate taste that I’m used to.  Once it was done, I placed the mixture on a plate and put it in the refrigerator.  When I took it out I was amazed at how it felt, almost like clay.

I then wrapped it up in aluminum paper and stored it in the freezer for several weeks.   Finally this week I decided to unwrap it and eat it.  As I was opening it up, the smell of chocolate filled the air with its aroma.  The texture was similar to the chocolate part of an M&M, or a Hershey’s Kiss but it also felt a little grainy because of the sugar I added.  Despite how it felt, the taste was amazing.  I had never tried anything like this before.  It was natural and pure, and nothing like those artificial chocolate bars you can buy in a store.  The taste resonated in my mouth, as I let the chocolate melt and I acknowledged that this was the best chocolate I had ever tasted.

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tu7FCAEtFE

Raspberries

One of the joy’s about summer in Canada is enjoying all the summer fruits and vegetables that are in season.  They’re not only good for you, but are also cheaper to buy.  While going to the supermarket and buying all these fruits and vegetables is fun, I also really enjoy going to farms and picking my own fruit.  A local farm that I love is Brooks Farms, a farm just north of Markham Ontario (where I live).  While Brooks Farms has many fruits to ‘pick’ from, my favorite to collect is the raspberry.  Raspberries are in season from July to August, but it’s best to visit early in order to pick the best fruit first.

Someone once told me that the raspberry is the champagne of berries, and after eating a couple I concurred.  Raspberries are fragrant, sweet, and are good for your health.  Raspberries contain lots of vitamins, and also have antioxidants that protect against free-radicals.  The only negative part about raspberries is the price and the seeds they come with.  Even though they are pretty expensive, I figure I would much rather spend my money on something that is not only delicious but healthy, than on some fast food junk that is bad for my body and can upset my stomach.

As for the seeds, they’re not much of a bother because I like to scarf the berries down when I eat them, lol.  However one solution to the seed problem that I have found is to make raspberry juice and remove the seeds.  Making raspberry juice is pretty simple; to start off, after bringing home your berries you just want to give them a light wash.  I then like to store mine in zip-loc bags, and I use a straw to suck all the air out of the bag so that I may store them in the freezer (for up to 12 months).  Then whenever I am ready to make juice I defrost the bag for a few hours, then put it in the blender, add some sugar and water and mix.  Once it is fully mixed I like to strain the juice to remove the seeds, and finally put it in a pitcher with lots of ice.  Once that is done you can sit back and enjoy a nice glass of raspberry juice and reflect on all your hard work.

Brooks Farms:

www.brooksfarms.com

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w4rUquIp10