This week and last, I was hammered with work and personal obligations but I can proudly announce that in spite of this, we did not eat out once! No ordering in, no heading to our favorite "we are overwhelmed" restaurant (La Louisianne)... nope. I made sauces and cooked up meals to accommodate us for the entire two weeks. I am so proud of myself and our wallets are happy for us as well!

However, because of this bombardment of work, I was unable to experiment with the Jerusalem Artichoke as I had hoped. However, I did find a few places in the UK that are serving twists of this idea:

At Due South a restaurant in Brighton (UK) for Valentines Day they are serving: Jerusalem artichoke gnocchi with shitake mushrooms and black truffle.

The Byre Inn (Xmas Menu) served: Jerusalem Artichoke Gnocchi with chestnut mushrooms, walnuts & a garlic cream.

Brasserie Blanc has this Wild mushroom and Jerusalem Artichoke Gnocchi on their menu.

I have more confidence that this is a good idea now that found some of these versions. The plan is to make these on Thursday.

During my recent grocery run I made a stop into the L'Autre Choix Mini Marche located at 334A Avenue Victoria in Westmount. During a light conversation with owner Clara, I mentioned my blog and how I love demystifying some interesting, but uncommon, or wildly expensive, ingredients. The moment I mentioned this, her eyes lit up... "Do you know of the Jerusalem artichoke?"

In the early 1600s, French explorer Samuel de Champlain (who founded Quebec City and explored parts of upstate Vermont) sent a new root vegetable he discovered back to France noting it tasted a lot like an artichoke.

But the Jerusalem artichoke, as it came to be known, has nothing in common with artichokes and is in fact a species of sunflower that is common in most of the eastern United States. As such, and to stem any confusion, many have renamed it the sunchoke or sunroot.

This root vegetable, which tastes quite like water chestnuts and cooks a lot like potatoes, is available all year but is at its best between November and March. While their bumpy and wrinkly skins had some in the 17th century believe they were the cause of leprosy, their peels are absolutely safe and edible.

They typically store in a cool and dry place for about three weeks when raw, but should be consumed within a couple of days after cooking. Freezing is not recommended.

Sunchokes can be consumed raw or cooked, and can be boiled, baked, steamed or fried, though they tend to cook faster than potatoes, and cooking times should be reduced accordingly. So, try them in chowders, au gratin, in soups, stews or breads, scalloped, or fried into latkes. They are also excellent substitutions for turnips and parsnips.

That said, keeping mind they do have a tendency to turn gray while cooking, but this unaesthetic discoloration can be resolved with the addition of a pinch of cream of tartar or some lemon juice.

Lemon actually goes very well with this root vegetable, as does anise, coriander, cumin, fennel, garlic, ginger, sage and tarragon. Sunchokes also play nice with bacon, salmon, most roasted meats, goat cheese, cream, hazelnuts and morels.

Stay turn for my upcoming recipe: Sunchoke and lemon zest gnocchi with goat cheese and sage.

Though I don't often follow a recipe, I have decided that if I ever want to TRULY develop recipes, I should better learn the difference between one that is very well written and easy to follow, a recipe that is confusing and requires an intuitive cook and one that is poorly written.

Thus, my new subject category - "Made from Recipe" will deliver my results when follow every direction given in a recipe, without changing a thing.

My first recipe is the Butternut Squash, Sage, and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Hazelnut Brown-Butter Sauce I found on epicurious.com.

This recipe is written precisely the way I wish to write my own recipes. Every step is clear and easy to following. It breaks down the timing for you as well, from preparing the squash, to getting the Hazelnut Brown-Butter Sauce ready.

These scones are a little decadence with a little less guilt. Sure, they still have chocolate chips and toffee chips in them, so these are by no means diet fare, but I have cut the calories and fat quite a bit by using buttermilk and egg whites. These make a superbly light dessert with coffee or espresso, and are not too sweet so they work well for breakfast as well.

This recipe works best with a stand mixer or a food processor with a pastry blade.

2 cups all-purpose
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
pinch salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces
1/4 cups toffee bits
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup egg whites (about 2 large eggs)
3/4 cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 400˙F. Prepare a cookie sheet with a light coating of cooking spray or use parchment paper.

Add first 4 ingredients into your mixer bowl and combine. Cut in butter with your mixer on low for about 1 minute. Add in the toffee bits and chocolate chips and mix until well distributed.

In a large measuring cup measure out 1/4 cup of eggs whites. Next add in buttermilk to the 1 cup mark. Lightly whip together the egg whites and buttermilk.

Turn the mixer on to low speed and slowly pour in the buttermilk mixture. Let mix for about 1 minute. The dough will be very sticky so flour your hands and place in the center of you cookie sheet. Pat the dough down into a circle, about 12" in diameter. Or make a rectangle if you prefer. Mark out 8 even pieces by cutting about 1/2 down into the dough (not all the way down) with a pizza roller.

Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool for about 10 minutes before breaking apart. Serve warm for the very best experience.

I tried making homemade marshmallows over the holidays but a combination of circumstances worked against me, resulting in a delicious, but less than successful batch of peppermint marshmallows. For one, I did not have a stand mixer (gasp!) and even if I had one, I did not have enough time for the marshmallows to set properly as they are best prepare one day in advance. Though I gave the marshmallow mixture a mighty good whipping for over 15 minutes, I could not get the volume to the level required. The marshmallows turned out to be just right for a nice mug of hot chocolate however, and we enjoyed the batch immensely.

A few days later, a knock at the door and Frugal Fritz delivers to me a beautiful red Kitchenaid Stand Mixer! Not only that, but he also picked up the Mixer Bible with over 300 recipes for the stand mixer! I am thrilled and immediately find a recipe for Marshmallows. Of course, I don't want to make plain marshmallows, but the great thing about them is that the actual flavoring of the marshmallows are the final touch. I have at least 12 minutes once the mixer is running to decide what flavors I want to use.

Once the stand mixer was magically doing what I sweated to do half as well last week, I searched the fridge for the fresh rosemary I bought a few days ago, with no luck. Then I saw the ginger and some oranges. I love these flavors together and went straight to zesting the orange and grating some ginger into a 1/4 tsp of pure vanilla extract. The results are more special than you can possibly imagine, as if it has nothing in common with the store bought versions, but yet, has everything in common with it. The texture, the flavor, the smoothness, the aroma... it is all so different yet so familiar!

1 packet unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
100 ml hot water
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp orange zest
1/4 tsp grated ginger

Pour the gelatin into a small bowl or measuring cup, then add the cold water, and set aside.

Pour the sugar, 1/4 cup of the corn syrup and the hot water into a saucepan over medium high heat. Gently stir until the granules of sugar have dissolved. Once dissolved, increase the heat and bring the mixture to a low boil. Use a candy thermometer and bring the liquid to 240˙F, remove from heat.

Add 1/4 cup of corn syrup to the mixer bowl, then carefully pour in the hot liquid while the mixer is on low speed. Turn the speed up to medium and add in the gelatin a little at a time. Beat for about 10-12 minutes. Next add in your flavorings and beat for an additional minute until fully incorporated.

Meanwhile, spray a tray with cooking spray (it is a good idea to spray your spatula as well) and add in the marshmallow mixture, spreading evenly as possible.

Let this stand, uncovered for about 24 hours. Cut up and toss with icing sugar to prevent then from sticking together.

I have to confess. I have never cooked with cranberries! Okay, maybe dried cranberries, but never with fresh cranberries. My limited exposure to them has been dried in muffins or scones, and through cranberry sauce the one time a year we eat it. Other than that. Zip. I must also confess that the only time I have used dried cranberries is because I made a mistake while shopping for dried cherries.

About a week ago, Frugal Fritz decided to load cranberries into our grocery cart - whatever - they can sit in the bin with the turnip because I don't like cranberry sauce -- yeah, even the homemade version, which my Nanny made every Christmas. They just don't appeal to me, they look like something you were told not to eat off bushes when you were a kid. They look poisonous! Irrational fear or not, I never attempted to cook with them.

You are about to embark on a journey into my mind, it won't be pretty, it won't be sane, but it just might be entertaining enough for you to read on through to the end.

So today, with a beautiful 2 kg boneless pork loin roast in hand, I had to decide how I was going to make this different from all the other pork loin roasts I have prepared over the years. Scanning the fridge brought little inspiration. Eggplant, zucchini, sunchokes, carrots, tomatoes, celery - no, no, that's for the soup I want to make, no, no, no. In the drawer there were mushrooms, the turnip and the cranberries. What goes with pork, and mushrooms? Nuts? Nah. Turnip and Pork? Not wowing me. Cranberries and Pork? Okay, I have heard of people serving cranberry sauce with ham, and we use dried cranberries with pork loin. What goes with that? Orange juice, but I am not feeling that and I have none on hand. (note to self, add OJ to grocery list). Pineapple, that could be fun!

I love spicy food, and I love it when hot meets sweet. Like chili chocolate or spice cake. We had sweet covered with the pineapple. For pork a rub works best. I decided to put together a dry rub using chipotle, ancho and tumeric. I then roughly chopped up some garlic and ginger. The aroma of the mix of spices was exactly what I was hoping for. A little salt and pepper and it was ready for the slow-cooker.

I have to remember to wipe down the inside of the slow-cooker BEFORE taking pictures, but I was so excited by how this smelled that I couldn't help myself!

I have the slow-cooker set to high for 8 hours. Check back tonight to see how this turned out!

It is now 8:16PM and we already devoured our meal. The pork turned out quite nicely. The cranberries added a nice tartness to the meal and though Fritz was not impressed by the pineapple, I liked how they soaked up the flavor of the pork and spices. I think this would have been better if I had pre-cooked the cranberries just until they popped.

Overall, Fritz rated the dish an 8 of 10, noting that he liked everything except the pineapple. I, on the other hand, am a much more critical marker and rated this a 6-6.5, meaning, just a little above what I might have expected had I stuck to a more traditional recipe.

While on an emergency grocery run a few weeks ago -- an emergency grocery run happens when my fridge looks like it belongs in a college dorm, empty except for an opened can of diet coke and a turnip -- I spotted a van, painted with a bag of fresh produce and a website address www.epiceriedirect.com scrawled across its side panel. When I got home, I checked it out and signed up for an account, though I did not purchase anything at the time.

The next day I received a call from Epicerie Direct informing me that whenever I do decide to place an order, the delivery charge (4.95$) would be waived. << MORE >>

I am headed on vacation next week for just over 11 days and emptying the fridge is high priority this week. With boneless skinless chicken breast on sale for 2.99$ per pound at Provigo until the 11th of November, I quickly decided that a white chili would be in order to use up a good deal of those leftover vegetables in the crisper.

This chili was not as spicy as I would have expected. In fact, to my surprise, the dish had a relatively mild heat despite the addition of two relatively hot jalapenos. Though I had expected a bit more of a spicy kick, the flavours in this chili was a perfect balance of spicy and sweet.

Vegetable Chicken Chili

Serves: 8 (2 cups per serving)
Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 6 hours
Cost per serving: Less than 2$

2 yellow bell peppers, chopped
1-1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
1 cup shelled edamame
5 green onions, chopped
1-541ml can red kidney beans (rinsed and drained)
1-541ml can white kidney beans (rinsed and drained)
1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes
2 jalapeno peppers, sliced
2 tbsps minced garlic
1-341ml can of corn nibblets (with liquid)
1 cup chopped carrots
1 tbsp of chipotle powder
salt and pepper
1 kg skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite sized cubes
1/2 lemon, sliced

Layer the bell pepper, mushroom, edamame, and green onions into the bottom of the slow-cooker. Top with the kidney beans, then the tomatoes, the jalapenos and the mined garlic.

In a separate bowl, toss together the corn nibblets along with the juices, the carrots, chiptole powder, salt and pepper, as well as the chicken breast. Pour into the slow-cooker and top with a few lemon slices.

Set the slow cooker to high for 6 hours. Gently toss before serving. Serve with Queso Fresco or as I did with Quark Fresh Cheese and some tosada chips.

Normally on a night when I have a casual get together, like nights when the kids come over with their girlfriends, I will make something in the slow cooker. This allows me to relax a little, not having to worry about one of the boys arriving early and "starving", or the other arriving later because he lost track of time. I can rest assured that everything will be done in time, and stay warm until the time comes.

This week Frugal Fritz found himself inspired after watching an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay. The opponents were the Lee brothers. The dish was Country Captain; a classic southern dish made with chicken that has been seared in bacon fat and stewed with curry, tomato and currants. All I could tell you is that by the end of the show, Fritz was hungry to make this dish.

Bobby Flay's Throwdown Country Captain Chicken Recipe

All this extra time on my hands and I just could not sit back and do nothing. So I decided to prepare a recipe. From start to finish, as instructed. Which is so very against my natural instinct to let loose, add and replace ingredients a whim.

I L-O-V-E scones, and though I love my recipe for Awesome Good Scones they are really more appropriate for breakfast, and I wanted something more desserty. Most of the recipes had something between 300-400 calories, and after a day of gorging, I still did not want to give up dessert. So I scoured "the best of Cooking Light" recipe book with over 500 recipes, surely they have a scone recipe that could be delicious, and low-cal?Lo and behold I found the Gingersnap Scones with Espresso Glaze.

Except the for gingersnaps, I followed the recipe to the letter. The reason I did not use gingersnaps is because they were not being sold anywhere that I could find! I finally settled on gingerbread men.



These scones were great. Much more "cake-like" than most scones recipes, making it more than just suitable for dessert. The best part, I have a few left over for this mornings coffee!

Metro 5.99/lb fresh Atlantic salmon 3.99 Clementines Maroc for 5lbs 0.99/lb Quebec apples 9.99 per case of emerald figs 2.99 Lafleur bacon (500g)	Provigo 2.99/lb boneless skinless chicken breasts 3.99/lb boneless skinless chicken thighs 1.49/lb fresh pork hocks 1.29 Fennel bulb 2/5$ Oasis juices (1.89L)
Loblaws 4.99/lb T-bone steak 5.99/lb Steelhead trout fillets 3/5$ per 1/2 pint of blueberries and blackberries 0.69/lb Spaghetti squash 1.99 cabernet wine grapes from Canada (454g) 1.49 Zinda couscous (500g) 2/4$ Gadoua bagels (6) 2/5$ Liberte yogourt (500g)	IGA 1.99/lb frozen pork tenderloins 2.79 Compliments butter (454g) 0.99 Seedless red grapes 2/3$ Quebec sliced leek (250g) 3.99/lb fresh ground turkey 2.99 Compliments large eggs with Omega-3 (doz) 3.69 So Nice (1.89L)

These are the specials I have chosen for our family for the week, but as with every shopping trip, other opportunities often present themselves. Last week, while I was shopping at Metro for some special ingredients I happened upon a table with ten pound bags of both carrots and beets for 1.49$ each. That was a deal I could not pass on, though I really wish I would have planned better for the trip home!

I am no longer a once a week shopper. I have come to learn that shopping every couple of days offers me greater opportunities to scope out the specials at different stores, I can also better plan my week and make sure I always have the freshest produce on hand for my meal.