Pictures from Valentines Day and Meal at my Parents house

Valentines Day 2012

Meal at my Parents house in Wisconsin:

Amuse Bouche: Citus Duck with fried Shallot

Soup: Puree of Acorn Squash

Salad: Roasted Beet with Beet Puree and Goat cheese

Entree: 6oz Filet with Pea Puree, Brussel sprouts and Sweat Potato Chip

Dessert: Chocolate Covered Strawberries and Whipcream

Minx

Just a quick blurb about Minx. She really is turning out to be the best cat ever. She plays, meets me at the door everyday when I get home, shes clean, doesnt eat things or scratch at things shes not supposed to and among many other things my favorite of all is that she just wants to be near me. Right now she is sitting on top of the couch right by my head . She doesnt want to cuddle or anything, just being near is good. good ol minx.

So life here is alright. Two more days of school and friday i start my practicum at cibo bistro. Italian/modern cuisine made all in house. I am reallllly excited. The summer is filling up fast, 4 weddings, one of which Im a bridesmaid. Not sure about the job situation, but Im trying hard and also trusting God with it. Missing my friends and family quite a bit lately and sometimes I watch TV to forget about missing home. Not the best habit. Im working on that too. Tonight we might go see the Lorax movie! Cant wait. Thats it for now.

-e

Lentils on my mind.

**What I did with lentils today... Explaination is below**

In Nutrition class, in the Toque, from teachers, and lately in life I have been encountered by lentils. A lot of people turn up their nose to them, especially when they think of split pea soup or something else like that. BUT lentils, pulse beans and beans in general are a very important part of our diet! Who knew right? (Actually I knew awhile ago because my friend Elizabeth started eating more of them and she told me how great they are)

Some info about lentils:

• Lentils are part of the legume family.
• They are a good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber.
• The high fiber helps prevent blood sugar levels from rising rapidly after a meal.
• Lentils have great amounts of minerals, vitamins, and proteins...heres a chart from www.whfoods.org

Cool hey?

**So heres the explanation of the picture above and what I made today.**

I was making some dinners for my friends Katie and Layne and their daughter Ava. Katie is expecting a baby boy any day now! So just made some bacon scalloped potatoes and a chicken and rice casserole and when putting in some vegtables into the casserole I stumbled upon my red lentils I've never used. So I added some into that and then I got thinking... I had :

-1 large sweet potato, peeled and small dice

-1 cup lentils

-3 cups water

-clove of garlic

-dried rosemary and bay leaf

-tablespoon of butter

-salt&pepper

(I added some carrot last minute too for color.)

Basically put the water, lentil, rosemary, bay leaf, and sweet potato in a big sauce pot and turned it on high. I put the lid on for a while too. Boiled , added the garlic clove, boiled, boiled until all was very tender(the water should be pretty absorbed too. You want to keep that because lots of your nutrients are in there! So dont drain, ok?). Then I took out the bay leaf and put in S&P and some butter and took my mixer and mixed mixed mixed until smooth. Thats it. It is like a super healthy creamy mashed potato. You could add more stock to make it more of a soup too. Its quite yum.

k. off to enjoy my lentils :)

Pictures from the Toque...finally!

Us on a quick break during the busy day.
Me and Allen, the first place winners.
Dessert!
Entre!
Appetizer!
**Also a quick video of me on the news here in Edmonton... http://watch.ctv.ca/news/#clip618550

The Club Culinary President and Vice Pres are in my class and needed a hand with this cooking clip, so I hopped right in :) I've started to help out quite a bit with the club when I can.

I have also been cooking/learning lots at my new job. We just had a France wine dinner for 112 and the menu was awesoommmeee. Guess what next month is...USA! Any ideas? As of now they are going for regions. I told them beer cheese soup and brats from the midwest. haha. But I also thought we could play with the banana split idea for a dessert...hmm. Oh! and today I made Lemon ginger sorbet for a club thing=YUM!

k byeee,

home in 5 days

-e

Culinary Updates

This is my chaud froid platter:

Using mayo and aspic we made the white gelatin like base, let that cool. Then put the inlaid garnishes in and covered that with aspic, let that cool. Then added my canapes.
Starting from left to right:

Parmesan crisp with a goat cheese mousse, Radish salad on carrot cream cheese, Tuna Tartar with avocado salsa, Curried Chicken salad with Frisee, and more Parm crisps.
This was our first project with chaud froid and aspic. We poached our trout then added garnishes.
You can also see the inlaid garnishes in this pic. My final project was a MUCH smoother platter. This one is blah.
all of our fun garnishes we learned.
Do you see the apple swans? :)

Loving school so much still. Job update: I quit! Woo Hoo! And got another job as a server at a fine dining restaurant at school. HR is still going over all my papers, but my last day is tuesday at my old job so I am hoping to start up my new one within this next week. That's the most exciting news lately. Other than going back to Wisconsin in approximately 20 days! I cant wait!! Thats it for now.

Christmas break...

Andrew and I on top of Marmot in Jasper.
The snowboarders at Jasper.
View from in the trees at Revelstoke.
View from just off the highest Chairlift at Revelstoke.

Trees.

Revelstoke.

Making a jump for sledding in Sicamous.
Me, right after seeing the hill we were going to be sledding down!
My first Poutine!

Cindy and I doing the Canadian norm...
Here's my breakdown of my busy Christmas break...

-Last day of class was the 19th. We had a cleaning day where we deep cleaned the whole big kitchen then took our Range exam.

-After class I packed up our stuff for Jasper! On the 20th Andrew and I hit the road after his last exam and met up with Trish, Yvonne, Jared, and Laura at our neat little loft hotel room.

- The next 3 days we did a fun secret gift exchange, skied on Marmot, went in the hot tub, and out for a nice dinner. There was a lot of 'Times Up' playing too!

-Skiing was SO beautiful and fun! Even though I did get a bit cold it didnt put a damper in my day.

-After Jasper we hung out at Bryan and Debbie's house for Christmas. Opened lots of presents, ate turkey, and just enjoyed eachothers company lots.

-Christmas Eve we went to Trish's and had fondue! That was lots of fun too. I also skyped with my family back home and I really liked that.

-On the 26th we were on the road again with our married friends: Ryan and Cindy, & Dave and Ashley. This time to Sicamous, British Colombia. Another amazing trip!!

-We went sledding, had a campfire, went skiing at Revelstoke (and Andrew went 2 times!), played lots of games, watched movies, AND Gloria and Nick came out to visit which really made my trip. Let's just say fun is an understatement :)

-We drove back on the 30th

-On New Years Eve we started off seeing Trevor and Raelene, and played some Cranium. Then we saw the dumb new Tom Cruise movie...Mission Impossible 13 or something...haha. It was nice being with Laura, Bryan and Debbie though. Then we celebrated the night at our friend's( Dave and Barb, plus new baby Blake) parent's house. Played cranium again, hot tubbed , and ate snacks. A great night.

-The next week up until school started was just normal. I started back at work on the 3rd...we tried to hang out in Devon as much as possible because Yvonne and Jared were still in town.

-Andrew got new hockey skates, gloves , and a stick for Christmas so hes been skating lots and we played speed scrabble a lot too.

Thats it for now, Im in Garde Mange class right now,

...garde manger

[gahrd mahn-ZHAY]
A French term for the cool, well-ventilated pantry area (usually in hotels and large restaurants) where cold buffet dishes are prepared and other foods are stored in refrigerated units. Some of the items prepared in a garde manger are salads, PÂTÉS, CHAUD-FROIDS and other decorative dishes. The person in charge of this area is known as chef garde manger.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary/entry/?id=2674#ixzz1j7ius0Z8

but its bed time, see ya later.(Also I am coming back to Wisconsin in FEBRUARY! See you all then.

-e

Picture Updates!

Winter is here...
we miss the fall...
and hardly remember summer!

Our kitchen remodeling project...that used to be a full wall, so the kitchen was so dark and not great. therefore we took out a chunk and half of the wall and eventually it will be a breakfast bar area with some shelves on the side. Now its just a mess.
AFTER WE PAINTED :) love it
BEFORE WE PAINTED

Minx sitting on the sleeping Andrew
Our kitten :)

So...
Life is still busy. This past weekend was Remembrance Day, so we had a long weekend. On friday we had Dave and Ashleys wedding, which was beautiful and SO much fun. We danced the night away. Saturday I went over to Cindy's house with Katie and her daughter Ava and we made some Christmas cards. Then, in the night, we went to a Haiti fundraising dinner. On Sunday we went to First CRC again (we are really liking it!) and after just cleaned cleaned cleaned! 7 loads of laundry later and furniture moving =our house in tiptop shape. For dinner we went out to Dad and Debbies house. We had apple soup! Quite tasty! and a Roast with potatoes for main course and crepes for dessert. This week should go by without a problem.

Oh, and the contest went really well. We got first PLACE!! All that hard work paid off :)

Here was our Menu:

Smoked Whitefish on a wild rice and lentil crepe with a grainy mustard celery root slaw

then,
Braised bison short ribs sausages with lentil and homemade rocotta cheese perogies. Pan roated guinea hen with a wild mushroom sauce and pickled beets.

for dessert: dark chocolate cherry triffle(the laters being mousse, whiskey and amoretto soaked pound cake , sour cherry compote, crumbled almond cookie, more mousse.