that canadian girl

Beautiful Christmas time drinks…

Long Kiss Goodnight

Ingredients:

Mixing instructions:
Freeze a martini glass and it in shaved chocolate to rim. In a shaker put ice, vodka, Baileys Irish Cream, and white creme de cacao. Shake lightly and pour into martini glass. Garnish with chocolate kiss.

Shamrock Express

Into a shaker 2/3 filled with ice add cold but fresh espresso coffee (or strong filter coffee), half a small shot of vodka, Baileys, and butterscotch schnapps. Shake thoroughly and strain into an ice-filled Old Fashioned glass.

Candy Apple Martini (added 28 Nov)

Shake Apple Schnapps, Butterscotch Schnapps and Vodka (in whatever quantities you want, depending on how sweet you like it!) in a shaker with a lot of ice, until the shaker frosts up on the outside. Pour into martini glass and add a drop of syrup to the bottom if you like ‘em sweet.

Last night, we had friends over for Chinese fondue, and it was a really good evening.

We’ve become the Missionaries of the Fondue Set, and our goal is to convert as many people as possible to Fonduism. It’s a very Zen religion, where eating slowly and socially is particularly good for your karma.

I really believe last night was a success in converting two more… Millions more to go!

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve added on the right side of the site a link to the Jamie Oliver website, more exactly the recipes section.

The man is an inspiration when it comes to simple tasty cooking! His salad of roasted squash, proscuitto and pecorino is one of the tastiest and easiest meals I’ve ever made. Any of the recipes welcome personal adaptations so well, you can usually make do with what you’ve got in the fridge, as opposed to those rigid and precise recipes where a single ingredient missing makes it impossible!

How can you resist?

Go on, cook something exciting tonight!

After a long day at work, I still had a craving to make some lovely homemade sushi… so I did. It’s a relaxing process up to the actual rolling, which always worries me in case I don’t roll it tight enough and end up with a mess of rice and fillings! Of course, as usual, it went perfectly well, and it was taaaaaaaasty!

Sushi kicks ass

Alright, I could try and explain how to make the rice and how to make the roll but here are two links that will do that for me

How to make sushi rice:
http://www.rain.org/~hutch/rice.html

How to roll california rolls:
http://www.rain.org/~hutch/calif.html

Just remember to make the wasabi (if you bought it as powder) at least 10 minutes ahead so the flavour can develop a bit!

And if you’re curious and want to make the other types of sushi, be my guest, here’s the link to the rest of this guy’s site. (and let me know how it turns out!)

I’m really fancying sushi right now but we don’t have what we need and we’re probably going to Costco and Ikea tonight, since we’ve pushed it back so many times.

Since my mommy and a few friends have talked about sushi and asked how I make mine, I thought I’d make a post about it It isn’t the end all and be all of sushi, I’ve only made it twice and it may be different to how others make it, but all I can say in its defence is it’s really tasty

Ingredients to buy in Asian supermarket:
* Sushi rice
* Nori (seaweed sheets)
* Pickled ginger (light pink slices of ginger in vinegar)
* Wasabi (in powder form, or pre-made mixture)
* Little wooden rolling mat

It’s worth getting enough sushi rice and nori for a few meals since most of us have to go out of their way to go to an Asian supermarket

Now, I’ve never made fish sushi so far, only veggie california rolls. The reason for that is because I DON’T trust the fish counters at our usual supermarkets… I’ll tell the Tesco fish lady story one day…

So from the normal store I’d get:
* Avocado
* Carrots
* Cucumber
* Roasted red peppers (ok that’s cuz I had that in the fridge.. its good I swear!)
* Crabsticks (could also use smoked salmon)

This post looks like it’s gonna get longer and longer, so I’ll write the next part on how to make the sushi later! Go buy the ingredients, I’ll be back

I highly recommend trying to make sushi at home, particularly california rolls and other easy no-raw-fish ones.

We had some twice now, and both times it turned out really well and was an absolute treat to eat! One little trip to Chinatown for the sheets of nori, the rolling mats and the pickled ginger. The rest can be picked up at any grocery store really! MMmMMmmm It doesn’t really take longer than any other meal to make and it’s really yummy!

Last night, I made homemade pasta and well, it went alright for a first attempt but… I can hear Gordon Ramsey screaming about how rubbish it is already! Next time we’ll use a different kind of flour to see if it works better. One way or the other, we finally got to try out our pasta maker and it’s GREAT!

Next Friday, we’ll be going to Vinopolis in London (http://www.vinopolis.co.uk) for one of Andrew’s coworkers’ leaving do. I haven’t been to London since before the wedding, when my family was over. Should be nice.