Ugly Sweater Holiday Party

UGLY SWEATER HOLIDAY PARTY

I kind of started a tradition among friends and then I guess they liked it so much that they kind of expected me to do it every year. It started as a Swag Swap gift exchange to clear out things accumulated during the year.  Last year I didn't do it because the one I did 2 years ago after the Ice Storm was extremely difficult and kind of burnt me out.  Last year a few of my friends got together at my friends place to do a gift exchange and that was nice.   This year I wasn't going to do it because I have had a bad financial year and it costs me a couple hundred dollars to do these parties with the food, decor and gift bags etc.  After deciding that I needed to do some de-cluttering after accumulating a lot of things after a year of food events and generally spending too much time moving things around my small space to make them fit.  Every time I have a party I spend a few days afterward trying to tuck things back into their place.  Because of blogging and my shopaholic tendencies I had accumulated so much stuff I didn't know what to do with and since this year more than others I couldn't afford to go out and buy my friends actual new gifts I decided to have a Not So Secret Santa Ugly Christmas Sweater Party.  Yeah I decided to hop on the Ugly Sweater bandwagon.  Comfy and fun.

Not so Secret because I was the Secret Santa giving gifts of things I didn't need anymore to my friends.  I asked them NOT to bring anything to exchange and told them I didn't want anything I had to store somewhere and the point of this party was to clear my space, get together with my friends all at the same time and give them gifts I can't go buy right now.  Most of the things were things like T-Shirts that aren't my size from events I attended.  Some of the housewares that I didn't have room to store or haven't used, homemade treats and some of my impulsive buys that never got used.  I gave one of my friends a small makeup case and a whole bunch of makeup I got as samples or stuff I never used and she was really excited about it.  For me the makeup kit was too small to use Professionally and I didn't have the space after re-organizing my makeup kit.  For her she was thrilled to try new makeup that she couldn't afford to buy.

One of my friends just moved into a new place so I gave her an orange serving tray and placemats and other stuff for her.  She is also a blogger and we always need new things to style out photos.  Turns out she didn't have a tray and I have like 4 so it will be used instead of moved around here.

What I did was wrap up different things and some had specific people that I thought would like it and a few things could go to a few different friends.   I passed out the gifts and gave them the option to trade for something else once if they didn't like it.  I got down to the last 3 girls and I couldn't decide who to give what to so I let them choose and then let the group decided if they could keep it.  It made it a bit more fun.   As it turns out nobody wanted to trade for anything else.  The only one that traded was one of my friends afterward wanted a candle holder instead of a large book box.   No problem.  The point is that I somehow managed to choose things I didn't need anymore that were new gifts for my friends.  Yes they all knew the plan.  They know I am not working steady and can't buy gifts and the fact that I had all kinds of food at the party and they didn't really have to do much made them pretty happy.

I only asked for them to bring a few things that they could choose if they wanted to bring something for the party like Wine, Pop and salads.

This was the first year that I was running behind and didn't have everything set up before my friends got there so I had one of my friends help set up a cheese and charcuterie board. I actually didn't have time to even take a photo of it but here's the board with some cheese.

I also had some entertaining food from winning a Sobey's gift basket and also St. Hubert Poutine bites that I had to blog about that I knew I couldn't eat by myself so I thought it was perfect for a party.

For the Food I made the Poutine bites which were what they call "insideoutpoutine".  They are mashed potatoes stuffed with cheese and gravy and coated in breadcrumbs.  All you have to do is heat them for about 15 min in the oven and serve.

Even my friend's 1 year old daughter tried one and I think she was a bit confused trying to figure out what it was.  She just started eating regular food so it's all new for her.  The tiny bites were huge in her little hands.

My friend somehow also managed to find time to bake the most amazing Gingerbread Bundt cake in a Jewish Star Mould. Unfortunately everyone was so stuffed that not everyone had room to try it but I did and loved it.

I had 3 bottles of BBQ sauce in my fridge so I decided to make meatballs and since I didn't have a lot of time I just bought some store bought ones.  Unfortunately not a big hit as they weren't very good.  Homemade is always best so next time I skip the meatballs.

I also made both Mac and Cheese and Vegetarian Lasagna the same time that morning.  Now I know how Chefs feel juggling dishes.  The Mac and Cheese was ok but the Lasagna turned out fantastic.  I used some no cook Molisano noodles that I haven't tried before and they were great.  I will buy them again for sure.  I mixed frozen spinach into ricotta cheese with grated parmesan and that was my veggie bonus layer.  The rest just tomato sauce and cheese.  I still have some left in my freezer.  Yes I always make too much food.  I never know what will turn out and what won't and who can eat what so I make more just in case.  I also wanted to have the leftover lasagna for myself because I don't make it often just for myself.  My friend lent me her Pro Catering Chafing dish that took up a lot of space on the counter but freed up my oven at least to make other things.

As part of a Gastropost Mission Challenge I had to make something with Walmart Canada's Brownie Mix and Wine Gums so kind of as late as I could make it I decided to make a Mocha Coconut Ugly Sweater Brownie Cake.  I had it at the party but didn't serve it up because I baked it too long and the bottom was a bit burnt so it was kind of dry.  Nobody was hungry anyway since I had so many other treats but it looked nice.

Along with the Ugly Sweater Cake I had an Ugly Sweater Contest where I encouraged my friends to dress very festive and I had a prize.  My friend Fabian won with his handmade sweater decor and his festive socks and slippers.  He was determined to win.

He won a Starbucks Ugly Sweater Gingerbread Men cookies, Dufflet's Cigar chocolates, Smores and chocolate crisps.  He was very happy as you can see. Oh and also a little ugly sweater ornament.

I made a whole assortment of sweet treats like Chocolate Chip cookies, chocolate covered apricots, Peppermint bark, Coconut macaroons, cinnamon roasted almonds and my friends mom's cookies, and there was lot's of chocolates too.

One of the things I made that I will make again was Ricardo's recipe for a Cheeseball.  It was so easy and it was so good.  Only a few ingredients,  Cream cheese, sharp cheese like cheddar, jalapeno and green onions.  It's all blended and rolled into crushed pecans.  I sampled it at a get together with Ricardo and liked it and I will make it again maybe next year and skip some of the other cheeses.

It was a lot of fun and for the first time I still had energy at the end of the party.  For me that's a successful party and my place wasn't a huge mess of wrapping paper everywhere this time.
As you can see some of my friends ditched their ugly sweaters before the party ended and I was the only one left wearing the Ugly sweater, although I was smart and most of it was just pinned on so I eventually took off the pins and just had a red cardigan and now it's just back to a regular sweater.

My place is all cleaned up again and feels a little less cluttered.  I want to encourage you to think outside the Shopping Mall and rethink Holiday gift giving.  Some of my friends did bring me gifts but mostly gift cards and a Starbucks mug and some other small things that will get used up.

I had to rethink my budget, and in the process helped the environment I think.  I want to make 2016 a year of less waste.  Less wasted money, food, stuff and time.  I hope I have inspired you to do the same or at least have an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party next year.

From me and my friends may you have a Very Happy Holiday and a Fantastic New Year!

HO! HO! HO!

Sobey launches 1st Nutella Cafe in Canada

Who:            Sobeys

What:           Nutella Cafe launch

Where:         22 Fort York Blvd

When:          November 13, 2015 

Why:            Launch of the 1st Nutella Cafe in Canada

I got up at the crack of dawn this morning to mosey my way downtown to visit the Sobeys at Spadina Ave and Fort York Blvd.  I had to be there at 7:30am.   I got there a bit late and missed the ribbon cutting ceremony but those pastries were calling my name so I made sure I got there in time to try them.

Sobeys launched their 1st Nutella® Cafe in Canada at this location today and were out in full force with a crack team of red jacket decked out staff to give out samples of pastries.

Inside the Sobeys people milled about and we watched as a couple of ladies swirled crepe batter on an authentic crepe maker and then filled them with Nutella® spread and fresh fruits.

My morning breakfast consisted of a Nutella® crepe and I also had an arogosta.  They were so delicious.  Besides the pastries they also have coffee of course and you can get a cappuccino for $2, a lot less expensive than your usual cafe's.

Also available are artisan breads made with Nutella®, including bombe, aragosta, zeppole, pizelle and all butter croissants and danishes.

Crepes are made to order fresh  and grab a coffee and you can do your grocery shopping while sipping away and the Crepes come in pizza style single serve boxes to take with you too.

Today, November 13th they are sampling all day until 7pm so if you read this today then head over there quickly to try some.

They are delicious classic Italian and French pastries and some are things you don't see in one place so it's a great place to visit before you head over to a dinner party.

If you do don't forget to take a selfie with your purchase and tag is #NutellaxSobeys so that they Sobeys people can see you enjoying your treats.

About Nutella®
Nutella® was created in 1964 thanks to Mr. Michele Ferrero; it was based on the recipe for Glandujot developed in 1946 by his father, Pietro Ferrero- confectioner and founder of Ferrero -- in Italy's Piedmont area.  Nowadays, the popular hazelnut spread is available in around 160 countries worldwide.  In 2014,  Nutella® celebrated its 50th anniversary.  It has been sold in Canada since 1968 - 47 years.

*Disclaimer - I was given free samples but the opinions in this post are my own.

Food Revolution Day Thank You!

THANK YOU

Another year of Jamie Oliver's Annual Food Revolution Day events is now over but all of the Ambassadors and everyone involved with Food Revolution Day want to continue the momentum and keep cooking skills alive and help drive more food education in schools for the rest of the year.  

If you haven't signed Jamie Oliver's Petition it's not too late.  

Take a minute to go to change.org/JamieOliver and sign  the petition.  Signatures will be collected until October and brought to G20 leaders in November.

I want to take this time to thank all of the sponsors and people that assisted in helping me make my Food Revolution Day event a very successful one.

Photos provided by my photographer friend Alex Tsang @hypebelly

First I want to thank Alissa from Hendrix Restaurant Equipment & Supplies for organizing all of the tools needed in their amazing new test kitchen and the rest of the staff for going above and beyond what I expected was possible.

Martina, Susan, Alissa, Linda, Jenny, Lisa

I would also like to thank fellow Ambassador Susan Ng (dough making machine), Jenny Roger (mandolin master), Martina Kelly and Lisa Swainston my Food Revolution greeters or supreme welcoming committee.

I would like to thank Sobeys who provided a gift card for food supplies for the event and also provided gift cards for prizes and also aprons, measuring spoons, pens and notepads for the attendees.

I would also like to thank Richa from Good Food For Good who provided the sauce that I used to make the Spicy Carrot soup.  I used the Chiltomate or now known as the Tacos sauce.  She was also in attendance at the event to provide support and speak about her line of sauces.

Fresh City Farms also helped out with fresh vegetables for the recipes and also gave me vegetables that I used for our group photo and I donated the rest to fellow Ambassador Dorothy Pang's Cooking Challenge.  They also provided 2 Gift Certificates for 1 Fresh City Farms bag of groceries to get a couple of lucky people started with their delivery program of fresh local foods.

I also want to thank Aroma Espresso Bar who donated gift cards to some lucky attendees so they could try some of their fresh healthy foods.

Jennifer from Pluck Teas also sent over a last minute bag of AFTER EIGHT teas for guest to sample during my event.

And A.Vogel Canada who provided Sprouter kits to all of the Ambassadors across Canada.  My sprouter arrived after my event so I am going to be doing a giveaway for one of them soon.

I want to thank everyone that attended.  The feedback from everyone has been great and a few people have already made a couple of things at their homes.

And Congratulations to the Winners of the 2 Gift Baskets.  Leo(I think on left and Fabian on the right).

Thank you to everyone that contributed in some way to make this a fun event and to everyone that came to participate I hope that it was inspiring and fun and everyone comes back again next year.

Photo credit for all of the above photos by Alex Tsang.  Thank you Alex for the great pics.

Food Revolution Vegetarian Cooking Challenge

Who:  Dorothy Pang Food Revolution Day Ambassador
What: Vegetarian Cooking Challenge for Food Revolution Day
Where: Nella Cucina on Bathurst Street
When:  Sat. Apr. 24, 2015
Why:  Getting people back in the kitchen to cook real food and raise awareness for Food Education.

Dorothy Pang one of the new Food Revolution Day Ambassadors for Toronto, organized a Vegetarian Culinary Cooking Contest for her first ever Ambassador event.  She organized about 30 young adults into about 5 teams of 4-5 people.   The event was held at Nella Cucina a large Culinary store with a cooking demo space upstairs.

The teams arrived and after registering and getting some information about the event they were treated to some Rawlicious Collard Wraps and Rise Kombucha beverages and coffee from Boxcar Social and cookies from Sweets from the Earth.

After getting their teams organized and having a quick bite for energy they broke into their teams to start formulating their creative plans starting with the basic mandatory bowl of ingredients:  kale, lemon, garlic, beets, and a bottle of Good Food For Good sauce.

They were then allowed to choose ingredients from a pantry of various vegetables, pastas, canned beans and herbs and spices which were generously provided by Sobeys, and a few from Fresh City Farms.

There was a lot of excitement as the teams hustled to get their dishes together.  A lot of high energy buzz in the room.  A lot of people had never met and had to come together as a team to create original dishes from the challenge.

Let's just say they pulled out all the tools that Nella Cucina had in their kitchen.

They had just over an hour or so to complete their dishes before presenting them to the judges who were myself, fellow Ambassador Carol Harrison and Tanya from Nella Cucina and Dorothy's boyfriend as the added judge because he was dying to try everything.

Richa, Dorothy, Carol, Linda

Good Food for Good's creator Richa was on hand to assist the teams in choosing the sauces and providing suggestions and Carol tried to assist in answering questions while I was busy taking these photos.  After they completed their dishes the presented their dishes to the judges one team at a time. They all tried to one up each other and there was a lot of thought to their presentations.
A lot of colorful dishes and unique combinations.

 

We had a score card for each team and it was almost unanimous that we chose the last team who produced 4 dishes including 2 desserts, one of which was the chocolate covered beets. They also made a beautiful fresh chopped salad and a pasta dish and phyllo wrapped bananas. Their team was called "REVOLICIOUS"  kind of appropriate don't you think.

The winning team won Sobey's gift cards, Aroma Espresso Bar Gift Cards and products from The Detox Market.

Dorothy also raffled off some other prizes including limited edition chopsticks from Chef Susur Lee.

Everyone said they had a great time and they would do it again.  We were all please with the outcome.

We all have to thank Tanya for letting us extend our time and one of the participants Henry who was a champion for sticking around to help us tackling the massive quantity of pots, pans, dishes and utensils.  He helped clean up for about 2 hours.    Maybe next time we should say it has to be a one pot wonder as part of the challenge.

We encouraged everyone to go online and sign the Jamie Oliver petition for Food Education and we took a great group photo at the end of the night.  I am hoping they all spread the word about Food Revolution Day and go to other events in the future.

Great job Dorothy.

Food Revolution Day Plans

This past weekend some of the Food Revolution Day Ambassadors in Toronto got together for Brunch to chat about all of our individual Food Revolution Day plans.

Food Revolution Day -  15 MAY 2015 

We have lot's of events leading up to the day and afterward.

This year we have a lot of different things on the go.

1.  The first one coming up is Dorothy Pang's Vegetarian Culinary Competition at Nella Cucina  on Bathurst Street in Toronto on Sat. April 25th.  I will be one of the judges along with fellow ambassador Carol Harrison.  

2.  Susan Ng will be getting my Grade 13 school Northview Heights involved on May 15th with some cooking classes.

3.  Mardi Michels and Mary Catherine Anderson will be hosting a parent and child hands on class at Royal St. George College on Food Revolution Day.

4.  Chef Mary Hulbert will do a cooking class for an after school program at St. Alban's Boys and Girls Club on Food Revolution Day.

5. Christine Barisheff will have events at Jean Augustine Centre for Youth Empowerment and also and adult event at Cirillos Culinary Academy.

6.  Jen Farr will be hosting a Food Revolution Day party at her home on May 16th.

7.  Carol Harrison is going to be doing a cooking demo with her kids on Rogers television and has plans to do some in school cooking classes.

8.  I will be doing my Wonky Veg cooking demo at Hendrix equipment on May 16th.

We all volunteer our time and couldn't do these events without the assistance of great partner sponsors.

Thank you to our Host venues:

• Hendrix Restaurant Equipment
• Nella Cucina
• Cirillos Academy
• Northview Heights SS.
• Royal St. George's College
• St. Alban's Boys and Girls Club
• Jean Augustine Centre for Youth Empowerment

We also rely on assistance for our food, supplies and prizes to make these events successful.

My sponsors include:

Sobeys for food donations and prizes

Fresh City Farms with generous support of fresh vegetables for the photo above, cooking demo and gift certificates for a prize draw. 

Good Food For Good for fabulous products for recipe demo and prize draw

Aroma Espresso Bar for having a special Food Revolution Day Special on May 15th which includes a Chopped Salad, Mediterranean Sandwich and a free Mint Tea.  They are also providing gift cards.

Other sponsors contributing to other Ambassador Events include:

Chef Susur Lee

A.Vogel

The Detox Market

An easy way for you to participate without leaving your chair is to Sign Jamie Oliver's Petition for Food Education here:  www.change.org/jamieoliver  Sign it!. and Share it!

For more information about Food Revolution Day on how you can join us check the website at:

www.FoodRevolutonDay.com

Follow the global hashtag feed #foodrevolutionday

and the Toronto team at #foodrevTO

Follow me @lindamatarasso on Twitter and Instagram

or Join the Toronto Facebook Page. https://www.facebook.com/FoodRevolutionDayToronto

Food Revolution Day TO Event

Here's the newly designed flyer by Hendrix Toronto for my Food Revolution Day Event that I am hosting there.  Hope you can drop by and check out some great Wonky Veg food.

Please share this flyer with all your foodie friends and culinary challenged ones too.

Register on EVENTBRITE for a chance to Win Prizes at the Event,  here's the link:
http://www.eventbrite.ca/e/food-revolution-day-to-wonky-veg-cooking-demo-tickets-16377411278

Food Revolution Day - Sign It. Share It.

Food Revolution Day 2015 is coming soon.

15.05.15 is the Global Food Revolution Day so save the date to participate in whatever way that you are able to.

This year's theme is FIGHTING FOR FOOD EDUCATION.

Jamie Oliver wants you to sign his Global Petition to get G20 governments to add Food Education to the curriculum of all schools to stop the epidemic of global obesity and teach kids where there food comes from and that they have the power to make a difference in their own lives.  They will learn skills for life.  Every child deserves that right.

Please SIGN IT and SHARE IT.           www.change.org/jamieoliver

Starting April 1st you can start to register to come to my Food Revolution Day FREE Public Event at Hendrix Restaurant Equipment & Supplies in North York.  If you register on Eventbrite and bring a copy of your registration to the event on May 16th you can hand it in to us to be entered into a draw to WIN a Jamie Oliver Cookbook and there are also other prizes that will be drawn in store.

I will be doing a Healthy Lunch Demo in Hendrix Equipment's Test Kitchen starting at Noon on May 16th.  At 3pm we will be drawing for prizes.  I will be making flatbread from scratch, grilled cheese and Mediterranean vegetable sandwiches and a spicy carrot soup.

You can start registering for my event starting April 1st on this page:  EVENTBRITE

How you can participate:

1.  Attend my event or other Global Events.  for the Toronto Area event updates will be posted on our Facebook page.  Like Us and get the updates.  Facebook Food Revolution Day Toronto

2.  Sign the Petition and pass it on.

3.  Become an Ambassador.  Sign up at www.foodrevolutionday.com

4.  Host your own event or have a family dinner or party and cook a meal together.

5.  Set up a food education program in your community.

Take a Selfie of yourself like this and post it to your social media to get other people to sign the Petition at change.org/jamieoliver
Tag it #Foodrevolutionday and #foodrevToronto if you are in Toronto.