Food memories on Father's Day

Today is Father's Day and I am thinking about my Dad Jacques who passed in 1984.

Most of my food memories come from the food my mother made but my Dad was the weekend cook because he liked certain things that my mother didn't make.  My dad was the one who did all the grocery shopping for the family and he is the one that taught me how to find my way around a grocery store and where to find a good deal.

My Dad loved bacon, eggs, cheese, cabbage rolls, those boil in bag packages of corned beef and all things charcuterie.

My dad taught me how to make some great scrambled eggs and most of the time he would start it and I would do the stirring and finish it.

This is one of my Dad's signature Scrambled Egg Dishes.   Scrambled eggs with cheddar and creamed cottage cheese. It's pretty easy to make.

  

JACQUES Cheesy Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients:

3 tbsp. creamed cottage cheese

1/4 cup of chopped or shredded cheddar cheese

3 whole eggs

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

In a medium hot frying pan add the creamed cottage cheese and cook until some of the water has evaporated and then add the cheddar cheese.  Cook until it's creamy thick sauce consistency.   My dad sometimes used to use a regular frying pan and burn the cheddar cheese to make it crispy but it's hard to do that with a non stick pan so will skip that version and go for the creamy version.

You don't need to add butter or oil if you use a non stick pan because there is a lot of fat already in the cheeses but if your pans stick add a bit of butter.  

After the cheese is a creamy consistency beat the eggs and add to the cheese mixture.   Keep stirring to mix the cheese into the eggs and cook until the eggs are cooked.  You will end up with creamy eggs not solid scrambled eggs.   Add salt and pepper to taste at the end of the cooking process.  Adding salt to the eggs at the beginning will make them tighten up.   

If you want to jazz it up you can add some chives, parsley or paprika.   In the photo above I added some paprika on top.   My dad only added salt and pepper.  He liked simple foods.

Also pictured in the photo above is fried salami.  It's a great substitute for bacon if you get bored of the same old bacon and eggs.   

Eat it with a nice piece of crusty french bread.   I added some chopped tomatoes for garnish but you can also toss some into the eggs before they finish cooking.   That would be my spin and not my dad's so you can do whatever you like and make it your own.

Cross Border Food Tripping

It was my Birthday in May and my friend wanted to take me out for dinner in the city.  Days passed and no plans ended up happening.  Then he asked if I would want to go to Buffalo, NY for a couple of days to shop for clothes, which I have been in desperate need of and which I have been complaining about a lot.  Yes I have gained weight being at home and not having any stairs to climb like I used to when I lived in a house to offset some of the food.  In the past year I have not had to run for TTC to get to work and be limited in what and when I can eat and run up and down stairs in my house to do things like cook, laundry and whatever else needed to get done.  So I have gained weight over the past year,  well more like steadily over the past few years due to stress and other issues and now working on the food blog and experimenting with food more with both cooking and eating out isn't helping it.
 I always had enough clothes to wear because I could still find something to wear if I looked hard enough.  In my house I had a laundry room where I could hang my clothes so they lasted a lot longer.   Now my clothes are gradually shrinking to the point of not being wearable so I thought it might be a good idea to take a trip to Buffalo and see what they have there.  Remember the people in the U.S. are slightly larger than the rest of the people in the world.  Well maybe more than slightly, but anyway you would think that there would be a good selection of all kinds of sizes of clothes available for all of their residents to purchase.  Well maybe they fit on your body if you are lucky but you probably wouldn't want to be caught dead wearing them.

We started our day with a Big Breakfast at BOB EVANS,  I have never been there before, I used to go to Denny's when I went to Buffalo so this was a new place to me.

I ordered some kind of Biscuit breakfast with hashed potatoes.  With crumbled sausage and a white gravy and poached eggs.  The eggs were the only healthy thing on the plate but it was very tasty.

 Anyway, we went over to the Walden Galleria and the Outlet Mall and we stopped into the Boulevard Mall to say hi to my friends cousin so technically we didn't shop there.   We also hit some independent stores like TJ Maxx, SteinMart and Chico's.   After all of that I ended up getting 2 shirts, 2 pairs of shoes and my friend bought me some Hugo Boss sunglasses for my birthday.   This clothes shopping trip turned into more of a FOOD TRIPPING jaunt with us enjoying some really great food there.

First up was The Cheesecake Factory at the Walden Galleria where we had some excellent Steam Bun appetizers and a Tuna Tartare that we shared.  We then ordered this massive salad that we also shared and I can't imagine being able to finish that salad on my own.   Pretty healthy right?  Yeah and then we blew it by ordering 2 slices of cheesecake, it was the Cheesecake Factory after all so we had to try their namesake food.  We ordered Kahlua Mocha and a Key Lime Cheescake slices.   Oh so good and oh so bad for me at the same time.  It did fulfil my Gastropost mission of the week being Citrus.   The Key Lime was a bit soft and it kind of flopped over a bit but it still tasted good and there was a rainbow on it  just before we started eating it.  My friend asked them to put a candle in the Kahlua one for my birthday even though it was a couple of weeks before, we were finally getting around to having that birthday dinner.  I was stuffed.  We went to see "Now you see me" at the Mall afterward which was a good thing cause I was too tired to do anything else.  Yes we skipped the popcorn and junk food after that huge meal.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel, nothing special but it left us room to get some good food the rest of the day.

After trying to go to many different stores to find clothes and getting frustrated I was done with clothes shopping and it was on to food shopping instead.  My friend had a list of things he wanted to get at WEGMANS' supermarket.  That's all he shopped for except for the sunglasses for me.  I have never been to Wegman's so I was curious to see what they had there.  He said the one we were going to was better than the other ones.  WOW what a grocery store.  It was more like a Whole Foods.   It had a huge Organic section with even their own branded organic products like ketchup and mustard.  They also had a huge food bar with all kinds of food.  Italian, Chinese, salads, you name it.  Talk about a great buffet.

You could just go there if you have a bunch of people that can't decide what to eat.  They have a little eating area upstairs.  My friend was raving about the subs they have there so we split a small one and I got a container of Sushi just to have something small to fill us up a bit.   The sushi was so so but the sub was fantastic with a great Sesame bun.  It was an Italian sandwich and they added pickles to it for a nice tang.   Energy up and it was time to hit the aisles of the store.  They had so much great food that I couldn't buy because of border restrictions so I ended up just getting junk food and things like bread and some other things that I needed.   I spend about $50 and my friend spent about $200 on all kinds of things.  I can only imagine how much we could have spent if we could bring more things across the border.

A trunk full of Wegman's groceries

After shopping we were pooped and needed to get a good sit down meal before heading back home.  We went back to the Walden Galleria and headed to Gordon Biersch this time.  I never heard of this place before but it is kind of a Milestone's-ish type of place.   It was the afternoon on a monday so it was very empty in there.  I was still kind of full so I only ordered the Baja Tacos and my friend ordered a burger and garlic fries.   The fries were so good and garlicky that I ended up eating more of his fries than he did.  I am sure we both had lovely breath after that meal but it was totally worth it.

One last stop and then we headed to the border.  We had a 20 minute wait to cross the border so it was a good thing we weren't hungry.

So all in all my little shopping trip to Buffalo was more of a Food Tripping cross border food shopping trip, but it was great to try places we don't have here.   I just wish I could do more food tripping and check out more new places.

So if you decide to go do some cross border shopping don't forget to stop into The Cheesecake Factory or Gordon Biersch for a nice meal or stop into a Wegman's and go crazy.

Now I see why the people in the U.S. are larger.   Oh.. and by the way... if you hate Toronto's gridlock then go to Buffalo for sure... no clogged subways and hardly any road traffic and free parking.

No I am not getting paid by Buffalo Tourism but it's nice to see the differences in how cities are set up.

My junk food haul...but Organic ketchup, mustard and bbq sauce.. yeah I needed that part.   I also got Bread, Beets and Collard greens not seen in this pic.

Michael Pollan talks about all things "Cooked"

This week I went to see Author Michael Pollan speak about his new book "COOKED" at packed house at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto.  This was another presentation by the Cookbook Store.  He was interviewed by Matt Galloway from the CBC's Metro Morning.  Who knew that Matt was such a foodie and cookbook junkie. 




Michael is the author of 4 New York Times bestsellers:Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001).

I have the audio versions of "In Defense of Food" and "Cooked" but still need to work on getting through his other books.
Cooked is written in 4 parts like the elements.  FIRE, WATER, AIR, EARTH.
He writes about the importance of fermentation and how the way we eat food has changed over the years.  There is even a recipe for making starter bread in this book.

His chat in Toronto with Matt Galloway was funny, interesting and thought provoking.
He spoke about the changes in the division of labour and how it affects what people eat and how things are prepared in the home.  How things changed when manufacturers of food products started to market foods beginning in the 50's to how we have changed the way we eat now.

One thing that he also talked about was that if more people "COOKED" more they probably would be healthier because they probably wouldn't be eating things like French Fries everyday because it's too much of a pain to make it at home.  I never thought about it that way but it is true.  I might make french fries once a year if I have a craving for them but generally don't like to make deep fried things at home because of the mess, and the waste of the oil used.  Fast food chains like McDonald's who are probably the single highest user of russet potatoes in the world have made it easy for people to eat things like french fries everyday.  They deal with the mess of it and make it efficient and cheap for people to have them anytime they want.   If you made them at home I bet you wouldn't eat them everyday.

He also talked about a little family experiment that he did with his family where they all had microwave meals one night.  He said they spent more time waiting for their microwave meals to heat up separately instead of just making one meal and sitting down at the table together in less time than it took for them to constantly heat up each individual microwave meal.   A quote that got a good chuckle out of the audience was  "The microwave is the Ayn Rand of cooking.. everyone for themselves".

He said that all of the microwave meals all ended up tasting the same with the same bullion cube taste. I have to admit I always noticed that too and because they food never looks as appetizing and never leaves you satisfied and full after eating them they are never my first choice for dinner. The only thing I don't mind is the stouffer's Baja Chicken Flatbread. It doesn't fill me up but it is a tasty snack that almost tastes like something you would make fresh.

They also talked about getting children involved in the cooking process again. When I was a kid I always helped my mother cook at home everyday. What he said was that because of the pursuit of success, parents let their kids off the hook of doing chores at home so they will do their homework. But really what's more important when you finish you education... whether you know calculus or whether you can feed yourself? I couldn't tell you anything I learned about calculus but I remember and have used some of the things I learned in Home Ec.. which doesn't seem to exist anymore. If the parents don't have time or the skills to teach kids how to cook then I think that food education should be mandatory in schools for kids to learn how to feed themselves properly. If kids learn how to make things at home maybe that will reverse the current childhood obesity problem. Once again they won't be relying on burgers and fries and pizza on a daily basis. You can't make french fries at home in the 5 minutes it takes to order it at a fast food restaurant and you can't even make pizza dough as fast as it takes to heat up a slice at a pizza place. Maybe kids would choose to make salads or stir fry's or pasta at home instead.

The other thing that was really interesting was that he talked about a new shopping cart that sectioned off an area for produce that was larger and that people bought more produce when they used that cart. He suggested it to Walmart so will see what happens there. It usually all comes down to economics. What grocery stores make the most money on is what is usually pushed to the forefront in the best view of consumers so they will reach for that first. There is a whole psychology to grocery stores and how they place the foods but that is a whole other conversation that I will write about another time.

He said he was taught how to cook by a woman who said "The key to good cooking is patience, practice and presence"

It was a pleasure to meet Mr. Pollan after the show.

Enjoy the process of cooking and you will do it more often.