Thai Quinoa Salad–tastes like sunshine.

Hey peeps! I hope you are all enjoying so sunny weather wherever you are. This is my favourite time of year, it’s warm but not humid and the trees and flowers are just gorgeous.

If you follow me on instagram you’ll notice my account has become naturgram because when I’m not at work or sleeping I’m outside and inevitably taking 20395843567029348 photos of some flowery sh*t which I post incessantly. Don’t worry, all my follower love it so hard.

Anyway, the real reason I’m posting (from a patio while I recharge my solar panels) is to share some noms. After all that’s why I have this blog that mentions nothing about food directly in the title, just in every post. Right, then.

As I mentioned, it’s warm and you (I ) don’t want to be slaving over a hot stove/oven all day and salads actually sound good because they taste like sunshine instead of mushy veggies trucked in from whoknowswhere. Fresh spring rolls have also been at the top of my recent noms list only, it’s weird, but they don’t seem to make themselves. So, instead of rolling out the rice paper I give you this Thai-inspired quinoa salad. And I can put Thai in the title because it uses Thai basil okay!

Thai Quinoa Salad

1/2 cup dry quinoa
1 cup water
1/2 – 1 cup carrots, chopped
1 cup cucumber, chopped
3 TBSP Soy Sauce (divided in half)
3 TBSP Mirin (divided in half)
3-4 TBSP chopped Thai basil (This is not your mama’s basil and we’re not making pasta sauce, try an asian supermarket – you won’t be sorry)
4 TBSP Hoisin Sauce
12 oz Shrimp

Marinate shrimp in 1.5 TBSP soy sauce and 1.5 TBSP mirin before sautéing, then set aside to cool.

Cook quinoa in 1 cup water, 1.5 TBSP soy sauce, 1.5 TBSP mirin and let cool.

Combine shrimp, quinoa, cucumber and carrots, Thai basil and hoisin sauce. If you’re not serving this immediately (it will keep in the fridge for a little while) then do not add the Thai basil and Hoisin sauce until just before serving.

Enjoy kiddos!

Quinoa Pudding Recipe

A couple of months ago I wondered if you could make pudding or dessert with quinoa. Yes, I wonder ridiculous things like this – solving the world’s problems one food idea at a time.

Anyway, in addition to cooking with quinoa I’ve enjoyed quinoa granola and hot breakfast cereals so dessert was the next natural step. Right? Duh!

I found some great inspiration recipes and wanted to share my current fave. It’s super simple and reminiscent of rice pudding.

Quinoa Pudding
1 Banana
1c Milk (I used almond)
1/3c Quinoa
2/3c Water
1TBSP Sugar
1tsp Earth Balance/Butter
Pinch of Salt
1TBSP vanilla (or to taste)
1-2TBSP Cinnamon (or to taste)

Rinse and drain quinoa then cook in water according to package.

Combine remaining ingredients (except butter) in a food processor or blender. Add to the cooked pot of quinoa and stir to combine over medium heat. Add butter and serve when smooth.

Makes 4 servings.

Keep leftovers in a tightly sealed container and warm in microwave for 30-60seconds before eating.

I’ve been loving this as dessert but it would also be a great breakfast, waaay better than oatmeal. Hope you enjoy!

Candy Cane Shortbread–A Christmas Staple

Christmas treats have always been tied to Christmas memories. From intricate Greek treats churned out by my mom and yiayia to experimenting with new recipes it’s just not Christmas without a baking day.

My typical MO is a batch of macarons, trying something new, and massive batches of old favourites. This year was way more low- key than normal but I couldn’t let the season pass without a few favourites.

And it just wouldn’t be Christmastime without Candy Cane Shortbread; the perfect combination of carbs+chocolate+pepperminty goodness.

Candy Cane Shortbread

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup  unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 large egg yolk
8 ounces chocolate (chocolate chips or your favourite bar chopped)
1 package Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line metal baking pan with parchment paper letting excess hang over sides of pan.

2. Whisk flour and salt together using an electic mixer until creamy. Beat in sugar slowly until mixture is just combined. Add in vanilla and then egg yolk. Gradually add in flour mixture until just blended.

3. With a tablespoon drop dough onto pan and use your fingers to flatten into an even layer. Use a fork to pierce dough all over.

4. Bake shortbread  until light golden brown, 28-30 minutes. Immediately sprinkle chocolate on top and let it soften before spreading into a thin layer. Pop pan back into warm oven if needed. Sprinkle chopped candy cane kisses on top and let cool.

5. Using the parchment paper overhang lift shortbread from pan and cut into pieces using a large knife.

Enjoy!

CHOlicious Taco Dip #justaddgood

Earlier this week I got an early Christmas present from my friends at Chobani so I could ‘just add good’ to my recipes. They were just in time to help me bring something delicious to one of my Christmas parties. I came up with this CHOlicious dip that went FAST!

CHOlicious Taco Dip

1 cup plain Chobani
1/2 package of taco seasoning
1 tsp hot sauce (optional)
1 cup salsa
2 green onions, sliced
Sprinkle of grated cheese

1. Combine Chobani and taco seasoning then spread on bottom of serving bowl
2. Top with salsa and hot sauce
3. Sprinkle with green onions and cheese
4. Serve with veggies, pita/tortilla chips

Adding Chobani was a great way to lighten up a staple party dip! YUMM!

However you’re celebrating the holidays I hope it’s delicious and festive.

xo
C

Favourite Things…

Ho ho ho Happy-almost-Christmas! In the spirit of the season I wanted to share a few of the things I’ve been loving lately. I’m not Oprah but these are some of my favourite things.

Angie’s Holidrizzle Popcorn – I can’t decide if I love the Dark Chocolate Sea Salt or White Chocolate Peppermint better. I’ll keep sampling until I reach a decision and get back to you.

 Dear Sugar – Tiny beautiful things. Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar. This book changed me. It changed how and what I wrote about this summer. It made me laugh, it made me sob and it made me grateful.

If ever there was a book that could use words on a page to have an intimate conversation; to validate, to comfort, to make you think and to simultaneously push, nudge, shove and inspire the reader, this is the one.

As the side of the cover image above says “Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.” It fell into my hands when I didn’t know a life raft of text existed or that I even needed one. If you’re open to it, you’ll discover a lot about yourself within these pages.

Full Moon Rising – Neil Halstead. This song is such a beauty it makes me wish I still skated.

A Very She & Him Christmas – one of the new additions to this year’s Christmas playlist, it’s so much fun!

For Lovers Only – a beautiful, heart wrenching, wonderous love story. Simply stunning.

Wishing you love and light for the Holidays. If you have any faves you’d like to share drop me a comment or tweet, I’d love to discover more things to obsess about!!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday yiayia!

We’ll be having some of our fave Greek dessert for you today. One part sweet memories, one part totally bittersweet. Wish you were here. Love and miss you so much.

xo
Christinaki

Once there was spring, now only autumn winds

Hey there!

So. It’s been quite a while since my last post. The blogging break wasn’t intentional but a lot has been going on on this side of the screen and posting either wasn’t appropriate or just not feasible.

To be honest the last 4 months have been completely awful, full stop.  And, for once, I don’t mean that in my usual sarcastic “teehee, first world problems” way, it’s just the truth.

I have been writing a lot and hope I can get back to light and fun foodie ramblings soon. Heaven knows I need light and fun in my life right now.

One of the most devastating things was losing my yiayia (grandma) last month. She is the most special and wondrous lady and there are no words to express what this loss means to me. Losing her was like losing a 2^nd mum, home, and the little bits of childhood we carry with us as adults all at once.

Life will go on but I don’t need time to understand that it has fundamentally changed and this is a loss I’ll always feel.

Last but not least, to those of you in my real life who have been there; thank you.

The company, support, emails, funny texts, trips and visits are a reprieve from the heavy load and have been lifesavers. Thank you.

xo
C

A Summer Public Service Announcement

Just a couple of weeks ago I was heralding the start of summer with the first watermelon of the season and a trip to the beach.

Note, by beach I’m referring to what that part of Toronto that has dusty “sand” and rocks beside a body of water. Good enough.

*Disclaimer: Kew beach may not be as gorgeous as pictures in real life.

 

Today I’d like to make a summer PSA and implore you to watch out for a secret summer-killer. The watermelon.

First is lures you in with it’s pretty green colour. Then you find yourself further enamored with the shocking pink inside.

BUT beware!

Don’t get too caught up in your cold refreshing watermelon dreams and watch out for the latest epidemic, watermelon bite!

What Is It? That moment when you’re cutting watermelon and cut yourself instead.

Treatment? Do not go to the beach, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 – go straight to jail the ER and get stitched back together again.

How you’ll feel? Completely ridiculous. Oh, it’s painful too, just make sure to stop when you hit bone.

The watermelon bite keeps on giving when the too tight stitches take 35 minutes to be removed and leave you with a Frankenstein finger. ;)

Be careful, it’s a fruity jungle out there!

ETA: I’m obviously completely fine, still wearing paper stitches and still annoyed at myself.

Getting Dippy With It – Cho yo fruit dip

Happy Friday! I haven’t done a “Fat Friday” post in a while so lets get back to it, this weeks theme was fruit.

Since we started themed Fridays (aka Fat Fridays) over a year ago we’ve done fruit a couple of times. The first time focused on more exotic fruit like starfruit and dragon fruit and the next time was fruity baked goods.

This time, with so much delicious fruit in season, we went with more traditional fare – lots of strawbs, blubes, all kinds of melons and strawberry shortcake.

I wanted to bring in something a little different than plain fruit without being junk food. Enter strawb fruit dip, which is too easy to call a recipe so lets call it a how-to on stirring things together ;)

Strawberry Fruit Dip

1 cup Chobani Greek yogurt
3 TBSP brown sugar
2 TBSP Vanilla
3/4 cup diced strawberries

Stir together and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving with fruit or nilla wafers.

And that’s how fruit day turned into parfait day (on plates). Om nom nom nom nom

If you want to be rockstar, be like my coordinator, and top your parfait with a timbit!

Physio Phun

Yesterday, as my physio therapist spent 5 minutes pushing my knee cap into place, he mentioned he had a surprise for me. Huh, I thought, is there really something better than pushing my bones around?

It was tape time!

This would have been a better surprise if the tape was a fun colour, like some crazy neon. Sadly the best my therapist could offer was to break out the sharpies. Not quite what I was imagining and my knee is demonstrating its displeasure with hundreds of little spasms. Wheee!

Don’t worry, I’m shutting down the complaints by icing my knee eating freezies – this counts as icing my knee right?!

Anyway, thankfully the appointment was silly enough to pass quickly. There’s no straight faces when the conversation includes gems like “Do you feel it in your butt?”. Keep your thoughts PG people, this was said while trying to stop me from using my hip flexor during a strengthening exercise – still funny though.

The real joke was on me though, with the fresh tape preventing me from bending my knee I looked seriously ridiculous trying to get into the car. Which reminded me of when I had knee surgery and they sent me home in a brace from hip to ankle. Not only was getting in the car a problem but the tub in my bathroom was just a couple feet in front of the toilet. That was an interesting problem to deal with.