Angel Hair with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

Anyone else craving pasta lately? I have been craving it so bad so I found an amazing recipe online and tested it last night. Let’s just says its good! Really Good! Normally I just throw together recipes and post long descriptions about them but since I found this online I will stick to their formatting plus it’s probably easier to understand. I very loosely follow recipes as a rule so I definitely didn’t do everything here… but it still turned out good. Give it a go and let me know what you think!

Angel Hair with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

Ingredients

1 (10-ounce) jar sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, chopped (oil reserved)

1 small onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 cup tomato paste

2/3 cup dry white wine

8 ounces angel hair pasta

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 ounces soft fresh goat cheese, coarsely crumbled

2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

Directions

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the wine and sun-dried tomatoes and simmer until the liquid reduces by half, about 2 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of cooking liquid. Add the pasta to the tomato mixture and toss to coat, adding some reserved cooking liquid to moisten. Season the pasta, to taste, with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with the goat cheese and parsley and stir. Mound the pasta into bowls and serve.

Instant Pot Yogurt

I tried making yogurt in the ever versatile Instant Pot for the first time over the weekend and it was quite successful! I read many other blogs about how to best make it and avoid any mistakes they made, and with that research in hand, my batch turned out pretty well!

The first thing they recommends was to sterilize your stainless steel insert and the underside of the lid. I just poured boiling water over everything. They also recommended using a separate silicone seal exclusively for yogurt because if you use the one you use with savory food, the yogurt could end up tasting like that food. So I bought a new 2 pack of seals from Amazon and plan to use one just for yogurt and will save the other for when I feel like I need to replace my original used with savory foods.

Next you need a good probiotic capsule to empty into the mixture. I had some probiotics at home that I just used but you can easily find them in health food stores. I’m told it’s important to get the capsules and empty the capsule and discard the capsule itself. Probiotics that are in a pressed vitamin form won’t work for whatever reason I read on many blogs.

Also make sure you have a good thermometer as you will need to measure the milk temperate a couple times to make sure everything is on track.

Lastly, be patient while it does it thing! Here is a great resource I used for the recipe itself and some tips (I searched the internet far and wide and liked this resource the best!): https://amindfullmom.com/instant-pot-yogurt/

 

Newest Kitchen Gadget!

I love new tools for my kitchen to make cooking faster and more fun! I finally jumped on the Vitamix train after many, many years contemplating this investment and I’m over the moon about it!

I had a Kitchen Aid blender for years and while it did the trick, it didn’t have the speed or power to do much more than smoothies, and absolutely no frozen strawberries or ice or it sounded like it was going to blow up!

But with the Vitamix I can blend just about anything including sauces, soups, dressings, even my own peanut butter and nut milk! I will admit the blender is quite loud (now I understand why the juice shops have that plastic box that covers their Vitamix).

You will see the Vitamix for sale in many places these days, but I chose to buy mine from Costco since they have such an excellent return policy should anything go wrong. Vitamix also has a warranty but I appreciate the extra security I get from being a member at Costco. If the motor ever dies or I have any issue, I know I can return it and not be hassled. Plus Costco had a very good price on the model I purchased, so I’m very pleased to have saved some money.

One thing I’m considering it whether I would like to purchase an extra container to make my own flours out of rice, quinoa, oats, millet, etc. Making fours requires an entirely different blade so you have to invest in a second container that is pricey. But over the long term it would save me a lot of money from buying those specialty flours in the store. And you can use your own organic ingredients which is nice and another cost saving versus buying organic flours.

Overall, I would rate my Vitamix a 9/10. I love everything about it except the initial investment, but if I use it multiple times a week for many years, the investment will certainly pay off. I also wish extra containers and accessories weren’t so steeply priced.

Quick Spaghetti Squash in the Instant Pot

You might have read my recent post about my new favorite kitchen gadget, the Instant Pot. It’s a pressure cooker that plugs in rather than using the stove top and not to be dramatic, but I really do feel it’s changed my life in the kitchen. I’ve always loved cooking but there are some recipes that are so time intensive (like soups and stocks!) that having the ability to cook them much more quickly saves so much time. The Instant Pot also generates very little heat so I loved using it this summer when the weather was particularly warm and I didn’t feel like having my stove or oven adding to the temperature in my already balmy home.

One of my favorite foods to eat and make in the pot is spaghetti squash. Squash are coming into season now and I just adore how they taste. They do, however, take some time to roast in the oven, which is why I appreciated learning a faster and simpler method in my new pot.

To begin, cut your spaghetti squash in half width wise. Then scoop out and seeds and discard. Place the metal trivet in your instant pot liner and add one cup of water to the liner. Place your squash halves side by side on the trivet. Close the Instant Pot lid and set manual timer to 5 minutes for al dente spaghetti squash or 7 minutes for softer squash.

One the timer elapses, use the quick release method to release the steam. Open the lid and allow the squash to cool for 10 minutes before handling.

When slightly cool, scoop out the squash and serve alongside your favorite pasta sauce!

This really is a 10 minute recipe and I so appreciate not having to wait over an hour for my oven to heat up and cook my squash. I can only imagine how much electricity this method saves as well! If you love squash as much as I do, please give this a try!

Perfect Recipe for Yummy Vegetable Stock

I recently made some basic vegetable stock which is perfect for a rainy day when you want a warm, savoury drink. Not only that, but it is also a great addition to soups and sauces.

I’ve always thought that rainy days are a perfect time to make stock. The steamy, fragrant kitchen warms the soul, and the effort generally ends up giving you several days worth of stock which makes for easy meals throughout the week.

This recipe can be put together in a matter of minutes, and the soup that you make with the stock will have depth, body and character unmatched by water-based soups. Vegetable stock is more subtle in flavour than meat-based stock, so top-notch ingredients and attention to seasoning is essential!

Start by peeling in roughly chopping one yellow onion, two leeks, four carrots, and four celery sticks. Also separate one bulb of garlic and smash the cloves with the flat edge of your knife. In addition, take two apples and slice them into four pieces each.

Next, heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large pot, and add the onions, leeks, carrots, celery, salt and four bay leaves. Sauté the mixture for five minutes, stirring often.

Once five minutes has passed, it is time to add all of the remaining ingredients. Those remaining ingredients are as follows: 1 tablespoon of whole black peppercorns, 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds, 1 tablespoon of coarse salt, a few sprigs of fresh thyme, a few sprigs of fresh parsley, a few sprigs of fresh sage, and 20 cups of cold water. I prefer to use filtered water, but tap water should be fine, too assuming you trust your local water!

Once you’ve added in all of those ingredients, including the water, bring everything to a boil. Once you have done that, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 45 minutes. Strain and cool if you are not using the stock immediately. You can store the stock in the refrigerator for up to three days, or in the freezer for up to two months.

This excellent recipe will yield approximately 14 cups of stock. Here’s one final helpful hint: avoid adding to your vegetable stock any broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, beats, peppers or asparagus. Adding these will typically give the stock a very distinctive/strong taste, which probably is not going to be very enjoyable. Other than these vegetables pretty much everything else is fair game!

I hope you enjoy it!

Best All-Natural Healthy Ice-Cream Shop Ever!

I think I found my new favourite ice cream shop!

The place is called Kippys, and it’s located in Venice, California. What makes Kippys so amazing and unique is that they make and sell fresh ice cream that has five ingredients or less.

In particular, The ice cream is made of coconut cream, coconut water, fresh organic fruit, raw local honey, and/or dates. As a result, the ice cream is essentially a raw organic non-dairy coconut-based ice cream, sweetened with raw local honey. They advertise that their ice creams are made by hand in house daily.

This is super important to me because I have a variety of allergies to nuts and other foods. It is so huge for me to be able to enjoy ice cream with confidence that it is dairy free, soy free, nut free, gluten-free, and, as they advertise, guilt free!

I’ve been to Kippys two times already, and loved it on both occasions. I’m excited to keep going back and trying all of the different flavours and combinations. So far, I have absolutely enjoyed the matcha and the chocolate ice cream there. They were absolutely delicious! I’m looking forward to heading back again soon to try the other flavours.

All of this is got me thinking about trying to make my own healthy ice cream as well. Given how simple the ingredients are, I figure that it shouldn’t be too hard to put them together in an ice cream maker and produce something fairly respectable!

I found this really affordable ice cream maker online that looks like it would do the trick. It’s a bit of a hassle since I would need to crank it by hand, but I suppose that can be considered exercise which justifies the tasty treat which follows!

Anyway, I’ll give it a go and let you know how it works!

My New Pressure Cooker + Braised Beef Shank Recipe

Guess what? I am now the proud owner of my own pressure cooker! I’ve been seeing these everywhere and finally decided to give one of them a try. I have to say, it’s been revolutionary! My food cooks five times as fast, and the flavour is like never before; apparently using a pressure cooker helps lock in the flavor!

Last night I tried a really yummy recipe for braised beef shank that I made using my pressure cooker, so I thought I would share it. Here’s the recipe. I think you’ll love it! You can also cook it using a normal pot (i.e. not a pressure cooker) although I think it may take much longer!

This is an absolutely wonderful dish which is super popular throughout Asia, including many areas of China. This dish is a favourite in my family happens to cook up very well using a pressure cooker. In particular, this recipe uses an electric pressure cooker to efficiently and quickly cook the meat.

The preparation time for this recipe is about 15 minutes, the cooking time is about 35 minutes, and this recipe should serve about six people.

First, combine a beef shank and certain marinade ingredients into a zip lock bag or food container, seal it, shake well, and in place in the fridge for one day. The beef shank should be 1 kg. The marinade ingredients I use include: 2 teaspoons of pepper, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 3 tablespoons of soy sauce.

Once that process is complete, remove the beef shank from the zip lock bag or food container and put it in your pressure cooker along with all of the marinade ingredients.

Once that is done, we need to make a special sauce which we will add to the shank as it cooks in the pressure cooker. Here’s the recipe for the sauce: 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 cup of soy sauce, three clovers, two anises, 1.5 teaspoons of cumin, two bay leaves, 1 tablespoon of jasmine green tea, 2 teaspoons of sesame oil, 5 g of fresh shredded ginger, two chopped green onions, and 5 cups of water.

Once you have prepared the sauce, pour it over the beef shank in the pressure cooker. Close the lid and turn the pressure valve to the sealing position. Set it for 35 minutes of cooking time.

When the 25 minute period is up, wait another 10 minutes. Then, slowly release the pressure from your pressure cooker and then open the lid. Take out the cooked beef shank and place it into a clean container. Allow it to cool for four hours and then slice and serve.

I’ve been making this recipe for many years, and my family absolutely loves it. I think your’s will as well!

My Gorgeous Copper Pitcher With Ayurvedic Benefits!

I recently purchased this amazing copper pitcher and have been absolutely loving it! The best part of it is not how beautiful it looks (although it is a real stunner), but, rather, the fact that it has some amazing ayurvedic health benefits!

I recently learned that copper has some incredible healing properties that I had never heard about. In particular, copper has been known for thousands of years to be a powerful but natural anti-bacterial agent. In fact, apparently there are some recent studies which showed that bacteria-infected water put into a copper pitcher died off in a number of hours, leaving the water clean and bacteria-free!

Not only that, but copper is an essential mineral which our body needs. Drinking from a copper pitcher is also a great way to enjoy natural alkaline water, since the water becomes more alkaline when it comes into contact with a metal like copper.

There are way more health benefits, and most of them are canvassed on the website where I bought my copper pitcher – check out www.shantiva.com. Beyond the health benefits, the aesthetics of the copper pitcher are gorgeous. The copper is hammered by hand, which gives it an amazing luster. Apparently the hammered texture also helps from a health perspective since it increases the contact area of copper that touches the water.

Ayurvedic practitioners recommend drinking from a copper pitcher first thing in the morning. I will give it a try and let you know how I enjoy it!

Cooking Up Some Brown Basmati Rice

Do you know that, traditionally, Indians don’t eat much brown basmati rice? As it turns out, Indians have traditionally preferred the more neutral taste of white basmati rice. For thousands of years, in fact, Indians have been removing the outer brown husk and polishing brown basmati rice into white rice. As each layer is removed, so is most of the nutritional value and fiber, which is too bad – but, of course, the rice but comes light, flakier, and, to many people, much more delicious and easy to eat.

Some people say that they find brown rice hard to digest, but I eat it at least two or three times a week and don’t notice any digestion issues. In fact, I tend to enjoy the flavour more than white basmati rice; it feels a bit more natural and hearty to me.

For extra flavor, I often sauté onions and add them to the rice. On other occasions, especially when I’m not using onions, I will often add oil or butter to the rice to give it some more flavour.

One of the nice characteristics of brown basmati rice is that you can freeze it for up to a month and the rice will not lose its texture once you thaw and reheat it. All you need to do is add a bit of water to cover the bottom of the pot to essentially bring it back to life. This differs dramatically from white rice, which can typically not be frozen and then resurrected without losing the texture and flavour of the original rice.

Here’s my recipe for brown basmati rice that I have used for many years. I hope you will love it!

I like to start by placing rice in a medium bowl and washing it well under cold water, and then letting it drain. For this recipe, I suggest you use 2 cups of brown basmati rice. One rule I like to follow is to keep washing the rice until the water that drains out is completely clear, or at least very close to clear. You might be surprised to see that it takes quite some time before the rice is clean enough to achieve this!

Once I have completely washed the rice and drained it, I set it aside for a moment. Then, in a large pot, melt some butter on medium heat for approximately one minute. I would suggest using 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter. Alternatively, you could also some cooking oil in the same proportions.

Once the butter is melted, I add some cumin seeds and allow them to sizzle in the pot for approximately 15 seconds. I would suggest using about 1 1/2 teaspoons of cumin seeds. Once that is done, I add onion and sauté until the onion is browned. This usually takes about 10 minutes. I would suggest using one large onion, and chopping it finely.

The more finely the onion is chopped, the nicer it will brown and the better the flavour of your dish will be. Also, the less you sauté your onions, the sweeter they will taste. On the other hand, the more you sauté your onions, the more they will have a toasty, roasted flavor.

Once the onions have been sautéed, add water, or stock, and salt to your pot. I suggest that you use 4 cups of water or stock. The stocking can be meat stock or vegetable stock. I also suggest you use approximately 1 teaspoon of salt to enhance the flavor.

Once you have done that, add in the rice. Using your hands, scrape rice grains from the bowl into the pot – you will probably find that the little buggers like to stick to the wall of the bowl! Stir well, Increase the heat to high, and bring it to a boil. Once you achieve a boil, immediately reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

The cooking time for the rice will vary from stove the stove, so remove the lid and check for water. If there is no extra water in the pot, carefully taste the rice to see if it’s cooked through. If it’s not, put the lid back on, turn off the heat and allow the rice to cook for another 15 minutes.

If it happens to be that all of the water has been absorbed into the rice but it still is not soft enough for you, you can add half a cup more water and continue simmering for 10 minutes.

If there is still extra water in the pot after 45 minutes, cook the rice, covered, for another 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, keep the lid on the pot, and allow the rice to sit for five minutes before serving. If you like your rice warmer, serve it immediately once you have turned off the heat.

This recipe serves about 6 to 8 as a side dish. It is very versatile and can be served with practically any other dish you can conjure up!

I hope you enjoy it!