Apple Pancakes

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When I was growing up in Poland, Apple Pancakes were one of my favourite childhood treats. Now when I'm looking for comfort food I will often make them.

Typically pancakes are made with white flour. Traditionally Polish pancakes are fried in butter or oil, by no means a healthy snack. I recently transformed my childhood treat to something that is equally delicious using whole wheat flour without all that added fat.

Typically I like serving them with a little bit of maple syrup or some powder sugar. These are so good, try them as an alternative to regular pancakes. Click here for the recipe and nutritional analysis.

Fortune Cookies

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I love "Fortune Cookies". Most of us are familiar with these delicious treasures as they are served at the end of most Chinese meals.

They are paper thin, crisp, light and a perfect accompaniment to a filling meal. Baked inside each cookie is a tiny piece of paper with a message; words of wisdom, prophecy or lucky numbers. I don't believe everything I read but I can't help to look forward to reading my fortune. Just now I opened a cookie and the note inside read, "The gift is not as precious as the thought." How true is that.

Contrary to popular belief, Chinese fortune cookies did not originate in China, in fact they were invented in California around 1909. As with any invention this one also had its controversy as there were 2 companies one from San Francisco and the other from Los Angeles claiming they invented the cookie. In 1983, the court ruled in San Francisco's favour.

I must admit I have never made fortune cookies from scratch. This is probably because I usually purchase a bag of cookies for a few dollars and I can't imagine doing a better job. However, I did find what looks like a delicious recipe from one of the chefs from FoodNetworkCanada. Click here to see it. One of these days I will make them from scratch, but for now I just enjoy snacking on them.

As far as cookies go, these are pretty good to snack on, one cookie has approximately 30 calories and 0 grams of fat. Most of the calories come from sugar but nevertheless its a good alternative to a chocolate chip cookie. For a detailed nutritional analysis click here.

Ethiopian Beef Stew

Recently I read a culinary blog about Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was very exciting to read about it as it is such a remote country historically plagued by droughts and war. I smiled while reading this expose, remembering my near death experience in Addis Ababa and oddly wishing I was there again.

On a trip to Tanzania, we had a flight stop over in Ethiopia. The plane started descending and while we were still flying through the clouds all of a sudden I (along with the pilot and other passengers) saw a farmer with a cow walking just below the belly of the plane. Wow! I'm not kidding. I could see the men's surprised face and his every wrinkle it seemed. Within a moment the plane started to pull up as if it was a fighter plane but much slower, like a donkey running in a horse race. As we ascended back through the low cloud ceiling I could see endless walls of mountains surrounding what was surely Addis Ababa beneath the clouds. The plane seemed to circle indecisively until the captain came on to make an announcement.

The captain explained that we were in unparalleled fog and that the airport was nestled high up in the mountains in a valley amongst peeks and the airport had no technical support to help the plane land. The captain missed the runway the first time and now he would attempt to land again. I was frightened to death, I could visualize all the bodies splattered on the mountain walls.... and here we are attempting another landing. This could not be safe. This attempt failed and the pilot made another announcement in Ethiopian apparently indicating he was not going to try that again. We survived and were re-routed to Djibouti, a military state next to Ethiopia across the straight from Yemen. We were told to stay in the plane, and with the big Apache helicopters parked next to us, we were happy to have survived and were praying no one was going to try walk off the plane because surely they would be shot dead.

After a few hours the fog lifted in Addis Ababa and we returned to it's airport, safe and sound. We only had a few hours at the airport. Nevertheless I remember Ethiopia very fondly, all the people were so kind, and I do hope to explore this country properly at a different time. This recipe is my tribute to my memories of Ethiopia. I love how foods can transport one in time and space to different places in the world.

Click here for my Ethiopian Beef Stew recipe and transform yourself to Africa... with a guaranteed smooth landing.

Easter Weekend: Traditional or Non-Traditional

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Typically I spend Easter with close family, as all other major holidays, however this year this was not possible. In actuality many of my friends stayed in London hence we decided to spend this holiday together. To ease the preparation for our host, and really make our event about celebrating new life and spring we decided to do a pot luck dinner.

Each couple brought a different dish; to start we enjoyed water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, rice crackers with my favorite Polish cream cheese, smoked salmon and port jelly, and for main course we delighted in Moroccan chicken, raisin couscous, and roasted vegetable. For dessert I brought a Lemon Gelato.

My Lemon Gelato was a huge success. It was light in flavour but very satisfying, a perfect end to a delicious dinner. Best of all with a few easy steps and less than 10 minutes, plus 30 minutes in the ice cream maker, (we can't speed that up) a delicious and celebratory dessert was born.

The dinner was a medley of flavours and we all enjoyed them and had a wonderful time. Traditional or not, that is the essence of spending holiday time.

Click here for my Lemon Gelato recipe.

Trip to Calgary

My friend Sarah and I share a deep love for all things cheese. This recipe is from the archive for a delicious Creamy & Cheesy cauliflower.

Its been a little while since my last post, and I apologize but this post has nothing to do with the upcoming Easter holiday, but that's because I just spent the last 5 days in Calgary, Alberta.

My husband and I, will be moving there in about 2 months for duration of 2 years and I had the pleasure of going out west to find accommodations, thank goodness for my friends Sarah and Mark. Wow!!! Not only were they perfect hosts, but they drove with me all over the city day after day looking for a place to live.

People in Calgary say its tough finding a place to live not just because it is very expensive (current price of a home, condo, or townhouse is over $460 000) but because the city is bursting at its seems and there is not a lot of vacancies to rent or real estate to buy. Growing up in Toronto I was optimistic that I have seen everything, the traffic, the insane real estate prices and the general mayhem of living in a large metropolitan. Nothing was further from the truth, Calgary stands on its own, with no comparison.

There are an endless number of people moving into the city everyday, there is no shortage of jobs. The city is constantly buying out homes to expand the city streets, construction doesn't stop... except when its too cold to work. People drive erratically, rushing due to the long commutes.... nevertheless this young city outpours with positive energy, and vigor for life. Most of the people in Calgary are not actually from this city but they don't want to live anywhere else. They love having the mountains a 45 minutes drive away, fabulous skiing in the winter, hiking, kayaking in the summer plus endless other sports are at everyone's fingertips, this a very active city. In addition Calgary is a multi-cultural center and over the last years it developed an amazing array of different restaurants everywhere, not just downtown. A truly great place to live.

Coming to Calgary I met a lot of wonderful people. The locals, as soon as they found out that I'm a food writer couldn't stop telling me about all the best places for grocery shopping, gourmet cheese shops, their favorite restaurants, family recipes for "Ginger Beef" (that's for another blog entry), the best pancake recipe and endless food related stories. I have the fondness memories from Calgary and can't wait to experience it all and write about it.

Between looking at homes I also had the pleasure to come along to a real cowboy bar (Ranchers) with live country music. Hanging out with a brigade firefighters and paramedics (my friends friends) I knew I was in safe hands. In addition to experiencing the cowboy night life, Kyle one of the firefighters, a champion two-stepper, taught me how to country dance. That was a lot of fun!! I am sure I will be doing some more two-stepping when I'm back in Alberta.

Who could say no to this sweet little face?

The day before my flight back I finally saw a few places that were nice, close enough to the hospital and not exuberantly out of our price range. Talk about moving fast, on the day of my flight we put an offer and when I landed I found out that it was accepted. Shopping for a home in 5 days, who said it couldn't be done!! :-) There is still one very important condition that has to be met, Madison our black lab needs to be approved by the condominium committee. Wish us luck!

Click here for my Creamy and Cheesy Cauliflower recipe.