Happy New year everyone!

Well I didn’t make any resolutions on New Years eve, so I decided to make some goals this year instead.

I didn’t do too well with my personal goals for 2009. I made progress on all of them, but unfortunately didn’t complete any of them.

This year I am taking a totally new approach to my goals. Instead of making personal goals, I am making food goals.

Since it’s the year 2010, I thought I would revolve most of my goals around the number 10.  Here are my ambitions for this year in no particular order.

Make 10 varieties of breads, rolls, or buns from scratch (without a bread machine)

I have never made home made bread before (other then pizza crust). I use to make bread all the time years ago when we had a bread maker, but we don’t have one anymore, so I’m going to do it the old fashioned way.

Experiment with 10 new types of salad

Make 10 new varieties of soup

Make 10 new recipes with shrimp or prawns

Try 10 new muffin recipes

Bake 10 new varieties of cookies

2010 should be a yummy year. Wish me luck.

What are your goals for this year?

As mentioned in a previous post I recently discovered that there is a good possibility I have an allergy to soy and soy products. Since then I have been trying hard to avoid all products that contain soy. Since then I have found out that soy in some form is in almost everything!

This evening I wanted to have a warm drink after dinner so I decided to have some hot chocolate. I was going to have my Nestle Carnation hot chocolate but after reading the ingredients I was put off it. One of the 17 ingredients listed was hydrogenated vegetable oil (which may contain coconut, palm kernel, and or soybean oil). Why does a hot chocolate powder need to have oil in it?

I was pretty annoyed to learn  that my stand by hot chocolate even has soy products in it. I decided to check out the ingredients on my gourmet hot chocolate that was a Christmas gift from my boyfriend a year ago. I was very happy to learn that there are no soy products in my most treasured hot chocolate flakes. These chocolate flakes came from the Chocolate Trading Company over in the UK. There are only 4 ingredients in this hot chocolate! It contains: fine dark chocolate flakes 72% cocoa, cane sugar, cocoa butter, and bourbon vinilla pod. I made myself a mug of hot milk immediately and had a lovely cup of my favorite hot chocolate. In the past I often had the Nestle hot chocolate instead of my chocolate flakes because I only have a limited amount of my gourmet hot chocolate so I like to save it for special occasions.

Here is my gourmet hot chocolate from the Chocolate Trading Company

Each mug of hot chocolate requires 1-2 heaped dessert spoons of chocolate flakes. I find that this is the perfect amount of chocolate. I love this hot chocolate because it’s not too sweet, it’s a little taste of chocolate heaven. Best of all it doesn’t have any soy products in it!

I don’t have much left in my package of chocolate flakes, but I am pretty sure I’ll be buying some myself from the Chocolate Trading Company when they are all gone!

I decided to make a chocolate beet cake. I used my chocolate beet muffin recipe and made it into cake form. I picked this recipe since the forum has a dark red background I thought it would complement the cake well.

I iced the cake with a pre made cream cheese icing, by Duncan Hines. For decorations I used mini semi-sweet chocolate chips for the forums name, and one giant bittersweet chocolate chip for the dot in .com.

Here is my cake decorated. (My dad loves this cake and had a piece before it was decorated).

The cooking forums cake contest runs until December 10/09 so there is still time if your interested in participating.

While I was out east I had the opportunity to try lobster for the first time ever!! I was pretty nervous about trying it because I usually either LOVE seafood or HATE it. Thankfully I ended up loving it. My uncle who is a fabulous chef made a lobster dinner feast for the whole family (all 15 of us). It was fabulous.

I was totally unaware about how to go about cracking the lobster open but my relatives gave me a few instructions, and some special tools, so that made things a bit easier, however it was still a struggle to open up certain parts of the lobster.

My uncle serve the lobster with garlic butter, green salad and mashed potatoes. It was a marvelous dinner enjoyed by all.

Here are a couple photos from my first lobster eating experience.

I also had a second opportunity to try lobster while I was on Prince Edward Island at a nice restaurant. I ordered stuffed lobster in sherry sauce with PEI potatoes and baby carrots and asparagus. It was absolutely amazing, ever better then my first lobster dinner.

Here is a of my stuffed lobster dinner.

My mom and I shared a PEI potato margarita which was to die for.

Have you had lobster before? What do you think of it? Have you cooked lobster before?

]]> http://www.lisaopolis.com/my-first-time-eating-lobster/feed/ 3 http://www.lisaopolis.com/a-feast-for-mom/ http://www.lisaopolis.com/a-feast-for-mom/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 20:54:32 +0000 Lisa http://www.lisaopolis.com/?p=376 I hope all the mothers out there had a lovely Mother’s Day yesterday. I am not a mom, but I did do some things for my mom for Mother’s Day.

First I went out and bought some ingredients for a lovely lunch. I purchased some French bread (still warm), monetary jack cheese, onion sprouts, Tuscan ham and Cajun chicken (from the deli). I combined that with the mozzarella cheese, marble cheese, tomatoes and spinach and many other condiments already in the fridge and created a lovely feast for my mom’s lunch. She was delighted. My dad who ate lunch with her was equally pleased with the menu.

While my parents were having their lunch I whipped up a pear apple crisp. I used a recipe that I found at: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes for bourbon baked pear crisp. I altered the recipe as usual and made it my own. Here is my version.

Pear Crisp

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup ground almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp allspice
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp brandy extract
¼ cup olive oil margarine
3 pounds of pears, peeled, cored and sliced
½ pure (no sugar added) apple juice
½ tsp nutmeg
½ cup raisons

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl combine: flour, oats, brown sugar, ground almonds, baking soda, ½ tsp nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice. Mix well. Crumble in the margarine. Spread 1/3 of the mixture in a glass baking dish of your choice. (I used 9X11).
Save the rest for the topping. Combine the apple juice, pears, raisons, and ½ tsp nutmeg in a large bowl. Add the brandy extract and stir well. Spread the pear mixture over the crumb mixture in pan. Top with remaining crumb mixture. Bake for about 50 minutes or until the top is lightly brown.

This recipe was a big hit at our house. Everyone enjoyed it. I served it with vanilla frozen yogurt. The only thing I would do differently when I made it again would be to add some salt to the recipe. I think this would make the flavors more bold.

After lunch I helped my mom with the dishes and we discussed dinner. We ended up making pizza together. I would have made it myself but I had a very sore ankle and foot so we did it together and it turned out super yummy.

A few days ago I was shopping at Save-On-Foods and I spotted something that caught my eye in the vegetable section. It was the pomelos. I had never had a pomelo before so I decided to buy one. It seemed like an okay deal for an exotic fruit it came to $2.29.

This afternoon my mom and I shared the pomelo. At first I want to peal it, but after a few attempts with my peeler as well as a knife it became evident that pealing it was not going to happen (the peal was way to thick/hard). We then tried to get into it by cutting it down the middle. That was also quite difficult, but with enough effort we were able to get into it.

I tried to eat my half like a grapefruit but came to realize quickly that it was not the best way to eat it.

In the end I ended up eating it by making a slit to remove the peal and then cutting away at triangle shaped segments and eating those.

The pomelo had a lovely light citrus smell.

Taste wise my first impression was that is had a very mellow and light citrus flavor. The flavor does resemble a grapefruit but is more subtle.

I’m not sure I would buy another pomelo but it was an interesting taste experience.

Yesterday while I was at Fairway Market I checked out the many exotic fruits and vegetables they have. I found some passion fruit and decided I would give it a try. I had never had a passion fruit before this experience but I had had some passion fruit juice mixed with some other juices.

When I decided to sit down and eat my passion fruit, I first tried to just bite into it (like I would a plum). I stopped immediately when I discovered how hard and tough the outer layer is. I then googled “how to eat a passion fruit” and learned that the hard and tough outer is generally not eaten (it is also very bitter). I then proceed to scoop out the pulp and seeds and eat that. The taste was very pleasant and mildly sweet. The seeds were as expected crunchy but good. I’m not sure if those are usually eaten or not. Together and pulp and seeds amounted to only a few teaspoons of food.

Does anyone know of a way that the tough skin can be eaten? Perhaps baked in some kind of sweet/tart bread?

Thanks