Homemade Salads

Fun, easy, quick and yummy! I love making salads at home. This is one of my favorites: mixed greens and baby spinach, procuitto, grape tomatoes, goat cheese, bell peppers.

For my dressing: balsamic reduction, lobster oil, salt.

Healthy Habits: Do YOU Juice?

Juicing has gotten very trendy and well known within the last year. And there is a reason: its freaking awesomely heathy for you and pleases your tastes buds at the same time!

My favourite things to juice: apples, oranges, pears, beets, carrots, spinach, lime, celery, cucumber, bell peppers. I find that just juicing the sweet fruits make the juice turn out very tangy and too sweet. Thats why I like to calm it down with something sour or bland like limes or vegetables!

A good tip is to refrigerate all your fruits and veggies so your juice comes out cold and there is no need for ice which dilutes your drink! Also, when cutting your fruits, cut and peel large amounts at a time and just leave them in the fridge. This will motivate you to juice more since everything is all ready and waiting for you in the fridge, yenno for those lazy days.

This is the juicer I use. I purchased this at Wal-mart for $98 on sale. The only complaint I have about it is that it doesn't come with a pitcher attached to the spout so you can only juice a glass at a time. Also, you can only use short glasses. If you want a whole pitcher of juice, you would need to juice multiple short glasses and pour them into your larger pitcher, one at a time. I don't really mind though.. Other than that, I do not have any problems with this and would definitely recommend this product.

This is what I made that night. The short one, which is mine contains one beet, one orange, half a pear and one apple. The taller one is 2 carrots, half an apple, half an orange and half a pear. Beets is my favourite thing to juice because it adds such a nice colour. If you're juice turns out brown, which is when you mix fruits and veggies, just add a beet to turn it into a beautiful red colour! You don't need much and we all know how good they are for you! Plus, how often do we really eat beets in our daily meals?

Homemade Spinach Dip

So the secret to homemade spinach dip is powdered vegetable soup! I use the Knorr brand. Just mix together sour cream, mayonnaise frozen chopped spinach (thawed, with water drained) and the powder! Red bell peppers and cream cheese are an option if you want more flavour. I usually add cream cheese if I'm going to serve the dip warm.

I always buy this bread from Wal-mart Supercenter. It's labeled "Crusty Bread" and is perfect for dipping! The outside is crisp and the inside is nice and soft. I like to lightly toast this before serving.

Homemade Macaroni

I LOVE cooking pasta. Its the easiest thing to make and conveniently, in Canada, almost everything is pre packaged, ready to make. I try to make things as close to "from scratch" as I can. This is one of my favourites. Bacon, mushroom, and chicken macaroni in mushroom-garlic alfredo sauce! Yes I am aware this needs a better name.

Fry up LOTS of bacon. I pre-cut them in small pieces before throwing them in the pan. Mind you, the bacon does shrink lots after its cooked and crispy so don't make em too small. I just used my scissors.. no need for exactly equal shapes.
After the bacon is cooked to my liking, I would add the chicken and mushrooms. The bacon fat sort of deep frys the chicken and adds saltiness so not need for extra seasoning!

After everything is cooked, strain all that extra bacon fat out. Then, I add some powdered garlic alfredo pasta sauce (about 1/4 package), canned cream of mushroom (also 1/4 can) and a couple splashes of milk. You'll get the hang of it once you start cooking this more often. If it's too thick, add more milk. Too thin, add more powder or soup. My trick to adding texture and last minute thickness is to add parmesan cheese. This evens everything out and gives the dish some cheesiness! Don't forget to mix the pasta in well. You want the sauce to be inside the macaroni, not just around it.

AAND viola! I like to add lots of dry parsley.. or fresh if you have it!

I used the same technique for this one using ground pork and lots of mushrooms.

MMM.. HOTPOT!

This is the easiest thing to make and it only takes about an hour since everything is basically pre-made! Everything was purchased at T&T and only costed 100 for enough food for 7-8 people! They have the best hotpot stuff.

The Soup: Chicken broth, Tom Yum paste, Tamarind Soup base, salt and pepper. So easy!

Mr Crab was still very alive in our sink.

This plate alone costed us $40, and they were frozen! Nonetheless, so worth it. 

Carrot muffins: family's new favorite

This makes 6 delicious muffins (: I've made them 3 times and they always turn out really good and moist! You can leave them out on the counter for 2 days and they'll taste the same! I got this recipe from allrecipes.com but changed it up a bit to taste since it was a cake recipe. Instead of the grated carrots, I used leftover carrot pulp from the juicer after juicing 1 full sized carrot. This will make the carrot less noticeable in your muffins. You can leave the pecans out if you like too. I tried putting in some sliced almonds I had laying around and it worked out nicely too!

• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sifted all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup grated carrots
• 1/4 cup and 1 teaspoon chopped pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans.

I used an electric beater but a hand beater should be fine. Make sure all the dry ingredients are all mixed before you mix it in the wet ingredients.

3. Scoop mixture into cupcake pan and make sure its even or they wont all be done at the same time! I like to sprinkle a layer of brown sugar on the top for garnishing and it tastes really good when it melts in the oven!

4. Bake for 18-20 mins. Let cool before stuffing these in your faces!