Vegetarian Lettuce Wraps at Ohana's Restaurant in Disney's Polynesian Resort

Ohana's restaurant in Disney's Polynesian Resort quickly became one of our favourite eateries when at our vacation home.  This restaurant is famous for it's grilled meats prepared over an oak fire served from long skewers, churrascaria style as well as their delicious Ohana Bread Pudding à la mode with Bananas-Caramel Sauce!  The atmosphere is simply delightful.  Reservations are a must and are six months out so we have already booked for our fall visit!
  

Ohana's has changed their menu slightly.  Grilled chicken skews are no longer available, the salad dressing has been changed from honey lime to passion fruit vinaigrette, and the stir fried vegetables have been updated to include more vegetables, less broccoli and no garlic sauce.  The atmosphere and quality of food remains above average.

The dinner began with Ohana Pineapple-Coconut Bread Mixed Greens Salad with Lilikoi Dressing (passion fruit vinaigrette with chunks of passion fruit and mandarin oranges).  Pork Dumplings tossed in Garlic-Ginger Sauce Honey and Coriander Chicken Wings appetizers are followed by skewers of Sweet-n-Sour Pork Loin served with Peanut and Sweet-n-Sour Sauces,  Szechuan Sirloin Steak served with Peanut and Sweet-n-Sour Sauces , and Spicy Grilled Peel-n-Eat Shrimp accompanied with noodles, tossed in a Teriyaki Sauce with Fresh Vegetables and Stir-fried Vegetables.   Ohana Bread Pudding à la mode with Bananas-Caramel Sauce finishes off the delicious meal.

I was intrigued with the vegetarian lettuce wraps.  This low calorie dish is a must make at home.  The spicy  filling consisted of edamame, bean sprouts, mushrooms, shredded carrot and sauce.  Unfortunately there is no mention of the wraps on the website for Ohana's dinner menu.  They may be a new menu offering in the testing stage.  According to reviews, the wraps replace the grilled chicken which may or may not be the case.  At any rate, I am going to experiment to create a similar filling for lettuce wraps.  These will be a nice change from salad!

If you go to Ohana's the Ohana Bread Pudding à la mode with Bananas-Caramel Sauce is a must!  Even if you are counting calories, factor in enough wiggle room to enjoy a bit of this absolutely heavenly dessert.  The ice cream has flecks of vanilla bean giving a decadent flavour that pairs nicely with the bread pudding.  The warm banana-caramel sauce tops this dessert nicely.  Delicious! 

Spaghetti with Broccoli-Garlic Sauce

I have been looking for heart healthy, lower cholesterol meals so was quite pleased to find a copy of Weight Watcher's Smart Choices Recipe Collection( 1992) at the local thrift store for 25¢.  This binder style cookbook is chock full of delicious recipes all meeting the Weight Watcher's guidelines for losing weight.  Each recipe has a beautiful colour photograph along with the nutritional information per serving.  At the back of the binder, the previous owner added in several pages from McCall's Cooking School which is a nice bonus!

Neither of us are watching our weight or on any type of diet restriction but we do try to eat mainly healthy, home cooked meals.  There is room to improve our diets though.  Our biggest culinary vices are larger portions of red meat, cheese and butter.  We have been reducing the portion size of red meat as well as having a meatless dinner once a week and fish at least once a week.  Butter adds a lot of flavour and it is only used in cooking for that purpose.  We very, very seldom use butter as a spread.   The cheeses remain a vice but we are cutting back on them as well.   Offsetting our vices is our tendency to eat a lot of vegetables including some type of salad with dinner and often just a salad for lunch.  We very seldom indulge in desserts and for the most part our snacks tend to be healthy (eg. popcorn, nuts, fruits).  That being said, a recipe book full of delicious, healthy and low cholesterol recipes is certainly a welcomed addition to my recipe book collection.

One of the first things I do with any new or new to me cookbook is browse through it from cover to cover tagging recipes I want to try with post-it-note.  I doubt I have a recipe book without tags!  I was always very particular about never writing or highlighting in my post-secondary textbooks most of which I still have but take the opposite approach with my cookbooks.  I do record any changes I made, whether we liked the recipe and anything thing I would do different the next time.  Browsing through the Smart Choices Recipe Collection I came across a recipe called linguine with broccoli-garlic sauce (Pp. 28) that had wonderful eye appeal.  I took that healthy meal idea then personalized it into a very tasty, easy to prepare spaghetti with broccoli-garlic sauce.  My version uses butter for the added flavour but I reduced the amount of Parmesan cheese and used home canned defatted turkey stock so the total dietary cholesterol in my version was just slightly lower than the 32 mg even though I used a little butter.

Spaghetti with Broccoli-Garlic Sauce
recipe by:  Garden Gnome

2 c chopped broccoli florets
½ small red onion
¼ small red bell pepper
3 cloves garlic
½ c defatted turkey stock
1tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
pinch fresh ground pepper
2 tbsp fresh ground Parmesan cheese
½ tsp dried parsley flakes
6 oz dry spaghetti (about 1/3 of a 450 g package)*

Bring a large saucepan with salted water to a boil.  Add pasta and cook until al dente.   While the pasta is cooking, mince garlic cloves and chop vegetables.  Heat oil and butter in non-stick, ceramic coated fry pan.  Add garlic and heat through.  Stir in vegetables, cooking until the broccoli is a bright green.  Stir in the turkey stock.  Make a slurry with water or stock and the cornstarch.  Stir the slurry into the vegetable mixture cooking just to thicken.  Remove from heat.  Drain the spaghetti.  Place the spaghetti on plates for serving.  Top with the broccoli-garlic sauce.  Sprinkle pepper and parsley flakes on top of the sauce.  Garnish with the Parmesan cheese.

*Note:  I used about half of a 450 g (about 16 oz) package and cooked extra specifically for planned pasta leftovers.

Spinach Wraps

If you recall a recent Frugal Kitchens 101 topic was Think Vegetarian.  The reason being anytime you eliminate meat from a dish you more than likely are going to be saving money.  Meat tends to be the most expensive ingredient in any dish.  While soups, stews, and casseroles stretch the amount of meat needed for a meal, eliminating meat occasionally simply saves on the cost of the meat.  Vegetarian dishes do not have to be expensive or complicated either,

Just look at these gorgeous, mouthwatering spinach wraps I made.  I cannot take full credit for these as I got the idea from one of our kids who made a variety of sandwiches for their little one's birthday party that included several adults.  It is always important at these types of events to not only offer a nice variety of crudites but also meatless dishes.  Some are not eating meat for whatever reason (eg. health, personal conviction) so including meatless choices in the party menu is a good idea.

Spinach wraps are extremely easy to make.  They are quite delightful with a refreshing flavour.  You can serve then cut in half as pictured or cut into quarters for smaller appetizers.  I added the alfalfa sprouts just for that extra punch of flavour. 

Spinach Wraps

whole wheat tortillas
sliced mushrooms
baby spinach
alfalfa sprouts
hummus

There are no measurements for these wraps.  Make up as many as you want.  Spread a tortilla with hummus.  Add a single layer of baby spinach on top, followed by mushrooms and alfalfa sprouts.  Roll the wraps, pressing slightly to hold the wrap together.  Cut as desired.  Secure with a toothpick for serving.

Frugal Kitchens 101 - Think Vegetarian

When it comes to finding those great vegetable sides it really pays to think vegetarian.  The reason being is vegetarian dishes add creative touches a bit outside of the norm because they are not relying on meat to make the dish.  For that reason, it is possible to find a wide variety of dishes that are strictly vegetable, grain, lentil and legume based.  There are different classifications of vegetarism with the strictest being vegan where no animal or animal product is used in cooking including honey.  Meat is generally the most expensive component of any meal.  By thinking vegetarian it is possible to liven up your meals and discover new ways to use ingredients while saving on your food dollars.  This week's Frugal Kitchens 101 focuses on thinking vegetarian.

There is the misconception that vegetarian dishes are boring simply because they don't include meat but that is furthest from the truth.  While vegetarian dishes avoid the use of meat, some use dairy (eg. eggs, milk, yogurt, cheese), fish or seafood depending on the degree of vegetarism.  Many of the ingredients bought in bulk are less expensive than bought in the grocery stores but this is one area where you do need to know prices as some items like rices and beans may be less expensive in the grocery store.  Here's a few tips for incorporating vegetarian dishes into your meals.

• herbs/seasonings - Just as in meat based cooking, vegetarian cooking relies on the creative use of seasonings and herbs.  Grow fresh herbs on your windowsills and buy in dried herbs in bulk in the quanties you need.
• think raw - Many fruits and vegetables can be enjoyed raw so take advantage of those dishes like salads and sandwiches on hot summer days.
• beans - Dried beans come in so many varieties that it is hard to get bored with them.  Traditionally they are the ultimate frugal food but they also play a large role in vegetarian cooking.  Black beans in particular form the basis of vegetarian burgers, spreads and dips.  Dried beans cost about 90¢ per pound with one pound yielding 4 to 5 cups cooked beans making them a true budget stretching food.  Keep mung beans on hand for sprouting to be used in salads, stir fry and breads.
• legumes - Legumes are a popular soup ingredient but can also be cooked then added to other ingredients like beans to make vegetarian burgers.
• nuts and seeds -  Nuts are often used as a source of protein in vegetarian dishes as well as providing texture, flavour and visual appeal.  Be warned that some nuts can be quite expensive with pine nuts being quite expensive.  I paid a little over $15 for about 1 c of pine nuts!  Other nuts (eg. walnuts, pecans, almonds and peanuts) are usually quite reasonably priced. Sesame and sunflower seeds are quite inexpensive.  Some seeds (eg. alfalfa, mustard) are quite delicious when sprouted for a rich source of Vitamin C that adds both colour and texture to salads, sandwiches and breads.
• stocks - Vegetable based soups and stews are delightful.  The stock can be vegetable (eg. made using a mixture of vegetables), tomato, or mushroom.  Flavours are built from there adding rice, legumes, beans or pasta along with chunks of vegetables if desired.  
• soy - There are three main soy products used in vegetarian cooking.  Tofu has a soft cheese consistency and surprisingly little flavour.  It is often added to stir fry, soups or stews where it picks up the flavour of the other ingredients.  TVP (textured vegetable protein) comes in pellet form with a cooked texture similar to ground beef.  It is used mainly as a meat substitute for soups, chilis, meatloaf and burger.  Soybeans are roasted to be used as a snack. 
• grains - Whole grains and various ground grains should be kept on hand for baking and cooking needs.  In general, all grains tend to be rather inexpensive.  By far the largest demand for grains in cooking is baking and that holds true to vegetarian cooking, with wheat being the most commonly used grain.  Bulgar, is a thick cut of wheat that is excellent for salads (eg. tabouli) or adding texture to vegetable burgers and vegetable meatloaf.  Rolled oats can be used as a cereal, for a wide variety of baked goods or to add texture to vegetable burgers.  Flax is a wonderful grain that can be used as part of a hot cereal or added to other dishes.  Of the grains, bleached white flour is the poorest nutritional value for your food dollar.  Rices are a grain as well.  Many think of vegetarian dishes using wild rice which really is not a true rice.  All rices though can be used in vegetarian cooking.  Rice is also a traditional frugal food.  It is inexpensive with white rice being the poorest value nutritionally.
• produce - The key ingredient in many vegetarian dishes is vegetables although not always so.  Keep the costs down on produce by growing whatever you can organically.  When choosing fruits and vegetables, buy local produce when it is in season.  Shop farm stands and farmers' markets for lower priced produce.  Join a produce co-op if there is one in your area to help stretch you produce budget.

Faux Spaghetti

Fruits and vegetables provide such vibrant colours in meals that it is really is quite easy to eat a rainbow.  Who can resist the tantalize yellow of fresh sweet corn with a bit of creamy yellow butter or the beautiful ruby red of fresh strawberries?  Even the plain old potato is not so plain when it comes to colour with the crispy golden brown skin of an oven baked potato playing against the creamy white flesh.  Squashes range in colour from creamy white with a deep green or yellow skin left on for cooking (eg. summer squash) to a deep, rusty orange with other shades of yellow and orange in between.  The darker orange the colour is, the more beta carotene the squash contains.

I love playing with the colours of fruits and vegetables, bringing life and vibrance to the plate.  Squash is the ideal way to add those splashes of orange.  Spaghetti squash has a wonderful medium toned yellowish orange colour.  It can be served much the same way regular spaghetti is served.  I baked the squash then plated the strands topping them with steamed baby spinach and homemade roasted Italian sauce with mushrooms.  I garnished with chopped red onion and fresh grated Parmesan cheese.  I found the spaghetti squash wept a bit more than I would have liked but some of the excess liquid could have been from the steamed spinach as well.  This excess liquid affected the appearance only and I'm sure it is something easily remedied.  It was a cheery, tasty and delicious low calorie meal.  Not only is this meal low calorie it also comes under the category of vegetarian.

Hummus

One thing I've learned over the decades of entertaining is to listen to our guests especially the little chit chat that goes on during entertaining.  A few years ago I started hearing little tid bits about vegetarian dishes.  At one time I think all of our guests were omnivores but over time some have for whatever reason given up meat entirely or stopped eating one type of meat.  Others have developed a food insensitivity.  As an hostess in tuned to the needs of her guests I try to offer a variety of dishes that all can enjoy.

Most of my dip recipes are mayonnaise and sour cream or yogurt based.  I wanted a vegetarian dip to add to my offerings for those who want a dip other than dairy based.  Hummus is a vegetarian type dip made from chickpeas that satisfies what I was looking for.  It is a versatile dip that can be used with breads, crackers and raw vegetables as well as a spread on sandwiches. 

I served the hummus with whole wheat sandwich thins that had been cut into 1 - inch wide strips.  This is a new style of sandwich bread that is quite similar to Greek style pita bread only oblong in shape.  The hummus went over well.  Even the grandkids were eating it!

Hummus
By Garden Gnome

2 garlic cloves, minced and then mashed
16 oz cooked chickpeas
⅓ c tahini
1 tbsp  freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ c water
1/8 c olive oil
pinch of sea salt
toasted pine nuts and parsley (optional for garnish)


Combine all ingredients in food processor.  Process until smooth   Smooth into dipping bowl.  Garnish if desired. Serve with pita bread or raw vegetables.

Great Depression Cooking - Eggplant Parmesan

It has been awhile since I've done one of these types of posts. Depression era style cooking is coming very much into vogue because this style of cooking uses simple ingredients cooked simply. Depression cooking was built on need not trends or convenience foods. Issues like brand names are out the window. If you watch the video preceding this one, the dandelion salad is from dandelion harvested in Clara's backyard. Put in perspective she is eating something for free that many health conscious people pay for in the grocery stores as part of the gourmet spring salad mixes and others pay even more to rid their yards of creating health problems due to herbicide residues. Home gardeners know that eggplant is one of the frugal plants in their garden. Take a look at this easy eggplant parmesan meal done depression style.

Butternut Squash Soup

Autumn is the perfect time for homemade soups. The weather is cooling and life tends to get a bit busier with kids back to school and preparing for the holiday season to come. One of my favourite homemade soups is tomato soup because it reminds me of my childhood. This is the time of year instead of greeting the day with coffee, cappuccino or espresso I love a large mug of tomato soup. I did a bit of flicking through the weekly flyers to see what was on sale to do a bit of cherry picking the sales. On the back of one of the flyers there was a recipe for Butternut Squash Soup. I just had to try the recipe!

Stick Blending

The recipe started off simple enough involving only a few ingredients. I decided to do a bit of substituting when I opened the evaporated milk and decided that was not something that was going into what was shaping up to be a lovely Autumn soup. After a couple more substitutions I decided to just wing it then change the method and well the rest is history.

Pictured is my funky stick blender that doesn't see a lot of use outside of making sauces and smooth soups. Despite the colours it does a nice job. It really needs to get out a bit more! Here's the recipe I came up with.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 medium butternut squash
1½ c half & half
1 onion, chopped
1 large potato
3 tbsp butter
4 c homemade turkey stock
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp brown sugar
salt & pepper to taste

Peel, de-seed and chop the squash. Peel and chop the potato and onion. Put the butter in a large saucepan and melt on medium high heat. Add the squash, onions and potatoes. Cook while stirring often to prevent sticking until vegetables begin caramelizing (turns golden brown). Add sliced garlic and continue cooking 1 minute. Stir in broth and cook until squash is fork tender. Stir in milk, sugar, salt and pepper cooking for an additional 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Use a stick blender to purée until smooth. Garnish with a dab of sour cream and parsley flakes.

Note: If you want a slightly thicker soup stir in a tbsp of powdered instant potatoes.


Butternut Squash Soup

The soup had a deep, rich, beautiful colour reflective of autumn and wonderful, cosy aroma, a true comfort food. As soon as I tasted this soup I was quite pleased. I have to tell you the rich creaminess combined with wonderful butternut squash flavour was amazing. The soup had a lovely texture, just right, not to thick and not too thin. The two changes in addition to those already made would be adding a bit of garlic powder and a bit less sugar. Fresh ground pepper worked well in this recipe but it does need to be set to a fine grind or substitute a bit of ground white pepper for the flavour without seeing it. This soup could easily be made vegetarian by using vegetable broth, soy milk and omitting the sour cream. This soup has gone into my personal recipe book for a bit more tweaking but as it stands it gets a hearty two thumbs up!

Frugal Kitchens 101 - Think Green (Meatless Meals)

Continuing with this month's Frugal Kitchens 101 theme of thinking green this week's topic is meatless meals. Meat is an expensive source of protein accounting for a good portion of any food budget. Meat is also expensive in terms of the environment. One very cost effective way of saving money on your grocery bill is to reduce the amount of meat you consume. Simply reducing the size of the meat serving is enough to see a difference on your food bill but you can do better than than. Each week plan on at least one meatless meal!

Meatless meals need not be boring! One of our favourite meatless meals is spaghetti served with roasted tomato sauce, homemade bread and a garden salad. It's simple to prepare and inexpensive to make but does not taste anything like a budget stretching, meatless meal. Unless you are aiming for a vegetarian dish, meatless meals can take advantage of homemade meat stocks. These stocks are extremely inexpensive to make (about $0.00052 per ml) and can be home canned or frozen. They give the flavour of meat without the actual meat so use them to enhance the flavour of vegetable dishes and soups without adding much in the way of cost. Cook your pasta or rice directly in the stock for a real flavour boost without the price of additional meat! A lot of great soups can be made without the addition of meat. I home can dozens of jars of tomato soup each year that does not contain any meat products. A hearty meatless meal can easily be made by adding cooked long grain or wild rice to the soup then serve with salad and homemade bread or simple grilled cheese sandwiches. This is a real comfort meal during the winter months. Another fabulous winter comfort ,no meat meal is baking an extra large baked potato then topping with home canned old fashioned chili sauce. Oh and you just can't beat toasted tomato sandwiches in the summer months especially when made with sun kissed tomatoes fresh picked from your garden. There are so many possibilities!

As soon as you remove meat from the meal you are bound to save money. I aim for one meatless dinner per week but that's not written in stone. We often have more than one meatless dinner per week including with most breakfasts and lunches also being meatless. So give it a try and see what you think. Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised!

next week: Think Green (Food Storage)

A Taste of Summer

I don't know about you but I am more than wintered out! It's been a long, cold winter that started early and just doesn't want to go away. At the start of this week I decided to make a couple of dishes to give us a taste of summer. It was just the little change we needed!

Lunch Goodies

My husband takes a homemade lunch to the office. Sometimes it is left overs but quite often I make him something different. Lunches tend to be garbage free meaning no paper, no wrappings and anything compostable is brought home. I have a few plastic lunch containers used only for cold foods (more on the plastics issue later). Anything that needs reheating is sent on a regular dinner plate or in a covered glass dish. Monday's lunch was chicken caesar salad (1). I assembled the salad in a lunch kit (2) leaving the dressing separate to prevent the romaine lettuce from becoming soggy. This is a hard plastic lunch kit that came with a small container perfect for dressing or sauce and a fork in the outside compartments. This is a perfect container for salads and wraps but nothing that will be reheated. Despite the fact the container is labeled as being microwave safe, it will only be used for foods that do not need heating.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a 24 mini cup Wilton muffin pan. While I have a 12 mini cup muffin pan, it is used mainly for freezing small amounts of things like roasted garlic. I thought the larger Wilton pan would be perfect for making snack and grandbaby sized muffins. Tuesday I made bran muffins using the new pan. Half of them went to the office for my husband's snack. Tuesday night I made a lovely batch of tuna salad, a summer favourite.

Guacomole

When the winter drags on who can resist the beautiful bright colours of fruits and vegetables to brighten the day? I just love the colours of the fruits and vegetables in guacomole almost as much as I like eating guacomole! I make guacomole using ripe avocados, ripe tomato, onion, lemon and lemon. Aren't they just simply gorgeous?

I simply chop half of the tomato and half of the onion fine. They I cut the avocados in half and remove the pits for growing. I scoop the avocado flesh into a small mixing bowl. I cut the lemon and lime in half and squeeze the juice over the avocado and mash to make a smooth, lightly chunked mixture. Then I stir in the chopped onions and tomatoes. That's it. It's nice and simple yet very tasty and always goes over well.

I usually serve guacomole with round corn tortilla chips (if I'm serving as a snack. However, two ways I really enjoy guacomole is using it as a filling for either soft tortilla shells or leaf lettuce. Both are very tasty appetizers sure to please!

Taste of Summer Pasta

I'm in a serious funk not so much in terms of cooking but physically. The weekend was lovely with beautiful weather and an abundance of family and friends as we celebrated our Thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving (Canadian) is always celebrated the second Monday of October somewhat earlier than the American Thanksgiving. That means we quite often end up with beautiful weather. Today the weather turned cooler with dropping temperatures and threatening rain. Despite a trip to the farm market and coming home loaded with goodies my body just didn't want to co-operate.

Taste of Summer Pasta

My husband went golfing trying to squeeze the last bit out of the nice weather and since he was not going to be home for dinner I decided a taste of summer was in order. Remember that pasta sauce I recently canned? Well I had a little left over, just enough to freeze for a serving. Looking at my purchases I decided to add as many fresh chopped vegetables as a topping. The end result was a wonderful, low fat, budget stretching, vegetarian meal that took me less that 15 minutes to put together. Now I used my homemade sauce but you could simulate this dish using a store bought sauce

Method: Cook angel hair pasta to al dente. Drain. Top with hot pasta sauce and chopped vegetables (tomatoes, onion, celery, green pepper). Serve with a side salad and dinner roll.

Mediterranean Pasta (Vegetarian)

Sunday was cold and nasty with rain on and off most of the day. It stopped raining long enough for me to cook angel hair pasta on the side burner of the grill. By the time we were eating dinner it was raining again! Doing without the normal kitchen amenities stimulates the creative juices.

Mediterranean Pasta

I decided to make a vegetable based pasta dish that was a bit different. Instead of a heavier sauce I tossed the hot angel hair pasta with a Mediterranean salad dressing containing kalamata olives, feta cheese, sundried tomatoes and herbs. Then I topped the pasta with steamed broccoli, fresh red onions, cherry tomatoes and jumbo stuffed olive slices. The olives are the kind bought in the deli section not in jars. The cherry tomatoes are from one of my tomato plants grown in a container. This plant is producing tomatoes faster than we can use them which highlights what I've been saying all along. A lot of produce can be grown in a small space and even in containers.

Mediterranean Pasta

1 454 g (1 lb) package angel hair pasta
1 tbsp olive oil
salt

½ c small broccoli flowerettes, cooked
½ c cherry tomatoes, halved
¼ c red onions, chopped
8 stuffed jumbo olives, sliced
½ c Mediterranean salad dressing with sundried tomatoes

Fill a large sauce pot half full with water. Add olive oil and a good sprinkling of salt. Bring to a boil. Stir in the angel hair pasta. Boil about 5 minutes or until al dente. Drain. Toss the hot pasta with the salad dressing. Plate. Top with vegetables.

Tomato & Wild Rice Soup and Wonton Appetizers

Quite often people will ask what I do with all my home canned foods. For some of the foods, the use is fairly obvious but I think many are surprised by some of the more novel ways I use my preserves. One of my goals as a busy mom has always been to create home made convenience foods. These are canned, frozen or dried home made foods that are meant to help put quick but healthy meals on the table.

Tomato & Wild Rice Soup

Soup is always one of my first choices for a quick meal. I can up several jars of various soups that can be simply heated and served along with a few soups that are similar to commercial concentrated soups so need milk or water added. The concentrated soups are nice by themselves but are also nice with rice, noodles or barley added. These ingredients do not can well at home so are best left out then added later.

Tuesday I started with on 500 ml jar of tomato soup then added almost 500 ml of 2% milk and about 2 cups of left over organic wild rice mix. I warmed this to the boiling point on medium heat stirring often then reduced the heat and let the soup simmer for about 10 minutes. A simple sprinkle of dried parsley served as the garnish. This was a nice, flavourful soup that used up left over rice. The basic tomato soup recipe is lovely and quite easy to make. If you don't can, do consider making a batch of this soup and freezing it. You certainly won't regret it!

Wonton Appetizers

We are hosting at least four larger events (more than 20 people) this month. That has left me with doing a bit of experimenting for appetizers. So I'm flipping through a magazine and came across wonton appetizers. Immediately I thought I could easily use any filling I wanted and the wonton wrappers. I figured I could make them sweet and dessert like or savory meal like tid bits. This was a trial run but got very good reviews from my most demanding critics, my family. These appetizers will be appearing at our first major event this weekend. I'm going to do this as a method instead of a recipe because honestly you could fill these cups with anything!

Method: Lightly spray regular sized muffin tins. Push one wonton wrapper into each hole. Do not try to make these look perfect. I simply pushed them into the hole and smoothed the bottom just a little. Bake at 177º C (350ºF) for 5 minutes or until wontons are turning golden brown on edges. Do not over bake. Spoon filling* into cups then bake another 5 to 7 minutes.

* Filling: I mixed 4 oz cream cheese, about ½ c home canned salsa and 1/2 c home canned seasoned ground beef together then spooned into the wrappers. Then I topped with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.

Spaghetti with Roasted Tomato Sauce

When I'm canning seasonal produce like tomato products, the first thing I worry about is whether I've canned enough. The reason being is I want enough of that particular product to last until the next season or about a year. So when I tell someone I just finished canning 48 jars of roasted tomato sauce often the first question is "What are you going to do with that many jars?" Consider though that this amount would work out to four pints per month, roughly one per week. In reality I aim for the hundred mark for the roasted tomato sauce. The method for making and canning roasted tomato sauce can be found in the archives here.

The question of what to do with some home preserved foods is a common one. It comes up over and over. The trick to home preserving especially canning is to know what your family eating habits are. Yes, 32 jars of homemade dill pickles look wonderful and they are cheap but will you use that many jars in one year? So start with the end in mind always having some idea of how you are later going to use the product. Always adjust the amount preserved to reflect your family's needs. Many of the recipes I post use one or more home preserved foods. I'm going to try posting more ways to use up your home preserved foods

Spaghetti with Roasted Tomato Sauce

Spaghetti with roasted tomato sauce is one of my fast foods. It is very inexpensive, filling and can easily be made in 15 minutes. To borrow one of Rachel Ray's phrases, "how good is that?" It is meatless but I like to sprinkle a little fresh Parmesan cheese on top. Without the cheese the meal is vegetarian.

There are no real measurements for this meal so it can be adjusted for the number of people being served. I used:

1 pint roasted tomato sauce
2 handfuls fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp butter or olive oil
1/2 medium chopped onion
4 sprigs fresh parsley
about 6 pieces fresh chives
about 3-inch diameter spaghetti
splash of olive oil
a good pinch of sea salt
2 tbsp fresh grated Parmesan cheese

Bring water to a boil in a large sauce pan. At the same time, slice the mushrooms and sauté in butter or olive oil frypan. Chop the onions and cut the chives into small pieces. Add a splash of olive oil, salt and pasta to the water. Heat sauce in small saucepan. Remove mushrooms from heat. Cook pasta until el dente then drain. Place pasta on plate and top with sauce, onions, chives, mushrooms and Parmesan cheese (if desired). Garnish with fresh parsley.
Serves 4