Restaurant Review: Moxie's

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Last night our friends Mike and Jen spontaneously phoned us and asked if we wanted to go out to dinner. I said, "Hell yeah!" It had been a crazy-busy week filled with appointments, running around and feeling uninspired when I got home. Nothing revs up the foodie spirit more than going out to dinner with good friends. Getting someone to cook and bake for me while catching up? What a fantastic treat!

We went out to Moxie's at Dartmouth Crossing for a Saturday night dinner out. It is a perfect location for us since we do not have to go all the way downtown and there is more than enough parking. What I love about Moxie's is that it is a little upscale without being pretentious. If you want to wear something nice without the pressure to dress fancy and still have a really hip dining-out experience, this is the restaurant to go to.

I ordered the seafood linguini for dinner. Prawns, mussels and calamari in a lobster-based rosé sauce with linguini pasta, I must admit the dinner was just OK. It was a tad under seasoned and I really did not taste lobster in the "lobster sauce" but the mussels were out of this world. For a $17.99 dinner I expected a little more but I was having such a good night out with my husband and friends that I forgave the meal. I have eaten here before and know that the food is good quality so I happily moved on to ordering dessert.

At Moxie's you can order mini versions of some of their dessert items. For someone like me who just wants a nibble of sweetness after a big dinner, I was so happy with my mini chocolate mousse. It came with a giant strawberry and two mini slices of biscotti. Our server Lorne was fantastic. He was very entertaining and helpful and promised as a fellow non-caffeine drinker he would not poison me with caffeinated coffee. I could enjoy my dessert without fear and sure enough, no caffeine migraine followed.

My husband ordered the Blackberry Apple Crisp on Puffy Pastry and loved it! He said it was soft and warm and the restaurant makes it to order, unlike a lot of desserts. He had also been blown away by his Chicken with Pineapple salsa, said the chicken was grilled to perfection. My husband is rarely impressed by a restaurant and this was his first time going here and so I am happy to report it gets his personal approval which excites me so much, it means we are definitely going back! Any restaurant that makes my husband's tummy happy is one that makes me happy.

Next time, I think I will get the hamburger. That is what my friend Jen ordered last night and I was so tempted to steal it from her, it looked that good, but it was gone in a flash! A very good sign. I will also be tempted to get Mike's Chicken Oscar with Jumbo Prawns just for the Béarnaise sauce, it is one of my favourites sauces of all time. There will be no shortage of items to consider on the menu, it is huge and I look forward to doing more foodie exploring next time I go to Moxie's.

Modern, hip and fun, Moxie's is a great place to go for dinner when you want to put on that new shirt and eat some trendy west coast food. This restaurant reminded me of The Cactus Club in Victoria, a place we used to go regularly with Mike and Jen when we lived out west. For the first night out in ages, I felt like home at Moxie's. I can't wait to go back.

Organizing Recipes

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One of the reasons I have started buying cookbooks more often is I loathe paperwork. Yes, the convenience and no-financial cost of being able to print recipes from the internet can not be beat but I can not keep up. Going through all the recipes I had printed out took me over a week last month, a week!

I started off by going through each and every recipe and asked myself, when did I print this out? If it was over a year ago and I am no closer to making it today then I usually toss it. If it is a special recipe for a dessert and I am just waiting for that perfect moment to make it, I will probably hold on to it.

During this process I am ruthless. I tear them out of my binder and throw the rejected recipes on the floor and move on.

Here is the tricky part. How do you organize them? I have two binders, one for cooking and one for baking. Baking is pretty easy, I divide the recipes up by what type of baked good they are: cake, cookie... but what about things like a recipe for raspberry coulis or a strawberry fool? I just ignore the fruit and file the coulis under "C" and the fool under "F". I used to be very uptight and make sure that part was perfectly alphabetized. Then I would have a stack of recipes to be filed and I would never file them. No wonder!

The cooking binder drives me bonkers! Right now I have the main dishes divided up by the kind of meat that is involved. I tried once to just have sections for Asian, Mexican... but they would get ignored because I would ask myself, "OK, what can I make with ground beef tonight?" and have to go through all of them. I do not like having the sections divided up by types of meat but so far, this is the easiest way for me to browse and find main dishes I want to make. From there it is divided up into sections such as: side dishes, soups, bread, dips...

Then I have another folder. The purple one in the photo above. This folder is for my regulars. I do not want to have to go through my big binders on a regular basis to find something I make three times a month. I have divided that folder up between cooking and baking and find this has saved my mind and spirit in the kitchen. Minimal handling and organizing of recipes, as well as heavy binders.

I bet there are a million ways to organize recipes and I would love to hear your ideas!

Is there anyone else who gets panic attacks just looking at their pile of recipes or am I the only one?

Vegetarian No More

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For three and a half years I was a vegetarian. After getting off the anti-Candida diet using the Yeast Buster Kit I could not bare to eat meat. The diet was all meat and low starch vegetables. I wanted to die. I was done with meat. I had always wanted to go vegetarian and I was determined to do it. It would be the next step on my health odyssey in British Columbia.

All that time I tried to like legumes. I did everything to tofu to make it delicious and nothing worked. No matter what I did to brown rice, I hated it! I did not become that thin yogi I wanted to be. I had no natural glow emanating from my skin. I was not infused with vast amounts of energy. I worked really hard at getting as much protein into my diet as I could. After almost four years of all that effort I really examined just how much protein I was getting and found out it was less than half what a woman my age should get.

Being a huge animal lover, I did not know if I could go back. Back to being a meat eater. I had gotten so used to being scared when I ate out, what if there is animal product in my food? So I never ate out and controlled everything out of fear. Instead of a choice based on health, I was now dictating my diet around terror. Well no thanks!

Five years ago I went hiking in the woods of British Columbia and cried. I told Nature I was sorry, that I would have to go back to eating meat for my health. That is when a pileated woodpecker tried to crap on me! I laughed. Touche! No, Nature may not have been happy with me at first but once I went back to meat I felt better. My muscles grew a little stronger. I had more energy and felt more grounded. Recently I have started to appreciate that to get energy out of life, it takes energy from life. I do not like that reality but it is my reality, whether I approve of it or not.

I will never regret trying to be a vegetarian. It was a personal food quest I was completely committed to that came to an end. For me, food is not a religion. I do not believe in food rules. What is good for me today, may not be good for me tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with trying new things or having flexible eating practices. It is all about moderation and intuition. I try and live meatless one day a week if I can. If not, no sin has been committed.

I have no time or energy for rules anymore. My body is much wiser than I am. I listen to it. Today it is telling me a snowstorm is coming. It is time for food of comfort. Perhaps a hot chicken sandwich with mushroom gravy for dinner? And maybe if I can swing it, Baked Potato Soup on the side.

I think my body has good taste!

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

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My family never ate squash. I mean NEVER. I came to the conclusion that squash must be awful then. I was wrong! I started experimenting with it years ago when I found out that it is a powerful cancer fighter and a super food. I knew I just had to add it it to my cooking repertoire and this is my favourite way to make it.

When my cupboards and fridge were bare last week, one thing I missed most was vegetables. It was decadent to live on noodles and bits of protein for a while but I quickly felt my energy disappearing. The beautiful thing about soup is it is so pure. You just throw veggies into a pot with some broth and herbs and you have the essence of health.

It all starts with the squash. I like butternut squash because of its bright orange colour. Colour in the health food world means vitality. The more colours you eat, the healthier you are. I prefer to slow roast the squash because that way I only have to cut it in half and scoop out the seeds. I do not have to peel it raw and precariously slice the tough flesh into chunks. Nope! I just slice in half, remove the seeds, put it flesh-side-down on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake in a 275F oven for two hours. I do this early in the day and then take it out once it is soft to the touch.

A processor makes my life so much easier by whizzing up 2 roughly chopped carrots, 3 celery sticks with their leaves on, one onion and 3 garlic cloves. I even did this on the phone with my friend Michelle in a matter of seconds and then put the aromatics into a dish covered with plastic wrap and into the fridge until I was ready to make soup.

When ready to cook saute the mirepoix (carrot, celery...) over medium high heat in some olive oil and season well. After a few minutes scoop out the squash, add to the pot with some grated ginger and two bay leaves. Use a spoon or a spatula to break down the squash a bit. Add a little broth to just cover the bottom and come up the sides a bit. Be careful not to add too much because you want the soup to be too thick rather than too thin. Let it bubble away for at least 15 minutes. I also threw in some thyme sprigs which I removed along with the bay leaves once everything was softened.

This is usually where my handy-dandy Food Mill makes my life easier by grinding up the veggies to make a silky smooth soup but I forgot to change blades to the medium consistency setting and what ended up coming through the other end was just liquid! Argh! Oh well, stuff like this happens. Now too hot to the touch to change blades, I put the soup back in the pot and used my immersion blender. Nope, not good enough. I like it to be perfectly smooth and it was still chunky. I removed the strawberry mango smoothie mixture from my blender into our dinner glasses, washed out the blender and used it to perfectly puree the soup, carefully covered with a tea towel. Then I added just a touch of heavy cream and pureed once again.

Vegetarians can skip this part but I wanted a little topper for the soup so I cut some turkey bacon into lardons and sauteed until crispy. If you are vegetarian and want a topper you can make some homemade croutons. For those meat eaters who want to use REAL bacon, go right ahead! It is your food. Make it your way!

In some ways this is a fast recipe, in other ways it is slow. I like that you can prepare all the veggies ahead of time which is what I did when my mother-in-law Lorraine came for tea. She is a huge lover of vegetables and always is the person making food for others. I had already roasted the squash and processed the veggies so we came home and in about 20 minutes I had this treat ready for her that tasted like it took me all day to make. The best part? She looked so happy as she spooned every last drop.

Although it does not feel like it, spring is around the corner and I will be replacing soups and roasted vegetables with salads. In the meantime, I am going to make as many soups as I can and enjoy their beautiful healthy essence.

Rachel Allen's Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies

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According to the American Food Network Facebook Page, yesterday was National Peanut Butter Lovers Day. I am actually not a big peanut butter lover, I like it but would not include myself in this demographic... until I made Rachel Allen's Peanut Butter Blondies! Crazy delicious, I could not stop eating these after they came out of the oven. If you are wondering what the heck blondies are, they are non-chocolate versions of "brownies" hence they are blonde and not brown and the predominant flavour is brown sugar.

Warning, this recipe is dangerously divine and if you are a nut for peanut butter? Use extra caution.

As always, British baking calls for the use of scales as a means of measuring the ingredients but the good thing about doing this is you always have the right amount no matter what the humidity may be that day.

This recipe calls for creaming together butter and peanut butter. Add one egg, some vanilla and brown sugar. After the brown sugar goes in you add a flour and baking powder combo until just incorporated and then add chunks of white chocolate. The trick with brownies/blondies is you can cream away the ingredients as much as you want but at soon as you add the dry ingredients, mix until just combined. Put in a greased and parchment-lined square baking dish and bake at 325F to 20-30 minutes.

I have had many issues with British recipes when it comes to temperature, some of my food has burned and in this case, may be a bit under-baked. One of the reviews wrote that she took out her blondies early to avoid over-baking. Well that was not a problem for me! I checked after 20 minutes and the top was still raw so I baked an additional 10 minutes and it still looked very wet on the top. In Rachel's Cookbook she says to bake it at 325F but I think that might be a little too cool. I may not have a state-of-the-art oven but it is very dependable when it comes to temperature. I think there might be issues with translating gas marks to Fahrenheit.

My husband said it was more like peanut butter fudge than brownies but hey, that is not necessarily a bad thing! At least this time I did everything right and even though they might have come out a bit early, the flavour makes up for it and I would rather the dessert be too moist than too dry. If you prefer chocolate to white chocolate, I bet that flavour combination would knock this recipe out of the park too!

Do not feel that just because National Peanut Butter Lovers Day was yesterday that you can not partake in the joy of peanut butter today. As I said to my dear friend Michelle on Facebook, real peanut butter lovers celebrate every day!

Coconut Lime Bread: for those with adventurous palettes

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This is what happens when you are stuck at home with a back injury running out of food, searching through cookbooks trying to find something you can make with the weird ingredients you have on hand. This recipe was inspired by Canada's Best Bread Machine Baking Recipes' recipe for Orange Pecan Loaf.

I put these ingredients into the baking pan in this order: 1 1/3 cup of warm (not hot) water, 1/4 cup of melted frozen lime concentrate, the juice of half a lime, the zest of a whole lime, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 3 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp shortening, 3 3/4 cups bread flour, 2 tbsp of fancy coconut and 1 1/4 tsp bread machine yeast. I put the pan into the breadmaker, programmed it to be a 2.5 loaf with a light crust made on the sweet cycle. The dough looked a little dry because of our moisture-challenging winters here so I added an additional 1-2 tbsp of water to the dough. The dough should not look dry once the kneading cycle really begins. Better to be too wet than too dry.

I waited about 10 minutes before taking the loaf out of the baking pan, even though it is nice and light on the top the sides continue to darken which I personally do not like.

I tried eating it with Nutella but woah, that was all kinds of wrong. So I made my own lime and honey compound butter with the zest and a squeeze of honey.

I took one bite and it still needed additional sweetness: a drizzle of honey and wow, perfect!

My husband ate the bread but kept saying, this is so weird, the entire time he ate it. Only those with extremely open minds and palettes should attempt this bread recipe. The coconut was not very pronounced, perhaps if I had used coconut milk instead of water it would be a different story. This bread is all about the lime balanced with the sweetness of the honey. I personally was very grateful for this loaf which sustained me for days as my cupboards and fridge became more hollow each day.

Thankfully my husband is home now and took me food shopping but the timing was terrible! We had a giant storm on Friday, there were obviously no deliveries on the weekend and another storm was coming in last night so there was very little food and we showed up 45 minutes before the store closed. I do not do well when I rush, I hate rushing. Oh but to have milk again and apples, bananas, beets, lettuce, ground beef...!!! Real food!

Nothing makes me happier than a full and happy kitchen. Right now, I am one happy camper.