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San Marzano Tomatoes... are they worth the extra money?

I would love to hear from you on this product. Over and over again I have heard people rave about San Marzano tomatoes, picked at the height of ripeness from the magical foodie land of Italy. Apparently these are the only tomatoes worth buying and the only ones real foodies cook with. At $6 a can, I want to know if they are worth it. I finally spent the money at a fancy food store and tried them out.



As the stormy weather raged outside yesterday I decided to make Food Network Magazine's Pasta Fagioli which required only five of these magical tomato nuggets so I put the rest of these enchanted tomatoes in a Ziploc freezer bag and labelled them "fancy tomatoes" to try out in more recipes down the road.



The soup was absolutely divine but was it because of those five tomatoes? I am not sure! Of course I will be testing them some more down the road. For me, the real test will either be a tomato soup or a homemade tomato sauce.

So what is your experience? Have you tried these tomatoes? Are they worth all that extra money or is it just hype? Help a foodie out and share your wisdom with me.

Double Cheese "Fan Tan" Rolls with Dijon Glaze

My husband loved these rolls so much he said the world has to know about them so I am going to share the recipe. I got the bare bones of it from Canada's Best Bread Machine Baking Recipes but changed it a ton! I really needed to come up with a recipe to use up my dried out brick of Parmesan and this recipe was perfect.

In your breadmaker put the ingredients in the loaf pan in this order:

1 1/4 cups of water
1 tsp of salt
1 tbsp sugar
3 1/4 bread flour (or all purpose)
1/3 cup of skim milk powder
3/4 cup of old cheddar cheese
1/2 cup of Parmesan chunks or 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan
1/2 tsp of dill seeds (you could also use dried dill)
1 tsp of bread machine yeast

Select the dough cycle and press start. Remember, depending on the humidity, you may have to add more water or flour to the dough for it to come together and eventually look like this:



See the chunks of Parmesan in the dough??? Fabulous! Now take the dough out of the loaf pan, put in a large oiled bowl, cover with a clean cloth and let rest for 10-15 minutes. This is where it gets tricky...



I am not very good at reading directions so I did my best. I took one third of the dough and rolled it out into a 9" square. I brushed the dough with some melted butter and cut the square into six strips both ways. Apparently I was supposed to cut six long segments, stack them and then make squares. I just did it the long way, no worries.



This is the part that got screwed up because I did not stack the pieces of dough. The squares are supposed to fan together (duh Suzie) but instead I just stacked them in a muffin tin. I covered the tin and let rise for 30 minutes.

I combined some melted butter with some dijon mustard and brushed the rolls right before going into the 375F oven to bake for 15-20 minutes until they were nice and golden:



OK, so they do not exactly fan out the way they were supposed to but who cares? They are delicious! So delicious my husband kept going upstairs for more. I used the rest of the dough to make pizzas the next night and that was phenomenal too.

Not your low fat roll by any stretch of the imagination but as a little treat? Fantastic! Pun intended although next time, these will actually be real fan tan rolls!

My Version of Jamie Oliver's Proper Chicken Caesar Salad

You know when you watch a food program and you want to make that meal right away and you think you have all the ingredients and then realize you don't? Well that happened when I watched Jamie Oliver make this unbelievable warm Chicken Caesar Salad. It looked like a dream!

Jamie only uses a quarter of a clove of garlic in his salad dressing (I need more garlic!) so right away I knew I was going to be changing the recipe in a big way... and I did. And you know what? It was still fantastic!



I had some leftover dill loaf that I cut up into croutons which I put into my Paula Deen casserole dish, along with four chicken thighs (store did not have chicken legs). I tossed everything in some olive oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper and garlic powder (I did not have any rosemary). I put the dish into a preheated 400F oven for 40 minutes and then topped with slices of bacon (I did not have pancetta) and put back in the oven for another 20 minutes but the bacon was not crisp enough. The croutons were starting to burn so I took everything out and cooked the bacon on its own until very crispy, the way I like it.

For the dressing, I really got creative. I did not have anchovies but I did have anchovy paste. In a small bowl I put 1-2 tbsp of anchovy paste with two crushes garlic cloves, 1 tbsp of mayonnaise, 1 tbsp of sour cream, juice of half a lemon, a few "glugs" of olive oil and lots and lots of Parmesan until it tasted like what I think of as "proper" Caesar salad dressing.


Wow, was it ever sunny yesterday, how rare!

You get some greens, add the warm chicken, the croutons that are not soaking wet (some of them will be), crumble the bacon and add the dressing... delicious! Even thought it is freakin' cold I am not ready to give up salads yet. Warm salads are extremely comforting and this one is a real winner.

I hope you see from this post that just because you do not have every ingredient a recipe calls for, you can still get creative and make it your own. Sometimes it may end up being even better than the original but please don't tell Jamie Oliver that!

Boosting Immunity

Well it will not be a surprise to anyone that I have pushed my health too far. As a result I am receiving signs that I have compromised my immunity which I am not happy about at all. I have to protect my health and help my system get stronger.

The first place I always turn to in order to help support my immunity is soup. In particular, my super immunity soup when I have the energy or I make my abbreviated version if I don't. This time while making it I remembered some of my mom's wisdom. She says to always put parsley stems when making a broth to boost healing power so I tied some together with butcher's string and let them steep in my soup. The grocery store was out of kale so I used swiss chard instead. Shiitake mushrooms are another huge immunity booster so I added some as well. Delicious!



It is already freezing here, I mean FREEZING! So I will be drinking a ton of hot healing liquids. Ginger is a huge healer (which also goes in my soup BTW) and I find it funny that people spend a lot of money buying packaged ginger tea when they can make it themselves. Ginger root is super affordable.

All you have to do is cut and peel a coin of it, add hot water, let it steep for eight minutes and then add some honey and you are done. To add extra flavour I also throw in a bag of lemon tea with lots of lemon, another healing food. Add lots of honey and you are good to go!



Once again I made this fantastic dressing of my Dad's wife's that I use in a warm spinach salad. It is filled with garlic and sundried tomatoes and is so strong and tasty. Raw garlic is an astoundingly powerful healer and the sundried tomatoes are filled with vitamin C which helps you absorb the iron from the spinach salad. I also got 100% pure pomegranate juice to put in my smoothies which is filled with antioxidants.

I listen to my body. When it says, ease down (Aliens reference), I ease down. I am already having a hard time with the cold and winter has only just begun here. My body is already struggling, warning me to rest and recover. Time for yoga, lots of naps and healing nourishing foods.

Food is the best medicine of all. Please let me know about your super immunity boosting food. I need all the help I can get.

Happy Halloween Foodies!

Well we did end up with trick or treaters after all despite the gloomy weather! The rain held off until later in the evening and we managed to giveaway most of our candy, thank goodness. We were very, VERY generous with the trick or treaters.



My Halloween treats were a big hit and we had a hard time deciding which one was our favourite. I will say that my Creepy Witches' Fingers and Witches' Broomsticks that I had put in the deep freeze tasted perfectly after thawing so you can make these ahead of time!



I love adding little Halloween touches everywhere and this guy hung out with the breadsticks for the many, many dips I made:



Yes, it was quite the spread of food! The only new thing I made for Halloween was my friend Michelle's brain mold shrimp dip which my friend Kelly named as "Shrimp for Brains" which had us all laughing our butts off. What a yummy fun night! The vampire cookies were a huge hit and I think we ended up deciding were the best treat of the night.



We did not just indulge eating snacks, I also set the table for dinner where we ate chilli with Kelly's homemade cornbread muffins (fabulous!), butternut squash soup and dill bread, followed by some homemade apple cider.



Yes, we feasted like there was no tomorrow together and had a fantastic evening, as usual. So wonderful that our friends Kelly and Eric could come this year for the first time. I think this may be the fifth Halloween we spent with Mike and Jen! Could not have had better company. We were so stuffed by the end of the night we put the witchy cake Kelly brought over in the deep freeze to celebrate some other time. To see more of our decorations, jack-o-lanterns and all things Halloween not-food-related, click here!

Now, for the big announcement!!!! The winners of our cookbook giveway are...



Congratulations goes out to Jaz for winning the Little Monsters Cookbook!!!



Congratulations goes out to Becky for winning The Geometry of Pasta!

Thanks goes out to everyone for participating in my giveaway and I truly hope you had a fantastic and delicious Halloween.