The Acadian, Eh?

I have two confessions. The first is that I am French Canadian, and that, consequently, I love cheese and anything maple in a bad way. In fact, I am even known to combine the two in beautiful and sometimes alarmingly delicious combinations that make my mouth water even just thinking about them. Cheddar and maple crepes? Nom. Maple and cheese danishes? Been there. Maple grilled cheese? Yeah. That just happened. Here's how to make a kick-ass French Canadian grilled cheese.

What I used: 

Five-Grain Honey Bread from Mary's Bread Basket

Damafro Brie

One Noggins Corner Farm Macintosh apple

Linda's Corner maple syrup

Butter

How I did it:

Heat up a pan to medium and peel, core and slice your apple. Slather two slices of bread with butter. Apply one layer cheese, one layer apple, and one more layer cheese just to be safe on the unbuttered side of one of the bread slices. Put the other slice on top, buttered side facing out. Throw it in the pan and cook until bottom side is crispy and brown. Flip and repeat. Drizzle some maple syrup on top right before serving and eat that sucker up, eh? Om nom nom.

Berry Lemonade!

It's finally summer in Halifax! The rain is gone, for the most part, the tourists are getting off the giant cruise ships and the mist is burnt off by mid-morning! I'm currently writing from my sun-drenched balcony, listening to OK GO and enjoying the sunshine, sipping on some fancy lemonade. Going to the market this weekend was a great treat, because of the great weather and the fresh berries in season! All this great weather and sunshine calls for a lemonade recipe to help keep yourself cool so I'll share with the you the recipe for the one I'm drinking at this very minute!

What I used:

Trinity Gold homemade lemonade concentrate

Millens Farm frozen blueberries

Noggins Corner Farm strawberries

How I did it:

Filled a pitcher with with one part Trinity Gold and four parts cold water. Thought about replacing the water with iced tea, for a tasty Arnold Palmer, then got too impatient to make iced tea. Poured the mixed lemonade into tall glasses, replacing ice cubes with frozen blueberries (an awesome trick I borrowed from my mom) and garnished with slit strawberries. Drank it in the sun with Stu and a sense of well-being and happiness. Om nom nom.

Pink Brie Scramble

A few weeks ago at the market, Stu and I came across a man who sold not only whole chickens and turkeys, but also chicken and turkey eggs. He showed us the oversized freckled eggs (being sold at the same price as the chicken eggs) so we had to buy some to see what they were like. Apart from being fairly hard to crack and huge, they were very like chicken eggs, but with a faint turkey taste. This discovery of turkey eggs got us on such an egg kick that we ended up having eggs every day, making elaborate breakfast dishes revolving around eggs. I am a huge fan of omelettes, but sometimes they are hard to flip if they have lots of ingredients in them, so a lot of the time I just end up making a scrambled egg with lots of tasty ingredients to make things more interesting. This week, we had a lot of fresh beet greens left over by Friday, as well as some nice local brie, so I decided to throw them into the mix. To my delight, this resulted in a gooey, creamy, pink omelette with lots of flavour and definitely an interesting look

What you need:

4 eggs (turkey or chicken, but you could even use ostrich eggs if that floats your boat)

A large handful of beet greens

As much brie as you want (can there ever be too much brie?)

Olive oil

Sprig of rosemary

How I did it:

Start by washing and trimming the roots off the beet greens. Chop them into bite-length pieces. Heat a little oil on medium in a pan, and throw the greens in, stirring frequently. When the leaves are wilted and they start giving off a pink juice, add the brie in, in small chunks. Melt the brie in with the leaves and watch it all turn pink. Put your eggs in and cook as dry as you like, stirring often until it's all cooked. You should have a lovely pink scramble, that you can top with chopped rosemary. Om nom nom.

Ludicrously Easy Pickled Lettuce

Hello again! Still don't have internet in the apartment, so I'm writing from the Wired Monk cafe and sipping some matcha (tea was one of the things we absolutely could not give up while eating local, along with salt, pepper and olive oil) So, last week Stu and I had our friends Torin and Anna over for dinner, and we decided to wow them with our mad culinary skills. So we got some fresh trout from the market, some arugula, some spinach, some rainbow carrots, some lettuce and some onions to make a tasty trout-topped salad. We were feeling pretty adventurous though, so we decided to step the salad up by pickling the lettuce! This seemed like a daunting task at first, pickling being somewhat foreign to Stu and I, but after a little brainstorming and experimenting, we found a seriously easy and delicious formula for perfectly sweet and tart pickled lettuce. Here's how we did it:

Start with:

A head of lettuce (we used iceberg, but other kinds would probably work as well)

A cup of water

Two tablespoons salt

Two tablespoons unpasteurized honey

Six tablespoons vinegar (we used apple vinegar for the sweetness, but balsamic or just plain white can also be used)

From there: Wash, drain and rip lettuce into desired size of pieces, and set aside in separate bowl. Mix all other ingredients in a pot and boil very briefly to make sure all the ingredients combine nicely. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it onto the lettuce, mixing it all together with your hands, making sure every leaf is bathed in the mixture. Let it sit for about half an hour, then pour it into a jar or whatever closable container you have lying around. Stick it in the fridge. Optimally, you want to let it sit in the fridge for a day or two, because then the lettuce has time to really absorb the pickling juice. From there, use it on salads, in sandwhiches or really wherever you would ordinarily use pickles! My favourite part of this recipe is that once the lettuce is gone, the pickling juice makes a ready-to-use salad dressing. Om nom nom.