Just keep Swimming

Sturgeon at the Biodome in Montreal

It has been a while since my last post but I have moved home for the summer and have been enjoying my parents cooking (a little to much...) and moved into lazy mode. I was doing my daily news/blog reading and came across this article. I am re-blogging this because I value the earth's oceans, lakes, and rivers and if a small amount of people read this and start taking time to research where their fish come from and what type of fish to avoid, I will have done my good deed for today. Commercial Fishing is a problem and needs to be better managed. The rate that the world's people consume fish is destroying the earth. Now, I eat, or try to eat fish twice a week as it is very healthy. I am also careful what fish I buy and where I buy it. I always buy local if I can and I also shop at stores that promote local and organic food. I never buy fish that are in danger. Farmboy, in the Ottawa area is a great place to buy fish. They always have a label that says if it is farmed, sustainable farmed, wild, or local and they usually have an organic selection too. Costco is another good place to buy fish as they have that info on hand. They are also clean and their fish never have that fishy smell. If the place that you shop has fish that smell fishy, then don't buy the fish! It means it is old and not kept properly.
Never buy farmed fish unless you know it has been sustainably farmed. Farmed fish are fed other fish, usually from the ocean. Your store should know when the fish was brought in, and where it came from. If they don't, ask to see if a manager (or owner) knows or don't by the fish.
I could ramble on all day about fish but it would probably bore you to death. The main point is to spread that article around and get people to think about what they are buying and where it comes from.

Too Much Bacon!

Just kidding. You can never have too much bacon. I learnt how to make this simple awesome dish from a friend who taught me how to make real Chinese food - or food that her mom makes back in China. Anyway, it is delicious. You are going to need:

-Snow peas,
-Green Onion
-Garlic
-Black Peppercorns
-Vegetable oil
-BACON!

Chop up the bacon into bacon bits, throw them in a pan and cook until crispy. You are going to want to use 3 or 4 strips depending on how much snow peas you have.Chop the ends of  the snow peas and dice up the green onions. Smash/chop a couple cloves of garlic. Once the bacon is cook, remove the bacon out of the grease and pat of any excess grease with a paper towel. (It is now up to you to decide it you want to make J.D bacon grease shots... I don't think this will compliment the dish well. )
Heat up another pan with a bit of veg oil on medium heat. Once it is heated up enough, toss in the garlic, onions and a couple of peppercorns. After those cook a bit, toss in the snow peas. You will want to cook these until they just start to soften but are still crispy. Mix in the bacon bits.
This is a good side dish and makes a green vegetable tasty.

p.s If you don't get the J.D bacon shot reference, you need to get out and watch youtube more.

Just Beet It!

Beets. I hated them when I was growing up. It might have had something to do with being over-boiled or too soggily pickled. I never enjoyed eating them and I most definitely never ate them raw. I'm going to be honest and tell you I stole the idea of this recipe from one of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks, and in my opinion, made it way better. He just paired the pears and beets with a little lemon juice. I think that's pretty boring. If you want to make a fun colourful salad, here is what you are going to need. The quantity will very depending on your preferences.

Ingredients:
raw beets
apples
pears
kiwi
lemons
grapes
optional: blueberries
sunflower seeds (shelled)
olive oil
salt and pepper
goat cheese

 I usually use two beets, one apple and pear, one kiwi, and a handful of grapes for 1-2 people.
Only get blueberries when they are in season or they could end up being too expensive and too sour. Take a peeler to the beets and kiwis and get the skin off of them. Cut the beets and pears into thin match sticks. Then cut up the apples into crisp shapes. Dice up the kiwi, cut the grapes in half and mix this in a bowl with some of the sunflower seeds. The beets will stain anything and everything. Your salad will look rather red. I leave the skin on the apples because it adds another color to the mix. For a dressing, mix lemon juice with a bit of olive oil and season to tastes. Add the dressing and toss the salad again. If you want, add goat cheese on top. This goes really well with the salad. I try to get green apples and green grapes. It helps to boost the colour in the salad. Don't worry about the apples and pears turning brown as the lemon helps to stop this. This salad is great for the summer, BBQs and for spicing up your general salad life.

How to make Wild Wing's Gar-Par and Dill flavored wings.

My two favorite sauces at Wild Wing's is Gar-Par and Dill. They are so good, that I don't like trying anything else when I go. Being a student, I can't afford to hit up that restaurant every time I have chicken wing cravings... which is quite often. I found an acceptable replacement that is not too expensive. First, you have to find your favorite crispy breaded wing, or make your own. I find that M&M's Jumbo Crispy Wings are the best suited for this, and they come on sale quite often.  They are also JUMBO and require no cooking experience besides turning the oven on. Now to make the sauces. Wild Wing's uses Renée's Dressing as bases for most of their creamy sauces. To make the Gar-Par Sauce, mix Caesar dressing with Parmesan in a bowl and then shake up your wings to get them all saucy. It is easier to shake just a few wings at a time to maximize sauce coverage. This sauce is thick and won't cover all your wings if your bowl is not big enough. Same goes for the dill sauce (M&M makes a good dill salad dressing too.). Feel free to use blue-cheese, Parmesan, or hot sauce in this one to vary the flavors. If you buy everything when it is on sale, you end up saving a lot of money and also will have extras left over for your next wing craving. Renée's dressing is generally cheaper to buy in bulk and it will last a long time. This works great if you use a quality chicken wing. If you don't, the sauce won't cling to the breading as well and it won't be as good.

Ribs.

I recently went to Tennessee, and stopped by Memphis. I ate a lot of ribs. So many delicious ribs that when I came back to Canada, it was almost a shame to even try them in a restaurant here. So I decided to make my own. A couple of racks with a Memphis Dry Rub that I attempted to make, and a couple of racks with my scotch bbq sauce. My Memphis Dry Rub is pretty simple: paprika, pepper, brown sugar, salt, celery seeds, crushed garlic, crushed pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, and a bit of dry mustard and salt. I didn't measure but it was round a tablespoon each, more or less depending on the strength of the spice.
They went on the bbq after chilling for 5 hours. In-direct heat at 350 and off in 1 hour and 15 minutes. You should baste these ribs about every 15 minutes. I used a vinegar/dry mustard/hot sauce mixture.

The scotch sauce is 1 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup ketchup, 1/3 soy sauce, scotch, garlic, 1.5 tbsp dry mustard, pepper, salt, more scotch, 1/4 hp sauce, some chilli powder and some cayenne powder. I didn't really measure either. The ribs got a pepper treatment then where wrapped in tin foil and baked in the oven for about 1.5 hours. Then they got drunk with sauce. I like my ribs saucy. They marinated at room temp for 2 hours. Bbq was heated to 350 and slapped on the grill for around 30 min. Be careful as this sauce is full of sugar and will burn. Watch your heat. I basted these with more sauce every 10 minutes or so, flipping when needed.

It was a toss up on which ones I liked more. The wet ribs were falling off the bone good. The sauce was almost a little too sweet and I would cut back on the sugar next time. And maybe add more scotch. The dry rub was great. The rub had a good kick too it and formed a very crispy skin to the ribs. The only thing I would do differently to them is smoke. Cause it ain't Memphis if it isn't smoked! I don't own a smoker or charcoal grill (yet) so that will have to wait. Overall these were delicious and a repeat.