Quiche Lorraine

More Great British Bake Off-inspired cooking - I made Quiche Lorraine today. I've never made a quiche before in my life! It was fun and delicious.

I found this recipe that was the main inspiration, but I wanted to add broccoli so I took some hints from this recipe too. I also have a 22cm tin and the recipe called for 20cm, so I tried to scale everything up a bit.

Final ingredients list for my version:

Pastry
100g butter, cubed
200g all-purpose flour
3 1/4 tbsp cold water

Hand mix flour & butter to crumb consistency, add water, form dough ball, roll out on floured counter, set in tin, refrigerate 20-30 minutes, blind bake 10 minutes at 450 degrees, remove blind and bake 10 more minutes.

Filling
6 strips of bacon
1 big onion, sliced & carmelized
1 medium broccoli crown, cut small and added to the onions for the last 10 min of carmelization
160g Gruyère cheese, grated 4 large eggs
200 ml whipping cream
100 ml whole milk
Salt & pepper

It ended up taking about 40-45 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees.

Results

It was GREAT if I do say so myself! Could have used a bit more salt, a bit more filling overall, but I'd make this again for sure.

Great British Bake Off

Robyn got me hooked on this show called the Great British Bake Off. It has inspired me to try baking a couple of the tastier looking things on the show.

Here is Mary Berry's Lemon Tart:

Not bad for a first crack!

Here is a fruit tart that uses the same sweet crust recipe as the lemon tart, with a crème pâtissière (from this recipe) filling. The crust turned out nicer looking this time:

The recipes are brilliant because they're in grams; you can't possibly muck up the measurements.

I made one slip up on the fruit tart. I used Masa Harina for "corn flour", but I should have used corn starch (only the US and Canada refer to "corn starch", the rest of the world calls it corn flour"). It still tastes fine, but the texture is a little bit off. The other UK-ism is that caster sugar is sold as berry sugar in Canada.

Homemade Soylent (Schmilk)

In 2013 I read about Soylent, a "nutritionally complete" meal replacement beverage invented by a software engineer, who started a 30-day experiment to see if he could survive on the stuff. His experiment morphed into a crowdfunding campaign with a feed-the-world-cheaply theme and he raised millions of dollars to start mass-producing it for sale.

Do people need "real food" to survive and thrive, or can we break food into its macro- and micronutrient components and reassemble those pieces to create something equivalent? Possibly better?

A lot of people were intrigued by the same question and the "powdered food scene" seemed to grow a lot in 2013 & 2014.

The shipping date of Soylent to Canada was never confirmed. When I started getting serious about losing weight in 2015 I started doing some research on homemade, powdered food meal replacements. The appeal was:

• Easily portionable and measureable (to meet caloric needs)
• Inexpensive 
• Easily hackable (for instance, easy to bump up the protein content or lower the carbohydrate content by adjusting the formula) 
• The buzz-phrase "nutritionally complete" kept popping up. 

As it turns out, Soylent (the company) hosts a recipe section on their website where users can submit and review recipes.

A 450-calorie serving of homemade Soylent

I found one called Schmilk Chocolate that I thought I'd try. It uses whole milk as a source of fat and protein. I made a batch and had it for breakfast every day for a week. It was pretty good! Bland, but not offensively so.

Since early summer 2015, I have been eating/drinking this homemade Soylent every workday for both breakfast and lunch. For supper and meals on weekends I have "real food". I have observed no ill-effects whatsoever (including excess flatulence, which some Soylent users had trouble with).

The positives are:

• Easy to make. I mix the powdered ingredients with whole milk a meal ahead; the consistency is better if it sits in the fridge for a while.  
• Easy to measure (12.6 grams of powder + 100 ml of whole milk = 108 calories. Scale however is appropriate. I started drinking 670 calorie portions, then 550, currently 450). 
• Easy to consume - you just drink it! 
• Tastes okay. Hard to describe; it's so bland that there are not any defining offensive flavours. The balance of fat, salt, and everything else seems to tell the body "this is good". I usually add an espresso shot for flavour. 
• Makes me feel satiated and satisfied until the next meal. 
• Keeps me regular.

Now that I'm basically at my goal weight, I don't think I am going to stop with Soylent any time soon. It's a part of my routine, and something I miss if my routine is interrupted. 

Recipe - Schmilk Chocolate - "5 day" Batch

1 kg Oat Flour (Only Oats brand comes in 1 kg bags) 

60 g Cocoa powder

53 g Acacia Fibre

30 g Psyllium Husk powder

16 g Iodized Salt 

5.5 g Potassium Citrate 

5.5 g Choline Bitartrate 

2 g Stevia Powder 

1.5 g Xanthan Gum 

5 g (or 5 daily servings) Multivitamin (powder)

9500 ml Whole Milk

Recipe notes:

• Most ingredients can be found in health food stores, all can be found online. 
• Mix all dry ingredients ahead of time.
• Food scale required. 
• 12.6 g powdered mixture + 100 ml whole milk = 108 calories.
• Recommend mixing at least 1 hour before consuming for better consistency. 

Weight Loss

I think I've got this weight loss thing figured out.

In Montreal in 2011, I started writing a blog post called "Losing weight with common sense", because I was going to make all of these "sensible" changes to melt off the pounds, and hold myself accountable by blogging. Thankfully, I never hit the submit button, and those sensible changes - like eating an enormous plate of salmon and broccoli with a side of four beers and a half bag of chips for an evening snack - never paid off.

I've been overweight since my early teens. By World Health Organization standards, that means having a BMI of >25. In at least part of my high school years I was obese (>30 BMI - at 6'5" that's >114.7 kg or >253 lbs). I wasn't interested in sports, and I sure wasn't interested in moderation. I didn't particularly care, and I didn't have the understanding/knowledge to do anything differently.

In October 2014 I got a Fitbit One to use as a silent wake-up alarm, because Robyn couldn't stand my old alarm clock. Putting a step tracker in my pocket piqued some interest in weight management and I started occasionally tracking my weight for the heck of it. I clocked in at 113.4 kg; just a hair under "obese" on the BMI scale.

In November of that year, Robyn's dad passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. He was in his 50's, healthy and active. This was shocking. I started thinking - a lot - about the limited time we have on Planet Earth. I was 28; about half Paul's age.

By Spring of 2015 I had been fiddling with the Fitbit app, and mustering up inspiration to get serious about changing my habits, health and appearance. I had been reading posts in reddit's r/Fitness, r/loseit and r/fatlogic. r/fatlogic was actually the best inspiration - the subreddit showcases examples of anything that "deviates from the scientific facts of body weight management". It was a wake-up call to recognize some of those behaviours in myself (those small internal justifications I made before smashing a whole bag of Ruffles All-Dressed potato chips).

I learned that diet is the key to weight management, not exercise (although I do not dispute the value of exercise!). I learned about calories, got a food scale, and started counting.

I couldn't believe how effective it was. I plugged in a weight loss target into the MyFitnessPal app (0.5 kg/week) and it gave me a calorie allowance. By maintaining the discipline to weigh and count everything that went into my body (and estimating generously when nutritional info was unavailable), the weight disappeared at a perfectly consistent rate:

Weight loss target was 0.5 kg/week from April to December. Slowed down to 0.25 kg/week in December. Almost at my "maintenance weight" target of 85kg. 

RESULTS
Starting weight: 113.4 kg (250 lbs) - October 2014
Starting BMI: 29.6
Starting waist: 38-40"

Current weight: 85.7 kg (189 lbs) - Today
Current BMI: 22.4
Current waist: 34"

A couple tricks I used to stay motivated:

• Daily weigh-ins, but ignore daily fluctuations. This built a rich data set and let me see that the day-to-day doesn't matter so much as the week-to-week and month-to-month. It's about lifestyle changes, not daily changes. 
• Didn't give up up my love for snacks, just found different snacks. Tomato basil rice cakes smothered in hot sauce and beef jerky, mmm. 
• Log absolutely everything. Estimate high if unsure. 
• Try my best to avoid going over daily calorie limits. If I go over, it's not the end of the world. Just hit my limit the next day. 
• Ditched the calorie counting features in Fitbit for MyFitnessPal - a much better app and food database. 
• The key has really been education and understanding. I failed in 2011 because I thought motivation was enough to succeed. Success, at least for me, is dependent on knowledge, goal-setting, and data. 
• Because I have the knowledge, I feel I can maintain these habits indefinitely. It's not a quick fix, it's a lifestyle change. 

Next steps - turn 30 in April with a healthy BMI for the first time in over half of my life, maintain current weight around the 85kg mark, turn remaining fat stores into muscle starting this spring when I can get out and start running again. That's a blog post for another day! 

Feels good, man. 

Hawaii's Best Treat

Oh, hello there blog! Long time, no see.

I have largely ignored blog posting since we moved into our new house in January. It's really awesome, especially compared to our old place. I'll post about it some other time though.

Robyn and I just got back from a relaxing 10 days in Hawaii. We spent 8 nights on the Big Island - the one with the volcano:

Lava flow covering the road in Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii. 

There is an awesome, awesome treat that can be found in Hawaii's gas stations and grocery stores: the SPAM musubi.

Here's one from a grocery store. 

It's a fried piece of spam, surrounded in non-vinegared sushi rice, wrapped in nori (seaweed paper stuff). You may be raising an eyebrow right now, but it's extremely tasty! Think about it: salty ham flavour, rice for bulk, and nori for that "umami" savoury flavour.

Here's one I got at a farmer's market in Hilo, Hawaii with a piece of pineapple across the top:

If you are ever in Hawaii, I urge you to seek out this local treat and try it! If for no other reason to tell your friends you tried it. But I am pretty sure you'll like it!

One of these days I'm going to make some... so beware if you get an invitation over!

Cast Iron Cornbread

Yummmmmmmmmm:

Crunchy, buttery outside, sweet tasty inside!

My favourite new toy is the cast iron pan that Robyn and I got for our wedding. I made this recipe from foodnetwork.com after work today, and YUM, I will be making it again.

Cast iron pans = AWESOME.

Not Going Back to Non-Stick!

I recently posted about my roommate moving out, and how living alone kind of sucks.

One think that's FUN about roommates moving out is that both parties have to stock up on formerly-shared housewares. Actually, I guess this is only fun if you're financially able to stock up on housewares and you secretly love buying housewares. Hmm.

Anyway, I love housewares. In our apartment, I owned most of the pots, but my roommate owned most of the pans. Most of his pans had a Teflon non-stick coating, with the exception of one gigantic, brilliant, stainless steek wok.

After using that stainless steel wok, I am never going back to Teflon again.

My main beef with Teflon (and any other off-brand non-stick coatings) is not the remote health risks to humans and birds, rather, it's the fact that the coating is not permanent!! From pots to pans to George Foreman grills, everything with a Teflon coating is basically a ticking garbage time bomb waiting to find its way to the dump. My secondary beef with Teflon is that you have to worry about what utensils you use to stir and scrape, or risk accelerating the garbage time bomb.

It doesn't make sense to continue buying $30 Teflon-coated frying pans every 2-5 years. So when my roommate took his magnificent stainless wok away (along with his average Teflon pans) I bought two stainless frying pans and a wok from Home Outfitters for $170.

I'm not trying to say, "Ooooh, look at me, look at all the money I'm spending on pans." I'm just re-learning the same lesson I have to re-learn every few years: buy good quality and it will last a lifetime (see other post about my hunt for the perfect messenger bag). Good quality doesn't have to be TOO expensive. I spotted some pots and pans that cost upwards of $250 apiece - probably because it costs a lot of money to print Jamie Oliver's face on the packaging.

Awesome Beers

I tried these excellent beers when I was down in the states with Robyn last week. Maybe... MAYBE I only bought them because they had awesome names/bottles.

More posts to come soon! The olde bloge has been dormant for a few weeks but I have some content ideas knocking around in my head.

Huevos Motuleños

Robyn came to visit me in Montreal this past weekend (yay!) and we made the most labour-intensive, filling, delicious breakfast ever: Huevos Motuleños!

Robyn found the recipe here, and we modified it a bit by making our own cornmeal tortillas and refried black beans.

Take a gander (click for larger picture!):

The layers are, from bottom to top:

• Homemade cornmeal tortilla
• Re-fried black beans with sauteed mushrooms and onions
• Two fried eggs (almost invisible in this picture) 
• A reduction of pureed tomato, garlic and Serrano pepper (spicy!) 
• A mixture of cottage cheese and feta cheese (a substitute for queso fresco, which we couldn't find)
• Crumbled Italian sausage
• Avacado

SO GOOD! We made the tortillas and the black bean mixture the night before, because we knew it would take a while to prepare and assemble everything. 

Here's a bonus picture of me rolling out cornmeal tortillas with a bottle of scotch (I don't have a rolling pin)

Tasty Weekend Eats: Shredded Pork, Soup, Subs

This weekend I made some tasty food! 

On Saturday I cut up a pork shoulder into 1-inch cubes, threw it in a pot, covered it with water and brought it to a boil with a quartered onion, garlic, and cumin. After skimming the foam, I turned down the temperature and let it simmer for one hour. For shredded pork, you need to use the shoulder because nothing else has enough fat to stay tender during cooking. This is the result: 

After removing from the liquid and letting it cool, I pulled off the fatty bits and shredded it with my fingers, while I got my soup ready:

I added a big handful of the shredded pork to a soup I made with celery, carrots, onions, green onions and pasta: 

It turned out delicious! 

Tonight I took my leftover shredded pork, mixed in some BBQ sauce, ketchup, brown sugar, and some seasonings. I put the mixture into sub buns with some cheese and grilled them on my George Foreman grill: 

The sandwich was also delicious, and I made a second one for lunch tomorrow! Woo-hoo! 

Frozen Seared Steak

Robyn sent me a link to a new way of cooking steaks, promoted by molecular gastronomists - crazy chefs who come up with ingenious new ways of preparing food based on empirical observation and study, chemical reactions, and SCIENCE! It is these molecular gastronomists who have written the six-volume, 2,400 page set Modernist Cuisine,

This blog describes the frozen steak recipe and where it came from - a request for a few molecular gastronomy recipes that can be done at home with no special equipment.

Basically you sear one side of a frozen steak on a mega-hot frying pan, then immediately put the steak in the oven at 200*F for 30-60 minutes, until it's done to your preference.

Here's my attempt:

It turned out GREAT. So, so so delicious. The outside has an incredible seared taste/texture, but the inside is extremely tender and "buttery soft" as the Kitchen Konfidence blog describes. It was dead simple - no more complex than any other way of preparing steak.

Next time I will use a thicker cut of meat, then keep it in the oven for a bit longer. Everyone should try this method at least once, you'll be convinced!

Salmon Burgers - YUM!

I was in Saskatoon this weekend, and on Sunday night Robyn and I made salmon burgers!

They turned out AWESOME. And they were wickedly easy to make. We chopped about 650g of boneless, skinless salmon in a food processor, then mixed in (by hand) 1/4 cup chopped green onions, about 1/4 cup feta cheese (more would have been good), an egg, a cup of bread crumbs, a shot of lemon juice, and as much fresh dill as we could muster. Which was one package from the grocery store.

We formed patties and fried them in 1-2tbsp of olive oil in a pan for about 4 minutes per side. Also, I made "homemade tartar sauce****" which has four emphasis stars because really I just cut up pickles into tiny bits and mixed them into mayonnaise.

We found the recipe in Looneyspoons and it would have been way better if we had all of the ingredients (lemon zest, for one) BUT they were still amazing. Robyn made homemade buns (pictured) the day before so they were extra-awesome!

A very simple recipe: will make again!

The McDonald's Wet Chocolate Caulk Pie

Most mornings in Montreal I grab a medium coffee with two milks from the McDonald's in the mall below my office. Plain McDonald's coffee (not the fancy McCafe stuff - I haven't tried it) is actually pretty good. And cheap! And all the cups have an air insulation layer inside. And the lids don't suck, like Tim Hortons.

Anyway.

Recently McDonald's has introduced what - to me - looks like the most vile and disgusting product ever to hit the shelves: The Oreo Pie.

Each day when I order my coffee, I have to look at a menu like this (this is not the exact menu, just an image that showed up on Google):

(image source)

Maybe it's just me, but that picture is GROSS. Yeah yeah fast food is all gross etc, but come on - this is especially unpleasant to look at. The exterior cake looks overly moist while the cake near the frosting looks rock solid.

And the frosting... I can't look at it without thinking of this:

(source)

There you have it: The McDonald's Wet Chocolate Caulk Pie. Am I insane though? Does that picture look gross, or am I overreacting? I can tell you that the idea of an Oreo pie sounds great, in theory. It's just when I gaze upon the menu picture in the morning, I suppress the urge to gag.

---

Bonus: while searching for images for this blog, I found this insane cake recipe that combines ice cream sandwiches, Cool Whip, crushed Oreos and Jello chocolate pudding. Strangely, this homemade gargantuan calorie feast looks much more appetizing than McDonald's Wet Chocolate Caulk Pie.

Blog link: http://justuskuhns.blogspot.com/2012/01/oreo-fudge-ice-cream-cake-and-friday.html

A Fine Meat Sauce

For supper tonight - and for several of my lunches next week - I made a meat sauce using ground-up hot Italian sausage in my wok. It turned out awesome:

Ingredients: 1 package Bowtie pasta, 450g spicy Italian sausage broken (skins removed, broken apart while frying), one red pepper, one onion, green onions, 5 huge mushrooms, can of diced tomatoes, can of tomato paste, and a shot of balsamic vinegar for aroma and flavour. Seriously, balsamic vinegar is awesome in Italian meat sauces.

Turned out great, will make again!

Christmas Cookies 2011!

My family has a tradition of excellence in intensely decorating Christmas cookies every year. Click on the pictures to make them bigger and see what you can spot!

The Monopoly board is mine! Robyn made the dude playing in the ball pit.

Here's the aftermath of the table:

Best Pizza in Saskatoon - Il Secondo

Robyn and I grabbed lunch today at Il Secondo - a bakery just off Broadway Ave, across from the Bulk Cheese Warehouse. In a word - delicious!

Everything is made fresh and the pizzas are the classic Italian style, baked in a wood-fired oven. I can honestly say the crust was the most perfect crust I've ever had - lightly crunchy on the outside, soft and delicious on the inside.

I also had an excellent latte, and it was only $3.75 - pretty decent as far as latte prices go! It would be five bucks at Starbucks.

I think we'd both highly recommend Il Secondo to anyone who loves a great pizza! The only downside is that their evening hours are still limited (they are a bakery, after all). So be sure to go there for lunch sometime.

Crab Mac'n'Cheese

Robyn sent me this recipe for Lobster Macaroni and Cheese a while ago and I'd been itching to try it. I made my own version of it on Saturday night, substituting pre-cooked (but real) crab meat for the lobster, and cheddar cheese in place of the fancy cheeses I didn't have. Also, I used a breading mixture instead of panko bread crumbs, which I don't recommend doing (too salty).

Since the recipe was ridiculously rich to begin with, I added a handful of chopped-up bacon - I figured it couldn't hurt :-)

Overall, it turned out delicious, especially considering I improvised all of the measurements! There were a ton of flavours but none of them were too intimidating; they worked nicely together. And it makes awesome leftovers.

Next time, I'd track down the real fancy cheeses and see if I could find the panko-style bread crumbs. But I will make this again!

Au Pied Du Cochon

Yesterday night Robyn and I visited Au Pied Du Cochon, a restaurant by Quebec chef Martin Picard. In a word: incredible.

This place specializes in two things: fois gras and pork, done in a French cuisine style - very rich and heavy sauces on everything.

We started our meal with Foie Gras Cromesquis - tiny breaded deep-friend fois gras cubes! You place the whole thing in your mouth and it just melts. The flavour is incredible. And rich. So, so rich.

For the main course, we split two dishes: a "Happy Pork Chop" and a fois gras poutine. Both were insanely good.

We were sitting at the bar, which was right in front of the kitchen. It was a lot of fun to watch the staff prepare all of these fancy meals, including a full pig's head dish!

For dessert - a delicious apple turnover... these guys have an excellent dessert chef hiding in the back because this was absolutely decadent.

If you're an adventurous eater who can handle an extremely rich meal, definitely check this place out when you're in Montreal! There's nothing to compare it to - so excellent!!

Lemon Quinoa Chicken Salad

My Saskatoon roommate sent me this recipe for Lemon Quinoa Chicken Salad a while ago and he insisted I make and try it, because it was "delicious".

Well, roommate, checkmate. You were right. It was delicious.

The picture makes it look bland, likely because I omitted cilantro (because I'm one of these freaks). Also I bought sliced almonds and forgot to put them in, rage!!!

So, readers, I highly recommend you construct this food item for yourself!

Tim Hortons Food is Bland

Has anyone else noticed that Tim Hortons food is some of the most bland, boring, tasteless food available for purchase?

I was eating a Tim Hortons sandwich in an airport when I was flying between Montreal and Saskatoon a while ago. I was struck by how completely boring the sandwich was - crisp but flavourless lettuce, a tomato that seemed like it had once been frozen, and deli meat that could have been called ham, turkey, or beef and I wouldn't have known the difference.

It had mustard, but it was more of a paste-like yellow garnish than something that added any flavour sensations.

Even the donuts seem more bland than they used to. Is it my imagination? Is it real; a side effect of the massive reheaeted-from-frozen food supply chain that Tim Hortons has apparently become?

McDonalds, Burger King, and the rest of the fast food industry knows that sugar, fat, and salt taste good. If I can't detect any flavour in a Tim Hortons sandwich - if the act of eating Tim Hortons is equivalent to a chore where you have to move your mouth to force a bland mash of bread and assorted toppings into your body - does that mean it's healthy?

Food for thought. (ah ah ah!)