Okanagancook

Thank you all for your thoughts and ideas! We are a small village of around 2000 people except in the summer when we swell to around 5000. We are surrounded by vineyards and orchards. Penticton is a city of 45,000 and is a 15 minute drive away. We have a small grocery store for essentials and a couple of restaurants/pub. I don't think we are getting more families. We were scheduled to get 21 people but that got changed to 13 and I am not involved in this negotiation so don't know why but I think it is also the decision of the families as to where they want to settle. Apparently many are scared to leave the city and they certainly don't know Canada at all so they have no clue that the Okanagan is very desirable mainly due to it's lifestyle and climate. The families we are getting are apparently farmers but that's all I know at the moment. They have been given houses to live in for 6 months (free). So they have adequate cooking facilities and the stores in Penticton have pretty well every ingredient they will need including Halal meats! At this point I am not even sure what cooking facilities we will have for the welcome tea so I am thinking we just bring stuff for the table. I think the tea is just meant as a small welcome, low key affair. I have done research about their food and I even found a website that had a PDF of pantry items listed in English and Arabic which will be invaluable when helping them to shop. I don't know how much English they know. So, it's an adventure at this point. I will know more soon. I have some helpers so will run the idea of a mixed food table by them. Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this topic. We will have plenty of sugar out for the tea and coffee! I am thinking of taking my Jura coffee machine to the event and we can make beautiful shots of good coffee for them :-)) cheers

Our little village here in picturesque south okanagan, British Columbia has applied to help settle these despite people. We do not have confirmation just yet that we are allocated families. Canada is settling 25,000 refugees and they have all arrived in Canada. Our families are staying in hotels in the big city of Vancouver awaiting settlement allocations. Not a great situation. Anyways, I digress. I have been put in charge of organizing a welcome event for the 13 people who are HOPEFULLY within the week coming here . There will likely be the volunteers who have been working to get them here attending, so a total of 30 people. My question is what should we serve as a snack. I am thinking we have some sweets of the Canadian bent. Maybe some brownies, some cookies with nuts such our local walnuts, something light like an angle food cake with lemon frosting. Also thinking maybe some savoury items like home made pittas (I can make those) with hummus drizzled with olive oil, some olives, maybe some babba ganoush, cucumber and yogurt. Coffe, tea, and fruit juices. i would appreciate any comments regarding this. Apparently our settlers are from farming areas in Syria but that is all I know at this point.

Ramen. Never ate, never made it. David Chan's recipe, very involved but not a lot of active care. Delicious! Just added fresh noodles and shaved scallions so we could appreciate the amazing broth. Nine more portions in the freezer

And what are Padma's qualifications for being a judge?

liuzhou, most of the Lorne sausage recipes I found on the net were all heavily spiced with the three spices: black pepper, nutmeg and coriander. The main difference amongst the recipes was: the amount of bread crumbs and ground pork versus pork sausage meat. I went with the sausage meat because the fresh ground beef I got from the butcher was lean. Thanksforthecrepes, I thought the same thing about the nutmeg but it was fine. You could detect it was there but the other two spices complemented. I cooked up a patty for my DH this am (I am still dieting so grapefruit for me!) and he thought it tasted better after an overnight rest. So if you make your own sausage do rest the meat before packaging and freezing. I thought it looked a little dry and the bread crumbs I used were quite fine so absorbed a lot of the water that was added. Next time I will add another 1/4 cup of water for sure. The mould is supposed to be 10 x 4 x 3 inches and you press the meat into the mould. If it was any thicker it would be hard to slice off the 1 cm slices and putting it in the freezer is a must which much knife blade wiping between slices. I'm glad you are going make your own sausage. Dead easy, really and the product is so much better. Definitely cook up a tester to see if you have your spicing/salt the way you like it. I haven't heard from my friend yet as to what she thought of them. Cheers.

Thanks Tere. Here is a picture of the loaf being sliced .

Yesterday at the pub I had a discussion with a Scottish friend who told me about 'Scottish Sausages'. I had not heard of them before and she raved about how good they were. In fact so good one of her cousins brought some from Scotland to Canada when he was visiting. So, I decided I had to try making some. Looked up various recipes on the internet and settled on this one: 1 lb ground beef 1 lb pork sausage meat 2 cups fine bread crumbs 1/2 cup ice water 2.5 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons each nutmeg and black pepper 1 tablespoon coriander (all spices were freshly ground) The batch was mixed with the paddle attachment on my Kitchen Aid as we do when we make our other sausages. I pressed the meat into a terrine mould and it is in the freezer for 1.5 hours to firm up so I can slice it into 1 cm slices. I cooked up a couple of patties before moulding and they taste pretty good. You can definitely detect the bread crumbs. From what I have read, this is how they are supposed to be. Any Scots out there want to comment on the recipe and ultimate taste of these 'Scottish Sausages'. I will take a few patties over to my friend once I have sliced and packaged them. cheers

An AK with the calamari! Doesn't get any better than that. The other dishes look very nice and freshly made. Sure wish we had a good Thai restaurant around here.

This sounds familiar....my advice, STAY AWAY from the InstantPot thread I have to admit though, I do love my little oven.

I think I use EYB everyday! It makes accessing recipes in magazines easy. i try to post notes on the recipes I make and I always check the note section before making a recipe. I also like the news items they put together each week. i got in at the very beginning with a lifetime membership for $50. Best $50 I ever spent

All great ideas. The thing about using the waffle maker is that you are making a signature item that customers will remember. 'Have you had the waffle sandwiches at .....' you can make crispy potato cakes with the waffle maker, needs some experimentation but you could have the potatoes ready for heating and crispening in the waffle makers. You could put various spices in them and/or serve with different sauces. good luck and do let us know how things turn out.

My mother used to make cabbage and carrots endlessly! However, and unfortunately they never looked anything like yours Anna.

Your waffle iron could be used for all kinds of creative salty goodies. Take a look at this: https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/behind-the-scenes-waffle-iron-frenzy

I uncovered my garlic which is about eight inches tall. (It was covered with leaves and burlap.) Planted my peas and some salad greens. Then came inside and checked the weather, bloody hell, it's going to -6 C tonight. I will be covering the garlic I guess.

I am dieting, for the 7 th week and my dinners or not noteworthy, at all, sheesh. One day soon I shall have something to post. in the mean time I am soooo impressed with everyone's dinners which are swoon worthy .

Glad you enjoyed seeing the process. The four outlets are on springs. You push the empty bottle's neck up with the outlet inside and that opens the spring strung outlet and wine shoots into the bottle. The bottle bottom wedges on the lower shelf which is adjustable for different sizes of bottles. The bottle on the far right was put on first and is full which stops the flow of wine. Then you just tilt the full bottle off the shelf and that's it. Pretty cool really. It's Italian made from high quality stainless steel. We put a pump from the main tank to the bottle filler tank and pumped in more wine as needed. Really easy to clean and we did almost 20 cases in 1 1/2 hours. There was one glitch. I turned the pump on to fill the bottler tanks and the hose wasn't secure so I showered our friend with Pino Gris for about a bottle's worth before I could point it back into the tank

Absolutely PB, looks delicious.

Well, it's a wrap. The wine was bottled yesterday. The Pino Gris was very, very dry so we added a little sugar to balance it out and that really helped. Probably the best we've made. The Merlot is also excellent but needs a couple of years in the bottle. Pictures are of the bottles being washed with metabisulphate to kill any bacteria; then the wine is pumped from the tank into our slick little bottling machine which fills four bottles at a time; Then the screw caps which are swimming in the metabisulphate are applied. We did use cork for a couple of cases. 11 cases of Pino Gris and 9.5 cases of Merlot. Next up is pruning the canes from last year and wait for bud break. The feeling around the valley is that this year will be very busy due to our low Canadian dollar. Our American friends can enjoy excellent wine & hospitality at basically almost 50% off. As well, Canadians will think of staying in Canada and travelling to this area which is so beautiful with lots of activities for everyone. "Come on down! "

I want some of that yummy looking bread!

Lovely, which reminds me I have frozen grated zucchini in the freezer. AND I have some commercial smoked trout. I can see something good for breakfast tomorrow. By the way, looks like you got a nice crispy crust on those zcakes.

Let's see, junior high I think so 1965'ish. She Loves You Yeah, Yeah.........

Beef shanks cooked at 144F for 48 hours after being seared and packaged with oil. We like beef short ribs we like done this way thought this would work well with the connective tissue in the shanks. They turned out a little firmer because I think there is more connective tissue and not as much fat. I then made a sauce for them and let them simmer in it for about 15 minutes. I should have done a bag with the sauce and a raw shank for comparison.

Not homemade shrimp chips but an easy way to prepare these delicious chips....microwave. I broke them in half and microwaved on full power (1250 watt machine) for 25 seconds. The picture below shows them starting puff from the middle in the microwave. No fat and tasting almost as good as making them in oil. I figure around 65 kcal per half chip.

That's the first thing we made in Home Economics way, way back in the day when there was such a thing as Home Ec. The boys were in 'Shop Class'. Cheese Dreams is what they were called. Yours are stupendous! And, ps, sorry about your cold weather. :-)

Welcome Bakerchic, from one dietitian to another, all be in a retired one! You will have a great deal of learning to do as you read through the various threads. Members here are very friendly and there is a real sense of online community here. just jump in and start participating.