Strawberries and Whipping Cream

Strawberries and cream. Cream and strawberries. Whipping cream and strawberries.

Any way you say it it just sounds delicious. The sweet tanginess of the strawberries with the pure sugar of the whipping cream. It’s so good! Strawberries and whipping cream can be served as a supremely succulent and sweet snack, or as a delicious semi-healthy snack. If anyone objects you can always say that they whipping cream helps the vitamins in the strawberries go down. 🙂 So go on and eat your strawberries and whipping cream with your head held high and a smile on your face. You deserve it! 🙂

Bagel with Ham and Poached Eggs on Top

A big day is ahead of you. You know that it’s going to be a long haul, so you know you need a stellar breakfast to keep your energy up. Crack open an egg, get yourself some ham and toast yourself a bagel. Voila, just like that, you have a protein-filled-energy-packed-delicious breakfast.

Of course, it takes a little more effort than that. After toasting the bagel you should poach the egg. To poach an egg you first bring some water in a pan to a simmer. Then you crack the egg into the pan; bast it (pour the water with a spoon in the pan over top of the egg) until your egg is cooked to your preferred taste.

As for the ham you can just use deli ham, but this will surely taste better if you used ham that you yourself cooked. This is a good recipe to get rid of some Easter ham leftovers, if you made a ham for Easter. Thanks for reading!

The finished ensemble 🙂

Oranges

As you bite into an orange, a pleasant citrus explosion happens inside your mouth. This fruit is one of the juiciest fruits around. It is also a very sweet fruit so most kids like it. Oranges come in a variety of sizes and kinds; from blood oranges to clementines to mandarins. Every type of orange has its own unique flavour and look.

So the next time that you need a snack, grab an orange and enjoy its fruity sensation in your mouth. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

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Tea Review: Fantasy Island

I have to admit, I didn’t think I was going to like Fantasy Island from DavidsTea; it reeks overpoweringly of coconut, which I despise. As a result, I wasn’t all that thrilled when I was offered 50 grams of it by a friend who bought it before realising that she hated it. I brought it home, and, to quote the label, “(I) let the organic black leaves unfurl, the coconut swirl and the heady scent of raspberry sweep (me) away…” And sweep me away it did. It’s surprisingly refreshing with just a hint of coconut; the predominant flavour is the raspberry. I have my doubts about the health benefits of this particular tea, as coconut is said to contain a terrific amount of fat, but I actually couldn’t care less. My only real issue is the exceptionally deceiving description: the “fabulous admirer whispering in (my) ear” still hasn’t materialised, but I think I’ll hold off the lawsuit since it’s just absolutely delicious.

Homemade Pizza

Pizza is the best dish that the Italians created, in my opinion. It’s one of those dishes that can be totally personalized. Even if you order it from a local pizzeria you can get virtually any kind. Vegetarian, pepperoni, meat lover’s…you ask for it and the pizzaria probably has it. Even if they don’t have they could probably morph one of their pizzas into what you want. That’s just how universal pizza is. Everybody loves it. I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t at least like cheese pizza.

As pizza has the potential to be an amazing dish, you’d better hope that you know a good pizzeria in town. If you don’t want to take the chance to go out and find your own pizzeria, then why not learn how to make your own? As with any good pizza, the secret to an amazing pizza is the dough. If done properly, it’ll have pockets of air that will puff up when the pizza is baking. The dough will probably look a little funny in the end, but it’s the flavour that really matters. I guarantee that you’ll not only (hopefully!) enjoy the results from making your own pizza, but you’ll also love the process. It truly is a good deal of fun trying to make our dough round.

It's not completely round, but at least it's oval-y!

The trick with making your dough as around as possible, with as little holes as well, is to use your knuckles to knead around the edges of the dough. The center of the dough is going to naturally have the most dough. You don’t want to mess with that, so all you have to do is patiently “circle” the dough repetitiously until the dough is at your preferred size.

If your dough doesn’t cooperate with you, don’t continue to knead!

Let the gluten rest for about a minute. During that minute or so, the gluten will magically “heal” itself. When you pick the dough up again it’ll be once again at your command.

After you’ve made the dough, it’s time to slather your pizza with some sauce and to slap on the toppings. Honestly, this is the best part. You’re going to be making a pizza completely to your taste. If you’re buddy really wants olives on the pizza, but you hate olives, you don’t need to suck it up and take one for the team. You can forego the olives, and instead slap on some carmalized onions. Or some sauteed mushrooms. Or maybe some sliced tomatoes. What shall you choose?

Really, the hardest part about homemade pizza is the dough. Other than it being rather difficult to stretch out, it also needs to rise for 4 hours. So you really need to be home all day for this recipe to work. The good thing is that with this particular recipe, the dough can freeze. So if you make a double batch, then you have pizza for the next while. 🙂

Finished masterpieces

Credit to my mom for actually making the dough 🙂 I just shaped it (with her help) and added the toppings. If you’d like the recipe for this amazingly tasty dough then go to this link:

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/pizza-dough.aspx

 

Jumbo Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the words of my mother, these cookies are warm deliciousness. Yet another family recipe, this recipe came from one of my mother’s friends. These cookies are absolutely delectable, and leave you reaching for another one to keep the flavour in your mouth. They’re really quite tasty.

The recipe is pretty straight forward. They don’t really need to be jumbo though; as long as you adjust the timing accordingly you can really make any size of cookie that you’d like. Hope you like ’em!

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 2 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 1 cup raisins

Instructions

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cream the butter and sugar. Bet in the eggs and the vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add them to the sugar/egg mix. Mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips and the raisins. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Green Seduction

This tea is the best tea for calming down. If you’re ever feeling frazzled, just grab a mug of this tranquil blend. There’s just something about this mixture of Organic Green Tea, organic black tea, organic green rooibos, organic rosehips and organic strawberries that calms the soul.

You can buy 50g of this Kosher tea for $7.00 at:

http://www.davidstea.com/green-tea-1/flavoured-green/green-seduction

So go calm yourself down and drink some of this yummy tea!

DavidsTea

Since this particular store is mentioned often in the posts written here, I figured it might be a good idea to actually write a post about this phenomenal store. DavidsTea is a specialty tea store. It has about 140 different kinds of tea; everything from your most basic black tea to your green tea from the Himalayan mountains.

DavidsTea was started in 2008 by David Segal. David wanted to know why North Americans think of tea as a boring drink, when in reality it can be a very sassy and flavourful drink. He didn’t see any reason why tea couldn’t be popular in North America since tea was already to popular in other countries around the world. So David decided to open up shop in Toronto on Queen Street. And from there the tea revolution began.

Davids Tea has tons of different teas (as mentioned before) all with extremely unique names. You honestly can’t find teas with these names anywhere else. I mean really, it’d be pretty hard to find another tea out there with the name Chocolate Rocket. Or Cocoamama lime. It’s just not gonna happen. They also have collections, like the spring collection, the wellness collection and the wine tea collection.

Davids Tea also has a certain atmosphere about it. When you walk in the door, it’s almost as if you can feel the relaxed vibes coming from the sales people. All of them (at least at the store that I go to) have smiles on their faces as you walk in the door. So when they offer you a taste of their tea of the day, you just can’t resist taking a sip. Tea shopping truly is an experience that can’t and won’t be rushed.

If you’d like to learn more about DavidsTea, buy some tea or find a store near you, just go to http://www.davidstea.com/

I highly recommend going in and giving them a shot. They’re amazing!

Thanks for reading!

Gingerbread

My great-grandmother (Nanny), as I’m told, baked an amazing gingerbread. My mom has been baking this gingerbread for years. I’ve only baked it once, but I’m told that it tasted pretty good. So as you can see this recipe has been passed down throughout the generations. It’s just that good.

Cakey Gingerbread Goodness

This gingerbread is sweet and more cakey than bready. For that reason I usually have this for dessert, but it can also be eaten has a snack. It’s quite delicious! This recipe is very easy, so I don’t have very many tips. The only thing that really has to be taken note of is this: if using a glass dish to cook this in, then Id only cook it for 22 minutes. If need be to bake it more, then only bake it for a minute until it’s done. Other than that though the recipe speaks for itself!

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/2 white sugar
• 1 1/2 flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup boiling water

Instructions

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees fahrenheit. Cream the shortening and the white sugar. Mix in the molasses and an egg. In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients. Once well combined, mix the dry ingredients in to the wet ingredients. Finally, add the boiling water and mix well. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Peanut Butter Cookies

This peanut butter cookie recipe is a family recipe. I don’t really know who in my family this recipe belongs to, but I do know that it tastes delicious. These cookies are moist, and oh so delightful. They really are. Perfect for a rainy day with a cup of tea.

Peanut Butter Goodness

The trick with these cookies is for them to cook for no more then 10 minutes. You could maybe get away with 11 or 12 minutes, but whenever I’ve done them at that length of time the edges always turn out crispy. I usually roll about 2 tablespoons of dough per ball/cookies, but I’m positive that you can make them larger or smaller, depending on what you like. A jumbo peanut butter cookie really isn’t too bad an idea when I think about it…

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup shortening
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup peanut butter

Instructions

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees fahrenheit. Cream the brown and white sugar with the shortening. Add the beaten eggs and the vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients. Then combine the wet and the dry ingredients. When they’re well combined, add the peanut butter.

When everything has been thoroughly mixed, roll and press the dough onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. And then voila! You have yourself some pretty darn good cookies. 🙂