Recipe #9: Green Vegetable Curry

So again its been a little while since my last post and now Ms. Boyardi told me I wasn't allowed to eat any more of her cooking until I wrote a blog….and here we are. She knows how to motivate me. One of the maybe 20 fans of the blog gave us an idea to have a rating system for each recipe. I discussed this with Ms. Boyardi and obviously…she chose garlic cloves as a means of rating the recipes. The more garlic cloves out of 10, the better. Feel free to go back on all the recipes and look at how each of us rated them. Ms. Boyardi may just be the most intense food critic out there.

As for this recipe, I am a sucker for curry, anything with curry in it, I am a fan of. Thai and indian food have to be some of my favs and for me this one was great. For Ms. Boyardi on the other hand, this recipe rivalled that of the infamous potato gallette that nearly cost the Boyardi family an oven and three pans.  The recipe is simple, shitake mushrooms, green beans, red bell pepper and baby bok choy in a green curry sauce over rice topped with fresh basil.

We cooked up all of the vegetables, started cooking the rice and then finally added the coconut green curry sauce.  To be fair, the recipe calls for green curry paste and coconut milk, but we couldn't find paste at the grocery store and settled for a pre-made sauce, that may be why Ms. Boyardi disliked it.
She compared the taste to "toothpaste and cleaner"  ( she's apparently tried that mixture before I guess) and apparently immediately gave her " the mouth waters" when she took a bite. I only get the "mouth waters" when shooting Jack Daniels ( or any alcohol some would say), and it means A. I'm going to soon puke,  and or B. I'm going to swallow an obscene amount of times and look retarded for 10-15 minutes. This green vegetable curry apparently had the same affect on Ms. Boyardi which meant I got the leftovers for my lunch the next day. I assure you, it tastes just fine.

Rating:

Ms. B: 0.5/10 " Pretty much inedible"
J:  6.5 10 " Delish"

Recipe #8: Thirty Clove Garlic Soup

Annnnnnnd we're back. There was a couple weeks hiatus with no blog posts as both Ms. Boyardee's and I's computer went on the fritz....probably TOO many views in this blog...that's gotta be it. Now I am attempting to write this blog on my tablet, and I feel like I'm back on dial-up internet but as Ms. Boyardee reported the fans cannot wait any longer.

This recipe was entirely if my own doing, meaning Ms. Boyardee wasn't even there, and I survived it for the most part. Garlic is one ingredient that in my mind can make any recipe better. When the recipe calls for no garlic, its a safe bet Ms. Boyardee will only put about a full clove or two, just to be sure. Annually she probably consumes enough garlic to warn off Dracula, and all of team Edward ( he's the vampire one, I looked it up). Little did I know, garlic has natural immunity boosting powers and, if consumed in the quantities that Ms. Boyardee cooks with, can be a natural laxative and/or gas producer. Fun stuff for someone who never regularly consumed  garlic and was meeting the Boyardee family for one of the first times. I remember we made a similar recipe to this one, and like clockwork, gas started building up until the point I thought we'd have a Hindenburg-like explosion. I politely excused myself, let one go in the washroom and decided at that point...it was time to go. I made up an excuse of late night hockey, and left before I fumigated the place. I was Mario Andretti all the way home.

Over the years with Ms. Boyardee I have built up somewhat of a garlic tolerance and in true Ms. Boyardee fashion, I decided to up the stakes on the garlic quota. The recipe called for two heads of garlic, I added the two heads of garlic, and raised two ELEPHANT garlic heads. Elephant garlic heads are about the size of a big grapefruit and each clove can be the size of a lemon, I added a picture just so you can visualize how stupid I was in adding this much garlic to one dish.

The recipe itself is easy as pie. Actually its easier than pie, pie is hard to make. All you have to do is boil the insane amount of garlic with some potatoes, add pepper and olive oil, and puree it. Then you add copious amounts of Parmesan cheese to it with some bread and it's absolutely delicious.  What you don't want to do. is add that much garlic and then it eat, for 2-3 days in a row for lunch at work. Every step I took I almost farted and would DEFINITELY get fired for the resultant fumes. Proceed with caution. 

Ms. Boyardee also tried the soup and confirmed my original hypothesis. The taste however is worth it and the picture, is Ms. Boyardee-esque if I do say so myself.

Rating:

Ms. B: 4/10 ( I think this would be lower if she wasn't trying to spare my feelings)
J: 6.5/10 -1( for the ensuing flatulence) = 5.5/10

Playoffs and Recipe #6 & #7- White Cheddar Corn Chowder & Wild Mushroom and Garlic Bruschetta

We are now over the 1,000 view mark for Transformeation and I am convinced that more than just Ms. Boyardee and my mom are fans at this point. The website even indicates that people from Russia, South Korea and Ukraine have unfortunately ( and probably drunkenly) stumbled upon my little blog and most likely immediately clicked onto the back button.... but MAYBE juuuuust MAYBE they are now vegetarians completely and solely thanks to this blog. A guy can hope.

This post is going to include yet another very embarrassing story and then an absolutely delicious couple of recipes that, in my opinion, have been the best yet.

Playoffs- I don't know what it is about these embarrassing moments that have happened since starting the blog, but according to Ms. Boyardee, I needed to blog this event despite feeling like a complete idiot. Playoffs are my favourite time of year. They are an excuse to not shave and then drink beer on pretty much every night of the week. Our team had gone pretty much unbeaten during the season and now, it came down to the final game. This league is the beer league of all beer leagues because the winner of the playoffs actually gets a full keg of beer...and I was thirsty. I play defense and had racked up a lot of blocked shots in the post-season, which left my body black and blue. My equipment is more tape then actual material and I think that may have contributed to the debilitating  injury I'm about to describe.

It was about halfway through the second period ( there's only two periods in beer league)  and the puck squeezed out into the slot. My brother is the goalie and I had almost zero confidence that he would make the stop so I stupidly slide over and blocked a slap shot from about 4 feet away...right....in the..groin area. Groin area is the term I used to tell my bosses the next day why I wasn't coming into work. The correct anatomical term would be, head of the penis.

Immediately the ref blew the play dead, and I was yelling out for an ambulance but only a small majority of people thought that would be necessary for a bruised penis. While yelling,  I made my way to the bench and immediately into the dressing room, where I took off my helmet (hindsight 20/20, this was a mistake). I then mentally prepared myself for what I thought would be a scene under my jock reminiscent of a Saw movie. It wasn't to that extent, but it did not look good. My father, who comes to the momentous games, came into the dressing room as I was examining the damage. I remember going into shock, and feeling dizzy but insisting I had to pee what I thought would be 97% blood. The next thing I remember is my dad dragging me across the room, penis out, as I had passed out...fallen...bit through my tongue and hit my head on the ground. That's right, I got hit the penis so hard I passed out. All the guys reading this (which I'm assuming is maybe one), just cringed a little. The aftermath, once I had iced the area, was to figure out how to drink a beer without letting it touch my swollen tongue, and finding the correct wording to tell Ms. Boyardee we would have to adopt. All is well now and I have two weeks off before my next game, I'm going to invest in a goalie jock.

Onto the recipes:
White Cheddar Corn Chowder: This recipe tastes even better than it sounds. Sweet corn? Yes please. White Cheddar? Never better. But combined...unbelievable tasting recipe. Ms. Boyardee insisted I participate more in this recipe as she thinks I make myself sound incompetent on the blog. I love how she believes I'm not incompetent. I cut garlic ( the recipe didn't call for garlic so of course Ms. Boyardee added 3 cloves), the potatoes, and celery, smashed the spices ( smashed is the proper culinary term I think), and even shucked the corn. Shuck is a very weird term with obvious possible innuendos that I may now take advantage of.  Usually I shuck very fast to get the job done as quickly as possible. Shucking usually leaves a huge mess everywhere, but this time I cleaned up as I shucked. I chose to shuck slowly, and really enjoy the shucking, and I think it really came out in this recipe. OK, now more shucking jokes. This recipe is basically a combination of potatoes, celery, onions, milk and spices and then at the last second you add the sweet corn. You then puree only a portion of the chowder so that it is still chunky. You top it with an unhealthy amount of white cheddar and pepper and it is UNREAL.

The picture was a tough one to reproduce. We didn't have any yellow napkins, so I convinced Ms. Boyardee that white was OK. Then came the wooden pepper shaker in the picture, which we don't own. Ms. Boyardee ALMOST got me to break out my widdling kit and fashion one from a stump in the backyard but instead, we used a paper representation. There was again, a need for a hand model, I obliged.

Rating:

Ms.B: 4/10 "you don't need a comment every time Joel"
J: 7/10 " A must try" (Very food critic-y)


Wild Mushroom and Garlic Bruschetta- I am a sucker for bruschetta and this book gives a recipes for a delicious original  bruschetta and then SIX alternatives. I'm thinking bruschetta party. This one is really simple. Toast some baguette, cook up a melange ( yeah I said melange) of mushroom types, add garlic, add thyme, and your left with a delicious appetizer. We chose cremini mushrooms and oyster mushrooms for the recipe. We chose oyster mushrooms for the recipe instead of recommended enoki mushrooms because A) the grocery store was out of enoki mushrooms and B) enoki mushrooms look like small penises and I was still having some PTSD from the above playoff event. All you do is cook down the mushrooms with a little garlic. Meanwhile we toasted the baguette slices. They were a little "well-done" and Ms. Boyardee almost threw out our oven. She did manage to save them with a little scraping and my convincing that crispier was better. You then rub raw garlic on the toasted baguette pieces and put all the cooked mushrooms on top. The last piece is a couple leaves of thyme on each one and the time really adds the needed kick to them. Unfortunately, we needed maybe 20 tiny leaves of thyme but still needed to purchase a whole bush worth because that's the only way they're available.  Either way a definite easy recipe that's worth a try.

Both recipes were SLAM DUNKs in my mind. In a couple weeks, Ms. Boyardee will be going to New Orleans ( pronounced Naw-lins) and I've deiced to try a recipe on my own. If there's no blog afterwards it's probably because I have failed and burnt my house down. Wish me luck.

Rating:

Ms. B: 7/10 You know it's gotta be good if she rates it that high!
J: 8/10 Better than normal bruschetta…ya I said it

The Yoga Incident & Recipe #5- Spiced Tofu with Wilted Spinach and Yogurt

I'm going to start with the recipe and then get to a pretty embarrassing event that recently occurred.
Spiced Tofu with Wilted Spinach and Yogurt- The book says this is a play on Sang Paneer which is a classical Indian dish. The only difference with this recipe is that it exchanges cheese, which is found in the traditional dish, for tofu. I'm not completely sold on the trade off. Tofu is growing on me but I need it cut small and cooked well-done for it to be more palatable. Ms. Boyardee knows how I like it so I was good to go. I'm a sucker for spicy things, and even more of a sucker for spicy things on top of rice. Ms. Boyardee surprised me and had already started this before I got home from work. I came home to onions and garlic roasting away (a smell I may bottle and sell as cologne) and asked what I could do to help. My job, to smash tiny little seeds and spices with a mallet. Cooking is fun AND destructive. You basically cook onions, garlic and tofu, then add all the spices, then wilt spinach ( about 2 lbs) into it, then add Greek yogurt. I wasn't sold on the yogurt at first but after trying it it gave a balance to the spiciness ( pretty much a food critic comment, lets pretend I know what I'm talking about). And yet again Ms. Boyardee made a delicious meal and had a presentation that is doppelganger worthy. Notice me holding the book in the top left. Ms. Boyardee will have a career with food photography and I may move into hand modeling.

Rating:
Ms. B: 9.5/10 She wanted a ten but I told her that's impossible
J: 6.5/10 Yum

The Yoga Incident-So I have been going strong with the old vegetarian efforts. Stifling my stomach at the three pounds of bacon that was made while camping a couple weeks ago, and sticking to a liquid diet when I'm out for beer and wings. Which is just beer, gotta make sacrifices right? So when Ms. Boyardee asked me if I wanted to go to hot yoga with her, her new favourite pass time, I figured it could only add to the healthy streak I'm on and I could probably sweat out a beer or two while I was at it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with yoga, it is defined as a discipline, which includes breath control, simple meditation, and adoption of specific bodily postures, used for health and relaxation. My current understanding of the class, after taking it, is that it's goal is to humiliate the inflexible. I literally cannot sit on the ground without supporting myself with my hands, I'm that inflexible. Relaxation? Impossible. HOT Yoga is humiliating the inflexible in 30 degree weather and 99.9% humidity. I was sweating in the change room. When we finally got in, Ms. Boyardee instructed me to place my mat down and grab some large wooden brick like things. She then instructed me to take my shirt off because " all the guys do it". Big mistake.

I started off pretty well, breathing deeply, relaxing.....then the class started. Ninety seconds into it my mat was wet and I was dripping sweat everywhere. I felt bad for the person who was renting the mat after me as I assumed no amount of soap could get rid of it.. Three pulled groins later I was attempting a position, which I know can only be called "The Human Pretzel". The instructor stated that if It was difficult to have your elbows on the ground, you can place on block underneath to make it easier for you. Ms. Boyardee did not require blocks. Meanwhile I stole hers and had a Lego fortress built under my arms.  Then came an easy stretch. Lie flat on your back, and bring your knees towards your stomach. Sounds easy enough. All of a sudden, a large LOUD, fart noise comes from underneath my back. The sweat, and mat, in conjunction with my NAKED back's apparent physiological predisposition for making fart noises led to what sounded like a loose rectum to EVERYONE in the class...including Ms. Boyardee. We had to do the stretch three times, I refrained.

Ms. Boyardee turned to me and said " did you hear that?" and I immediately responded with "It was the mat!" and she burst out laughing, I don't think she believed me. The class ended and I spent five minutes trying to convince her that it was my naked back and the mat, which led to her screaming out as the rest of the class walked by " It's OK, everybody farts".

I had to prove myself. When we got home, I took off my shirt, performed the dreaded stretch move, and alas, the back fart emerged once again. However, Ms. Boyardee immediately thought I was ACTUALLY FARTING.....AGAIN. Finally after backfarting like 20 times in a row did she agree that it was my naked back and not a case of flatulence. I have another class tomorrow, I think I'll keep my shirt on.

Recipe #4-Pasta with Beets and Ricotta & Avocado, Beet, and Orange Salad

Sorry I have been MIA the past couple of days despite us completing TWO recipes at once. I was busy formulating a letter to send to the makers of the pan that Ms. Boyardee hated last recipe, demanding they go out of business. At her request of course.

Beets, Beets, and more Beets. I've already shared with my readers my new fondness for these maroon delights and the subsequent stool surprises that await each ingestion-er. As I write this, Ms. Boyardee is peeling more beets and reported we were "beet obsessed". Something Dr. Dre and I have in common I suppose. Anyways, Ms. Boyardee found these two recipes and I was immediately hooked because of my favourite main ingredient.

Pasta with Beets and Ricotta- The picture makes this recipe look a lot harder than it is. The most time consuming part would be roasting the beets and Ms. Boyardee already had that done by the time I got home from work. So I threw on some Frank Sinatra, poured some wine and got started cooking. By got started I mean, asked Ms. Boyardee what the hell she wants me to do. Sous chef I think is the proper term for Ms. Boyardee's  lackey. Good looking lackey, that sounds better. Ms. Boyardee got her food processor out, and made the beets into a pulp mixture and added oil, salt, pepper, sun-dried tomato and cayenne pepper flakes. My incredibly tough job was to toast some walnuts, and by god they were pretty toasted when she called for them to be thrown into the processor. We then just make a basic pasta and stir it around into the mixture and the pasta takes the colour of the beet mixture. We added a scoop of ricotta on top and some red pepper flakes for purposes of the picture, which is EXACTLY like the photo in the book. No, it's better than the photo in the book. Martha Stewart should be knocking on our door shortly with photography offers I'm assuming.

The recipe was really delicious, and in my very humble opinion, the toasted walnuts added that little extra something that was needed. If Ms. Boyardee and I had one criticism it would have been to use goat cheese instead of ricotta, then again we have been known for our biases towards the goat.

Rating:

Ms. B: 5/10
J:5/10

Avocado, Beet, and Orange Salad- I'm a huge sandwich guy, and one of the things that I miss is making sandwiches. The process is just as rewarding as the first bite. I no longer use meat now though so avocado has taken on that role and I can put a whole avocado on one sandwich. I'm kind of a big fan. So a salad with beets AND avocado, easy sale. Lackey's job was to toast homemade croutons and toast sunflower seeds (I see a pattern emerging). Both were a success so I may have to ask for a raise. She pays me in beer.  We added the beets, avocado, orange, spinach, croutons, more beets, sunflowers seeds and did I mention the beets and a homemade dressing. Ms. Boyardee went a little (a lot) overboard with the picture and tried to get the plate perfect, down to the beet juice and sunflower seeds as you can see below.

Rating:

Ms. B: 4/10
J: 5.5/10

Recipe #3- Potato and Leek Galette with Watercress

And we're back! I haven't had a post in a week or two, and came back only to find 371 views! I think Ms. Boyardee must just sit at work and hit refresh to make me feel good, either way it's working. Now onto the recipe.

I didn't know what a Galette was but looking at the instructions 'galette' seems to be a high class name for some delicious hash browns.  We were at the Boyardee mansion and wanted something to pair with some corn and salad and figured this would be nice, easy and completely stress free. Oh if this were only true.

Ms. Boyardee is a GREAT cook, and I mean great, but in those instances where something goes wrong, or is just a tinsy bit off, she gets a little ( and by little I mean gigantically) upset. Some examples include the homicidal spree I had to stop in Europe when the pancakes they served didn't come with maple syrup, or when we made "lava" cakes that had no "lava" in them and I had dialed 9-1 into my phone and had my finger poised over the 1 button for some time. Needless to say this does not happen often but when it does, I try and make light of it, or I overwhelm her with chocolate products until she is happy again.

This recipe started out great, Ms. Boyardee had skinned the potatoes and cut the leeks and it was my important job to grate the potatoes. I did an absolutely grate job ( Ha) grating the potatoes and only managed to get a couple skin cells in the mix. We then added the spices and flour with the potato and leeks and mixed them all around.

Then it was cooking time, with Ms. Boyardee at the helm with two huge skillets on the oven. I started forming little balls of the mixture and gave them to Ms. Boyardee to put on the pans. The directions state to "cook until golden on bottom, about 6 minutes". This is when things go a little south. Some of the galettes were cooking faster than others, some were crispy and all were not even close to as round as the picture ( I blame it on my ball making skills). At one point Ms. Boyardee blamed one of the skillets for the uneven cooking and demanded it be thrown out ( I just put it to the side) We then took the best looking galette out and had to substitute some mixed greens for the watercress. I knew something was amiss when Ms. Boyardee told me to make the galette for our picture as she knew my artistic skills max out at stick figures (as you can see from the photo below).

It was missing a little something, some sort of sauce, so Ms. Boyardee told me to "work my magic" on a sauce. Clue number two that she hated this recipe because my "magic" is muggle-ish compared to the Harry Potter that is Ms. Boyardee. I whipped up some greek yogurt, chives, and lots of lemon and figured I now have upgraded to home-magic kit abilities as it was not half bad.

When we all sat down for dinner, Ms.Boyardee was a tad standoffish and I asked her if anything was wrong and she replied "no", if it was only that simple. About 5-10 minutes later I questioned her on acting weird and she stated that she hated this recipe, and that it looked like crap, and tasted like crap and she was upset with it ( in slightly harsher words). Meanwhile, Everyone at the table loved them and devoured them all without any complaints. Sometimes Ms. Boyardee is too hard on herself and her cooking skills. If those were her screw-ups, I'll be alright with being a guinea pig on future recipes.

Rating:

Ms. B: 0/10 " F*ck this F*cking Recipe!" We originally went through all the recipes and she rated them all SUPER low. We then went back through them all and made them all higher, however when we got to this one she said, " No that's still accurate".

J: 6/10 Apparently I'm compensating for her low score

Recipe #2- Roasted Beet-Garlic Soup & Sweet Potatoes with Coconut, Pomegranate and Lime

So we decided to do two recipes at once, and kill two birds with one stone. For the purpose of this blog and Ms. Boyardee's views on animal rights, those two birds are grain fed and free range, but both are still killed with one delicious stone. The recipes we chose ended up not really meshing together, but individually they were pretty good.

Roasted Beet-Garlic Soup- Before Ms. Boyardee opened my eyes and mouth to different tastes, I could say I lived a  food sheltered life. I often said I didn't like things even if I hadn't tried them (I still do this with seafood but am too stubborn to change). Beets was one of the things I just assumed I would hate. I think this underlying dislike for beets came from watching CSI when in one episode Grisham's suspect was eating kidneys which he mistook for beets. Then Ms. Boyardee made me a beet goat cheese (which is good on anything by the way) salad and I was hooked.

One thing that Ms. Boyardee didn't inform me of after introducing me to beets was that they stain everything…and I mean EVERYTHING. Hands, shirts, and…for lack of a better word…bowel movements (not sure if I have PG rated readers….or any readers for that matter). The day after I ate my first beet meal, I thought I ruptured something in my lower intestine. Somehow painlessly, I thought my duodenum had dislodged and I had passed it and I was now "bleeding" from areas you don't want to bleed from. Thankfully, it was just beet juice, learning experience for us all.

Wow, I wrote way too much without even talking about the soup. It was unreal, it had the consistency of apple sauce,   and Ms. Boyardee put in triple the garlic. ( I think she's secretly afraid of vampires after too much twilight movies). It was missing a little something though and Ms. Boyardee added a little goat cheese…perfection. The photo below, I think is evidence that we're ( Maybe just Ms. Boyardee) getting too carried away with the perfection of the photos, I think Loblaws may hire her as a food photographer at this pace. All in all the soup was hard to... beet ( yeah I went there).

Rating:

Ms. B: 3.9/5 " Extra 0.4 just for the beets"

J: 3.5

Sweet Potatoes with Coconut, Pomegranate and Lime- This to me sounded like a very awkward mix of ingredients and I was intrigued to see how it would taste. The sweet potatoes were cooked and prepped by Ms. Boyardee on my arrival. All we had to do was toast the coconut and get all the pomegranate seeds out. In my opinion, Pomegranates are a all work, little reward kind of food. You spend 15 minutes getting the little buds out and then you devour them in 30 seconds. In this instance, Ms. Boyardee had already done the dirty work so I just reaped the rewards. The coconut flakes had to be lightly toasted. Ms. Boyardee put them in the oven and then we proceeded to do a little dance in the living room to some background Frank Sinatra ( a key ingredient to cooking). The coconuts were then burnt, and we had to start over and almost burnt the second batch as "Fly me to the moon" came on and   almost stole us away again.

Then it was picture time. The picture is a little ridiculous and half the ingredients are scattered everywhere not even on the potatoes. I thought Ms. Boyardee was having a stroke, and missing her target, but no, she was being artistic ( how stupid of me). The potatoes surprisingly kind of worked. The cilantro gave a unique taste, the pomegranate the sweetness with the potato and the coconut added texture and toastiness (that's now a word). You had to make sure not to put too much cilantro or it could over power the dish but I think overall it was a success. We're really settling into this whole transforMEATion food blog now and am up to 160 views! I swear only about 153 of those are mine and Ms. Boyardee, the fan base is growing.

Rating:

Ms. B: 3/10

J:3/10