Sorry folks.  The daily stats are as follows:

BLT: 1
Baby: 0

As for the “unbirthday” yesterday, we ended up having a nice day.  Bought a couple of foodie magazines, enjoyed a nice latte, made my favourite gazpacho for dinner, finished reading “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and rounded out the evening with So You Think You Can Dance.

1. Where could someone find chestnuts in Ottawa?  The closer to Centretown the better.
2. Can I get over the fact that chestnuts look like mini brains?

We went to our first ZenKitchen dinner last night and really enjoyed ourselves. When we arrived, we were served ricotta and pesto appetizers which were delicious. I asked the husband with a puzzled look, “isn’t all the food supposed to be vegan?” I don’t know a lot of vegan food, but I was pretty sure ricotta was cheese. Only later did we find out that it was actually tofu! Crazy! I was completely fooled

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos – but you can check out some Flickr photos from the event. First, there was the harira soup, then the caesar salad, a fancy mushroom cannelloni and finally, the chocolate mousse.

The local mustard greens were a particular highlight. Nice and peppery. Like arugula, but um.. stem-ier.

We’ll definitely try these dinners again because I get the feeling it may be even more awesome when there’s an abundance of local produce.

What a busy weekend – I updated all of my sites to the latest version of Wordpress with only a couple of hiccups.  You should always read the instructions first.  Really.  Disable all plug-ins.

The faulty new blender got returned.  More books were made for the upcoming shows and new recipes were tried using produce from our veggie box.

Oh!  And I decided to start a blog just for recipes.  Check out Boyfriendly Cooking  to see what I did with kohlrabi.

I watched last night’s episode of Marketplace – the topic?  Putting “Made in Canada” on products that are clearly not Canadian.  They pointed out that if a manufacturer spends 51% on “production costs” (such as shipping!) then it can be labeled “Canadian”.  What was even more shocking?  Frozen fish.  Caught and then sent to China for processing and then travels on a boat to Canada for packaging – totaling 25,000km.  That’s too far.

They provide tips for eating locally,  reading labels for ice cream & cheese, garlic, and fish.

I feel so duped – I am a label reader.

Yesterday’s lentil soup is still going strong. Like the Energizer bunny of pulses.  Lots of leftovers meant we haven’t had to cook all weekend – except for one thing – apple crisp. It took about 15 minutes to chop up some apples for this apple crisp. I had forgotten how much I liked this dessert.

Mom’s Apple Crisp

• 1/4 cup of margarine or butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup flour
• 3/4 cup oats (I used the 3-5 minute kind)
• pinch of salt

• 4 1/2 cups chopped apples (I like the skin on.. you may not)
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sugar
• dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg

Mix the crumble ingredients well. Set aside. Chop up the apples and mix with lemon, sugar and spices. Empty into a square baking dish. Top with crumble.

Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

* Tip from Mom: Throw in some candied ginger or cranberries.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5 (So into eating the crisp, he forgot to say how much he liked it until asked.)

I am a big fan of “Presto Pasta Night” by Once Upon a Feast and when I read What Did You Eat’s post about this lentil and sausage soup I knew it was going to be good!

In fact, this was the first time I’ve ever cooked with dry lentils and not the canned type.  I’m officially a convert now.

I did a few things differently :

• I’m not sure what an “oz” really means – I used 4 links of turkey sausage.  It was plenty.  Probably even generous.
• I didn’t have sage!  Oops.  I threw in dried basil, thyme, marjoram, and tarragon.  I LOVE tarragon.
• For the pasta – I used tubetti.  A very generous cup of tubetti.

Boyfriendly rating:  No rating yet.

So, there was this sale on herbs at the grocery store and I went a little herb crazy buying basil. I don’t know why it’s so cheap in October, but I didn’t ask any questions. Next thing I know, I’ve got four packs of basil in my cart. This could only mean one thing – pesto!

After two meals of pasta with pesto, I was starting to feel a little pesto’d out. But my thrifty self couldn’t toss the leftover pesto – for shame. What to do? Make pizza. I took a couple of packs of pizza dough mix and covered it with the remaining pesto. Next, I took some chicken and pork sausage from Aubrey’s and sliced it up. I topped it with a few tomatoes from our veggie basket and some Gouda that was on sale at La Bottega.

Boyfriendly rating: 5/5. Fast and delicious. Meat + cheese = result!

Lana’s pizza-perfect pesto

• 2 cloves of local garlic (three if it’s supermarket garlic)
• 1/4 cup + handful of toasted pine nuts
• 1/4 cup + generous handful of grated parmesan
• 1 tsp of coarse sea salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp (or more) of lemon juice
• 2 cups (3 supermarket packages) of basil

Blend in a food processor or with a hand blender. Sometimes I also throw in some sun dried tomatoes (after soaking them for a few minutes in hot water).

I know several people who visit this site get organic vegetable/fruit delivery from Ottawa Organics. Sometimes I’m not always sure what to make with all of these veggies each week and I get panicky that I’ll waste the vegetables. Here’s a helpful blog called Seasonal Ontario Food that can help you (and me) figure out what to do with your seasonal produce.

I’m keen to try this Beets in Mint-Anise dressing this week.

A former co-worker with a lot of Starbucks know-how introduced me to tea mistos last February – in particular the “earl grey tea misto with two pumps of vanilla syrup”. It’s not on the menu, but it’s underground name is “London Fog”.

Some people may call tea lattes ghetto, but they are cheaper than a latte made with coffee. And.. really delicious.

My even cheaper at-home London Fog recipe is earl grey tea with vanilla flavoured soy milk. It’s not quite as sweet as vanilla syrup, but it’s close.