A site to house both my random musings as well as pictures of my baby, so really the best thing ever if you are into people whose last name is Valensky
A couple years ago (and a couple blog posts ago) I made a big ol turkey dinner for Melisa and I and it turned out quite well. I've made some others since then, all in the same method, but over the Christmas to New Years break we had another turkey, and although I prepared and cooked it very similarly, I did do a couple of things differently, which turned out to be quite successful! I thought I'd outline them here for your enjoyment. :)
Read MoreA couple months ago, around easter, Safeway had a deal where if you bought a turkey under 16lbs you could get it for 99cents a pound. This price was too good to pass up so Melisa and I immediately trekked out and procured a 15lbs bird, obviously wanting to make the most of this sale. Since then this turkey has been sitting in our deep freeze, waiting for it's time to shine, and today it shined so bright.
Read MoreFor the past few years Melisa and I have been living in apartments that either don't have balconies or don't allow barbecues, this has not gone over well with my stomach as I love to BBQ. I've been searching for ways to successfully cook up a good steak indoors and thus far have always met with failure. This failure finally ended tonight after cooking The Butter Steak. Unfortunately I don't own a Cast Iron Skillet and have never gotten around to finding a good place to buy one in Vancouver, further to that I have no idea where the broil pan is that came with my stove so the two common high heat short cook time methods of indoor steaking have never been an option for me. I've tried numerous times to cook a steak on the stove top in a nonstick pan but it has never worked out, yesterday though in the Something Awful forum's 'Goons with Spoons' section I stumbled across a thread dedicated to steaks and therein lay my answer, a medium heat long cook time approach to steak that I have never heard of before. Basically it involves using the maillard reaction through butter to give the a nice crust even at a medium heat but also to keep the meat rare to medium rare with a long cooking time. For a better explanation of the cooking process as well as instructions and fancy pictures I highly recommend you visit The Paupered Chef's page dedicated to the process. This in turn will lead you to an egullet article on the methods that started the ball rolling and has more info on how to cook the perfect butter steak.
Read MoreDo you like the Olympics? (Which are going on right now in my home city of Vancouver!) Do you like hockey? Do you like Beer? If the answers to those questions are yes than do I have the podcast for you! This week I was the guest on the Hops & Hockey podcast to bring a little Canadian perspective onto the weekly show now that the Olympic hockey tournament is in full swing. So if you want to hear my voice again! (and why woudn't you) you can check it out here. So speaking of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics they have been pretty awesome so far. It's quite neat to be living in the city where they are going on and I managed to go to a Women's Hockey game last week which was quite the experience. (as a side holy cow is women's hockey terrible unless you are on the Canadian or American team)