And the winner is...

Awesome!  Check out what the nice people at Porter Novelli gave me!  

Ok, so in the spirit of being me, I tore open the whole basket without thinking of taking a picture of the wonderful gift that I won online (yup, I won an online contest - woohoo)! That basket contained these little wonders:

• Gerolsteiner mineral water (never heard of, but it can't be bad...it's mineral water after all...)
• the bag of Schatzle Spatzle (I love the name, and would buy it solely on that criteria alone)
• a tin of vegetable pate (that doesn't seem quite right, but we'll try that with company just to see if we get a good consensus on whether or not it's real food or not)
• cream and caramel Vivani organic dark chocolate bar (mmm...)
• 2 baby Vivani organic dark chocolate bars (mmm...)
• the package of pumpernickel (that will probably be eaten with the veggie pate)
• a jar of gourmet gherkins (ok, so these I'll hoard for myself since I loooooove pickles)
• a Ritter Sport chocolate w/ marzipan bar (really?  It's a German brand?  I never knew...)
• a jar of hot mustard (another thing I'll hoard - I can always use more mustard)
• organic instant chocolate mousse (something I'll have to share with company again)
• a copy of "Taste of Germany - Contemporary German Cuisine for All Seasons" cookbook
• ...and an autographed copy of "Olaf's Kitchen" cookbook - which I did see at Costco, and is now in my proud possession (like I need another cookbook.  But I don't have a German cookbook yet...)

Maybe this will inspire a new class on German cuisine at work...

Heehee!  I just had to share this - it's all things foodie German-style!  Nothing much to comment on since I haven't tried any of the foods, but if anything interesting comes about, I'll be sure to make note!  Yay!  Free stuff!

An appreciation of the common potato chip.

So while I was at the grocery store getting some dill for my salmon dinner, I was inspired by a potato.  I dunno why, but I had to buy one to make potato chips.  A 53 cent russet, a long soak in cold water (according to the Joy of Cooking), and I was set...

...for a little deep frying...

...and voila!  Love the paper towel blotter.  If you look carefully, you can see the difference between the white paper towel vs. the grey area that has absorbed my potato chip grease.  Check the top right corner for proof - no potato chip there, but a shadowy outline of oil.

Pros and cons of making my own potato chips:

• Pro: I got to flavour the chips to my liking, and it cost me less than a bag of store-bought chips to make.  A light dusting of truffle salt on half the batch, oak-smoked salt on the other half.  Awesome.
• Con: My condo smells like a deep fryer.
• Pro: I now understand where the grease goes on a potato chip.  Once the chip has cooled, the oil becomes "one" with the chip.  I kept cracking chips as I was dabbing off hot grease until I figured out this bit of magic.  Wait, is this a pro or a con?  I guess this is a pro since this experiment should curb my lust for potato chips knowing how sponge-like potatoes are with grease on them.
• Con: I ate the whole batch regardless of the aforementioned point.
• Pro (to make me feel better): I know my potato chips were made with only 3 ingredients - potato, canola oil and salt - which coincides with my quest to eat fewer highly-processed products (amongst other vague eating ideals - read my very first blog entry if you need to reference what I'm talking about).  I can also consider part of my project a locally made product...the potato was grown in Ontario after all.

Anything's worth trying at least once, ya?  If I could only get rid of this @*%(#&! fried smell now...

Yorkshire pudding...not good without the beef drippings.

Ya, 'nuff said. You can't make real Yorkshire pudding unless you've got beef fat of some sort. It turns out pretty blah otherwise. Had a craving, thought I could fulfil it with butter - alas, it wasn't meant to be.

My 2 cents.

Sausages and ciabatta...redux.

It's been a while since I've made an effort to put anything here, but not for the lack of actually doing anything constructive in the meantime...

Having a few days of vacation, I thought it'd be a good time to try making the sausages and another batch of bread again. I also hung out with Spends2Much making giant spritz cookies (click to see her review of the Williams-Sonoma giant cookie press).

Here's the summary of my time spent making sausages and ciabatta again:

Batch of Jerk sausages 2: Drier marinade...needed more of the gooey green mixture (probably a cup per pound of sausage to make a discernible difference in flavouring. Instead of tasting like Jerk, they tasted...oh...like sausages that were seasoned with some spices. No heat from the jalapenos I used. *sigh* Note to self for next time - remember that the marinade has salt to begin with...gotta go lighter on the briny goodness.

Batch of ciabatta 2: Poolish as seen above - looks the same...used multi-grain flour for kicks this time though. Thought it would add more flavour to the plainish flour I was using...

The dough after kneading and resting...uh oh...this is starting to look a little familiar...but at least this one's sloppier than the last batch. (If you didn't know, ciabatta dough is supposed to be ooey gooey.)Zoinks, this looks EXACTLY like the last batch...except tastier from the multi-grain poolish I used.

Lessons learned:

1. I should really pick up a recipe book for sausages.
2. I should take a beginner's course on bread baking.
3. No matter how matter-of-fact my descriptors of sausage making may be, taking a picture of a bowl of sausages still makes me giggle for all the wrong reasons.