Orange-Cranberry Sauce

Getting ready to dollop cranberry sauce on a turkey sandwich.

A few facts:

1. I love turkey.
2. I love Thanksgiving leftovers.
3. Turkey without cranberry sauce is like a present without a bow.
4. I have never had a canned cranberry sauce that I liked.

Over the years, my sauce has evolved from the basic sugar + water + cranberries into a more unique sauce. Having been asked a couple of times for the recipe, I finally decided to put it in print.

Rødkål: a Festive Side Dish

At a Christmas gathering some years ago, a friend whose birthday happens to be on Christmas Eve shared this bright, sweet-and-sour casserole. She tells me it's a "very traditional Danish dish, served with pork roast or duck or goose [or turkey, in our case], and not only at Christmas, but definitely part of Christmas dinner." (Rødkål translates as "red cabbage" and leads me to believe that this is really the only way to serve red cabbage in Denmark.)

She was kind enough to share her personal recipe. I've adapted it to work in a crockpot, which meant cutting the quantities in half. It makes fantastic leftovers or a pretty pot-luck contribution.

Recipe below.

Quiche à Odette: The Easiest Quiche Ever

Quiche à Odette -- the world's easiest quiche

Last year, for pi day, I decided to make genuine quiche -- from scratch. We didn't eat until close to 8:00 p.m. (Dinner at our house is usually around 6.) It was delicious, but definitely not worth the time and effort, especially when compared with this super-easy, crustless option.

Citrus-Mango Salad for a Hot Day

(The tomato is hiding.)

Hot, sticky weather like this calls for negligible cooking in the house.

This hot spell is killing me. Today the thermometer read 32 degrees Celsius in the shade. IN THE SHADE! And that doesn't even account for humidity. So there was no way I was about to fry, roast, or simmer anything in the kitchen, which leaves: grilling and salad.

Rhubarb Crisp with a Twist

UPDATE: I've played around with the recipe and have found that adding 1/2 cup of flour to the topping makes it more crumbly and less chewy. Choose the one you prefer.

It's spring (thank God!) and rhubarb is starting to show up in the produce aisle, so it's time to make one of my husband's favourite dishes: rhubarb crisp. Rhubarb is high in Potassium (vitamin K), which is important for heart health and for calcium absorption. Rhubarb is also said to fight Alzheimer's (but I can't remember where I read that).

Here's the recipe I created - for the best rhubarb crisp I've ever tasted.

P.S. This recipe is egg-, wheat-, and gluten-free. If you skip the ice cream, it's dairy-free as well.

Pasta Primavera

I've been so preoccupied getting the cookbook ready that I almost forgot that I owe you a recipe!

Back in November, I posted a list of recipes that I still had to prepare and asked you if there was one you were most eager to see. That post only got one comment, but it was a request for Pasta Primavera. So here it is.

Fresh out of the oven! -- UPDATED

UPDATE: now includes preview and link to order iTunes version!

DING! The Sibbald Family Famous Recipes Cookbook is DONE and we have ordered enough copies for our little family.

The book is available to you, now, in two formats: print or PDF. (I'm still waiting for the iTunes book to go live.) Here are the links.

Nananeye's Muffled Pup - UPDATED

Today's post is actually a recipe for a meat pie, but it requires a bit of a preamble. It is from back in the days when Steve and I were just starting out. Now for the explanation of the recipe's name:

Pea Soup

I will never be able to say "pea soup" without hearing the crickets (surely they aren't cockroaches!) from Rescuers Down Under. Despite that, it is one of our favourite recipes.

French-Canadian Classic: Tourtière du Lac-St-Jean

Tourtière du Lac-St-Jean

Most Canadians are familiar with tourtière* - a meat pie made with ground meat and spices. It's so popular that you can buy it ready-made in grocery stores. This is not that tourtière.

This one is a feast of game meat in big chunks, slow-roasted in a pie crust. It is a recipe big enough to feed a whole extended family, and it takes most of a weekend to prepare and cook.

Murphy's Law strikes again.

I'm still working on the cookbook project, and am making good headway. I've decided not to share every recipe here, especially if the recipe is fairly straightforward. But today's recipe warrants a blog post -- not so much because it's fancy (quite the opposite), but because a full-blown comedy of errors took place in our kitchen this afternoon.

Comfort Food: Irish Stew with Dumplings

Stew is one of those classic "peasant" foods that make me feel like I'm sitting in front of a crackling fire with a wool shawl wrapped around me and a mug full of wine. Ideally, there would be a baby asleep on my lap, and a dog snoring lightly at my feet.

Ah, sigh.

On the day I saw my first fluffily floating flakes of snow in Ottawa this year, I pulled out my biggest pot and started an Irish stew simmering in the kitchen. Then I added dollops of dumplings, and we all sat down to a hearty meal.

Since you couldn't be there with us, I decided to share the recipe here. I've learned a lot of lessons about stew -- all the hard way. I hope this post will save you some scorched pots and leathery meat.

Challenge Accepted

Front cover of the Sibbald Family Famous Recipes Cookbook

More than two years ago, I decided to turn our hand-written, heavily soiled family recipe book into a proper cookbook with photos and stories and personal notes. Since then, I've encountered corrupted files, obsessive perfectionism, and loss of enthusiasm.

Foodie Friday: Golden-Glazed Chicken

This was after it had baked for 45 minutes.

Mmmm, chicken! This is an easy, delicious, savory-sweet recipe that was given to me by my sister-in-law Mary Ann when I babysat my nieces one weekend. She made sure to leave a recipe that a newlywed with no parenting experience could pull together with minimal effort.

It was a winner and has become a family favourite, though it goes by a couple of different names, including Honey-Mustard Chicken and Curried Chicken. Here's the recipe.

Amazing Disappearing Treats: Bouchées aux noix or Nutty Nibbles

Bouchées aux noix

When we lived in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, we had a lovely neighbour named Odette who shared a few recipes with me. By far the most popular on was the recipe for these treats, which she called Bouchées aux noix, which roughly translates to Nutty Nibbles.

These bars may be the least healthy treats I've ever shared with you, but they are absolutely delicious.

Today, I'm sharing the recipe and some tips I've learned the hard way.

Broccoli Goodness

I haven't posted a recipe in quite  while, so I figure it's about time. And why not start with something that combines healthy and unhealthy foods in the most appealing way? This recipe includes lots of nuts and seeds (good fats) and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower (vitamins, fiber, and disease-fighting phytochemicals), but then throws in bacon and mayonnaise. But if you're someone like me (or have children like me) who like a little sweetness to bribe them into eating their veggies, then this recipe is for you.

Potato Salad -- in a Hurry

Potato Salad with a Chive Flower

Potato salad is one of my favourite summer foods, but I almost always forget to boil the potatoes well ahead of time. (My middle name should be "Last Minute.") I had always thought that meant I would only have potato salad on weekends, but then I found a short cut!

Here's my simple recipe and my trick for speeding things up.

Almost-One-Dish Dinner: Layered Meat Loaf

This card was NOT given to me!

Meat loaf gets a bad rap. I mean, sure it's really high in fat and kind of has an odd texture . . . but it can also be really tasty. And with this recipe it also holds a hidden surprise and uses up some of your leftovers, which makes it even better.

Chop-chop! How to chop onions and celery.

I've recently learned the term mirepoix - I can't recall where. It refers to the medley of celery, onions, and carrots that form the first step of many stews and soups. If you have a food processor, you probably just put them all through that, but ours has been broken for five months now, with parts on indefinite back-order, so I'm re-learning some skills and thought I'd share them with you. Just in case you end up in my situation. Or, you know, camping or at the cottage.

Also because: OCD

Lemon Chicken with Roasted Cauliflower

Inspired by this recipe from Elena's Pantry.
What looks like a slice of garlic on top is actually a slice of shallot. See below for more about shallots.

I shared this picture of a Greek-influenced recipe (it includes lemon, chicken, and black olives) way back in February, but forgot to share the recipe! So here it is.