Recipes to Riches: Week Three

Aren't the charicatures great?!

 I am slowly catching up! Don't you worry. 

Week three of R to R was competing for the category of appetizers. The three contestants were Diana with her stuffed olives, John with his grilled chicken grenades (skewers) and Sarah with her savoury mini tourtieres (mini meat pies). 


I'm still a bit leery on the winner; John and his grilled chicken grenades won on this episode. While his grenades were tasty--which consisted of bacon wrapped with chicken with cheese and jalapeno peppers topped with apple jelly--I just found that this was something already on the market and one could make without great difficulty. The rest of the contestants had yummy appetizers too; but they couldn't match up on flavour when they did the batch-up contest. 

Chicken Grenades!

All in all, my boyfriend and I enjoyed it. However, make sure you bake it on tin foil because the jelly burns on the regular baking metal surface...and it ain't fun getting it off!


To watch the episode, go here!

Recipes to Riches: Week Two

Aren't I terrible? I haven't even been keeping on this...and I've been meaning too! :-S
Nevertheless, I had the fortunate opportunity to try mostly all the Recipes to Riches products, minus the most recent one. Happy reading!

For week two's R to R, the three contestants were Jacqui and her Rock 'n' Peach Bliss cake, Crystal and her Orange Chocolate Silk Cake and Melissa with her Banana Chocolate Cake. The winner? Jacqui and her Rock 'n' Peach Bliss cake. And how delicious it is! It's a multi-layered cake with caramelized brandied peaches, cheesecake, vanilla cake and a graham cracker crust. 


I've never had cheesecake and cake combined together and I thought it was a great concept. Delicious. Me and my whole family enjoyed it very much, too!


To check out the episode, go here to watch!

Donuts, revamped!

This past long weekend, my boyfriend and I decided to head down to good ol' Calgary just to get away for a quick over night trip. I love Calgary. There are always new foodie spots to hit and there are many interesting restaurants/bakeries popping up. We stayed in the southwest part of downtown, home to some unique restaurants, bakeries and shops, one of them being the brand new Jelly modern doughnuts. 

I definitely recall reading about this new bakery in the August/September issue of the Where magazine. I always pick up this magazine when I'm in town because it always gives great reviews and recommendations on restaurants/diners/bakeries scattered across the city. I'm not too big of a fan of doughnuts, but I was curious as to what they meant by "modern". My boyfriend's eyes lit up when he heard 'doughnuts', so we decided to give this place a try. Even better: when we looked up the location of Jelly on our GPS, lo and behold, it was right beside our hotel!

After checking out of our hotel, we made our way to Jelly. The exterior of the bakery was very eye-catching: Jelly is in bright pink, as well as their logo, a doughnut of course, with white-very simple.

The showcase of doughnuts was amazing! I felt like a kid in a candy store. An astonishing array of unusual doughnut flavours filled the showcase-lemon, s'mores, peanut butter, madagascar bourbon vanilla, coconut, apple pie, maple bacon (what we came for!) and many more. You can check them out here.

I was trying to get a shot of the menu, as you can see that didn't work out so well (still not bad for a camera phone!)

 

Look at those doughnuts!

Look again! They even have bite sized doughnuts in the same flavours of the original sized ones-except they call them 3 bite doughnuts. Cute!

The individual prices of the doughnuts were $2.25, which is a little pricey considering they are just doughnuts; however, their catch is that they use local, organic and only the best ingredients possible to make the donuts. The fillings are hand-filled and everything is made fresh that day. To include some examples, the bacon they use is from Valbella meats in Canmore (which I absolutely love!) Vital Green and Chinook Honey. Their doughnuts are preservative-free, which means they are best consumed within 24 hours.


We opted for 1/2 dozen (1 dozen seemed like too many, considering I don't have much of a sweet tooth). We chose maple bacon (of course!), lemon, s'mores, peanut butter, coconut, madagascar bourbon vanilla. 

Our flavours L to R clockwise: S'mores, bourbon vanilla, maple bacon, lemon, coconut and peanut butter. All sooooo delectably delicious.

We first devoured the maple bacon...how could we not? Although most can agree that maple and bacon go together very well, and they do, my boyfriend and I agreed that there was not enough bacon bits on the doughnut. There wasn't enough of the satisfying bacon taste we get every Sunday morning. Other than that, it was yummy. 

Interior.

So far, we've tried s'mores, peanut butter and madagascar bourbon vanilla. The s'mores was my favourite so far (they even make their own marshmallows!), but the other ones were very tasty as well. I gave the lemon doughnut to my dad because he loves lemons; the coconut doughnut is on the menu as tomorrow's dessert. 

They even make birthday donuts!

Any of you planning a trip to Calgary anytime soon? Make sure to include Jelly modern doughnuts as your next sweet tooth venue because it's worth the trip there. We'll definitely be making a second trip!

Jelly modern doughnuts is located at 100 1414 8 street S.W., Calgary, Alberta

Verdict: sooo scrumptious!

Recipes to Riches: Week One

(I'm a bit behind ...) Week one of Recipe to Riches - Glo McNeil of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia wins the first one. She was up against three other contestants: A gentleman from Montreal with his Maple Pudding Chomeur and a food blogger from Burnaby with her Canadian Pie in a Jar. Although Glo's "Luscious Lemon Pudding" won out against the three, I was very interested in the other two desserts. Perhaps I should give the recipes a try? Check them out here. If you're interested in watching the video, check it out here.

Time for the taste test...

The packaging. Cute heh?

Each in a individual plastic ramekin.

Heat it up in the micro for 1 minute and...voila! You have "Luscious Lemon Pudding" 

Verdict: these cute little desserts were delicious! Although the recipe is quite simple, the judges are right that it could be a casual or fancy dessert.

My two favourite things collaborate: President's Choice & Food Network Canada

For those of you who love food and watch Food Network on a daily basis, you probably have heard of the show "Recipe To Riches" in which contestants across Canada (I'm still choked that I didn't hear about this until a few weeks ago!) entered their recipes. The judges scoured across Canada from Coast to Coast, choosing the top three finalists for each of the 7 categories (from desserts to savoury pies ). Within each category, all three individuals compete in a "batch-up challenge" in which the three contestants chosen must make their recipe enough for 100+ or 200+ depending on the challenge. Once the judges have a taste at the recipe, one person is eliminated from that round. The remaining two contestants compete against each other in a marketing challenge in which they pair up with two of Toronto's top marketing firms to market their products. The contestant with the best consumer response, name and marketing idea wins $25,000, their recipe made into a PC product for Canada to try and are automatically qualified for the grand prize of $250,000.

 There are 7 categories to compete in; the first two contestants already won for their dessert. They won $25,000 and their recipe made into a PC product and made avaiable to Canada the following weekend. The final 7 contestants are up against $250,000 and their recipe made into a permanent PC product. I already tried the "Luscious Lemon Pudding Cakes" and "Rockin' Peach Cheesecake" and they are delicious! However, my question is--why didn't I hear about this contest?  Check it out here:

Finally! Vietnamese food near my house. Cheap? Not so much. Good? Average.

Last Sunday mid-afternoon, my boyfriend and I were feeling pretty sluggish. After taking an afternoon snooze, we decided it was time to head out of the house to grab some groceries. We haven't had lunch yet but decided we wanted Vietnamese food. We were thinking of heading down to the usual, Pho Hoa in Chinatown, but I suddenly remembered my mom mentioning to me that there was a new Vietnamese restaurant in the southside.


It's located in the Century Park Plaza, just off of 111 street and 23rd Avenue. It's called Spring Roll Kitchen. It's located beside the sales office of the Century Park condos on 111 street and off of 23rd avenue.


The interior of the restaurant is spectacular-very spacious and roomy. We entered through the back door without knowing it (oops) but the first thing I noticed was the beautiful bamboo centre piece. It separated the large dining area from the booster seats from the regular tables. We were seated near the front entrance, right in front of the giant graffiti-like art on the wall. I thought that was a very creative idea-combining graffiti art with Vietnamese culture.

Beautiful interor!



Awesome graffiti.

Now on to the food...I'll have to be honest I wasn't expressed with the food. Especially for the price I paid, I was expecting something a bit bigger. At $10 for a small bowl, this is probably the most I've paid for pho in Edmonton. I ordered the regular beef pho-thin slices of beef, rice noodles, toppied with thin white onions and green onions, the usual. I found the soup to be too bland-not salty enough. I walked up to the cashier to ask for 'salt' but due to language barriers, she gave me a napkin instead. Thankfully, our waitress inside the kitchen saw and ran out quickly to see what I needed. The extra salt made it taste better, I think. 

My steaming bowl of pho.

 My boyfriend opted for the pork and shrimp rice noodle bowl. At nearly $10, he also said it wasn't anything spectacular.

My boyfriend's rice noodle bowl.

After tasting the restaurant, I am indifferent now as to having a Vietnamese pho joint on my side of the town. However, I am definitely willing to give it a second try. Things could taste better the second time around.

Spring Roll Kitchen is located on 2395-111 Street, in the Century Park Plaza. 

A treat from down east: the McLobster!



Tada...the McLobster!

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

[I apologize for the long absence. I've been enjoying my summer way too much. But I've got some great ones in store!]

I finally had the chance-and I do mean finally-to try the famed McLobster down east. Last year when I first went to Prince Edward Island, the season just ended and I missed it by a few days. This year, we went back earlier so I was able to catch it in time.

The McLobster is like any other sandwich on the McDonald's menu. It comes with a medium drink and medium fries or a side salad.

And how was it you ask? Well, being a big fan of fresh lobster, this sandwich was delicious! For McDonalds to offer fresh seafood is already a feat, but to have it in a place where those red crusteaceans are abundant and fresh was amazing. The lobster meat was ripped to smaller pieces, mixed in with chopped celery and a light dressing that tasted like mayonnaise, put on a small white sandwich roll.

I think I had the McLobster about 3 times during my week-long stay. I already can't wait to go back next year!