Holiday Recap

Over the Christmas holidays, we pretty much dropped the ball with the whole blogging thing. Originally, we thought we’d have plenty of time once exams were over to give you guys some quality recipes, but we couldn’t have been more wrong! Our holidays were jam-packed from start to finish! We didn’t even have time to do too much baking or cooking let alone blog about it. At first, we were a little worried about it, we didn’t want to let down our readers or be forgotten in the blog world. We quickly realized, however, that there was no point in worrying about it. The holidays are a time to relax, rejuvenate and spend time with family and friends – and spend that we did! We will start at the beginning:

After our last exam, our Mom came to London, where we order pizza from Panago. They make seriously good pizza! Their multigrain crust is delicious, no too thin and not too thick. They have 6 categories to choose from: Frugal Favourites, Vegetariano, Carne, Pollo, Oceano, and Create your own. They have 5 crust options (including gluten-free), really cool sauce ideas (hello sweet+smoky tropical, chipotle cilantro, coconut curry and BBQ!), plenty of cheese options and tons of toppings! Needless to say, it was delicious!

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After coming home for a couple of days, we actually headed back to London because a couple friends who have been in British Colombia and England were going to be in town, so we went to see them. It’s always fun seeing friends you haven’t seen in a long time! 🙂

Once we got back from London for the second time, we had a lot of work to do – last-minute Christmas shopping and holiday bread baking type work! We are always in charge of baking the rolls for our Dad’s family’s Christmas lunch/dinner.

Multigrain and white! (Gotta please everybody.)

Christmas day in our house always starts with a light breakfast of homemade bread, fruit salad and yogurt. We like to save room for all the food that’s coming! Once we open gifts with just our parents and brothers, we head over to my Aunt’s house for Christmas lunch.

Hot Apple Cider, Egg Nog, punch and grapes before lunch, followed by a HUGE lunch – turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, squash, brussel sprouts, bean salad, corn and peas, rolls, orange-glazed sweet potatoes (definitely remaking this gem!), cranberry sauce, pickles, turnip (not a fan), cole slaw…. it goes on and on! Unfortunately, this is when our camera died, so the rest of the day went un-pictured. But don’t worry – there were LOTS of desserts! 🙂 Mince pie, cheesecake, chocolate pudding cake, key lime pie, candy cane ice cream, some sort of chocolate square and more. We always like to go for a walk with our Dad after (get those digestive juices going!) and then later on we had a “dinner” of cheese and crackers, leftover turkey, fruit and cookies. Lots and lots of cookies! Our Aunt is kind of a master baker – nothing she ever makes is short of amazing!

Boxing day is our Christmas dinner with our Mom’s side of the family. This year it was particularly special, because for the first time in probably 18 years, all three of our mom’s brothers were here at the same time. We have an uncle in New York, one on Victoria Island, B.C., and another in Golden B.C. It was so special to have all of them here, including two of our cousins from B.C., and of course my mom’s sister and her family who still leave here in Ontario.

 

Grandma and all of her children! 🙂

And of course, we ate lots of food, too! We had regular and bacon mashed-potatoes, candied yams, biscuits and rolls, two kinds of cranberry sauce, our cheesy brussel sprouts, turkey, stuffing, our Christmas Salad… food food food!

 

 

And wine. 🙂

 

Fielding Estates Fireside White – a blend of several of their best whites, it is so good! And also Angles Gate Cab-Merlot. Huge fans of Angles Gate, also!
To finish it off, dessert!

     

Kawartha Dairy ice cream – I don’t know where my Aunt got it, but it’s seriously some of the best ice cream ever! We always get it at training camp every year, we didn’t know it was available in Southern Ontario! No Christmas dinner would be complete without our traditional eggnog trifle, and these pink squares are a requirement every year. We don’t actually know what they are called, we just know that they are pink and they are delicious! We made our own peppermint chocolate version of these brownies (unreal!), lots of cookies and Misty Mints. Because who doesn’t love misty mints?

The rest of our holiday was family family family… and running. We went shopping, ran, watched movies, ran, went to cousin’s hockey games, ran, ate dinners, ran… you get the picture! On one of our cousin’s last night, we went to John and Son’s Oyster House in Toronto where we tried oysters and Lobster for the first time! The Oysters were good, however we think we’ll have to have them a few more times before we’re used to the texture. The lobster, however, was divine! We were a little squeemish about the little claws sticking out, but the actual meat was so tasty! We are fans of the lobster.

Before we knew it, it was New Years Eve! Us, our brothers and cousin decided this year to join a few friends of ours down in London to celebrate. We had a potluck to which we brought turkey chili, gluten free corn bread, hummus and veggies, and gluten free sugar cookies. We promise we will re-make the sugar cookies and take pictures for you, because they were awesome! 🙂

After New Years, things were pretty low-key, still lots of running and hanging with the family that was still in Ontario. On our cousin Geoff’s last night, a group of us headed to Pepperwood Bistro in Burlington for a farewell dinner. We are 100% going back to this restaurant. It. Was. Unreal! It was so good, in fact, that we are not going to say much about it in this post, because it deserves it’s own! Another restaurant review is coming right up!

We came back to London on Sunday evening, and second semester started the next day. The first dinner back is always a little sad, because we’re missing our dad and brothers dinner conversation and our special girls-night dinners with our mom. One of our teammates had a brilliant idea, however, that saved us from this heartache! She suggested a team dinner at our favourite restaurant – The Works! This time we ordered the Stockyard burger and the Olive Oyl, both elk patties and on whole wheat buns. The Olive Oyl had warm spinach, fresh tomato, garlic, feta and black olives. It was very tasty and we’d recommend it to any olive lover! The Stockyard, however, was on an entirely different level. Crusted with peppercorns, with a dijon-haze sauce and melted swiss cheese, it was heaven in a burger! It was so peppery – almost spicy! It was definitely right up there with the Sweet Ride and Hunka Hunka Burnin Love.

So that’s the long and, well, long of our Christmas holidays! While we miss our family, we do love it here in London and are really excited about out classes this term, as well as the Track season ahead. We have our first track meet this weekend, wish us luck! 🙂

~twosaucysisters

2013- The Year of… Granola?

Happy new year everybody!

We hope you all had a fun evening celebrating with your friends and family, and of course eating some good food- we certainly did!

We attended a potluck dinner and brought hummus (obviously) with veggies, turkey chili and corn bread, and the tastiest gluten-free healthified sugar cookies you’ve ever tasted (assuming that you’ve already tried healthy gluten-free sugar cookies…) We also failed to take any photos of it, but never fear, we will have the recipe for those cookies for you soon… we promise!

Today, instead we will be talking about a recipe that we’ve had waiting in the wings for quite a while, that we’ve been saving for when all the Christmas hype begins to die down a bit.

And that recipe is peanut butter granola.

A humble recipe, yes, but delicious nonetheless, and definitely worth the effort of making home-made granola (which isn’t a very intensive process, anyways).

And if you’ve made a new year’s resolution to improve your diet, then you’ve come to the right place, because this granola is much lower in sugar and fat than traditional granola, but still offers that deliciously satisfying crunch that we crave in a good granola.

And like our previous granola recipes, we used a mixture of oats, Kamut, and spelt flakes.  When we posted about our pumpkin granola, we received a very informative comment about Kamut that we wanted to share with you all:

Yum! Yum! Yum! Your pumpkin pie granola sounds delicious and looks so pretty! I represent Kamut International and am so pleased to see that you are using KAMUT® Brand flakes in the recipe. I wanted to let you and your followers know that “KAMUT” is actually a trademarked name for an ancient variety of organically grown wheat.

KAMUT® Brand khorasan is an organic, non-genetically modified, ancient wheat variety similar to durum. In 1990, “KAMUT” was registered as a trademark by the Quinn family in order to support organic farming and preserve the ancient khorsasan wheat variety. Under the KAMUT® Brand name, khorasan wheat must always be grown organically, never be hybridized or modified, and contain high levels of purity and nutrition. Today, Kamut International owns and has registered the KAMUT® trademark in over 40 countries, and is responsible for protection and marketing of all KAMUT® Brand khorasan wheat throughout the world.

KAMUT® khorasan is grown on dryland certified organic farms primarily in Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The grain is prized by consumers who appreciate the grain for its high energy nutrition, easy digestibility, nutty/buttery taste, and firm texture. KAMUT® khorasan wheat is higher in protein, selenium, amino acids, and Vitamin E than most modern wheat and contains essential minerals such as magnesium and zinc. It is used as whole grain berries, whole grain flour, white flour, flakes, and puffs to make a variety of products. Some specific benefits of using KAMUT® khorasan are receiving more nutrients, protein, and taste than conventional whole wheat – plus supporting organic agriculture and helping to preserve an ancient grain.

Interesting, isn’t it?  That comment came from Jamie Ryan Lockman– thanks Jamie! 🙂

We think we’ve come up with our new year’s resolution- eat more granola! 🙂

Peanut Butter Granola

Prep time: 10 minutes
Bake Time: 20-30 minutes
Makes: 1 large Mason Jar

Ingredients:

1 c. rolled oats
1/2 c. Kamut Flakes
1/2 c. Spelt flakes
3/4 c. dry-roasted peanuts
pinch of salt
1/4 c. honey
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp water

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375F

In a large bowl, combine oats, kamut and spelt flakes, peanuts and salt.  In a separate bowl blend the honey, peanut butter and water together until you have a “syrup”.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until everything is evenly coated.  Spread onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 20-30 minutes or until lightly browned, stirring every 5 or 10 minutes.

~twosaucysisters

What did you do for New Year’s? What are your resolutions for 2013? Some of our resolutions are to stretch more, write down all of our recipes, and eat more granola, of course!