I really wasn’t sure what to name this deliciously multi faceted concotion of mine. Originally I wanted to follow in my ma’s footsteps and make traditional sloppy joes for Halloween (she used to make little pepper faces on the buns for us-so cute). The dilemma was that I didn’t want the whole bun deal. So of course the yams come in, caramelized yam slices soak up sloppy sweet spicy beef pretty well. But it was still incomplete, the messy appeal of a sloppy joe was lacking, so I created these crispy thin flatbreads that work wonders as makeshift utensils. Top that with fresh roasted salsa verde, avocado and colourful rainbow chard and you’ve got yourself a pretty classy dish, a sloppy jane indeed with a south of the border flare.
Happy Halloween! I dressed up as the cat in the hat, J wore a creepy mask and baby Mav was a little skeleton, we had our own dance party to Whitney Houston, the monster mash and Fresh Prince of Bel Air. J threatened to tape my singing ‘I will always love you’ so that our future kin can laugh at my desperate quaking voice. I so wish I could sing like Whitney. I wrapped a bunch of mini homemade oh henry bars for the trick or treaters but alas, no little princesses and vampires came a knockin’. I guess our place is a little out of the way, but it’s our first Halloween here so I wanted to have treats just in case. Oh well, they certainly won’t go to waste.
Preheat oven to 400F, Line a baking tray and place the sweet potatoes and tomatiollos on the tray. Bake for 40 minutes.
In a large skillet melt fat or oil and add onion and garlic, cook until the onion starts to turn golden.
Add chile, chipotle and beef. As the beef starts to cook, raise the heat and add the molasses, stir on high for 2 minutes and turn heat to low.
Add in worcester sauce,oregano,cumin,chili powder and salt. Cover and let simmer on low.
To make the salsa verde, take the roasted tomatillos and add them to a blender or food processor, in addition to one clove garlic, lime, and cilantro. Blend on high and set aside.
Combine Tapioca flour, coconut flour, water, cumin and salt until smooth, it should be quite thin.
Heat a frying pan with a bit of your favourite cooking fat or oil, dropping about ⅛th C mixture into the pan and swirling the batter around the pan each time for small little flatbreads. They take about 2 min. per side to get nice and crispy. Repeat until finished.
Remove yams from the oven and sprinkle with a tsp cane sugar, turn oven to broil and brown the tops for a few minutes.
To assemble, arrange yams around the edge, sloppy in the middle, and all the fix ins around the edges of your bowl.
Oh my, Oh Henry, Oh yeah! These little duddies are way better than the original, it’s so hard to eat just one, they’re just so perfectly gooey and crunchy and covered with chocolate, oh my. Bribe your babes to trade you their crummy candy for these wholesome yet indulgent little treats. Instead of roasted peanuts I used roasted cashews, which taste better and offer a few more health benefits. They say one serving of cashews is equivalent in mood boosting therapeutic properties to a dose of prozac, which you might need after seeing all the heinous halloween costumes. Has anyone seen the sexy ebola nurse costume going around…for real.
It’s almost Hallow’s Eve, and that means treats and low lying creepy fog lurking around every dark corner with only the tips of the barren trees poking out. Goblins and ghouls are almost as scary as the copious amounts of GMOs being fed to the littles. Remember when candy bars were made with just regular old sugar. A part of me is so upset that halloween has been hijacked by monsanto, but another part of my heart just wants to work harder to provide alternatives. This year I’m going to make little bliss balls and attach my contact details, we live in a small town so hopefully if any parents are freaked out they will contact me. Luckily I don’t have to worry just yet about my little guy getting into all that crazy candy, just his constant magnetic draw to the dogs water bowl.
In a food processor or high powered blender combine date paste, almond butter and coconut oil and blend until it starts to come together, add water until it is smooth but still quite thick.
In a square baking dish 8x8 spread an even layer of date paste caramel mix, top with roasted cashews and push the in to the caramel slightly just so they stick. Freeze this for at least an hour.
To make the chocolate coating, melt cacao butter or coconut oil over a double boiler, whisk in cacao powder, honey and salt.
When the caramel is sufficiently frozen, cut it into mini bars, the recipe makes about 18 little bars. Use a metal spatula to remove the bars from the dish and roll them around in the chocolate sauce until thoroughly coated.
Set aside and allow bars to set in the freezer or fridge.
An attempt was made to ascend one of the remaining remnants of the old growth forests of British Columbia. Up into the endangered Jumbo valley, whose ski resort future is looming within her glory. Though we underestimated the mighty whipping winds which brought a taste of winter and a swelling fondness for the unpredictable. At first our persevering spirits motored forth, with my 7 month old baby strapped to my chest, every step was placed with meaning and my clumsy nature replaced with grace. Meandering up this narrow slippery path, the moment being the only possibility, I squelched the idea that this sort of reckless snowy mountain hike makes me a negligent mother. It’s that kind of domesticated human brainwash babble that I catch myself in sometimes. Our feminine ancestors were certainly out perusing the land daily foraging food with their babies. We did end up turning back, it was a white out and the epic views were smothered in clouds and snow. For now the foraging will happen close to home, until Jumbo welcomes us back next summer. It was an absolute pleasure to reconnect with my sister and our friend, we came home from our hike to a slow cooked boeuf bourgignon which I’m just going to have to recreate and share with you all.
For now I have a spiffy way to roast up brussels sprouts that every the pickiest little turkeys will gobble right up. These caramelized maple almond brussels sprouts and pumpkin will convert any hater, they sure did the trick for me, former loather of all things brussels and J too. The sweet gooey maple crunchy roasted almond bits and slightly bitter minister cabbages speckled with slices of creamy pumpkin- oh it’s just perfection. Honestly I ate these as a meal by themselves today, even baby Mav chowed down. Paired alongside roast chicken or turkey, you’ve got yourselves a colourful healthy side dish and maybe even a new fall staple.
My sweet seeeesta and our friend are coming to visit this weekend! I’m so excited and roasting a huge chicken while I watch every car that passes by. It’s very lovely that they are coming for the weekend since it’s a 10 hour drive. We plan on checking out some hot springs, going fishing and hiking up to the Jumbo Valley, an absolutely stunning mountain pass home to the worlds largest Grizzly habitat. An old guy in town told us a funny story today, he was at the gas station, eating a muffin and bent down to check his tire pressure. He put the muffin down on his trunk and while he was fiddling with the tire, a bear stole his muffin and brushed up against him non-chalantly. Lots of bears around these parts, so hopefully we’ll see a Grizz on our hike, just not too close…
I ripped the last of the kale out of the garden today as the frost is coming soon. What to do with a big bunch of fresh kale? Make a fabulous salad of course, loaded with honey crisp apple slices, parmesan cheese and a tarragon-mustard vinaigrette. It will pair beautifully with our balsamic roast chicken and crispy roasted potatoes.
I don’t always know what to write about. On this food blog, which I suppose is entirely supposed to focus on food, that which nourishes us and how to best enjoy it. Though I do consider myself, and all of you for that matter, judges of good taste, I also feel like holy fuck, we are so lucky. First of all, to eat and have no real worries about where our next meal is coming from, but on top of that blessing, to photograph this nourishment, to share it far and wide. Whoa. I look at these numbers sometimes, I watch the real time on google analytics of all the people from all over the place checking out this meal that I created and wrote about and photographed and digested and gave back to the earth. It’s surreal to me just how deeply we are all connected, each and every one of us. Even that neighbour that you fucking can’t stand and your uptight stupid know it all boss, the primary investor at Monsanto and the guy who tried to shoot Harper yesterday. Does that perpetuate a feeling of compassion within us, or does it strike a chord of anger? I think for me it’s a bit of both, recently there was a study done on the worlds population and if all the food were divided equally, how many calories each person would be allotted daily. 2700. 2700 calories is plenty, for anyone, not to mention a child or elderly person just wouldn’t be consuming that many calories, so it would all balance itself out. Is the possibility of this statistic even real? It would seem so, yet the gluttony which rears its ugly head around every corner stifles the souls knowledge of the potential for every single one of us to be fed. Nourishment, to me, simply doesn’t always feel complete when I know there are hungry brothers and sisters out there. I want to feed them all, just do it, plant gorilla gardens everywhere and spread seeds like STI’s around every corner. Though i’m far from being in any epicentre of the hip happenings, I guess the first step is to just act locally, think globally. There are ideas brewing in my head and heart as to how this is possible. I want to let them stew and form themselves better before blurting anything out. But I feel a potential of thought is greatest when actions show themselves to be louder than words.
Now about these muffins, I loathe a dry muffin, honestly I have never enjoyed a wheat muffin except for the ones they make at Dominion Cafe, pear ginger white chocolate, I have to make a paleo version. Normally conventional muffins are so bleck, dry and dense and just blah. Well, not these little pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. Its likely I put way too many chocolate chips in them, speaking of sharing food maybe I can give organic chocolate chips out at halloween instead of GMO candy. I digress, these muffins are excellent, they’re moist, delicately spiced and filled with chocolate. Alongside a cup of coffee, they are like a morning bear hug. The basis of this muffin recipe is borrowed from these delicious blue berry muffins.
A few years back I stopped watching television, it’s a time suck and I hate all the ads. But I still can’t help myself from watching cooking shows on you tube, and as you may be able to tell from the name of my website Naked Cuisine, Jamie Oliver, the original naked chef, is my all time super fave 10 year ongoing crush and inspiration. I’ve though about doing a Julie and Julia, momofukufor2-esque blog with only Jamies recipes, you never know, maybe someday. The other day I caught up on Jamie’s Ministry of Food show, where he highlights super simple recipes for people who may not think they are very good cooks. I never fail to learn a thing or two, really who needs cooking school when you’ve got the food network, especially with Heston’s new show, all the best shows seem to come out of Britain for some reason.
I wish all my favourite food bloggers had cooking shows, it would be so cool to see people in their home kitchens working their magic. I love the little videos that Green Kitchen Stories puts out and Perennial Plate travelling the world. What are some of your favourite cooking shows? Do you prefer reading food blogs and looking at photos over food video? Someone contacted me recently about a new iPhone app they wanted me to try where you make little cooking videos and post them a food gawker for video type website. I had to decline since I’m likely one of the last people on the planet without a cell phone. We actually just moved from an area where there wasn’t even service. They were going to put a cell tower on our friends land but there was massive revolt and hardcore hippies uttering death threats so I think they put a pause on the project.
This chicken is absolutely simple, perfectly cooked every time, and pretty classy too. It’s really easy to whip up the whole lot in under 20 minutes with a nice fresh salad. If you want to watch Jamie cook up prosciutto parmesan chicken check it out here. The method for perfectly cooked chicken is to make the chicken breast or thigh equally thick by bashing it under plastic with a rolling pin or other heavy object. It cooks a lot faster that way and comes out perfectly juicy every time.
4 boneless, skinless free range chicken thighs or breasts
½ C parmesan cheese, grated
1 Tbs olive oil
fresh cracked pepper
Instructions
Place one piece of chicken at a time in a ziploc bag, bash it with a rolling pin a few times so that it has an even thickness.
Lightly sprinkle parmesan on one side of the chicken pieces. Cover with layers of prosciutto so that the cheese is protected.
Heat a frying pan with a bit of oil, when its nice and hot put the chicken in, prosciutto side down and cook for 3-3½ minutes per side over med-high heat.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
