My lemon tree has a wee lemon growing!

Can't wait to see the spectacular fireworks the City of Edmonton will showcase later!

Happy Canada Day to everyone!

I'm having a horrible day.  Several weeks back I turned on the Auto Uploader setting in my Flickr account so the photos from my phone would just automatically upload to my account.  However, I realized that it didn't auto sync, thus if I deleted it from my phone, it wouldn't delete from my Flickr albums.  I found this somewhat annoying to have to delete from my phone and then from my Flickr album thus I decided to stop auto uploading the photos.

I then decided I wanted to just remove the Auto Uploader album from my Flickr account and just leave it for photos that I purposely upload to Flickr.  I google searched how to delete albums from Flickr, since it isn't intuitive from their interface.  This is where things went very, very badly.  I was sure I chose the auto uploader album and hit yes to delete all.  Unfortunately, it deleted ALL MY PHOTOS.  My entire photostream!  I'm not sure how I chose Photostream Album instead of Auto Uploader Album but I must have. Now my blog has no pictures since the photos where grabbed from my Flickr photostream.  I am in tears.  I sent an email to Flickr, begging them to restore my photostream.  I'm not sure if they can even do that but it is worth asking since I am beside myself.  I feel like a giant idiot.

So in light of my chaos this morning I thought I'd post about the Cream Cheese Icing I made for my hubby's birthday cake last month.  Because you know, cake and icing are comfort foods, there to assist your soul when things go bad.

Oh, how I wish there was a big cake full of frosting in front of me right now.

***insert sobbing sounds here***

...

My husband's favorite cake is probably cheesecake but I already had prepared chocolate layer cakes in the freezer so I decided to make cream cheese icing instead.  I had this vision of making a multi-layer chocolate cake with thick cream cheese layers as I have seen before in magazines and online.  I decided to wing it, because that is what I do sometimes. I was already super busy prepping for guests arriving  I'm not sure what I was thinking because I could have google searched recipes but I often just go for it and have my friends/family be my guinea pigs.  Most of the time it works out for me, sometimes not.  This time it actually did!  This cake has 1 KILOGRAM of cream cheese!  Sometimes you really do need to go big or go home!  Though I admit, the whole time I was stressing out thinking that the cake would deflate or the icing would just run down the side with every passing hour it sat waiting to be served.  I prepped it in the morning and walked away until I served it in the evening.  Here it is, in all it's glory,  1 KILOGRAM of CREAM CHEESE!!!

My mother in law told me about Dr. Oetker. Whip It the week before, that she uses it to stabilize her whipping cream, so this is where my idea of my stabilized cream cheese came to mind .  I figured I could use it to stabilize my cream cheese.  I used spreadable cream cheese, I'm sure you can use regular cream cheese but you might need to change ratios.

...

I often tell people that Loblaws should hire me cuz I'm their biggest fan.  People look at me strange but I'm serious. Don't talk bad about my Superstore.  As an avid home cook, Me love you long time!

I loved them back when they were an ugly-painted warehouse box store, loading up my discount no name products in my gigantic shopping carts.  I have not had a product I disliked from their President's Choice line.  Black label, oh yeah!  Healthy Blue Menu- in my cart! Not to mention their in-store Guiding Stars marketing, love it!   I have always loved the "spend $250 and get a $25 gift card" coupon because those years when I had babies, BOTH in diapers, that came in real handy.  Every time I use my PC Plus card and it's time to redeem, I thank Galen Weston Jr. for saving me buckeroos.  It's like getting free Joe Fresh clothes!  Seriously Galen, you need to hire me!

I remember being so jealous of the Presidents Choice Pop Up last year, wishing we had some of that awesome here in Edmonton.  So when I heard that tomorrow is the grand opening of the Loblaws CityMarket store in the Brewery District, I had to drive by on the way home just to have a sneak peek.  I wasn't expecting the doors to be open but YES, YES, YES!

It's sooooo beautiful! The refrigerated wall of CHEESE! The Deli is HUGE with so much variety!  When I hit the Patisserie, I thought I'd died and went to heaven. Died.  Heaven.  I may never bake again.

Galen!  I like it!  I like it a lot!  No, I LOVE IT.  My love affair continues.  See you in the aisles!

I thought it would be fun to put a little rock and roll into my blog.  I got the chance to talk food with Gordie Johnson, lead singer of group Big Sugar. I have seen Big Sugar play during my University years and remember quite a few of their songs.  This week they played 2 sold out shows at Festival Place in Sherwood Park.


I heard that you are a big foodie. I was reading that you grew with Italian food.

Italian food and Ukrainian food.  I grew up with 2 great schools of thought and it’s interesting because there are some places that it intersects.  Perogies are potato-filled ravioli. My father makes fresh pasta and my mother makes fresh perogy dough. They both have to roll them out, cut them into circles, fill them, pinch them and boil them so then... this is the exact same thing though we all know it’s not but at the end of the day, it kinda is.

It’s like how every country has their version of meat on a stick...

There are these things you eat your entire life and then one day you realize when you are looking at them … like my mother used to make Babka, which is a Ukrainian Easter Bread.  She used to let it rise and made it in a big ole coffee tin and it was this yellow, yeasty, cakey stuff with raisins inside.  The Italians have Pannetone on the holidays and I was at my mom’s house one day and I was looking at it thinking this is exactly the same thing. It’s not similar, it’s identical.

You cook a lot of Italian.  Are there specialties you make? You mentioned your father makes pasta dough.  Do you?

No, my father has the machine and the whole restaurant set up.  If I’m having pasta, I use the dry, I like it better. Hard to say what my specialty is… I’m the guy who makes the sauces once a week. I make my own pesto and tomato sauce. I make a giant pot of (tomato sauce) it and by the end of the week, we are down to just a little leftover which goes into next week’s sauce.  We have sauce that has potentially 10 year old sauce in it.

Do you experiment in the kitchen?  Do you make your own cheeses or yogurt? How adventurous are you in that sense?

In that category, I would say when I make Texas chili.  I can make Indian food, Jamaican food ... but living here in Texas, I have gotten into the whole science of chili making.  There are so many techniques into making chili, it can be very complex dish so I take an Indian approach by making a curry for my chili.  We use local peppers, I will dry them for 6 months, hanging them in the sun in my kitchen and grind them in a coffee grinder.  Chipotle peppers, Ancho chilies, which are very dry and raisiny, so when you grind them down to a powder, it’s amazing.