We try to keep up with as many Canadian food bloggers as we can, and these are just a few of the mouth-watering posts we came across this month. Enjoy!
White Chicken Chipotle Chili
http://piccantedolce.blogspot.com/2008/10/white-chicken-chipotle-chili.html
Jen of Piccante Dolce came up with a zesty white chili that’s sure to be a hit on those upcoming chilly days.
Honey Chicken with Butternut Squash with Dried Cranberry and Pecan Rice Dressing
http://morethanburnttoast.blogspot.com/2010/10/honey-chicken-with-butternut-squash.html
It’s a great time to take advantage of fall ingredients. The lovely aromas of butternut squash, sage, and rosemary will definitely make your home smell like autumn if you make this dish posted by More Than Burnt Toast.
Greek Chicken Wraps
http://iliketocook.blogspot.com/2010/10/greek-chicken-wraps.html
Rounding out our roundup, I Like to Cook posted a healthy, delicious-looking Greek Chicken Wrap that looks great for lunches on-the-go.
If you have a Canadian food blog, or know of one that we should be reading, let us know about it in the comments!
Judy Scott Welden is a consumer advocate, nutritionist, and media spokesperson. She is passionate about bringing nutritious foods to Canadian families and we're happy to have her unique perspective in her upcoming series of posts at 
1) Who taught you how to cook?
My mother set an incredible example for me in our home about the importance of family time and the value of a delicious evening meal shared by all around a table. Though she did not teach me how to cook, she did let me play in the kitchen with recipes and food experiments. My grandmother taught me how to garden and to preserve. I am a self taught cook, for the most part. I read, I practice, I fail, I learn. I love to be shown by someone whose food I admire, and when I can, I learn that way. I believe in buying local and preparing food for my family from scratch as much as possible. I have attended classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and at The Bertinet Cookery School in Bath UK to hone my skills.
I will continue to take cooking classes as I travel because I believe that food preparation is an inherent aspect within every culture and I love learning about ethnic practices. As Canada is a multicultural country, I appreciate the learning available to me to continue to build these skills from my neighbours, colleagues, and friends.
2) Why is the Slow Food movement important to you?
I believe it is critical to teach our young and their parents the importance of eating good, clean, local and fair food. It is important for them to understand where their food comes from, what the food production process is (farm wise) to enable a strong appreciation and intrinsic value for the food on their plate, daily. They must learn about taste and how to cook!
The Slow Food movement works to celebrate and support local producers of food. Without consistent, careful and ongoing education and opportunities to learn and to participate in, the future for the planet and our personal health is bleak. I am driven and so enthusiastic and excited about getting back to the basics which is not reading, writing and arithmetic; it is growing, and sharing and cooking and eating delicious, nutritious food.
3) What is your favourite thing to make for friends and family?
Whatever is in season, fresh and simple. That is so exciting for me. Fresh and local food is a celebration on a plate every day! There is nothing like a grass fed prime rib of beef stuffed with slices of garlic and topped with Montreal Steak Spice roasted to perfection in my Grandmother's enamel roaster on a Sunday afternoon. The aroma is intoxicating. This is served with homemade buns, deep dark beefy gravy, mashed potatoes, a variety of freshly steamed seasonal vegetables, and accompanied by the quintessential homemade apple pie. In the Spring, this is accompanied by a salad of new leaf lettuce from our garden with the family's traditional sweet and sour cream and vinegar dressing. Now, that is Alberta!
4) You describe yourself as "part mad scientist" in the kitchen. Which dishes show the mad scientist side of you?
I must say that I do fail a lot in my kitchen, even now, as a seasoned home cook. That is because I am consistently working to try new ideas and to create recipes and food that excites me. One example of this would be my recently self rendered leaf pastry and the follow-up tasting of pastry made with it compared to the home rendered leaf pastry of a friend (fat rendered from a different farm pig) and the standard Tenderflake lard. That is the mad scientist in me, as well as the fact that I also embrace new technology in my cooking practices. I believe in optimizing the flavour and texture of beautiful food in every way I know and I have recently begun working with water ovens, or sous vide cooking, which is often found under the umbrella of molecular gastronomy. I use it to do very basic thoughtful food preparation.
5) What is the most memorable thing you've eaten?
There are so many food memories and one is not standing out other than the incredible flavours of the heirloom tomatoes I grow myself picked fresh from my yard garden combined with some fresh garden basil, a sparkle of salt, crushed garlic from Sundog Organic Farm (just outside of Edmonton) and some SmokyVally Chevre. Now that is incredible.
In a nutshell, I am a Canadian interested in maintaining and passing on the traditions of my 7 generation Canadian family as well as learning the food traditions and practice of others.
Theresa Albert is a nutritionist, best-selling cookbook author, and Food Network personality, and we're thrilled to have her with us for the next few weeks to provide her unique brand of cooking and nutritional knowledge.
Humans are designed to love sweetness, and with good reason! When we were cavemen, there were no farms or grocery stores, so we foraged for food. Generally, the foods that were on the sweet side, like nuts, berries, seeds, and herbs, were safe and nutritious. Mother’s milk is crazy sweet, specifically to cater to the newborn’s palate. Sweet is good. But too sweet with nothing else to offer is not so good.
We get into trouble when we refine sweetness, whether it’s high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), sugar or artificial sweeteners. Our bodies don’t seem to know what to do with that sweet taste when it comes without the nutrients or calories it is expecting the sweetness to come with. Consume straight up sweetness in HFCS or sugar and your body overproduces insulin to deal with it. When we don’t actually use the insulin, the crash that ensues happens because the body is unable to handle the traffic.
The studies on artificial sweeteners seem to show a similar but opposite response. It appears as though we hold on to the sensation of sweet and drive toward the calories we expect to come with it. So we when we taste sweet the body expects to put out some insulin to move fuel into the cells. But when the calories aren’t forthcoming, we biologically seek out even more food. Pretty smart bodies.
There has never been a culture that expects or consumes more sweetness than ours in our time. It starts early in the morning and goes on all day. Most are becoming aware of the issue but are still grappling with the problem.
I am often asked how much sugar we really need in our diets - and the answer? None! Zero, zilch. Human bodies do a great job of “refining” our own sugars from foods, specifically and most simply from carbohydrates. In a perfect world, the sugar you need in your bloodstream comes with the fibre, calories and nutrients of food.
There has been no upper limit set by either Health Canada or the World Health Organization but they do make a recommendation. The recommendation is that we should consume no more than 10% of our calories from “added” sugar. And by “added” sugar we mean sugar that doesn’t occur naturally as in fruit. That’s one can of soda pop, or a couple of cookies or one serving of sweetened cereal. In short, it isn’t much. By the end of a seemingly perfectly healthy breakfast of sweetened yogurt and packaged granola, one could have 15% or more. That doesn’t leave any room for your afternoon coffee with sugar or your treat for dessert! (see my blog and podcast about breakfast here)
One of the ways I suggest we get around this is to switch to honey, agave nectar, molasses or maple syrup to sweeten. So, that morning yogurt becomes the plain variety with a titch of honey and cinnamon which adds flavor, sweetness and nutrients rather than the refined sugar that comes with the prepackaged, pre-sweetened stuff. Honey is great in tea, and maple syrup is awesome in coffee.
These natural sweeteners register lower on the glycemic index (a measurement of how quickly sugar is burned in the body; lower and slower is better) since they still contain other nutrients and minerals and are less refined. Making this small step toward reducing one’s need for sweet can help the overall picture.
Canada’s own Monda Rosenberg retired as Food Editor of CHATELAINE, Canada’s largest circulation magazine, in 2009. She was responsible for the magazine’s entire award-winning Food section, including writing and recipe development of over 2,000 recipes a year and overseeing food photography. Before joining CHATELAINE, Monda Rosenberg was Food Editor of the Toronto Star for five years.
Monda has received an impressive number of food writing, styling and publishing awards including the Nabisco Food Writer’s Magazine Food Editor of the Year Award, the New York Art Directors Award for Food Styling and the General Foods Nutrition Writing Award. She has been president of the Ontario Home Economics Association and president of the Toronto Home Economics Association for a double term.
A frequent guest on national television and radio shows, Monda is the author of The New Chatelaine Cookbook, two Vitality Cookbooks, the Quickies series of 7 cookbooks and Chatelaine’s Wonder Foods.
Plump pink thighs are a true joy in the culinary world (and I'm not talking about the cook's legs). Knowing there's a package of chicken thighs in the meat keeper is almost as good as knowing dinners ready to go - since I can get them on the table with very little work.
SUPERMARKET SAVVY
I've been developing a crush on this cut since it became the stuff of super sales and easy-to-find packages of various sizes in almost every supermarket. I confess that I'd been a white meat gal most of my life, but the bonus flavour, ease of cooking and cost savings won me over. Growing up, the only decision to make when entertaining was to roast a whole bird or cook breasts. These days smart cooks use full-flavoured thighs in the classiest of dishes, letting it sub for milder tasting chicken breasts or the task of cutting up a whole bird for a coq au vin, Indian butter chicken, curry or even chicken cordon bleu.
I usually reach for the skinless boneless packages unless I'm making something that will slowly simmer or braise away and I want to capitalize on the flavour in the bones. Meat on the bone infuses more taste into the sauce and into the chicken meat. Most of the time, I remove the skin before cooking no matter what cut I buy. Partly to cut back on fat and calories but also because I don't like that flabby skin thing that can happen unless you are roasting or frying the thighs. Experts have been telling me for years that chicken cooked with the skin on and then removed has no more calories than if you remove the skin before you roast it.
The advantage of leaving it on of course is that it protects the surface from drying out and getting all wrinkly and hard. Despite their testing I have never completely bought this one BECAUSE IT MAKES SUCH A WHOPPING DIFFERENCE IN THE BEAUTY, TEXTURE AND MOISTNESS OF THE THIGH WHEN I LEAVE THE SKIN ON. But if I am going to roast and have skin-on thighs, I do leave it in place ALSO to get that sensation of opening up the oven door and seeing the glorious juices running down all that golden, crispy skin. Then I strip my skin off at the dinner table (it’s the only stripping allowed in our dining room) and give it to my husband to eat.
The nutritional goods on thighs is that a 100 g portion (ABOUT 3 OZ ) of thigh meat without the skin has 166 calories and 6.88 grams of fat. Leave the skin on and those figures rise to 244 calories and 17.59 grams of fat. I would rather spend those extra calories on the pure "meat".
There is an ongoing debate in our house about whether it's worth shelling out the money for the already skinned and boned thighs or to buy the thighs with the bone-in and skin-on and do the stripping and boning ourselves. I have always felt that no matter what you buy, each thigh costs around $1. The decision of which to grab in the grocery store comes down to the specials that might be on and how rushed I think I am going to be when I use them. Then there is the question - how much is my time worth? Remember the skin on thighs can be very THICK so it doesn't work to simply compare the prices of skinless boneless to the same weight of skin-on bone-in.
In a very unscientific test; I purchased bone-in, skin-on thighs for $5.49 a kilogram. The eight skin-on bone-in thighs weighed 1274 g and cost $6.99 (that works out to about 87 cents a thigh). I removed the skin and bones. Together the skin and bones weighed 405 g. That left 869 g of actual meat. Thus I paid $6.99 for 867 grams of chicken meat. That means that the meat cost $8.04 per kilogram (sorry about all these figures).
I spent about five minutes removing the skin and another 10 minutes removing bones (what can I say, Speedy Gonzales I am not).
Skinned and boned thighs were selling that day at $14.55 a kilogram. At this price the 869 grams of pure "meat" that I ended up with would have cost me $12.66. The bottom line is that I saved $4.62 by doing it myself. Every minute I worked I saved 31 cents or $18.60 an hour. So is my time worth more than $18 an hour - especially when I am tired and hungry? Of course you might be much faster at this task than I.
SAVINGS DOWN THE ROAD
Stock up when thighs are on special. Freeze so it will eventually be easy to remove them individually. Put a few thighs in a large self-sealing bag and place the bag on a baking sheet. With your hand on the top of the bag, move the thighs around so there is space between them. Seal and freeze. Once firm, remove the baking sheet and the thighs will remain beautifully separated so it's a snap to take out a few at a time.
SKIN AND BONES
Fortunately there is no big challenge in boning and skinning thighs. It is not difficult, but it takes time - some pieces more than others. To skin, insert the point of a small knife between the edge of the skin and the meat or use your finger tip to loosen the two. Grab the skin and gently pull back a little. Then take a piece of paper towel and place over the pulled back part of skin. Grab the paper towel covered skin firmly. Steadily pull away the skin in one piece.
Boning a thigh is not a snap but considerably easier than boning a breast because there is just one central straight bone to take out. Slap the thighs, skin-side down, on a cutting board and spread them out as best you can. You will see the enlarged tip of one thick bone. It will have a cut off side. Using a sharp knife, make a cut lengthwise through to the middle of that bone. Now grab the large end of the bone and while gently pulling it up, scrape all the flesh from the bone. If you make your own broth, pop the bone in a bag to freeze until you have time to simmer up a broth. Flatten the thigh and cut away any excess fat.
When I don't have time to thaw and want chicken pieces or strips for a soup, pasta sauce or stir-fry, I take out the number of thighs I need and defrost in the microwave or in a sealed plastic bag in a sink of cold water. But I defrost only to the point of being able to easily saw through the meat. After slicing, I throw them into the bubbling soup or sauce and let then simmer away.
GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN
The direction you cut the chicken matters. Muscle fibres stretch lengthwise in the thigh running the length of the bone. When heated they shrink. To avoid tough chicken, slice the raw chicken across these fibres (aka, the grain). Then as they cook up, they'll only shrink the short thickness of the cut and not curl up.
ANYTIME, ANYWHERE
or
THIGHS MANY WAYS
Thighs are the superstars of the poultry counter because they can stand in for so many other cuts of chicken and you never have to sacrifice flavour for speed.
Here are a few of my favourite ways to gussy them up.
CHIC (HOTTIES) ROLL-UPS - Remove bones from skin-on bone-in thighs. Place meat side up, on a plate or cutting board. Place a small amount (about a rounded teaspoon) of soft chevre cheese in the centre. Spread out so it covers about a third of the thigh. Scatter with a few strips of pickled hot red peppers (you buy them in a jar at the supermarket and they are terrific on hot sausages). Roll up the chicken trying to keep all the cheese encased. Stretch the skin so it covers as much of the skin as it can. Place seam side down on an oiled piece of foil on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with ground cumin. Roast at 375 F (190 C) until golden, 30 to 35 minutes.
DECADENT COMFORT SAUCE - Heat a jar of Alfredo pasta sauce in a large frying pan. Add cut-up pieces of skinless boneless thighs. Stir often while simmering away for about 10 minutes. (Meanwhile get the pasta boiling.) Then add a few handfuls of sliced mushrooms and frozen peas. Season with tarragon or poultry seasonings and eventually toss with fettuccine.
NO STRESS MEXICAN BAKE - Place the skinless thighs (bone-in or out) in a baking dish, spreading them out as best you can. Spoon salsa sauce over top. Scatter with grated cheese or just lay thin slices over top. Bake, uncovered, at 375 F (190 C) 30 to 40 minutes.
CRUNCHY-CREAMY BAKE - Dip or brush skinless boneless thighs with your favourite, flavourful salad dressing. Creamy Caesar, blue cheese and Greek with feta are the usual ones I reach for. Then shake in a bag filled with dry bread crumbs, crushed croutons or taco chips. Place on a rack on a baking sheet and roast at 375 F (190F) about 25 to 35 minutes depending on their size. Why not bake frozen French fries or big pieces of potato wedges at the same time?
Note from Chicken Farmers of Canada: While we can understand Monda’s skepticism, our research has always shown cooking with the skin on and removing it prior to consumption does not increase the calorie count. Remember though, that chicken skin does have its own nutritional properties, too. Either way – Monda’s chicken ideas are delicious!
The news media is all over the salt topic, and with good reason, but sodium isn’t the whole picture. In my private practice, I hear people say “oh, we put away the salt shaker years ago!” They’re usually surprised to hear that the salt shaker is the least of their worries.
Most of the salt that we consume comes from packaged or prepared foods, so unless you are cooking at home from scratch 80% of the time, you are likely consuming too much salt.
We need about 500 mg of sodium per day to survive and the suggested maximum is set at 2500 mg for an adult with no risk factors. (Risk factors include things as simple as being over 40 and complex as hypertension or high blood pressure). Many experts agree that a safer number is actually around 1500 mg but the food labels on packages give you a percentage based on 2500mg, which can complicate matters unless you are much better and faster at math than I am.
The best solution to sodium is to cook at home and know what is going into your food. I use prepared foods judiciously rather than religiously by always making sure that they are in balance with the other things on my plate. I love restaurants and sometimes, like everyone, I need to save time at a drive-thru and use packages to save a long, busy day from becoming a disastrous one. But making sure that most of what is on my family’s dinner plate is fresh, single ingredient food is crucial to controlling the salt (and many other things!)
The upside of filling that plate with fresh vegetables and whole grains is that these foods help your body metabolize the sodium with their high potassium content. So, even if you slip up once in a while and have takeout pizza and movie popcorn on one day, the rest of your week will help you stay on track.
Some of the worst offenders come in the most innocuous of packages. Foods like tomato sauce, pickles, sauerkraut, canned tuna and vegetable juice can provide ¼ to ½ of a day’s worth of salt in one delicious (and otherwise nutritious) serving. Rather than avoiding these foods altogether I suggest that we mitigate their impact by stretching them.
· Mix together a can of unsalted tomatoes with your favorite tomato sauce.
· Check labels on pickles, brands do vary widely. Consume only a few.
· Rinse sauerkraut through a sieve before eating. It’s still delicious and healthy.
· Drain canned tuna well and mix in some yogurt instead of mayo. Stretch it even further with some chopped green onion and celery.
· Vegetable juice can be mixed with other juices or watered down for less sodium per sip.
In the end, what you really want to do is eat as much as possible that hasn’t been packaged for you to mitigate the risk and keep sodium levels at healthy levels.
Have you noticed in recent years that portion sizes have ballooned? Think of extra large coffee paired with a jumbo muffin, and what movie is complete without a bucket of popcorn and a supersized pop? As we grow accustomed to increasingly larger portions at restaurants, fast food outlets and grocery stores, our meals at home are also growing larger – call it portion distortion. We’re often eating ‘one serving’ that is actually double or even triple the standard size used by nutritionists. These larger portions mean consuming excess calories, which can easily add up to weight gain.
A good way to gain control over portion size and the amount you eat is to familiarize yourself with serving sizes based on Canada’s Food Guide. I am always shocked that this free tool isn’t used more often. Instead, we join pricey weight loss groups and look to the latest gimmick for help. If we ate according to the Guide, I’m sure weight would not be the problem it has become today.
Canada’s Food Guide provides recommendations for the daily number of servings from each food group based on age, gender, stage of life and activity level. It’s easy to determine your daily needs and see the number of servings appropriate for each person in your family. But what does a serving look like?
Here are some tips for understanding what a single portion looks like:
Our Flying Chicks successfully rappelled off the 18-storey Delta Ottawa Hotel on September 27 and they couldn’t have done it without you! Chicken Farmers of Canada was able to raise more than $9,500 in support of Easter Seals due to your generous donations! We couldn’t be more thrilled.
After registering and signing all the waivers, in case something did happen, the Flying Chicks collected their kits and were then outfitted in complete rappel gear. After a very short practice run on a makeshift 1 story wall, they were ushered to the roof in full costume where they received their final instructions.
Down below, about 35 of us, staff, stakeholders, friends and family were watching in anticipation. Some worried and praying for a safe landing, the rest of us knowing everything would be just fine. We had signs, lots of them and we were loud. I’m sure our cheers of support could be heard a couple of blocks away. Before they came down they waived to us from above. As expected the most tentative step was the first one.
Let me tell you that although 18 storeys doesn’t sound that high when you’re looking up or down and watching someone make their way down a building it’s actually really high. It’s definitely not something you could do if you are afraid of heights.
The street was full of super heroes that day. I think all of the participants were decked out in their favourite costume. We saw Mr. Incredible, Wonder Woman, Bat Girl, DJ Lance and so many others. Our Flying Chicks were decked out in red capes, red masks and beaks.
After that first tentative step they each made it down the building. Slowly at first...some more slowly than others...but they did it. Once they were down, and thumbs up were all around, the expressions on their faces said it all. They loved it! It was an exhilarating, fun experience and they would do it all over again.
We did manage to take some video of the experience for you to see, so please watch and enjoy.
Again, thank you so much for supporting CFC and our Flying Chicks and also a big thank you to our chicks for being super heroes for the day!
Well, it’s happened. His Royal Highness now gets mad when he’s not eating the same things we are. This means a whole bunch of things, but mainly these:
1) The grown-ups have to seriously watch what they’re eating, so that Baby gets good stuff (versus us getting take out while he gets a gourmet mash).
2) A little more thought has to go into meal planning, so that whatever we have can be easily adapted. This means that if we have something that doesn’t suit his diet (too hard, too spicy or contains ingredients he can’t have), we better plan for something that looks a little like what we’re eating, so he doesn’t feel short-changed.
3) More mess – with His Nibs now using his pincer grip like a pro, he gets his food in little chunks, rather than pureed, so we are now in the world of trying to find a baby beneath the berry’d cheeks and lips, etc.
4) More time – now that he’s eating on his own, gone are the days when we could just spoon feed and get to the playing. So, dinner takes a little longer – but Mom and Dad get to sit back a little more, too. Probably for the best of everyone involved.
Ultimately, we all benefit. Instead of doing a pot roast in a slow cooker with a sauce kit from a package, I make the rubs myself. Instead of choosing something that is convenient but probably not the best choice, I have to plan, which ultimately means better decisions all around. Instead of mindlessly shovelling foods and worrying that I’ve made him eat pureed sweet potatoes AGAIN, I now know that he’s getting variety – just like we are.
Last weekend, we all went to the Farmers’ Market. There, I picked up some gorgeous Roma tomatoes, some fresh peaches and cream corn, some asparagus and more. I’d already been to the butcher to buy some mouth-watering, large chicken breasts. That night, we all enjoyed a tomato and cucumber salad with bocconcini, grilled chicken and fresh berries with cream for dessert.
What was particularly awesome was this: I cut up the tomatoes, the chicken (which I’d brined with garlic and rosemary), the cucumbers (I had to be careful and cut these really small, because they’re still a little hard for him to chew) and added some well-cooked asparagus pieces. I tossed them together, placed them into a bowl with a suction base that stuck to Baby’s high chair and he went to town. A second bowl, filled with chopped blueberries, followed.
So, he sat back and ate alongside us – I know the meals are good when very little lands on the floor and he’s picking pieces to eat out of the pouch in his bib!
Theresa Albert is a nutritionist, best-selling cookbook author, and Food Network personality, and we're thrilled to have her with us for the next few weeks to provide her unique brand of cooking and nutritional knowledge.
I shared with some of my colleagues the fact that I am working with the Chicken Farmers of Canada to help Canadians get wholesome, simple meals on their tables. Luckily, my colleagues are some of the smartest, busiest women and mothers around. Even more luckily, they agreed to let me mine their lives and share their tips for doing just that. What you will find over the next 6 blogs are those interviews. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent; in fact, they are proudly displayed so we can all see that every family has its way of doing things and learn from each other!
This edition’s interviewee - Maureen Dennis
For this post, I talked to Maureen Dennis, who is the founder of 
So, baby’s teething – again. Frankly, we’re very lucky because there’s no real ceremony to the appearance of each tooth. The first one was a surprise, but all the ones afterwards (he has 6 now and is going on 7) have shown up with nothing more than a lot of drool.
Now, though, his gums are a little red and his fingers rarely leave his mouth – classic teething signs. Plus, he balks at anything hard hitting his gums. He’s not miserable, but something’s definitely up.
Last night’s dinner was an act of compassion. He’s starting to shy away (more like ‘boisterously recoil’) from the mushy, pureed stuff and definitely wants whatever Mom and Dad are having for dinner. Last night, though, we were having things that weren’t really appropriate – chilli-lime pork tenderloin (too spicy – maybe even for me), homemade tortilla chips (too hard) and broccoli coleslaw (too raw). So, what’s a Mom to do?
Naturally, I turned to the chicken default – I made 
