Rhubarb Loaf

Local rhubarb has been appearing at the market, just in time for a Sunday baking/therapy session.  The weekend was so beautiful for being out of doors I was glad to have prepared these loaves (the recipe yields two) just after breakfast. The brown sugar/butter/cinnamon topping made the house smell dreamy while I cleaned up the kitchen. And I got to spend the rest of the day outside.

Reading Munchies

Do you snack while you read? I do, sometimes. In fact I have a very clear (and dear) memory of reading V.C. Andrews novels lounging on the floor of my room while eating Hostess BBQ chips and drinking Welch's grape soda. I must have been around fourteen at the time. This memory horrifies me on a number of levels. Would I let my boys read V.C. Andrews at fourteen? Not on your life. And why was I drinking grape soda on the floor of my white carpeted room? And those chips! I would eat an entire big bag by myself in one sitting. And I was skinny as a rail. I miss my fourteen year old self. My fourteen year old self loved the 'Flowers in the Attic' series. I haven't thought about those books in years. I imagine if I still had this particular series (which I don't) the pages would be smeared with greasy, red fingerprints. And the occasional splatter of purple soda.

Maple Bacon Kettle Corn - It's Happening

Everything is better with bacon. Truly. Case in point: Maple. Bacon. Kettle. Corn.

Chili and Honey Popcorn

Remember this? Well the recipe for Chili and Honey popcorn I misplaced finally revealed itself. No matter that I was actually looking for an AWOL math test (also located, eventually) the important thing is, I can enjoy chili and honey popcorn again. Here's the deal:

3 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp liquid honey
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp chili powder
big ol' bowl of popped popcorn

You know what to do. Make sure you get out plenty of napkins.

Snack attack - popcorn

I love potato chips. Which is a funny way to start a post about popcorn. I've turned to popcorn as a way to curb my appetite for chips. So to keep it interesting, I try to change it up by dressing it differently. Which begs the question, if you douse your popcorn with butter (among other things) should you just have gone for the chips in the first place?

Not if you make Cracked Pepper and Honey Butter popcorn. I found this recipe in the Winter 2010 Food & Drink magazine from the LCBO. I had to cut down on the pepper (it calls for 3/4 tsp, coarsley ground) but partnered with the sweet of the honey this makes for a wonderful treat on Saturday night. It hasn't improved the selection of what is on TV, unfortunately, but I care less when I'm cramming popcorn into my mouth...

I also tried a wonderful popcorn recipe from the Two Dishes cookbook I mentioned recently. But given the state of my clipped recipe file, which is disaster right now after it fell out of my cupboard and became all...aflutter, I can't find it. It was also based on butter and honey, but calls for chili powder instead of pepper. Made my fingers red but totally worth it. D. liked it even better than the Cracked Pepper, which suprised me because he is not a chili fan, but totally a pepper fan. If that makes sense. I'll try and find it. If you Google chili honey popcorn, you'll get the jist.

Terry Fox Run - The Pride, The Shame

Thank you to everyone who sponsored us in the Terry Fox Run this weekend! D. and I surprised ourselves by completing the 10K distance. We had only set out to do 5K but felt so good when we completed the first 5 that we decided to keep running. We finished in 1 hour, 1 minute and 58 seconds. D. took a celebratory picture of us with my iPhone shortly after we finished:


Yeah. That's my shoe. And my hand on D.'s shoulder. It's mostly assorted foliage from Springbank Park. Apparently we need to work on how to use the camera phone. Anyhoo, we raised (drum roll please) $320.00, so again thank you for your generous support.

That would be 'The Pride' of my post headline. 'The Shame' is what we (okay, I) did after, which was head to Smoke's Poutinerie and order up a helping of pulled pork poutine. Voila:


So any health benefit I might have gained by running 10K was immediately obliterated by greasy french fries slathered in gravy topped with cheese curds and pulled pork. But it was so good. I washed it down with a Lime Rickey Pop Shoppe Pop. So given the choice I'm going to choose to bask in the (sweaty) glow of having done a 10K, my first, and worry about the damage I've done to my arteries through poutine (not the first, nor the last) tomorrow.