Best Beet Borscht

The Best Beet Borscht In Eastern Europe, where borscht is king, you could eat a different recipe of borscht every week of the year, and each would be authentic. Although borscht is thought of as a beet dish, the word means any soup made with a variety of vegetables. My version is easy to fix, yet retains the qualities found in a more time-consuming preparation. I flavor with kvass, a traditional fermented beet liquid for use in red cabbage found in European delis, but it’s not necessary; substitute lemon juice if you wish. Notice that the vegetables are slow and low...

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Sweet and Sour Meat-A Balls. Viewing all the Olympic activity this month you will need lots of gold metal nibbles to enjoy while watching. Chicken wings with all the frying, the cost for a few dozen and finding that the frozen store bought ones taste blah! Meat-A Balls! Easy to assemble and 10 bucks worth of ground lean beef burger, a jar of your favourite BBQ sauce and you got a yummy nibble. I made sixty bite size balls and used this recipe for the sauce. This is how I make this party favourite that makes any  party snack a tasty treat everyone will like. You will need;...

Vanilla Orange Cream Cheese Carrot Cake

Vanilla Orange Cream Cheese Carrot Cake. My Mom made an excellent carrot cake. I don’t remember the amount of times that I sat waiting to lick the icing spatula. This recipe makes a delicious cake and is simple to construct. If you can let the food do the talking and use fresh ground spices and the better the ingredients the better the results. Set the oven temperature and get out all the ingredients in one area. This makes a quick recipe quicker and easy cleanup after. Now get your mixer and bowl and shortly you’ll be enjoying the rewards of good home baking....

Dill Pickled Beets

Dill Pickled Beets My Aunt Marie was a founding church member that helped raise money by selling her home preserves. She was one very serious canner. I remember many visits to her house and smelling the delicious cooking aromas that lingered in the air. This next recipes was one of her best offerings and she would produce several batches which were presold each season. I remember as a lad helping her pick, clean and peel several baskets of fruit and vegetables for this purpose. She taught me lots of things about canning that I later found very useful in my career as a...

Serious Rhubarb Jam

              Serious Rhubarb Jam Rhubarb was a plant my grandmother tended with gusto. She would cover the early spring plants with a wooden ash bushel basket.                By doing this the leaves would be smaller and the energy and sugars would collect in the stalks. I found that the stalks are more reddish and do taste better. She made this no nonsense rhubarb jam that she used for pancakes, squares, chutney and crumbles. She used it for a marinade and for braising a shoulder pork roast.  She also insisted that it was used as a...

Drunk on Scotch BBQ Salmon Salad

Drunk on Scotch BBQ Salmon. I started fishing with my dad back in 1955.  My dad would take us kids fishing down to the Hespeler Speed Dam or Puslinch Lake. We would catch some stream trout or lake pickerel pike, perch and pumpkin fish. These small Sun Fish from the Pumpkin Fish strain were what we would catch most all day. My dad told me way back then that these small fishes would feed you better than a big old bass. The pumpkin fish have more good omegas and nutrients in larger volumes than any other fresh water species that he told us back then. Like perch they can be...