Presto....Pesto!!!

I heard for the first time on Monday that the third Monday in January is known as the most depressing day of the year.  Makes sense in some aspects - the euphoric high of Christmas festivities followed by the exaltation's of ringing (or imbibing oneself) in the New Year have come to an abrupt end; those credit card bills with exorbitant charges have inevitably arrived in your mailbox by this point; and for those of us living in the Great White North of Canada, the temperature has dropped significantly bringing on frostbite and seclusion.  (Colin can resonate well with this, having lived so close to the Arctic Circle when he lived in Canada some years ago!)  Well, my credit card bill arrived earlier in the month and has already been paid, and although the thermometer keeps dipping further south of the freezing point, the sun has been shining and I plan to embrace the cold weather with the Three 'S' 's - sledding, skiing, and skating!

Following a trip to Curves on Monday, I went grocery shopping.  I ran into Amanda and we talked recipes, food labels and trying out the local ski slopes.  Dinner that evening was going to be Squaghetti - a recipe from "The Cleaner Plate Club".  The recipe is a spaghetti dish with zucchini, pesto and roasted tomatoes.  In essence I was making three different recipes - the spaghetti/zucchini, the basil pesto, and roasted tomatoes - all three from the book.  Before making my shopping list, I checked what I had on hand already.  I had a jar of basil pesto in the fridge but the ingredients listed hydrogenated soybean oil.  HYDROGENATED = TRANS FAT, so where I thought I could save time using up what I already had, I tossed that and made homemade basil pesto.  Amanda happened to have a jar of pesto in her cart so we checked the label and hers was good - no hydrogenated anything.  She uses pesto on salmon!  What a great idea!  So instead of my usual salmon topped with a dollop of marmalade and toasted sesame seeds, I planned to use what was left of my basil pesto to flavour my salmon this week!  It couldn't get more perfect!  Thanks for the idea Amanda!

So I had to purchase some new items again this week.  I couldn't find a bunch of fresh basil, so I ended up purchasing a whole plant...

...which is fine, because now I'll always have it on hand - and the fresher the better!  Right?  I think so!  I also needed to buy fresh marjoram and purchase fennel and shallots for another recipe.  I had trouble figuring out what fennel was to begin with, and upon initial inspection nearly picked up a bunch of arugula because the thing beside it looked so strange I wouldn't know what to do with it, or which part you are supposed to eat.  I have dried fennel in a glass spice jar that didn't resemble either of these offerings so I was flummoxed as to what to do here.  In the end, by process of elimination (and remembering that arugula is in the 'mixed green' salads I've purchased before) I picked up the funny looking thing, which indeed was fennel!  The shallots were much easier to distinguish!

You see, it does look pretty funny, doesn't it?  I picked the one with the most foliage sprouting from it, thinking that was the part I was supposed to use (it looked more like the dried stuff I had).  Google is a most wonderful tool, I must say!!  I left the fennel on the kitchen table as a conversation piece more than anything else!  The kids came home from school and their curiosity was certainly piqued!  We tried sticking the shallots into the celery-like tubes poking out and tried to figure out what to do with it.
Back to the squaghetti that I made for dinner on Monday night.  As I said, this was really a three recipe dish.  I had limited time to prepare everything so I started by making the roasted cherry tomatoes...

I just love the vibrant colours of fresh produce!  We've been missing out all these years buying packaged dinners!  And the smell radiating from the oven while these baked was heavenly!  As soon as Kristen walked in the door after school, she got super excited thinking she smelled garlic bread.  Two minutes later the same response was elicited from Matthew.  I had a very short lived moment of remorse for getting their hopes up, but how was I to know?  While the tomatoes were roasting I set to work on making the homemade pesto.  I never would have thought there were pine nuts in pesto, but alas, there is.   Since I don't own a food processor I had to make do with my handy dandy blender.  I picked the basil fresh from my new plant, added garlic, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and pine nuts... and presto!!  Fresh basil pesto!!

Now, for arguments sake I set about comparing this lovely vibrantly green and freshly made pesto to that 'blech' version residing in the refrigerator.  Have a look...

Do you remember those anti-drug commercials on TV where they show an egg and a voice said, "This is your brain", then crack the egg into a frying pan and state, "This is your brain on drugs"?  Well this is my version.  On the left you have basil pesto (the egg, if you will) and on the right you will find basil pesto on trans fat, essentially pesto on drugs!  Which one would you rather ingest?  I hope you chose the one of the left!!!

At this point I had to take a break to take Kristen and her friend Seren to gymnastics class.  I had to hurry back to finish making the dinner in time to get to BCSS to facilitate my support group for Friends & Family of Cancer Patients.  First order of business was to take the lemon zester to the zucchini which makes it look like spaghetti noodles!  Which needed to be blanched for a couple of minutes before adding the 'real' spaghetti noodles to the pot.

When the noodles were ready,  I mixed them with the pesto, zucchini and roasted tomatoes, then topped it all off with some grated Parmesan cheese.   Mmmm is all I can say!  Matthew enjoyed it.  Kristen ate it all but seemed indifferent and Jacob had to be coerced a little to finish it.  John's favourite part was the roasted tomatoes.  To be honest, I'm not sure this dish would have appealed to me 3-4 months ago, which just shows how far I've come.  This is one of my favourites!!!



On Tuesday evening I took the night off of cooking and went to dinner and a movie with Michelle.  We were hoping to go to an Italian restaurant but got caught in a bit of a snowstorm and driving conditions were terrible and we ran out of time.  We ended up eating at Williams Coffee Pub because it was close to the theatre.  I ordered a grilled chicken pesto sandwich with a berry pomegranate smoothie (my staple there)John made French toast for the kids for dinner which is fine, it's homemade and we only use pure maple syrup now.

Wednesday nights are typically fish nights at my house.  I had bought both salmon and tilapia this week but since I had left over homemade pesto I opted to go with the salmon and try out the tip I got from Amanda.  I also tried a new veggie dish - Red, Gold and Orange Salad - again from The Cleaner Plate Club.  Enter the fennel and shallots!  This dish has red beets, golden beets, fresh fennel bulb, shallots, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.  You are also meant to add mandarin or clementine orange sections, feta cheese and fresh mint - which I inadvertently forgot to add - oops!  Still tasted great though!!

Those thick white slices that kinda look like onions are the fennel which has a slight black licorice taste.  They shrunk a bit while in the oven.  No one else wanted pesto on their salmon so I only put it on mine and I can tell you that my taste buds were very happy campers that night!  Amanda, thank you for telling me about this wonderful combination!

Even better - there was enough of both to have left-overs for lunch the next day.  It was then that I realized I had eaten pesto 4 days in a row!  But, I'm certainly not complaining!

Oh!!!!  I forgot to mention that my Colin Firth 2013 desk calendar arrived this week!  A little extra motivation never hurt anyone right!!!  Now I have a constant reminder of my muse as I track my progress. 

I checked my blood pressure last Monday at Fortino's.  The results were 148/84, 129/85, 137/86 and 134/92.  I need to learn to quit while I'm ahead - the 129/85 was acceptable enough.  My last weight check was 143.5 lbs.  It was back up to 144 at the beginning of the week which I accrue to indulging in Carla's birthday cake and appetizers at her party.  I'm hoping that the reason I'm not losing as much now is because I'm developing more muscle mass - as I'm told that muscle weighs more than fat.  The important thing is that the weight is continuing to come down overall.

This weekend we went to Kingston to attend my niece's baptism.  Katie made a scrumptious carrot cake with the requisite cream cheese frosting which called to my weaknesses and I gave in.  So, to make up for it I plan to go wheat-free again for a few days this week.

Colin, I must leave you now to plan this weeks meals.  With  St. Valentine's Day less than 3 weeks away I will endeavour to shed more of me so that I can earn St. Trinian's as my next reward!  Perhaps John and I can plan on a romantic evening watching it together!