Beef and Moose Barley Soup

I ate moose when I was young and hated it. Well, it was more like I hated any kind of meat my Mom cooked. I still don't eat much of what she cooks now. An Aunt of mine was visiting from  Newfoundland not that long ago. She was cooking a big salt beef dinner and moose. After a lot of going back in forth in my mind, I decided to try it. I loved it! I was able to get my hands on some moose recently but it was a variety of steaks and minced moose. There was no way I was putting a strip loin or tenderloin in my slow cooker, but I had one inside moose steak. So I bought some eye of round steaks and made some soup for my lunch. I prep my food for the week almost every weekend. I've blogged about some of the stuff I've made here, here, here and here. Soup is so easy for me to put in a thermos and have a hot lunch when I get tired of cold lunches. You could easily make this with all moose or all beef.

 12 oz eye of round

10 oz inside moose steak

2 backs of beef bouillon

10 cups of water

1 sweet potato

2 medium yukon gold potatoes

4 small carrot

2 turnips

2 red pepper

Couple sprigs of thyme

S&P

1 tomato

1 green onion

¼ cup barley, rinsed

 Cut the meat in 1 inch cubes. Cut the vegetables about the same size. Brown you meat in a pan, then put it in the slow cooker. Throw everything else in. Cook for 12 hours on medium.

This made enough for 2 weeks, I froze half of it. I was also thinking about how great it would be with some salt beef in it! Yum!

Chicken Ezekiel Wrap

Almost every Sunday I make food for myself for the week. My job takes me all over the place, I don't have an office space, so that means no fridge or means to heat anything up. I don't have a lunch break, I eat whenever I can, which is usually at lunch time. Sometimes I pullover and eat on the side of the road, in a cafe, while I'm waiting for an appointment with someone or sometimes at our community kitchen where I work. This wrap was perfect for the week!

Ingredients

1 pack of Ezekiel wraps (6 in a pack)

Shredded rotisserie chicken

1 yellow, 1 orange pepper sauteed

1 onion sauteed

Hot pepper jelly 1 tbsp per wrap

1 avocado, divided into 6

1/8 cup of daiya mozzarella per wrap

Pickled jalapeno (optional)

Heat a pan over medium heat. Spread the hot pepper jelly over the wrap, put all the other ingredients in. Roll it up. Place in the pan and brown on both sides. I placed a heavier plate on top of the wrap to flatten it a bit.

Simple Slow Cooker Beef Soup

What is better on a rainy day than a hot bowl of soup? Nothing really! It was a looking ahead at what I was going to make and decided beef soup was probably the best option. It was a Friday, and I was going to be in a workshop all afternoon. Who wants to come home on a Friday at 5 and cook, I don't. So beef soup it is.

Here's what you need

5 eye of round steaks

4 carrots

1 onions

4 medium sized potatoes

1 box of beef stock

1 bottle of beer

1/4 cup of flour

a couple sprigs of thyme

salt and pepper

2.5 tbsp olive oil

Cut your steak into 1inch ish cubes, not need to be exact. Toss them in flour. Cut up the carrot and potato to be about equal size as the beef. Slice the onion thin. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan. Brown the beef . I did it in two batches so I used 1 tbsp of oil per batch.Transfer to a slow cooker. Put 1/2 tbsp of oil in the pan, cook the onion until it gets some colour. Pour a bit of stock in with the onion once they are a bit brown to deglaze the pan. Pour it all in the slow cooker. Pour the rest of the stock and beer in the slow cooker. Season with salt and pepper and add a couple sprigs of thyme. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Canning and Preserving

So it's been quite a while since I've written anything. I have been spending so much time canning and preserving over the past month I haven't had time to do much else.

This is my first year canning and I have to say, I think it may be a new addiction. Here is how it all started. I picked some strawberries in the summer and made a small batch of delicious strawberry jam. That was in July. At the beginning of September, a friend of mine posted a picture of salsa she made on Facebook. Then I wanted to make salsa. So I went out and bought what I needed. Then she continued to post pictures of jam that she made. So naturally I went out and bought 25lbs each of pears and peaches, a bushel of pickling cucumbers, beets, tomatoes and green beans. I spent the entire weekend canning. I was exhausted. Two weeks later, I went out to buy more beets, because they were so delicious. I also bought hot peppers, a giant bag of onions and more pickling cucumbers.

I have a Pinterest board just for everything I've made and one for what I want to make.

Here they are

What I want to make

What I made

I have been sharing and trading and looking forward to making so much more.

Here's my canned stuff, there is quite a bit missing from here!

Slow cooked BBQ Pork Ribs

I love ribs, I could eat them almost everyday. Unfortunately they take hours to cook. So they aren't really a doable meal on weekdays right? Wrong! You can make them any day of the week. Slow cooking them while you are at work or doing whatever else you need to do is all it takes. It melts so much of the fat off as well. I don't like having them slow cooking for too long though. Then they fall apart and you cant take them out of the slow cooker without shredding the meat, that's not what we want. After you take them out you can either BBQ or broil them in the oven. They are so easy! 

Ingredients

2 racks of ribs (or how ever many you want to make, as long as they fit in the slow cooker)

1 tbsp dried onion flakes

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black peppercorns

BBQ sauce of your choice

Place your ribs in your slow cooker standing up. Fill your slow cooker with water just until it reaches the top of the ribs. Add all the remaining ingredients. 

You could add any other spices you want here too. Set the slow cooker to low for 6 hours. Mine switches to keep warm after the 6 hours is done. 

When you get home, carefully take them out of the slow cooker. Cover them with BBQ sauce and either grill them just until you get some grill marks or broil until they get a bit of colour. 

They will fall right apart when your eating them.

What I Ate Wednesday #17

I haven't participated in What I Ate Wednesday in quite a while. But it's September...the kids are now back to school and life is starting to get back into more of a routine. I forgot to take a picture of two things I ate and took a bad cell phone picture of another meal, but hey, something is better than nothing! Here it goes

Breakfast

See bad cellphone photo!

2 eggs over easy, with 1/4 cup egg whites, 4 oz of BBQ eye of round (I will post this recipe another day), a whole wheat English muffing with my homemade strawberry jam and a coffee

Lunch

I didn't eat all of this! These pictures are from my food prep on Monday. I forgot to take a picture so I had a bit of the pasta and 1 patty.

Sun dried Tomato and Pesto Chicken Pasta

2 cups whole wheat penne (uncooked)
1/4 cup julienned sun dried tomatoes (not in oil)

1/4 pesto

8 oz of grilled chicken breast

Corn cut from 2 cobs of corn

Cook the penne. Put the sun dried tomatoes in the pasta while it's cooking for the last 2 minutes or so. Mix everything together.

Greek Turkey Burger

1/4 cup goat's feta

1 lb ground turkey

1 tsp oregano

juice and zest from 1/2 lemon

Mix all the ingredients, grill until cooked through.

Supper

Homemade chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese

 After supper I had a piece of vanilla cheesecake with more of my strawberry jam on top with a coffee

That's it!

 Head on over to Peas and Crayons to check out what others are eating!

Beercan Chicken

It is so hot here and it has been for the past week. I had a couple of chickens in the freezer that needed to be cooked, so I thought beer can chicken was perfect. I have only made it once before, last year and we loved it. Why haven't I made it since? Anyways, it turned out great. The kids loved it too. I didn't have a can of beer so I poured 1/2 bottle of Rickard's Red into an empty Pepsi can and it worked just fine. 

I use a stand for the chicken, I bought in on clearance last year, but I have seen recipes that don't, they just use the can. I also set mine into a pan to collect the juices, you can pour them over at the end if you want.

Ingredients

Rub

1 tbsp dried sage leaves

1 tsp lemon pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp paprika

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt free barbecue chicken powder

3 lb chicken

1/2 can beer (do whatever you want with the other half)

Remove any giblets and/or pieces that don't belong in your chicken and rinse out the chicken. Rub the cavity with some of the rub. Lift the skin on the breasts to put some of the rub under the skin. Rub the rest of the the seasoning all over the chicken.

Put the chicken over top of the can that is opened with 1/2 can of beer left. Preheat the grill. You want to put the chicken over indirect heat. I lit two of my burners and left the third off. Put the chicken in the pan and put it over the burner that isn't lit. 

You can do this with charcoal too. Just put charcoals on one side and the chicken on the other.

Leave it on the BBQ for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a meat thermometer reads 180. I checked on it every 10 minutes or so after 1 hour.Let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting. 

Enjoy!