Dave is my husband and also knows a thing or two about taking a photograph. He comes along with me to most of the weddings I shoot and is a huge part of my business. The other day I got in front of the camera for a change while Dave snapped away and these are the results. If you’re looking for a photographer for your wedding I think you should hire Dave and maybe just maybe he’ll let me tag along too……

The apartment that we’re renting is cold. Yes, I realize that most apartments have the problem of being overheated, but not this one. See, here they heat their units from a centralized vent…IN. THE. HALLWAY. So yes, it gets a bit cold in here. But there’s nothing like a hot lunch to warm you right down to the bones, and that’s what Dave and I did this past Saturday. The skies were blue and we bundled up and went for a walk down a trail nearby, and returned to our slightly (only slightly!) warmer home to this great little lunch we reheated from having a few nights before as part of dinner, so it was ready in no time at all. I think you’ll like it, have a look, have a taste…

Maple Parsnip Soup

This recipe is modified from the cookbook “Simply in Season”, a great little book we got for Christmas that arranges their recipes in terms of what ingredients are “in season”, so there is a section for spring, summer, fall and winter – neat idea, hey? If you’ve never had parsnips before, they are actually really good! Kind of remind me of apples – they have a little sweet kick, but have a spicy edge to them too. Here’s how you make it (there should be enough here for 4 servings – two for now, two for later!):

1. Melt about 1 tbsp of butter/margarine in a pot for making soup over medium heat.

2. Add about 2-3 parsnips (medium-large sized ones) (ps they need to be grated and chopped up into small-ish chunks), half – 1 onion (chopped) and a clove of minced garlic. Stir it all up until the onions are soft but not brown.

3. Add 2.5 cups of vegetable broth and a sprinkling of nutmeg. Bring it to a simmer and leave it until parsnips are soft – timing can vary depending on how small your bits of parsnip are…but I think at least a 20 minute wait here. While waiting – get the stuff for the grilled cheese sandwiches ready!

4. Add about 1/4 cup of evaporated milk and remove from heat. Now when it’s cooled a little bit you’re going to blend it all up until it’s smooth.

5. After blended, here’s where you’ll add in a hit of maple syrup – yum! between 1/6 – 1/4 of a cup depending on how strong you want it! And add 1 tbsp of dijon mustard or more for a spicier taste. The recipe in the book suggests to add toasted pine nuts to the top, but we did cracked black pepper and parmesan cheese :)

Et voila, mes amis!

Mmm…Tres delicieux. Muy bueno. Uh…shoot, I’m out of languages already. Ha ha ha :)

Life can be like a rollercoaster. Ups and downs, natural ebbs and flows, really super high points and dismal gut-wrenching lows. Life as a photographer can be like a rollercoaster too, except maybe even more so, at least I’ve been finding it to be so lately…there can be no inquiries for weeks on end, then a sudden flurry of emails…two emails arriving hours apart both asking if I’m free for the exact same date for their wedding…clients emailing to say how much they love their photos, followed by another email from another (potential) client saying they’ve actually found someone else to do their wedding…thank goodness in this week of ups and downs for Christmas sugar cookies :)

Dave pulled out this recipe over the weekend and late Sunday night we set about making sugar cookies while intermittently watching the Polar Express on TV. It was a recipe his mum always made around Christmastime with him and his sister helping out. The recipe was passed down through his dad’s side of the family. The goal was, apparently, to eat almost as much raw dough in the process as actual cookies that made it to the oven. In Dave’s words, “It isn’t Christmas until we bake sugar cookies”. So we baked. And ate raw cookie dough.

Stark Family Sugar Cookies

What you’ll need…

1/2 cup butter | 1 cup white sugar | one beaten egg | 1tbsp cream | 1 tsp vanilla extract | 2 cups flour | 1/2 tsp salt | 1 tsp baking powder

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the beaten egg, cream and vanilla and mix together. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add to the creamed mixture and beat together very well until it forms a dough that sticks together. Chill the dough in the fridge overnight. Roll out small amounts of dough (we split ours into quite a few pieces) on a very well floured surface. It needs to be rolled out quite thinly! Then cut with cookies cutters or just press the top of a glass into the dough if you don’t have any (we used the cookie cutters we got from Graeme & Sabrina’s wedding!). Sprinkle with colourful white sugar (sugar with food colouring added – we didn’t have any, so ours came out very plain looking!). Bake at 350 F for 5 minutes. We set the timer for 4 minutes then literally watched them to make sure they didn’t burn – Take out of oven as soon as edges start to brown. They do burn rather quickly, so you do need to keep your eye on them!

And voila!

Best eaten warm straight out of the oven. This recipe makes plenty of cookies – I’d say we got 50+ cookies in total – so make sure you’ve got some friends to give a few away to!

The best part was when Dave popped his first cookie into his mouth, smiled, and said “ok, now it’s Christmas”.

Happy baking!

Because I am one of those people – the person who whips out their camera at the sight of a delicious plate of food – and because I’m all about healthy, fresh, good tasting, home-cooked meals – I thought I’d include a post every now and then on my blog chronicling the adventures of my husband and I in the kitchen. And I thought it was about time to include another recipe post, so here you have it! Hope you enjoy this one and happy eating!

Fruit Crisp

This might have been one of the first “recipes” I can remember asking my mum for after I moved out on my own – of course it’s a dessert! I think I can remember calling her up and having her recite it to me as I copied it out, and I still use the same torn and stained piece of paper that I first wrote it down on! My mum used to always make this using apples, but the other day we didn’t have any so I experimented using a fresh mango and frozen strawberries and it was heavenly. I use the word “recipe” here loosely, as there are no real measurements involved!!

What You’ll Need:

Some kind of fruit – apples…mango…strawberries…blueberries…rhubarb…yum.

What else…flour, oats, margarine, brown sugar, white sugar…cinnamon/nutmeg if using apples!

Making It:

1. Prepare your fruit – ie. wash, cut, peel, core, etc.

2. Heat oven to 350 C. I use one of those white corningware dishes for this and I usually don’t grease the sides with butter – I’ve never had anything stick.

3. In a bowl, mix together equal parts flour and oats. How much you make really depends on the size of the dish you’re using! In another bowl I mix in some brown sugar with some margarine in more or less equal parts again, but the ratio I use between the “dry” bowl and the “wet” bowl is 4 parts flour/oats to 1 part margarine/sugar. Mix together with a fork. You want a mixture that’s still a little bit crumbly and a little bit sticky, but I think it’s up to you to try it out a few times and see how you like it best.

4. Sprinkle your fruit with a little bit of white sugar (and cinnamon/nutmeg if it’s apples) and put into the dish and top evenly with a layer of the topping. I’d say you want the topping to be around an inch thick.

5. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the topping looks browned. Sometimes I crank up the heat for a few extra minutes to crisp up the outside if it’s still looking pale. Eat warm with a big dollop of ice cream, or cream, or just on its own – it’ll be lovely either way, promise.

Finished Product:

We made just enough for us to share and ate it late one night last weekend curled on the couch watching a movie (a Meryl Streep/Philip Seymour Hoffman flick called Doubt – interesting drama/mystery that I’d say is worth checking out! Or maybe my recollections of the movie are tainted by the delicious in-house concessions!).

In all the years that have passed since that phone call, I’m still thanking Mom for passing along my favourite dessert “recipe”!

This week on the blog is all about New York City! We were there this past August, and while there we took the chance to meet up with an old friend of ours who I hadn’t seen since high school! Clive had been living in the city for the past little while finishing up a degree at NYU before starting this fall at Harvard business school. Yes, Clive is a smart guy. He is also a music genius and composes scores for musicals – one day you will see this guy’s stuff on Broadway, I just know it. Check out his work here!  He met Bryant, who is originally from Wisconsin, who was also studying at NYU, and they both put a big smile on my face when they met up with us for a fun little photoshoot and tour around Central Park. There’s nothing like being in New York City . . . but New York City with “locals” – even better.

Here are a few of my faves from our shoot – I had a great time and was in stitches from laughing out loud pretty much the entire time . . . what can I say, we are goofs. I admitted this to them at the time, and I’ll admit to you all out there in internet world now – I was a little nervous before our shoot as I had never photographed a same-sex couple before. Thanks guys for making it easy, for your hospitality and for showing us around! Hope you’re both doing well in NYC/Boston :)

Photographing in Central Park has got to be one of my most favourite things. I loved it so much that Dave and I woke up early the day we were leaving NYC (and driving back to Toronto) and took another walk through the park before we left. Stay tuned for those photos later this week, and tomorrow some more midtown Manhattan goodness.

I think I’m having one of those days. Got out of bed too early and have been cruising through the day in a zombie-like state that even a stop at Tim Hortons couldn’t shake me from (and usually it does). In the spirit of sleepy, zombie-like Mondays, I thought I’d post the easiest, quickest and most delicious meal I could think of – something that even I, a wreak in the kitchen on a good day, could whip up easy peasy. And it’s a super delish way of getting some fish into your diet if you’re not that into fish – even if you don’t like fish, this is not a fishy dish. It’s a delicious dish. A delish fish dish.

(PS – I got a lot of great feedback from my previous recipe post! Let me know if you end up trying this meal or any meal I post on here – if I can help even just one person discover something new to add to their repetoire, that’s like, golden, man.)

Salmon Tikka on Naan Bread (for two)

The inspiration for this one comes from a Jamie Oliver cookbook – Jamie’s Food Revolution (or, as it is known in the UK, Jamie’s Ministry of Food). Ah, Jamie your food is so good and rustic and simple. My mum and I started loving Jamie back when he first got his own TV show, the Naked Chef. . . how many years ago was that?! Something about the way he speaks has always reminded us one of my mum’s younger brothers, and he’s probably still one of my favourite chefs out there.

What You’ll Need:

* I usually get out all my ingredients before I start out onto the kitchen counter.

2 Naan breads (most grocery stores sell them in packs of two!)

1 fresh red chile (or chile flakes)

1/2 cucumber

1 lemon

a single serving pot of natural yogurt

2 salmon fillets

2 tablespoons Patak’s tikka paste (we get ours from our local Fortino’s)

Making it:

1. Warm up your naan bread in the oven while you make the rest of the meal.

2. Chop up your chile, or just us red pepper flakes/chili powder. Chop up the cucumber into cubes, halve the lemon and squeeze half the juice into a bowl. Add the yogurt to the bowl, along with the chile and salt and pepper.

3. Cut up your salmon fillets into strips and cover with the tikka paste. Heat up a frying pan and add olive oil, then cook your fish for about 1.5 minutes on each side.

4. Put a naan bread on each plate, top with the yogurt mixture and sprinkle the cucumbers over top as well as the salmon along with another squeeze of lemon juice.

Finished Product:

Yum yum yum! It honestly takes about ten minutes to whip this one up and even less time to consume it’s THAT GOOD!

. . . but at least I don’t take videos of people eating meals at large family gatherings (yet). I’ll leave that task to my Dad, since he’s had twenty plus years of experience and does a fantastic job of setting up the tripod in a discreet corner of the dining room and pressing record while no one’s looking.

My husband and I love to cook together. It’s just what we do. Ask any of our old university roommates and they’ll confirm it – we’ve been cooking together since the early days of being together. It’s how we connect at the end of the day. And I’ll be honest: I’ve always been a little terrified of the kitchen. I still hate making meals on my own, and the kitchen always ends up looking as though a tornado tore through it after I’m done. I’m by no means an expert when it comes to putting together a meal.  But it’s a nice thing to do together – we laugh, talk, spill some things on the floor (ok, that’s only me), lick the bowls (again, only me) and at the end of it, tuck into a yummy plate of food.

We see a lot of our young friends who seem to get stuck in a rut when it comes to making meals every night and coming up with new, interesting, and healthy creations. I thought it’d be nice to every so often put up a few recipes onto the blog, in the hopes that I can inspire someone out there who’s stuck on what to make for dinner.  Here goes, bon appetit!

Teriyaki Chicken & Mango Stir-Fry (for two)

The inspiration for this one came from our monthly “Everyday with Rachael Ray” magazine. First though, I’ve got to say something: I don’t care much for her new talk show, but I simply love watching old episodes of “30 minute meals” on the Food Network. I’m liking the magazine so far too. The original recipe was with pork, but we don’t eat pork, so we just changed it to chicken. I’m sure it would work well with tofu as well for a veggie option.

What you’ll need:

*I usually get out all the ingredients that I’m going to need out onto my counter/kitchen table before starting. Makes me feel all organized.

1-2 skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut in bite sized chunks

1/3 cup (or about that much) flour, in a bowl, with a little salt sprinkled in

Bit of Olive oil

1/2 a head of a small napa cabbage, cut into strips (*with the leftover cabbage, stir fry it up in some oil, soy sauce, and pepper for a side later in the week)

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

few grates of fresh ginger/a little bit of ground ginger

1 1/2 tbsp teriyaki sauce

1 mango, cut into bite sized chunks

handful of alfalfa sprouts

Rice – we used jasmine rice, I think. Dave does the rice part, as I am inept, especially with rice.

Making it:

1. First, you want to get your rice going – just follow packet instructions!

2. Add your chicken chunks to the flour/salt bowl and mix it up to coat the chicken pieces.

3. Get a nonstick frying pan heated up over medium heat with some extra virgin olive oil (evoo), shake off excess flour, and place chicken in the pan. Cook until browned on both sides and transfer to a plate.

4. Add some more evoo to the pan and put in your strips of cabbage and cook for just a couple minutes. Add in the garlic and ginger and let it cook for just another couple of minutes. Then stir in the teriyaki sauce, adding back in your chicken to the pan.

5. The recipe said to put in the mango pieces as well, but I would leave them out of the pan the next time we make this (and yes there will be a next time – it was soo yummy). Plate your rice, pour the pan out over top of the rice, then top with the cut pieces of mango and alfalfa sprouts.

Finished product:

Honestly guys, it is so good, you’ve got to try it!  Even if you don’t like cabbage (we’ve NEVER used cabbage before). But see what I mean about the mangoes? Leave them out until everything’s on the plate – the teriyaki sauce turned them a bit brown in the pan!

Well, I’m just about ready to head off to a friend’s to celebrate the 5th . . . “remember, remember, the 5th of November” . . . Have a good one!