MMmmm . . . Double Chocolate Stout. Yesterday I made a beef short rib dish and one of the ingredients that the recipe called for was a cup of strong stout. I saw Young’s Double Chocolate Stout was on sale, sounds like the best choice of beer was made for me. It comes in a 500 ml bottle which meant there was going to be 250 mls left. Well of course I tried it and it is just heavenly ~ very delicious and I could detect the chocolate as well. It was the perfect stout to use for my beef short rib dish (which also turned out simply fabulous).
So next time you are in the liquor store wonder over to the imported beer section and buy a bottle of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout ~ it is silky rich and creamy smooth ~ simply luxurious!
I just finished a small bowl of cottage cheese with Canadianna Spicery Hemp Salad Lift sprinkled on top and it was very delicious! My friend, Patty, brought me back three different kinds of Canadianna Spicery mixes from her last road trip to Kelowna. Last night Bob and I had baked chicken legs that had been rubbed with Rock Creek Rub before being baked – very good again! Rock Creek Rub is a spice mix with a lot of my favourite spices in a sort of West Indian mode.
What a day fiddlehead picking was yesterday. I was like a kid in a candy store – there are just so many. Sheryle and I went with our dogs, Bailey and Ebony. When we got to “our” fiddlehead picking spot, low and behold, two other women and four other dogs were there snooping around. We decided just to put out our elbows and just burst in and start picking. One of the other dogs came over to sniff me and I told the dog to go away – well of course Bailey got in there like a bat out of hell and ran that dog off. It turns out the two other women were looking for nettle and quickly left because Bailey made the one dog most unwelcomed. We got some many fiddleheads and there are still lots left to be picked.
Fiddleheads are a real pain in the butt to clean but worth the effort. So I cleaned a large handful, soaked them in very salty water for about an hour (to help get rid of little parasites), changed the water and boiled them hard for 12 minutes (I suggest boiling them for a little less time – 10 minutes). I served them with garlic butter since we were having Fillet and Lobster tails for dinner – the fiddleheads were my favourite part of the meal. If you come over in the next couple of days – I will cook some up for you!
When I go hiking with the hiking group in the fall, the forests just wreak of mushrooms. This drives me crazy because I love mushrooms! I have yet taken a course on identifying mushrooms (and there are lots of courses out here for that) something always seems to come up when they are offered – ’09 for sure!. When the hike is over I drive over to Evergreen to see what they have in store for wild mushrooms – and I have found some that I think I may be addicted to. Black fungus (grown on the north side of the Tea tree – they come dried) these are so flavourful and highly nutritious! Wild pearl mushrooms – really good too. Us mushroom lovers all know about the Shitaki – big flavour there too!