Chestnuts and Souffles and Ghosts… Oh My

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Fresh Chestnuts
Maple Gingerbread Souffle with Maple Crème Anglaise

This coming Monday our trio will not be together for Monday Night Dining, due to the observation of All Souls Mass at our church, so instead we decided on a Halloween night dinner instead. The advantage this has, is that we get to take our time, without rushing off to rehearsal.  The original plan was to have a late season barbecue, but with snow and cold rain in the forecast, decided a cozy French fall menu, cooked indoors would be better.

Along with our trio, we also invited Norm and Dermot, to join us for Halloween. With the candles and jack-o-lantern lit, we started in on Bacon Leek and Chevre Tartlets and a selection of cheeses. read more

Dinner is 5:30 sharp!!

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Chalkboard menu

I am writing this week’s blog, cheeks red with shame. Each time we extend a dinner invitation, while in rehearsal season, it is accompanied by the moniker “Dinner is at 5:30 sharp!”  We don’t want to be mean, but we do not have a lot of time to work with on Monday’s.  This week I was the one that was late.  Luckily we had much of the meal prepped ahead, so Shawn had to complete the prep and set the table himself. I entered the apartment with trepidation, to be greeted with, “you have perfect timing!” Shawn was cool and collected. My appetizer, Canelones de Mare, was at the perfect eating temperature. read more

When Life Gives You Eggplants…

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Roasted Sicilian Eggplant

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind, with rehearsals, our fall Pax Christi Chorale – Blest Pair of Sirens show, work and life. It is in these busy times, that we often need to pause and take stock, maybe over dinner.  When we showed up for the rehearsal with the orchestra, for Sunday’s performance, our dear friend Lois stopped us on the way in. “I have something for you.” She reappeared with a bag with beautiful Sicilian eggplants and asked if we could make something out of them. The utter joy that Lois displayed, when she presented me with these gorgeous aubergine globes, that she procured from a farmer’s market, warmed my heart.  The menu had been roughed out, but we do love a challenge. Shawn immediately thought of Eggplant Caviar, something I had never heard of. This should be interesting, especially with very little prep time. read more

Autumn is for Osso Buco

Shawn4 Comments on Autumn is for Osso Buco
Heirloom Carrots

One problem with having a busy weekend, is finding time to prep for Monday Night Dining. This week to have something to warm us up, in the fall weather, and take into account the lack of prep time, we have turned to the faithful slow cooker. We have invited Paul, a new member to Pax Christi Chorale, to join us for dinner before the last regular rehearsal, before our fall concert.

So tonight, we start with a celebration of our garden. Yellow Tomato Soup, with Tomato Concassé and Creamed Parsley. The tomatoes and parsley were all from the garden. read more

retorno de verano

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Prep

I know last Monday we were thinking of fall and comfort foods, but summer came back this week with conviction; luckily, I resisted the urge to put the barbecue in storage.  With summer back in the air, we turned to Mexican food, which is one of our favorite summer cuisines.  This week we have Michael joining our trio, for a mexican feast. We started with Crepas de Camaron Con Salsa de Chile Pasilla, or Shrimp Crepes with Chile Pasilla sauce.  The pasilla chile is the dried version of the Chilaca chile, which were lightly toasted and combined with roasted tomatoes and onions to make a rich and slightly piquante sauce. read more

Dining on the Autumnal Equinox

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This Monday marks the last day of Summer. With Fall on the way our thoughts have been turning to warm clothes and of course stews.  I always find there are certain foods we associate with different times of year or weather. With things getting cooler, for some reason we always think of Indian food.  For tonight our trio has invited Jennifer to join us.

To start, since it is still officially summer, and we still have fresh tomatoes, from the garden, we made an Indian Cream of Tomato Soup, with yellow tomatoes from the garden. read more

California Dreamin’

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Eggplant and wine

We are back in season and tonight celebrates a special event in the life of a dear friend. Jared is moving to California, to live as a monk! And teach, and compose and basically show everyone that he is as impressive as we all think he is. We go into Monday night dinner with mixed feelings (being proud and happy for a friend, while knowing we will miss his talent, intelligence and friendship), we still look forward to breaking bread with friends and singing wonderful music.

Tonight for dinner, we have our trio, Jared and Amy. We started with and Eggplant Parmigiana, with local eggplant, and tomatoes and herbs grown in our garden .The eggplant is breaded and fried, then layered with tomato sauce, béchamel sauce, parmesan and mozzarella, then baked. read more

Prelude to a New Season

David6 Comments on Prelude to a New Season
Jamie Oliver Rotolo

This Monday marks our return to rehearsals for Pax Christi Chorale, which changes the dynamics and especially the timing of  our dinners. This is also the first “in season” dinner since we started blogging. I was thinking that we should go with something simple and tasty, to get us back into the groove of the shortened dinner schedule. Shawn spent a good deal of time on the weekend perusing cookbooks and recipes online. At one point he pointed to Jamie Oliver’s Italy book and said “I want to make Rotolo.” Ro-what? Then he told me I could get out the pasta machine, so I’m in.  This week is just our trio, to ease us back into the music season. read more

Moorish Delights and Hawaiian Nights

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Morroccon Tagine

When planning meals, sometimes we have a theme ingredient, sometimes a region in mind, or sometimes there is a recipe that we have been wanting to try. This week many of these things combined. I have had M’Hanncha on the brain lately (stop laughing).  The other weekend  we were at the Farmer’s market in Orillia and wandered across the street to Bank’s Antiques. They had a beautiful Moroccan Tagine, with a beautiful patina, but they didn’t have it for long….  This was starting to sound like a theme, if only we could get a Moroccan Octopus to cook.  Oh yeah, there is one in the freezer. So the theme this week is Moroccan. We have not cooked Moroccan for at least 10 years and the cookbooks were getting dusty.  We left the guest list to Steph, who recently had to take a little day trip and  met up with friends up north. As many conversations do, at Weber’s Burgers, the conversation turned to Ukuleles. It turns out that everyone seems to own one these days. This was starting to sound like a jam session for sure, so the guest list included our trio, Julia, Anne, Tom, and a last-minute addition, the stranded NMJ. read more

A Musical Moveable Feast

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This week we had to move Monday night dining to Tuesday and  we had a slightly expanded guest list. Nine for dinner and interestingly divided up nicely by voice part. Our guest of honour tonight is Jared (more about why later). To fill out our numbers we had Dan, Gabrielle, Lois, Catharin, Paul and our intrepid trio.  We started with some sparkling wine and brought out the appetizers. Empanadas stuffed with Ground Beef, Currants, and Olives.  We accompanied this with Tiropitakia, stuffed with goat cheese. Oh and not to forget the humus made from white beans and garlic. A lovely start, on the upper deck and a big announcement involving monks in California… That’s all I can say. read more