Tuesday, February 2nd - Mardi Gras Cook: Julie

Happy Groundhog Day!  Those darn rodents decided to forecast another 6 weeks of Winter!  Time to start a new tradition and shoot Wiarton Willie prior to his exit from his hole in the ground.  If he doesn't see his shadow due to his imminent death, we'll always have an early spring!  Well enough about our lovely Canadian Winters and on to much more exciting things!  Julie's menu!   We are always in for a surprise when it's Julie's turn to cook as she never discloses what she plans on cooking until she arrives at my door step, food in hand, mostly prepped and ready to be finalized and served.

The Menu:

• French Loaf
• Bacon Wrapped Pork Tenderloin stuffed with figs, spinach and roasted hazelnuts with an Apple Juice Reduction
• Fluffy Mashed Potatoes
• Beets in Orange Juice
• Bok Choy with Pickled Artichoke Hearts
• Caramilk Ice Cream

French Loaf:

Frantically call Toffer prior to his arrival and ask him to pick up some bread.  Slice and serve.

Fluffy Mashed Potatoes.

Use your favorite mashed potatoe recipe and simply add the word "Fluffy" in front of it. For all you cat lovers, no kitties were used in the making of this recipe! I find the best way to mash potatoes is to use a Potatoe Ricer available at any quality kitchen supply store.  I've yet to be disappointed with mashed potatoes prepped in this manner.

Bacon Wrapped Pork Tenderloin stuffed with figs, spinach & roasted Hazelnuts served with an apple juice reduction.

Recipe pending

This is an original recipe a la Julie tradition!  One that was absolutely amazing.

Note: I recommend not to ask her for her Blue Cheese and Mac recipe.  This one is better left in the Julie vault of recipes not to repeat again!

Beets in Orange Juice

Recipe pending

Bok Choy with Pickled Artichoke Hearts

Recipe pending

Caramilk Ice Cream

While grocery shopping stop buy the freezer section and grab a 1 ltr tub of Caramilk Ice Cream.  After dinner, just prior to the beginning of the Biggest Loser, equally distribute the entire litre into 6 portions and serve.

OMG!  OMG!  Dinner was truly amazing.  I think I can declare that this was Julie's best menu to date.  The only left overs were the mashed potatoes as we all feasted on the pork tenderloin.  It had a fantastic blend of flavours and textures and cooked to perfection.  Quoting the famous Jen "Julie, this is better than my tenderloin" and we all know Jen can cook the heck out of Kraft Dinner!  

Topics of discussion for the evening:

• Jen's Budget Barbie article featuring Adam and Eve, a local chocolatier in the gay village.
• The Toyota Recall
• American Idol - Go Bikini Boy!  Go!
• The Biggest Loser!  Miggy (I cut you) - You go girl, even after surgery and being told she had approximately 8 pounds of saline in her abdomen; she still did not fall below the yellow line.  A big disappointment with Brown Team.  Really, you are over 420 lbs and only dropped 6 lbs in a week working out with Jillian and Bob.  Something does not add up!  Red Team - You are not fooling us with your game play!  Red Wife starts dropping magical numbers and husband is now losing minimal ones!  Uh Huh!  This was complete game play as you both knew Pink (sounds like Pig everytime Allison says it) Team had a 2 lb disadvantage at the weigh in.  You are lucky as it almost bit you in the cellulite butt!
• Jude's text message.  Some complete stranger named Nebullah (or something like that) inadvertently texted her with his/her new contact information and she somehow thought it was due to the fact that she has my contacts in her address book.  Ummm... No... If it was one of my contacts, he/she would have texted my phone number, not hers!

As Dan and I will be on vacation for my next scheduled turn, Jen has agreed to swap cooking weeks with me as I will be in Costa Rica.  I've been looking forward to Jen's first kick at the Table with the group and will have to wait until almost the end of March to be delighted with her prowess in the Kitchen. 

I've already planned my menu!  All new dishes from Zest - A cookbook Toffer bought me for Christmas.  As I like the element of surprise and told everyone last night that I was going to make a Goat Cheese, Celery and Pear salad for a starter from the Savour section, the remainder of the menu will be from various sections of the book such as Piquant (That's French for "Spicy" Toffer), Ambrosia and Fragrant!  I'm salivating already!