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Vegetable soup with ginger & lemongrass

February 12, 2018 by Ariel 2 Comments

The inspiration comes from a vegetable soup my grand mother used to make.  She used to cut all the vegetables in super small pieces and I always enjoyed the aesthetic of her presentation.  You could probably chop everything finely by hand but, if you’re in the lazy club (like me), a hand blender or a food processor work wonders.

This recipe isn’t the soup she used to make but, I would like to think it is as good or at least pretty close.

 Delicate, slightly sweet and made with our homemade vegetable broth.  The fennel leaves used as garnish but also as a component in the soup really shine with the star anise in the broth.  The ginger giving it a nice kick and the lemongrass as the last taste hitting your palate.  When it comes time to buy fennel, I always try to get the complete plant with the long rods and a lot of bright green leaves.  Back home, I’ll cut it up in “parts” and keep the leaves in a separate container to use them like any other fresh herbs.  Next time, I’ll probably add a little extra lemongrass because the taste could have been more pungent and, I would encourage you to do the same if you’re a big fan of lemongrass.

Makes three big portions or four smaller ones. Bon appétit!

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Filed Under: Gluten Free, Popular Diets, Recipes, Soup, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian Tagged With: carrots, celery, fennel hair, ginger, green cabbage, healthy, lemongrass, olive oil, recipe, soup, vegan, vegetable, vegetarian

Vegetable Broth

February 10, 2018 by Ariel Leave a Comment

I keep a lot of food scraps in my freezer.

Most of them are vegetables, fresh herbs and egg shells because there’s so much you can do with those and it’s almost a blasphemy to throw them out when you spent your hard earned money buying them.  It also goes with my “no waste” and “everything should be make from scratch” mentality because it’s very rewarding to create basic staple foods instead of buying them at the grocery.  This vegetable broth is a great example of “food recycling” and I really hope you’ll get the chance to try it and make it your own.

Plus, who doesn’t like to know that every pennies spent on veggies will go that much further and you’ll end up having a delicious and personalized broth ready to use in your future creations.

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Filed Under: #FoodieLife, Gluten Free, Popular Diets, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian Tagged With: bay leaves, broth, carrots, celery, cloves, corn husk, corn silk, easy, food recycling, garlic, ginger, green beans, green cabbage, morel mushrooms, onions, scraps, sea salt, shallots, star anise, stock, vegetable, veggies scraps, zucchini

Grilled Cheezy Polenta with Spicy Pomegranate Salad

May 20, 2013 by Ariel 2 Comments

Cheesy_Polenta_with_Pomegranate_Sauce01

I’m planning a bunch of photo shoots in the upcoming months and I have to start watching what I eat…. Sound awful right? lol  No worries it’s not THAT bad because my head is full of delicious ideas to keep me happy even when I have to watch what I eat…

This is a fun and easy recipe, for example, that I like to prepare as a lunch during those “model bootcamp” time but you could easily serve it as a fun appetizer.  The total recipe will give you 4-5 maybe even more portions of polenta and salad dressing so it’s something you can keep in your fridge for about a week and grill your polenta at the last minute when you’re ready to eat it.  I hope you’ll like it as much as I do and let me know how it turned out!

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Filed Under: Appetizer, Recipes, Salads, Vegetables Tagged With: baby spinach, cauliflower, easy, grilled, italian, lettuce, lunch, mache, model, polenta, Pomegranate, recipe, salad, vegetable

Breakfast Tart

May 13, 2013 by Ariel 2 Comments

BreakfastTart01

Hey Foodies!

Wow it’s been a while since my last post.  The worst thing is, I have been shooting a lot new recipes for this site but I never got around to take my time to come here and post them.  My life have been a roller coaster lately and it was hard to even come here and blog you something interesting to read with each of the recipes I shot.  My online business took an unexpected turn and what looked like the biggest drama of my life, ended up being the best thing that could have ever happened to me.  I guess nothing happened for no reason in life but the little stressed out Ariel wasn’t able to write or think about anything fun for you guys although I cooked and baked a LOT during this very stressful time.  I’m so glad it’s over now…

On a more delicious note….  One sweet fan sent me a few cooking gear for my birthday in March and I have been dying to trying them out.  One of them is a super adorable tart pan from fat daddios and since I was drooling over all the delicious tarts that you can see on foodgawker, I absolutely wanted to try to make my own so here it is!  My first basic and delicious breakfast tart.

The whole concept is very easy and extremely versatile.  You can basically stuffed the tart with anything you would like and enjoy it either as breakfast or do like me and make a dinner/breakfast (I love to do that).

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Filed Under: Breakfast, Recipes, Vegetables Tagged With: breakfast, buckwheat, cheese, egg, recipe, tart, vegetable

Fun Spring Salad with Fennel, Carrots & Apples

March 25, 2013 by Ariel 4 Comments

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Even tho it’s technically spring right now, I’m looking outside my window and I don’t see it.  Last week, for our first day of Spring, we had a big snowstorm in Montreal and since it looks like we are in the middle of January.  The worst thing is, 2 weeks ago there was no more snow outside, the weather was starting to be nice and uplifting and the birds were singing.  I’m wondering how surprised those pore little birdies were when they realized that only a few days after they either woke up or came back from the south, mother nature still had a ton of snow and cold weather for them.

One thing for sure, mother nature is getting more and more erratic with the years… and I cant believe some people are still so close minded that they don’t believe in global warming.  …Ugh, ignorance like this annoyed me till no end and I feel like slapping all those people in the back of the head for having such ignorance but again, it’s not my place to do so but since this is my blog, I’m venting away lol  …sorry about that that.

On a much funner and tastier note, I decided that even if it’s not as sunny as I would have expect it today, I’m not going to let this weather gets to me and I will be celebrating the arrival of Spring anyways with some fun light and flavorful salads like this one.  It’s also part of my few posts that I’m dedicating to my contracted models who are seeking for healthy and low calories recipes to prepare because they have to go on photo shoots very soon.  I hope you’ll enjoy this fennel, carrot and green apple salad as much as I did.  It’s super easy to do, barely take any ingredients and will keep you full for quit a while.  Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Maple Flavored, Recipes, Salads, Vegetables, Vegetarian, Zesty Tagged With: bulb, carrot, easy, fast, fennel, green apple, healthy, lemon juice, maple syrup, recipe, rice vinegar, salad, spring, vegan, vegetable, vegetarian

Roasted Fennel with Grains of Paradise, Honey and Thyme

January 25, 2013 by Ariel 1 Comment

I meant to post this yesterday but life had decided otherwise…

 Here’s the first recipe of many others where I’m using the amazing grains of paradise that we learned about in my previous post.  Like I told you in that post, one of my favorite uses for these amazing peppery seeds is on roasted veggies and what’s better than roast fennel bulbs seriously.  This recipe is simple and delicious plus you can serve this side dish with pretty much anything.  I personally love it on the side of  a big juicy steak 😉

Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Recipes, Side Dish, Vegetables, Vegetarian Tagged With: alligator pepper, cooking, fennel, grains of paradise, honey, peppery, recipe, roasted, roasting, seed, side dish, spicy, sweet, thyme, vegetable

Make you own Butternut Squash / Pumpkin Puree

December 26, 2012 by Ariel Leave a Comment

I realized that earlier this autumn I said that I had made my own pumpkin puree for my recipes but never thought about showing you how to create your own.  It’s super easy and once you try it will be really hard for you to go buy the canned version again.  Today I’ll be making butternut squash puree but you can use this same technique for making pumpkin puree, other squash and even potatoes.

The secret is all in the roasting…  Hope you find this post informative 🙂

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: baked, basics, butternut, olive oil, oven, pumpkin, puree, recipe, roasted, roasting, squash, vegetable, veggies

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Photography tale of an urban gardener…

Spring gardening in isolation

Winter gardening, years later.

Winter gardening…

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