Recipe. Dragon. Giveaway. 'Cookin' Greens' Rapini with Coconut and Spices

Well, piqued yet?

I was recently approached by my absolute favourite brand of frozen greens, 'Cookin' Greens' who threw down an intriguing challenge to me. Cookin' Greens may already be familiar to my readers. Last year, I made my Palak Paneer with their Flash Frozen Chopped Spinach, and to date, its one of the most popular recipes on The Tiffin Box.

This time round, the challenge was a different one. I was very excited to hear that Cookin' Greens were going to be on CBC's Dragon's Den and to celebrate this, they contacted their favourite food bloggers (ahem!) and gave them a rather fiery task... we were to create a recipe for a Dragon, using a Cookin' Greens product.

My pet dragon turned out to be internet mogul Bruce Croxon and I had to make him 'dinner' using Cookin' Greens Chopped Rapini. Yipes! Bruce turned out to be a pretty formidable challenge for this poor food blogger, but I went with my sword erm... knife, flying, and my pans all girded up.

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Indian Street Food (and Drinks) - Sugarcane Juice

I'll start off on a weird note. Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Despite its complicated sounding name, its a simple thing, really. It a phenomenon when you hear, see, or find something unusual, and then suddenly you hear it repeated within a very short period of time. For example, I was reading this book, and one of the key aspects of it was a tuna melt (yeah, I know, I know!! Humour me, OK). The next day I went with Kay to the Blue Plate Diner here in Edmonton, and, lo! a tuna melt was staring at me from the menu. 

At this point, you're probably wondering where on earth this waffle of mine is going, right? Well, its going somewhere... I promise. And it all started with a piece of sugarcane grass. Kathryn and I were shopping at Fruiticana, a local Indian grocery store for our Cook Indian Vegetarian class, and what should be staring at me, but piles of sugarcanes, all beautiful in their green and gold finery! I almost did a little dance right there with excitement (Kathryn and Aditi must have thought I was completely nuts!) as I convinced Kathryn that we should buy one straightaway. The plan was to use them in our South East Asian class, but that never really came about, and the sugarcane was duly stolen appropriated by the chief leftover scrounger, aka, me.

So I get home with this cane, and my Kay just looks at me and goes, is that sugarcane?? Really? And I go, well, yeah. What's wrong? And he tells me that on the very same day, one of the students in his office, a lovely young Zimbabwean chap called Chaka was bemoaning the fact that he couldn't find sugarcane anywhere in Edmonton... talk about Baader-Meinhof phenomenon overload or what!! So Kay happily took a piece of the sugarcane to Chaka, who was impressed and pleased and excited too, and my good deed for the day was done :) And to make things even weirder, just the day before, Michael, another one of Kay's students had just told him about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. As Jughead would say, 'weird, weird'.

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Indian Sweets - Classic Cardamom and Rosewater Kheer

In India, if something good happens in your household, there is a popular saying 'muh meetha karo' - literally translating as 'sweeten your mouth'. I've had a rather good week, and so my post today is for you to 'apna muh meetha kariye'. 

I was lucky to have two cool things happen to me this week. The first one was this site being nominated for Edmonton's first ever #Yeggies Awards, or The Edmonton New Media Awards in the Food section. I doubt heavily that I'll win, simply because I am up against some fantastic food blogs, but just to have been shortlisted is an honour, and its wonderful to get local recognition as well. 

The second, super duper exciting thing that happened... is below! 

Yep! Yours truly was featured over two pages, the front and second page of the Edmonton Journal's Food Section. This is a truly remarkable honour for me and I am still pinching myself, I am so excited! I had a blast with Liane Faulder, the Journal's food columnist who wrote this feature, and the photographer, Greg Southam gave some fantastic photo tips. All in all, I had a really great week, and I am still in a bit of a daze. A nice one though!

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My Masala Dabba (Spice Box) - All About Cardamom

New Series on The Tiffin Box - My Masala Dabba (or My Spice Box)

This series is something I've been thinking about for a while, ever since I wrote the Exploring Ethnic Cuisine, over at Food Bloggers of Canada. I finally got around to it after one of my readers commented on my post on homemade chaat masala where I agonised over what a spice was, only to find it sitting in my spice cupboard under a different name.

So I thought it may be time to do a series on all the spices I use for my everyday cooking, and perhaps introduce you to new ones as we go along. Along with My Masala Dabba, I will also do a Herb Collection, but to be honest, that will probably be quite a shorter series.

I would very much appreciate your feedback on this series, as its something that is very new to me. What kind of spices would you like featured? How much information would you like? How would you like them presented? I'll start off with the spices in my own cupboard, and slowly move to the more exotic ones that may not be as familiar or easy to source, but I'll try my best to make sure you can find them. After all, the ethos of The Tiffin Box is that I should be able to find what I need here and you should be able to source them too, without needing a trip to India, otherwise all my recipes are essentially redundant, so to say :)

I am not aiming to be Wikipedia here - I just want to share my knowledge of the spices I use and how I use them, along with pictures. This is not a comprehensive dictionary of spices or their use. And sometimes I may well be wrong in what I write, so please don't hesitate to jump in and correct me or add your own thoughts to the post. Tell me what you know, and what I've missed and I will add it to each post. I welcome all criticism and feedback and its what makes me and this site better.

(Green and Black) Cardamom

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GIVEAWAY - Win Tickets To Winefest Edmonton 2013 (Closed)

Yay! We have a winner!  

Aditi picked Comment Number 2 as the winner, so congratulations to Peggy Doyle. I will email you shortly, please respond to me latest by 9. 30 AM. 

And to see how Aditi chose the winner, check out the video :)

What better way to celebrate the arrival of a new computer than with a glass of wine... or two, or three eh? So enter...

Yay! Winefest! 

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