If you've ever looked at my FoodBuzz profile page, you'll note that I say my favorite restaurant is Sukhothai, a local Thai restaurant. My hubby and I like to go together and order an assortment of dishes and then eat too much food together.
We each have one dish that is always chosen, his being beef with chili and basil, and mine being Pad Thai with shrimp.
I've made Pad Thai from scratch before, and been disappointed. Despite this, when I was asked to try a bunch of the new President's Choice products from the Holiday Insider's Report, Pad Thai cooking sauce was my top choice.
A quick and easily put together meal, which I need lately, that is fairly well balanced with some veggies (I used carrots, bell peppers and bean sprouts), a healthy protein (shrimp), noodles and sauce.
Unfortunately, this did not make it to the plate without having lost votes already from our family of four: one child was sick and not eating (and still doesn't know we had shrimp without him, don't tell him please!), the other was unwilling to try it. Oh well, I thought - more for me!
I did mention I really like shrimp Pad Thai, right?
The final results were alright, the sweet and sticky sauce coating everything. It is a very good choice for someone who hasn't had very good Thai food and wants to try something in their own home. The instructions on the bottle were easy to follow and it made plenty of Pad Thai, even with only two of us eating it.
As for us, we are going to stick to Sukhothai for our Pad Thai in the future. Maybe when you've had one of the best, the rest just don't measure up.
You can purchase President's Choice Pad Thai Cooking Sauce at any President's Choice affiliated grocery store, such as Loblaws, Independent Grocer's, Value Mart, Superstore, or Zehrs.
Product Review: PC Pad Thai Sauce
"Guest" Post: Chef Joey's Cupcake Creation
A little while ago I was contacted by Brenda Tuttle, author and creator of Chef Joey's Cupcake Creation and asked if I would be interested in doing a review. While I wasn't, my Little Sous Chef was very interested and could not wait to get the book and start baking.
My Little Sous Chef is 7 years old, and while he can read quite well and has been a helper in the kitchen over the years, he is still 7.
Hi, I'm the Little Sous Chef and I want to tell you about a book called Chef Joey's Cupcake Creations. I liked this book and the cupcakes were so good. You could even put peanut butter in the icing. And that's what I did for two of them.
My mom is going to ask me some questions about the book and here are my answers:
Was the book easy to read? Yes, it was easy to read.
Did you like the pictures? Not really cause they were a bit babyish.
What made the pictures babyish? Cause there is a baby in it and then it skips until he is a grown up, there is no "years later" showing he growed up.
Did you need anything special to make the cupcakes? Yes I needed cake mix.
Could you make the cupcakes without my help? Not yet but later, when I'm older.
Why couldn't you make them without help? Because I can't measure things and I can't put things in the oven. And I didn't understand the numbers.
What numbers? The numbers of the measuring, like 1/3.
What else do you want to tell me about the book? I didn't use orchids (what's an orchid?). I had Lightening McQueen paper cups and I put little silver and gold balls on the cupcakes.
How many cupcakes did you eat? By now I've aten about 8. Me and my brother have had all of them.
Did your Dad and I get any? Well ya, you both had 1.
Would tell other people about this book? Yup! I will.
Who will you tell? I don't know.
Will you share this book? Yes, I will share it with my friends.
Do you have anything else you want to tell me? Nope. Hope you like the book!
Saunders Farm: The best fries I'll never eat
If you live in Ottawa, you know what Saunders Farm is. For some it is a yearly tradition: go to the Farm, get your pants scared off you! (Or take the little ones during the day time for some Harvest fun and only a little spookiness, no pant scaring.)
If you don't live in Ottawa, but read this blog regularly, you know I've been working at Saunders Farm during the month of October, when the farm is open for Haunting Season.
You'd think with a name like Haunting Season, I'd be scaring people, right? Well, I'm not, I'm feeding them!
If you come out to the farm, follow the path under the arbor to the mazes and stop when you see this sign. The Farmer's Table is where you will find me, helping to make wonderful food from fresh and local ingredients. Gourmet burgers made with local, grain fed, hormone free, organic beef. Candy apples hand made with apples picked from a local orchard (the same one I took my children to for our own apple picking.) And more....
Meet Angela Grant Saunders, Director of Beauty, Teambuilding, and more importantly, Catering! Angela's love of good, local and fresh food, is highly contagious. Her enthusiasm shows when she talks about food, when she helps prepare food, when she enjoys her food. The Farmer's Table is Angela's baby, and her pride shows.
If you work at Saunders Farm and are part of one of the food booths, you are part of Team Angela! Go Team Angela!
Nestled in the trees, this is where you will find those fries I said I wasn't going to eat. I'm not going to, I don't eat fries, but I do make them, and I've had it from many, many, many tasters and eaters, that I make great fries.
Alright. I admit it. I ate one. One french fry. The only french fry I've eaten in 5 years! And yes, it was great!
Its hard not to make great fries when you start out with fresh potatoes, hand scrubbed and cut daily.
No freezing for these potatoes, from the cutter to the deep fryer.
First a slow and low fry, just to cook the potatoes gently (or as gently as you can be cooked in hot oil.) We don't want crispy fries yet, just softer potatoes. That takes time, have patience!
After a slow cook, then a rest, it is back into the hot oil for the fries. Really hot oil, not the same low temperature, where the fries will get crispy on the outside, but stay soft and tender on the inside. Golden brown in color, these are not the fries you will get at a fast food restaurant or will pull from a bag and put in you oven.
These freshly made fries come in two sizes, regular and family size, and they go fast! The smell of freshly cooked fries floats through the air around the Farmer's Table, making it hard to resist ordering a few for your family. Or a family size for yourself.
If you are interested in trying these fries, you better hurry, as the farm is only open until October 31st! Wait any longer and you'll have to wait a full year for the next Haunting Season.
And while you are there, don't forget to say hi to me. I'll be at the deep fryers, making mountains of fries that I am not going to eat.
Product Review: PC Butter Chicken Sauce
If you've read my blog for awhile, you know a few things about my family and I. We like Butter Chicken is one of them. I've even posted a recipe for Butter Chicken before.
You also know that I prefer to make things from scratch. In the past I've posted of homemade jams, ketchup, breads and baked goods. Making from scratch is not always the least expensive way to do things, but it tends to be the healthiest.
That said, sometimes it is easier to go with a premade product and not all premade products are bad. In fact, some of them are quite good.
I include the President's Choice Indian Butter Chicken sauce in that list of items that are quite good and worth the value of what comes in the jar (plus it is a good, solid jar that can be reused.) The sauce is thick and flavorful and my kids love it. It is a good choice when you are pressed for time but still want a healthful meal on the table - just throw some chunks of chicken in a pot to brown, pour on a jar of sauce, let is bubble for a few minutes and then serve on rice with a side of veggies. Naan bread rounds it out (and PC makes a decent Naan bread as well, for when you don't have time to make your own.)
Is this the most healthy way I could sever butter chicken to my family? No, it isn't. There is too much sodium and fat in this sauce for my comfort level (though PC does make a Blue Menu version, which is lower in fat, sodium and calories, we don't like it quite as much - it looses something in flavor along with all the fat and sodium.) But when my alternatives for a quick dinner that everyone will eat all involve much worse choices, I'll stick with grabbing a jar (or two, we like to dip Naan in the sauce) of PC Butter chicken sauce.
POM Winners and one more POM recipe
It has been fun, and tasty, messing around with my little bottles of POM juice. So before I announce my winners, here is one last recipe for you, not from the people at POM Wonderful this time, but from fellow Daring Baker and blogger Elle, of Feeding my Enthusiasms. It is her recipe for Rosemary and Garlic POM Steak.
Wow, was this ever nice and tender and flavorful! I grilled up a couple of steaks for company, and served them up with Caesar salad and rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes. What a great combination. We had very little in the way of left overs when we were done and had moved on to cake.
So good I am tempted to only give away one of my POM coupons and make this again soon, but I did promise two coupons and two coupons I will give away!
So the winners are:
Emily B, who entered by comment on my original post, and Jennifer, who entered by sending me an email.
To choose my winners, I went with the tried and true Breadchick version of writing names on paper, though I did not have a cat to have chase those little papers around, I had to pull them from a bowl to get my random winner. Low-tech, I know, but effective!
Emily and Jennifer, emails going out to you right now to get your mailing addresses! Please respond within 48 hours.
And in the meantime, here is Elle's wonderful recipe:
Rosemary and Garlic POM Steak
from Elle of Feeding my Enthusiasms
8 oz. POM Wonderful pomegranate juice (I had a bit less)
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped roughly
2 cloves garlic, minced (or 4)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
More POM, and delay in giveaway
I've been swamped for a few days and will be for a few days more, so I've decided I need to extend the deadline of my POM Wonderful giveaway until later next week, Wednesday, April 22nd. So you get more chances to enter to win your own bottle of POM Wonderful juice.
And to give you another reason to want to try this little snowman of juice, get a gander at these brownies, POM Double Chocolate Brownies. I'd love to have given you a better picture but I had to sneak in to get a picture of this one, the last one. The POM juice for these brownies was reduced to a syrup, with half the syrup being drizzled on before baking the brownies and the rest drizzled on afterwards. It resulted in an almost candy-like topping on the brownies, quite good, quite the surprise.
This recipe is a keeper. I like keeper recipes.
POM Wonderful and a giveaway!
You'd have to be very new to the food blogging world to have not noticed an abundance of little snowmen bottles popping up lately. Those adorable little bottles hold POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice and I was fortunate to be one of those bloggers asked to try it out.
I love trying out new products, or old ones I've never had before, and my family has been very tolerant of all my little "experiments" lately, even helpful with some items. So when I came in with a snowman bottle of POM and said I was baking a cake with it, they were all ready to dive in and try the results, POM Velvet cake with a cream cheese frosting and a generous sprinkling of pomegranate arils. (Did you know that the lovely fruit from inside that ugly ball you see in the stores are not seeds but arils? Well now you do!)
Some of the other posts I've read reviewing the POM juice have gone on about how they loved the juice straight and were drinking it so fast they couldn't make anything with it.
I wish I could say the same. I can't. I tried, I really did.
As much as I love to eat the arils (three of the four of us do), I do not like the juice at all.
It is a good thing you don't have to like the juice to bake and cook with it though, cause this cake was good! The rich creaminess of the frosting balanced out the denseness of the cake, which wasn't overly rich but had a nice dense texture and crumb to it. Taking a bite with a bit of cake, a bit of frosting and an aril or two was a delight, the three different textures and flavors mingling together so well.
I liked the results so much I decided to continue on with my little "experiments" and make a few more things! I'll post about them some more over the next few days, but for now, let's get to that giveaway!
I have two, count them up, two coupons left for a snowman bottle of POM Wonderful juice, which also comes in other flavors other than straight pomegranate. So that's two potential winners!
How can you win? Easy, easy, easy....
- Be a Canadian resident, as these coupons are good only in Canada.
- Leave me a comment below telling me what you think you would make with your POM juice. It can be a drink, a dessert or anything. (If you make a mess, though, you have to clean it.) Be sure to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.
- Post a link on your own blog about this, letting me know at allthingsedible (at) hotmail (dot) com, and you will get two chances to win!
I'll randomly pick a winner on April 18th, so be sure to check back to see if you've won.
Product Review: How do you test dishwasher detergent?
Do you have a favorite dishwasher detergent? One that cuts through everything you can throw at your dishes? Or do you just pick up whatever is on sale.
I used to pick mine by which one dissolved best in my dishwasher (the powder tabs did not work well), and left the dishes clean, which left me with lots of options to choose from. Usually I would pick the one that was on sale and that I could easily find a coupon for.
That, however, was before the dishwasher from ****.
That's right, I don't like my dishwasher. I had a beautiful, white, wonderfully efficient dishwasher, but traded it for my bigger kitchen. My new kitchen came with a dishwasher, but one that left most of my dishes dirty and had me rewashing everything.
When you go through as many dishes as I do, that's really not fun.
So when I was offered the chance to try out some Cascade All-in-1 ActionPacs, dishwasher detergent, I thought, "Why not? I can't possibly make my dishes any dirtier."
I didn't really notice a difference at first. That could have been the dishwasher. So just to be sure, and because I had to, I scrubbed out the inside of my dishwasher, I ran it through several cycles with a special dishwasher cleaner, I sprayed it down with CLR and ran it again. Then I went back and tested what I had been using against the Cascade.
If you happen to have a dishwasher that isn't cousin to mine, the All-in-1 ActionPacs are a good choice for getting your dishes clean. The Cascade worked a bit better than what I had been using, but I was still indifferent about what I would buy the next time I was shopping. 
Then I bought myself a package of the Cascade ActionPacs with Extra Bleach. Which, coincidentally enough, was on sale, and had a coupon.
And is now my regular dishwasher detergent.
So I guess I've answered my own question: you test dishwasher detergent by making alot of dirty dishes, then letting the detergent get them clean. And you pick one by how well it cleans your dishes.
Think I can find a detergent that will unload the dishwasher for me now?
Product Review: President's Choice
I recently had a big box delivered to my door, containing a variety of very different President's Choice products to try out and share with my readers. The selection of items was wide, from drinks to snacks to breakfast. Including chocolate, which you may have already read about here.
Beans and Caviar already sampled and reviewed the chocolate, the oil and the soy beans, so I thought I would go in a different direction and tell you about some completely different products.
Let's start with the tea, the Fair Trade Orange Pekoe Tea.
For those who don't know, a Fair Trade product is one where everyone involved, including the planters and the harvesters, receives a fair wage, not the pittance that is frequently paid to the workers. Yes, this can drive the price up for the consumers, but it is, as the name says, a fair trade. I'd rather pay a bit more for a quality product, knowing that my purchase is helping to provide for a decent wage to another family somewhere in the world, then pay a lower price where the profits are going to a sweatshop.
And now that I've gotten my "views" out, lets to back to the actual tea. For years when I've had Orange Pekoe tea, it has been Tetley. It probably won't be Tetley anymore, I like this tea and I like it alot! It has a nicely balanced flavor, no bitterness in it at all. And I imagine it would make a very flavorful tea bread. I'm not a tea expert, or a tea snob, I only know what I like and I like this tea, both for its flavor and its stand on fair trade practices.
Taking the same stance is the President's Choice Fair Trade coffee - my package was of a medium African roast, fine grind.
Now I don't drink coffee, I don't like coffee. But I know people who do, I work with several, so I brought the coffee to work with me and made them a pot.
And they raved about how good the coffee was, how nice it smelled and how smooth it was.
I'll take their word for it. They would be very happy if I left the entire bag their for them.
In addition to some fair trade products, the people at President's Choice are also in ongoing developement of many new products for their Blue Menu line. These are products that are healthier, have lower fat, higher fiber, products that are just better for you than the regular version of the same product. I already am a regular user of one Blue Menu product, their whole wheat spaghetti, which is our standard pasta and my families favorite. 
New to the Blue Line is the 100 calorie cookie packs, including this one for the Ginger and Lemon cookie. These cookies have a nice, bright flavor, with the lemon being front and center, just how I like it. Bitting into one of these little crunchy cookies is a burst of lemon flavor. That said, after that first bite, I did not like the texture, finding it similar to a meringue, sticking to my teeth.
My children, on the other hand, overrulled me and said they loved them and did we have any more? While the 100 calorie packs are just fine in size for me, two hungry boys after a substantial after school snack found them too small.
Now I have a confession to make here: as much as I liked some of the products sent to me, and I appreciate the chance to get to try them, my absolute favorite was probably not one of the "products" that were on the list of items for review. I can't help it though. When my box arrived, with all the President's Choice items in it, they were all nicely packaged up inside one of the improved PC Green shopping bags.
I love these bags. I like the size of them, the length of the straps (the right size for slinging over your shoulder), the weight of the fabric, the color of the bag. And that they are machine washable.
Plus, at $0.99 a bag, they are a good price, a very good price.
Which is why before this one came into my home, I already owned six of them. There is one at my feet now, filled with my recipe binder that I am working on sorting through. There is one in my vehicle, holding my shoes for work tomorrow. And one on my oldest son's bedroom floor, holding his drum lesson supplies. There are 2 in my grocery bin at the front door, and the last one is in the laundry room right now, waiting for me to do a load of laundry.
These bags are so versatile and useful that the last time I participated in a Blogging by Mail, I included a bag in my package.
My thanks to the people at President's Choice for the bag of goodies, and as you can guess, most especially for the new bag to add to my collection.
Outside the kitchen: Product Review
Shortly before Christmas I was contacted about doing some product reviews that did not involve food. Sure, this is a blog about food, and family, but the connection between eating and the product was a natural one.
I'd been asked if I would review some electric toothbrushes.
Now doesn't that have an obvious connection to food?
After giving it some thought, I decided this was a good type of product to review for the readers of All Things Edible. Afterall, if you are going to eat some of the desserts I sometimes post about, you are going to want to be able to get a good toothbrushing done afterwards. And since I am a "trouble" dental patient with a strong gag reflex who has problems with alot of toothbrushes, I am actually a good person to try out some electric toothbrushes and see how they do for someone who has problems brushing their teeth.
When my package arrived, it had two brushes in it, one of them an Oral B Vitality Pro White, which looks similar to this one here, but isn't exactly this one here.
This is a plug in and go type of toothbrush. Okay, sure, let it charge up first, then use it, but beyond that it doesn't need fancy instructions. Press the button to turn it on, brush your teeth, and it will tell you when you have reached two minutes. Press the button again, it turns off. Pull off the brush head, rinse it off, and then put it all back together on it's charger base. Almost as simple as a plain brush without any power, only with this, you get a better clean.
As I said, I have a strong gag reflex. When cleaning my teeth, my dentist gives me lots of little breaks and if I put up my arm, everything comes out of my mouth right away. So far this has worked for us. So I tend to be a bit nervous about the size of brushes I use in my mouth. Afterall, one thing my dentist has never been able to do is take full, adult sized x-rays (though we manage child sized ones). I was pleasantly surprised to find that this bulky looking toothbrush was actually easier to put into my mouth than the regular one I use. Which helps in getting to those back teeth.
All together, a good toothbrush. If you are looking for a relatively inexpensive electric toothbrush, this is a good investment. Provided you actually use it.
Now the other toothbrush in my Oral B box was a cadilac among toothbrushes, the Oral B Triumph with Smart Guide. It comes with a good set of instructions, batteries, two brush heads, one for daily use (with floss things in it) and one for ocassional polishing. The remote acts as a clock when it isn't doing its timing job for you as well.
I put mine together very quickly, while thinking, "I have toothbrush with a clock and a timer. Who needs this with their toothbrush?"
Let me tell you, I do. I love this thing. The size of the brush head is essentially the same as with the Vitality brush, though shaped a touch differently, but it is such a good brush.
Press the button to start and the little timer starts counting up for you while showing you a little circle, suggesting you focus only one one "quadrant" of your mouth at a time. It gives you 30 seconds per quadrant before moving on to the next. When you've reached two minutes, it still counts but gives you a happy face to show you've made it.
Teeth feeling sensitive today? Well press the lower button and the brush changes from regular brush mode to sensitive mode, again giving you your count up timer to show you how long you've brushed for. If it is only one section of your mouth feeling sensitive, then switch back to normal mode when you are done brushing there.
According to the instructions, the Smart Guide will give you warning when it is almost time to change your toothbrush head. And it won't confuse your daily brush head with your polishing head, telling you to replace one when it really means the other. And if I were to go out and get additional heads, I could also program the Smart Guide to let the brush have two users, each with their own set of brush heads, each monitored for use and replacement warnings.
Who knew a toothbrush could think?
Plus it monitors your rechargable battery life and comes with a carrying case for when you want to go away and bring the brush with you. As with the Vitality, it is easy to clean, just remove the head and rinse it, then you are done.
The downside to this brush? Well, it isn't cheap, costing more than $100, and replacement heads are not going to be inexpensive either. However if it saves you time in the dentist office, well then it is a good investment, isn't it? For our dental money, and my sensitive mouth, this toothbrush is worth the cost.
Now since I've started using these two brushes, I've had a visit with mydental office and they were quite pleased with how clean my teeth were, especially considering I was several months late for my cleaning. As much as I like my dentist office and all the staff, less time with me in the chair is a good thing.
Many thanks to the folks at Oral B for giving me a chance to try these two toothbrushes. My "testing" period for them is over, but I fully intend to keep using them: I keep the Vitality in the downstairs bathroom and the Triumph in my bathroom, so they are both used on a regular basis.
