It’s Finished!

The basement renovation completed on Tuesday, hurrah! We now have a TV and play area, a bathroom, a laundry room and a study in our basement!

I’m sure I was excited that day but I was also anxious about the cleaning up and re-organising work that’s awaiting, much like moving into a new house but on a smaller scale! We would also need to be creative in moving all our ‘stuff’ (currently sitting in our living room and the spare bedroom upstairs) back to the basement as we now have less storage space.

So it was a welcomed distraction when my neighbours, Rich and Ange, invited us to join them for a BBQ dinner that night. They wanted to thank me for always sharing my baked goods with them. 🙂

This was what I last shared with them – Dorie Greenspan’s Florida Pie – a key lime pie with a layer of coconut cream. Sweet and tangy! My meringue was overbeaten though, sigh! I’m just going to whisk the egg whites by hand next time.

For dinner, Rich grilled these delicious, juicy burgers and prepared a condiments bar with sweet sautéed onions, bacon strips, relish and tomato slices. I made Potato Chip Tortilla, from Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table, as an appetizer to snack on while waiting for the burgers.

Potato Chip Tortilla – a Spanish omelette made with crushed potato chips (I used tortilla chips instead) and green onions.

Next week is the last week of the summer holiday! Time flies! Hope to bring the kids out somewhere since they have been home with me so much watching the renovation.

 

French Fridays with Dorie: Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots

I haven’t cooked dinner at home for so many nights now since the Christmas break! I don’t have vegetables in my fridge too save for some green onions, cilantro, 2 tomatoes and a half a bag of organic carrots. Thanks to the bag of carrots I’m able to participate in French Fridays with Dorie (FFWD) this week. 🙂

This carrot dish is tasty! Onions, garlic, ginger and cardamom are sautéed in butter (butter, not oil, makes a difference!) before the sliced carrots are added in with some chicken broth to cook. I didn’t remove the seeds from the cardamom pods and use whole pods instead because I mistook ‘seeds’ for ‘pods’ when I was reading the recipe. I did give the pods a light smash with the knife. I wasn’t sure how thin to cut the carrots too so I sliced them Chinese-stir-fry thin. Next time I’ll either cut them thicker or cook them for a shorter period so the carrots won’t be too soft.

The cardamom taste wasn’t very strong and overall this dish felt like a Chinese/Asian dish to me because of the ginger. It’s a great way to cook carrots though and I’ll be making this dish again.

This recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspan‘s Around My French Table.

This month FFWD members are free to select the recipe they want to make each week from the December set of recipes. Check out what other members made here.