The best chicken soup...

Seyfi is really into soup these days. I'm not sure if it is because he is coming home for lunch everyday, and a bowl of soup seems to hit the spot, or if it is because Belgium has the kind cold that goes right to your bones, and a bowl of soup warms up your soul, but he would like to have soup everyday, and I try to make sure he gets that. (Since I love him so much...)

At least once every week, I make a roast chicken. It is something that we all really love, and I always take the bones, add in a few more things and make a really lovely stock from them. Usually, I am adding in a carrot, an onion, some garlic, herbs and salt and pepper. This base really makes for the best soups.

However, lately we have been getting a bit bored of our roast chicken dinners, so I decided to glaze the chicken with a barbecue sauce (that I had made), mixed in with a bit more brown sugar and then watered down abit with some apple juice. I brushed my glaze on the chicken every ten minutes while it was in the oven, and the end result was a really lovely tasting chicken.

Now, I was not about to go without making my stock for my soups for the week, so I took the barbecue sauce bones and made my stock from that, but this time only adding some salt and pepper. The end result... a delicious, sweet, dark stock.

What I will share with you today is my recipe for the barbecue glaze and the ingredients that I added to the stock...

Barbecue Glaze

1 cup ketchup
3/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
8 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey mustard
1 tablespoon soya sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Bring to a bowl. Turn down and simmer for at least half an hour. If it seems too thick for glazing, add some more apple juice.
Brush on chicken every ten minutes while it is roasting.

Best Chicken Soup

1 carrot
1 leek
1 cup of cauliflower
1 celery stalk
1 tablespoon olive oil

Finely chop the vegetables and saute them in a stock pot in the olive oil.

6 cups of chicken stock (I use my barbecue glazed stock, but any stock is fine.)

Add to the sauteed vegetables, and bring to a boil.

1/2 cup green lentils

Add to the boiling stock, and let the soup simmer for at least 45 minutes.

1 cup soup noodles (I used some gluten free ones that I had made)

Add to the soup ten minutes before you want to serve it. Enjoy!



This soup really did turn out surprisingly delicious. I served it to a friend who also said it was wonderful, but the toughest critic of all, Alara ate two bowls of it so it must have been really good!

Holidays at home...

I'm sorry that I haven't been writing for so long, I'd like to say that it is because I have been so busy, but really I haven't been all that busy.

Over Christmas and New Years, Seyfi was off, so we had that opportunity to do some traveling. However, between all the snow, and how ill all of us got, we didn't get too far at all.

One thing that we did to was visit all of our neighbours at Christmas. This was a real highlight for us. It was very nice to be able to go to everyone and visit, and get to know the lovely people who live around us. What was even nicer was when they came to visit us as well. We had decided to live in a little community like this so that we could meet the people around us, to learn about Belgium from Belgians, and it seems that we are on the road to doing this.

We were also invited to our landlord's home to celebrate the Epiphany, or Three Kings on the sixth of January. We sat with them and ate Frangipane (an almond pie) and drank Champagne (with a blackberry syrup for the ladies). One of the fun things about the night was that there was a statue of the king hidden in the pie, and while we were eating, who ever found the statue was the king of the night. Guess who was the king- my lucky husband! He spent the rest of the evening wearing a crown!

I guess that we did have a quiet holiday, but I wouldn't have changed it for the world. We could have gone anywhere, but by staying home, we learned so much more about the country we are living in, and the people who live here.

The snowman- an update

We recently heard from a very reliable source (my dad) that some people were making fun of the size of Seyfi and Alara's first snowman. You know how you are- apparently you live in Bracebridge...

Well, Seyfi being the competitive man that he is, immediately did three things:

1. Pointed out that the snow that day was too powdery, making it difficult to make a proper snowman.

2. Put on his snow boots, and toque and made the biggest snowman he could.

3. Made me take pictures of it and post them here.

So here is Seyfi's huge snowman, it looks in our living room window and scares me every time I forget it is there.

Gluten free butter tarts

I'm Canadian, an if there is one food that is truly Canadian, it has got to be the butter tart. People in Canada debate where you can buy the best butter tart, who makes the best butter tarts, and what is the seceret to the best butter tart all the time, In fact, I remember listening to a rather heated debate about where to buy the best butter tart a few years ago on the CBC.

Now, I can be very honest here and tell you that butter tarts are not my favourite dessert, and I probable would have gone my whole life without making a single one, if it hadn't been for my husband. Seyfi absolutly loves butter tarts. During his first visit to Canada, he was introduced to their sweetness, and now, everytime we go back, he always wants to have some. (My wonderful grandfather is usually the one to supply him with his fix!)

Since we haven't been back to Canada for a year, and we are not quite sure when we exactly we will be going, I thought that for Christmas I would make Seyfi some gluten free butter tarts.

I used Gluten free girl and the Chefs recipe for pie crust for the shells (which turned out perfectly), and my dad's recipe for the butter filling. They turned out perfectly. Just like I always remembered them to be, only for some reason better. Maybe becasue it has been so long since I last ate one. I generally don't eat the ones that have been bought for Seyfi (he doesn't like to share his tarts!)

This is how much I am enjoying them this time, as I am sitting here typing this up, I just finished eating one with my cup of tea, and am seriously thinking about eating another one, Alara and Seyfi are sleeping, no one would know...

Anyway, I just thought that I would share my dad's recipe with all of you. It is really easy and soooooo delicious. Go ahead have one, and then sneak two more when no one is looking.

Dad's Butter Tarts

12 tart shells (uncooked, homemade or store bought (no judgement)

1 cup raisins
1 egg
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp cream
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350*F

Soak your raisins ( I acutally don't use raisins, some people put in nuts, I don't do that either)
Beat egg, beat in butter and sugar, add raisins or nuts and vanilla
Spoon mixture into unpricked tart shells, bake 10 – 12 minutes

These really are something else! Make them and join in the age old Canadian argument about who makes them better! Or let me know where you think the best butter tarts come from!

Christmas lights

For the past eight years, while I had been in Turkey, I could feel the holiday season approaching as the shopping centres got themselves all dressed up for Yılbaşı (which is actually to celebrate New Years). Everything gets so beautiful and festive, but outside of shopping centres, you don't tend to see a lot of decoration on people's homes.

In our littlw town here in Belgium, there are some lights out, lots of Santas falling from windows and dioramas set up in windows, it really is quite nice. So, we went for a walk around our neighbourhood to look at them all. It was cold, but lovely.

Then, I heard that there was a little town near us where everybody lights up their house for the holiday season. We got very excited, we bundles up Alara, got into the car and drove to Neufmasion for their holiday lights.

It was beautiful. Alara loved them, and it was really nice to see houses all lite up like that again. If you live in this area of Belgium, I recommend taking the drive out there.

It is really nice to be able to see the build up to Christmas this year in a new country. To be honest, I haven't really been in any shopping centres, or markets, but just seeing how our neighbours here celebrate Christmas is very nice, and something we will hold onto forever.

Gnocchi= Yummy!

Alara has been home from school off and on for the past two weeks because she has got such a bad cold. A cold that I assume is from started a new school and being introduced to new people (and there germs!)

Having here home is really nice, and I absolutely love it, but when she is not feeling well I need to have something easier to make because she really becomes a 'mommy's girl'.

I was looking through the cupboards and fridge, trying to decide what to make, when I saw that we had an unusually large amount of mashed potatoes left over. Other than potato pancakes, what could I make with mashed potatoes? Then it came to me... gnocchi.

I first ate gnocchi when I was a early teen, I remember it because my sister had gone out for lunch somewhere with my grandmother, and came home raving about these potato things called gnocchi. Our family then proceeded to incorporate these potato pillows into our meal rotation, and really enjoyed them. We did however always buy them, I can't remember if they were fresh or frozen, but I think they were frozen.

With these being a gluten free family, that pretty much leaves any 'ready made' gnocchi out. So today I made my own gluten free potato pillows and they were yummy. How yummy? So yummy that Alara ate three plates of them!

The girl with the cold, who has been eating very little lately, ate three plates of gnocchi!

Here is my recipe for gnocchi (it can be gluten free or not, depending on your flour)

2 cups of mashed potatoes
1 cup of flour (I used gluten free, Schar C mix)
1 egg
1 tsp salt

Mix all the ingredients together to a dough.
Split the dough up to smaller workable pieces.
Roll out the down into a long roll and cut 2cm pieces.
Push down on the back of each piece with the back of a fork.
Cook in a pot of salted water until they are floating.

I then take them from the water and saute them with butter, olive oil, onion, garlic, tomato, basil, oregano, salt and pepper.

Sprinkle with cheese.

From begining to end these take about 45 minutes. So easy, cheap, and satisfying!

Making a gingerbread house

When we were younger, we would sometimes make a gingerbread house at Christmas time. I always loved doing it, and wished that we could do it more often. Then, a few years ago, before Alara, I made a huge gingerbread house, and thought, this is a lot of work and would be more fun with kids...

Then a few weeks ago, my friend Jane called from Ikea and said she was picking up a gingerbread house kit, and would I like one too. Making a gingerbread house without having to do all the work? I'm in!!!

So, today, after school (where nobody was crying), Jane and her daughter, Melisa, Alara and I decorated our gingerbread houses, well sort of...

You see, our box had fallen while I was cleaning up the shelf, so as we opened our box, we could see that not only was it broken, it was completely shattered, we wouldn't be able to rescue it.

Luckily, Melisa's house was completely fine, so we just traced her house onto the two boxes and cut it out, and stuck it together. Really, other than the lack of gingerbread smell, there was no difference.

We had all kinds of candies, and Jane had made some different coloured icings, and we let the girls make their houses, with some helpful guidance from their mother's. The candies were stuck lovingly onto the houses, and some were eaten, we laughed, and enjoyed a lovely winter's afternoon with good friends.

Alara and I loved doing our house together, but I think that next year I am going to get two kits, one for Alara, and one for me, I don't like sharing!!