May
31
2012

Father's Day Gifts Dad Will Love

(And A Contest!)

Father's Day Gifts Dad Will Love

The store shelves are full of gifts for dad right now. From desk weights to silk ties, finding the perfect gift for Father's Day can be quite the overwhelming task. In our house an easy way to dad's heart is always getting something for the grill. Weber has put out some pretty neat grilling accessories this year that you know dad will just love to open up and use on Father's Day.

Here are a few great options that I recently had a chance to try out:
 
Weber Rib and Roast Holder
 
This might be the most-often used accessory in my BBQ arsenal. The stainless steel rib and roast holder can hold up to five racks of ribs, ensuring they get an even sear and maximizing the space on your grill. It also means you can easily slather them with sauce on both sides without flipping them back and forth. It fits perfectly into roasting pans and lifts your meat off of the grill surface and ensures air can circulate around the meat for even cooking. The roast holder can fit small roasts or even a whole chicken. It's also dishwasher safe for quick and easy clean-up. Here's one of my favourite roast recipes for the summer grill.
 
 
Weber Large and Small Fish Baskets
 
One of the hardest parts about grilling fish on the bbq is ensuring it doesn't break up and flake into small pieces. With the fish basket you can cook anything from whole fish, to filets, or salmon steaks as the flexible stainless steel wire adjusts to hold any size. I find the freshest whole fish I can get my hands on, season inside and out, rub with olive oil and stuff with herbs, et voila! Also, dishwasher safe for simple clean-up.
 
 
I want to help you make Father's Day special by giving away a Weber Q 140 Grill. It’s new for 2012 and is perfect for use on the porch or patio without the need for charcoal or briquettes. Simply leave a comment below and let me know what your favourite thing to grill for dad on Father's Day. Retail value of $279.99 MSL. 
 
  
Yummy Rules and Regs: You must be a Yummy Mummy Club member to win. Click to sign up! It's free and filled with perks. One comment per member. Entries accepted until June 13th, 2012. Contest open to Canadian residents (excluding Quebec). Winners will be picked using www.random.org.

 

Winner: Tonya C. of Peterborough, ON

May
27
2012

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Tea

Put your pinky finger down when you pick up your cup

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Tea

With its recent resurgence, the tea-craze is in full swing in North America. Specialty tea shops are popping up in malls with retailers offering dozens of niche flavours and tea paraphernalia. As a foodie I get a lot of questions online and from friends about how to make sense of this whole tea-volution. What are the different types of tea? How should they be prepared at home?

To help find the answers to these and other pressing concerns of the tea-cup wielding public, I asked for help from the Fairmont Royal York Hotel and Metropolitan Tea, who both certainly know the ins and outs of the tea industry and have perfected tea drinking to an art-form. 

YummyMummyClub.ca and Fairmont Royal York co-hosted a tweet-up so our writers and readers could learn more about what goes into the art of a great cup of tea. Al Cardenas of Metropolitan Tea took us through a tasting of some of their exclusive Fairmont flavoured teas and gave us a brief history lesson of the tea leaf. To get a few things out of the way up-front—tea is to be sipped pinky finger down, and there's to be no clanging of the spoons if you don't mind. 

 Tea making has a vast 5000-year history and true tea leaves (genus Camelia sinensis) can only grow in tropical regions. The first tea discovered was black tea in China (Camelia sinensis sinensis). Many moons later the British Empire took the Chinese tea bush and tried to grow it in other places without much success. Soon they discovered a second genus (Camelia sinensis assamica) from which Indian tea is made. Both are similar but have subtle differences in size and flavour. All true tea comes from these two genus (i.e. the same plants) and has been cultivated all around the world. People used to think tea had medicinal properties. They didn't know why—they just drank it. Today we find a lot of people reverting back to tea for its health benefits. For example, people are looking for antioxidants, soothing, to ease digestion, to help them turn down in the evening. Clearly the health and wellness effect of tea is trending.  The only difference between green and back teas is that green teas are not fired in an oven while black teas are. Oolong tea refers to a semi-fermented tea that falls somewhere between green and black tea. There tends to be a lot more variety with oolong because there are less stringent rules around its production.  Herbal tea can be anything that is not from a true tea leaf. For example, Rooibos is a South Africa drink and is not really a tea at all. It's produced from a red pine tree. There are many different types of Rooibos blends—and it continues to increase in popularity. In Argentina a drink called Mate is a cultural staple. It's made from dried leaves of the yerba mate and is served with a metal straw from a shared hollow calabash gourd.   Caffeine is the same in all true teas (black and green). Green tea isn't steeped as long and the water usually isn't quite as hot so there tends to be a bit less caffeine in a brewed cup of green tea. However, this difference is quite minimal and the leaves themselves contain the exact same amounts of caffeine. Tea bags were invented in New York by Thomas Sullivan at the start of the 1900s. They were originally made from silk and were used to send samples to clients around the world. While the loose tea was intended to be removed from the bags, people found it very useful to prepare the tea in the tea bag. Over time due to competition on store shelves, to drive down prices bagged tea kept driving down quality. However, today there are good quality tea bags but not quite as good as what you can get in loose leaf variety.  Lastly, while many people mistake the term Orange Pekoe for a flavour of tea it actually refers to the quality of the leaf. It can refer to any black tea of medium grade consisting of many whole leaves of a specific size. 
May
15
2012

Argentinean Grilled Chicken

Argentinean Grilled Chicken

I love Argentinean food and all of the great herbs they infuse in their marinades. This incredible grilled chicken recipe is a perfect example. I’m a big fan of chicken on the BBQ, and this marinade is so fragrant and flavourful that it really steals the show. You’ll also feel a lot better about making your marinade using fresh ingredients rather than pouring it out of a bottle.

 

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Argentinean Grilled Chicken
 
Serves: 6
 
Ingredients:
 
1/2 cup Italian flat leaf parsley
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf
dash crushed red pepper flakes
12 boneless chicken thighs
 
Preparation:
 
 Pulse marinade ingredients until puréed. Marinate chicken in a ziploc bag for 4 hours or as long as overnight.

 Preheat grill over Medium-High heat. Remove chicken from the bag and discard marinade. Grill until desired doneness, about 5 to 7 minutes per side.