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Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Turkey

If you were following our posts on our Facebook page last night you would already know that we are celebrating Thanksgiving here in Canada this weekend. Our family dinner was actually yesterday and I’m still full from all the delicious food that Claudia made. I mean, look at that turkey above! I’m excited for my lunches over the next few days which will consist of all the delicious leftovers.

Cabbage Rolls

It would not be Thanksgiving in our house without Cabbage Rolls. Claudia decided to make an entire roaster full! When I asked her why she made an entire roaster full when she was only cooking for 6 people, she replied “Well, why not?!”. I love my mother! You can find our delicious Cabbage Roll recipe by clicking here!

Gravy

While Claudia and I were preparing dinner, I learned yet another valuable food lesson. She always uses potato water mixed in with the turkey drippings to make her gravy. It gives it a little added flavour rather than using just regular water. Brilliant, right? It blew my mind anyways.

Pumpkin Pie

We finished off the evening with the Claudia’s delicious Pumpkin Pie, and the standard family debate: whether pumpkin pie should be served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. I take ice cream every single time. There is nothing better in my opinion.

Whether you are celebrating this weekend, or in a few weeks, Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours!

Our Most Popular Recipes of 2012

2012 was a fantastic year. I can’t believe it’s almost over! I wanted to take an opportunity to thank you all again for visiting our blog – whether it was for the first time or your tenth time.

Today, I wanted to recap our top 12 recipes for 2012. I always find it fascinating to see which recipes resonate the most with our readers. In our 3 years of blogging, our most popular recipes always tend to be the Ukrainian dishes. Our all-time most popular recipe is Cabbage Rolls, which was one of my very first posts on the blog. Without further adieu – here is your top 12 of 2012!

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#12 – Fiery Roasted Tomato and Garlic Soup – Without a doubt, this is my favourite soup of all-time. It’s creamy, rich and packed with a lot of delicious flavour.

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#11 – Pumpkin Snickerdoodles with Vanilla Icing – These were a pretty big hit with my friends. These cookies are soft, warm and sweet. Besides, who doesn’t like hints of cinnamon, ginger and pumpkin…especially in the autumn season.

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#10 – Salted Caramel Chocolates – This creation was the end result of me getting really into using chocolate molds. Not to mention, I love salted caramel. These treats are really easy to make and super delicious. There is nothing better than homemade chocolates in my humble opinion.

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#9 – Wookiee Cookies – My love of Star Wars resulted in my love for these cookies. The recipe is from the Star Wars cookbook that I received for a birthday present. These cookies start out as your basic chocolate chip cookies until you add cinnamon to them. They are delicious, and my fiancé’s favourite cookies!

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#8 – Danish Apple Bake – This apple dish is buttery, flaky and full of flavour. I still love my former coworker for this recipe!

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#7 – Rolo Brownie Trifles – This individual trifle recipe is decadent and rich – a perfect guilty pleasure treat. You simply can’t go wrong with Rolo candies, brownie, gooey salted caramel, and chocolate whipped cream!

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#6 – Pyrizkhy (Ukrainian Cabbage Buns) – As I mentioned earlier, Ukrainian recipes tend to be the most popular on my site. I posted this recipe a week ago and it made the Top 12 of 2012! These turned out to be a big hit for our Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner this year.

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#5 – Chocolate Dipped Cream Cheese Butter Cookies – These cookies are a nice twist on the traditional holiday butter/sugar cookie. The cream cheese makes the cookie a little denser and the chocolate adds a nice sweetness. These were another big hit this year at Christmas time.

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#4 – Cadbury Mini Egg Cookies – These cookies are an all-time favourite amongst my friends. Since you can now purchase Mini Eggs year round, I try to only make these beauties around Easter, to not overdo it of course. I often get requests from my friends to make them during the non-Easter season and I cannot help but oblige. These are truly delicious!

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#3 – Pumpkin Caramel Dream Cake – An adaption to our very popular Skor Cake, this Pumpkin Caramel Dream Cake is rich and full of caramel and pumpkin flavor. Perfect for the autumn season…or any season!

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#2 – Egg Nog Cupcakes – Perfect for the holiday season, these cupcakes are sweet, dense and moist. I am not a huge egg nog fan, but these cupcakes have the perfect amount of egg nog flavour.

IMG_6209#1 – Imperial (or Empire) Cookies – I was so happy to see that this recipe was #1 in 2012. I love these cookies. They remind me of my days as a Starbucks Barista. They are soft, delicate and delicious. I choose to make them with Claudia’s Raspberry Jam recipe, but you can always use your own favourite.

So there you have it – our 12 most popular recipes of 2012! What were your favourite recipes in 2012 – from either our blog or another? Please comment and let me know!

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

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Wishing all of our dear blog followers and your families a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year!

We recognize that this site would not be possible without any of you. Both Claudia and I hope you take the time this holiday season to relax, rejuvenate and connect with your loved ones over some fabulous food.

See you in 2013!

Dish Magazine

We had the good fortune of being featured by fellow blogger and foodie, “The Media Chef” Kathryne Grisim in the Spring 2011 issue of Dish Magazine. Kathryne reached out to us a few months ago in the dead of winter to tell readers what foods/meals remind us of spring. Immediately, I thought of Joey Restaurant’s Viva Salad. If you haven’t had the good fortune to try it, I cannot say enough great things about it. Delicious!

Grab your copy of Dish Magazine today at any MLCC location and check us out on page 16!

Food Blog Community

Claudia and I started our food blog back in June. Over the past several months, I have come to the realization that the food blog community is enormous and full of tons of passionate people willing to share their ideas and creations with those who have similar interests. I have been very fortunate to have been invited to share some of our Claudia’s Cookbook recipes on other great food blogs. I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize them here and encourage some of our followers to check their fantastic blogs as well.

Sweet as Sugar Cookies – Lisa has started up a great Sweets for Saturday recipe exchange that she asked us to be a part of it. Every Saturday, food bloggers can post their favourite dessert recipes to her website. We recently contributed our Nanaimo Bar recipe! We encourage you check out all the other amazing desserts posts and food blogs on her site.

Prairie Story – Alison is a fellow Manitoban and food blogger extraordinaire. She also has a great recipe swap on her blog that we have been actively involved called Recipe Swap Thursday.  Same idea as Sweets for Saturday, only these recipes can encompass any food item, not just desserts. We’ve contributed many of our recipes including our Date Squares, Nanaimo Bars, Chocolate Chow Mein Clusters, Cabbage Rolls and Pumpkin Scones. Prairie Story not only has some amazing recipes that we definitely think you should try, we also think that our blogs could be sisters as Alison features many of her own Polish family favourite recipes as well!

Miz Helen’s Country Cottage – Miz Helen is a food blogger from Dallas, Texas. She posts some great recipes that she plans to make over the next week for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each week we look at the menu line up and wish we could one day be a guest at Miz Helen’s dinner table! She also does a great recipe swap each Thursday called Full Plate Thursday, where we were invited to feature our Nanaimo Bars recipe on. 

 Thank you to those mentioned above for inviting us to be a part of your communities! We look forward to meeting many more food bloggers as we continue with Claudia’s Cookbook and can’t wait to grow our own online food community as well.

Image above courtesy of Learn Food Photography

 

Tag, we’re it!

We were tagged by our new friend and fellow Manitoban Alison at Prairie Story  to take part in this great little game of “get to know you”.  The rules are pretty simple, we answer the 8 questions asked by Alison and in turn, pose 8 questions of our own to 8 new bloggers! Pretty cool! Here we go:

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Ukrainian food is good for you

A good friend of ours forwarded this cute article to us. Looks as though Snowflake the dog’s life was extended greatly by his fantastic diet of Ukrainian favourites, such as perogies, holopchi and nalysnyky!

We must agree, all that buttery deliciouness Claudia has been making all these years is good for something. At least for Snowflake anyways!

©Wendy Ducharme

Hello world!

Welcome to Claudia’s Cookbook!

In the next few weeks we will begin sharing some amazing family recipes that are currently being passed down and documented (here of course!) from mother to daughter. In the mean time, check out the Inspiration Section to learn more about the story behind the website.

Stay tuned!