Red Racer Pumpkin Ale Bread

2011 might well be the year of the pumpkin ale. In 2010, everyone seemed to jump aboard the winter ale train, but this year, it felt like every brewer and his dog released a pumpkin beer of some kind. This is great news for pumpkin ale fanatics like me, who wait all year for the spicy, gourd-flavoured brew to hit store shelves. Now, instead of a couple of options, we've got a veritable buffet of orange cans and bottles to salivate over.

One of my favourite local pumpkin offerings comes from Surrey's Central City Brewing. Their Red Racer Pumpkin Ale is creamy and delicious, with subtle hints of cinnamon and cloves (pumpkin pie!), and without the overwhelming sweetness of some other pumpkin ales. Nice and balanced, I thought it would be a perfect choice for my first attempt at pumpkin beer bread. (yes, this is my second beer bread post this month. I think it might be becoming a thing.)

Homemade crusty beer bread

Bread is awesome. If it were socially acceptable (and physically possible) for me to eat an entire loaf in one sitting, I would do it. But despite my enthusiastic appreciation for bread, I'd never once tried to make it myself. This might have had something to do with growing up in the 90s and assuming that owning a breadmaker was a necessary part of the process (do people still use those?). Luckily, turns out it's not - as it happens, bread is actually pretty easy to make. Who knew?

For my first attempt at bread baking, I decided to start with (what else?) a bread with beer in it. I used Granville Island English Bay Pale Ale, and it turned out great - with a nice, almost honey-like flavour. You could use any light beer for a more subtle result, or try a darker, spicier beer for more of a noticeable flavour. I'm looking forward to experimenting with different brews in this recipe.

Lighthouse Beer Riptide Pale Ale Veggie Chili

It's an amazing experience when two things you love separately come together to create something truly magical. Like beer and snowboarding. Or beer and camping. Or beer and... ok, you get it. This week I had the fortune of stumbling upon one of these mash-ups from above whilst nerding about on the internet. And thus I present to you: beer and chili, together at last.

I found the original recipe on the Lighthouse Brewing website and decided to use it as a base for my chili feast, with a few tweaks & additions.

Easy ways to cut down on food waste

I've always felt guilty about throwing out food - and we eat so many vegetables in our house that it ends up being 3/4 of our weekly garbage (living in an apartment means no city food scraps pickup). I'd had a compost for a while, but was still throwing out fruits and veggies every week, much to my frustration. Finally, the kick in the ass I needed to start getting creative came in book form: American Wasteland by food journalist Jonathan Bloom. The stats are shocking (almost 1/2 of all food produced in the US ends up in the landfill), but some of his big- and small-picture ideas on what we can do to change it are pretty inspiring.

Here are some of the simple ways I've been able to cut down on food waste over the last few months:

Easy miso soup

Soup is my comfort food. Anytime I'm sick, sad, cold or hungover, I reach for a bowl of warm, brothy goodness. One of my favourites is miso soup, especially if I've got a craving for something salty. Since it usually only costs about a buck in Japanese restaurants, I figured it must be cheap and easy to make and decided to give it a try. I've been making it in big batches ever since. So cheap, so easy, so GOOD.

Snacks that rule: kale chips

Is it just me, or is everyone all about kale chips lately? No? ...Ok, maybe it's just me and my healthy nerd friends. Regardless, kale chips are so good, you don't even have to be a health nerd to like them (and you can always alternate them with handfuls of Doritos). I've never been a huge kale fan (so bitter!), and I'd always buy the stuff and then let it go bad while I tried to come up with something inspiring to do with it. Problem solved! Yum.

Red lentil & rice veggie burgers with sweet potato wedges

Despite being full of veggie-munchers like me, it's tough to find a good veggie burger in this city. It's even tougher to find a good store-bought version. The ones that are flavoured in an attempt to taste like meat have never gone over well with me (Me: "Taste this for me, I think it might be meat. Gasp! I think they served me meat!" P: "This tastes nothing like meat. Do you even know what meat tastes like?!") and most of the rest of them are bland as hell.

After several years, I finally got sick of watching P chow down on a plump, juicy, freshly-made beef burger while I sat and chewed on my cardboard "mushroom patty". And so I threw down my bun (figuratively) and decided I could probably do it better myself. My first attempt is a lentil-based burger:

Beet and bean borscht

I've always enjoyed the saying "cheap like borscht." But I don't think it quite gives borscht all the credit it's due. Something like "cheap, easy, delicious and the coolest colour EVAR like borscht" would be more accurate in my books.

I got this recipe from a pretty random source: the Saskatchewan pavilion at the Olympics last year. They had a booth celebrating their role in North American pulse production (sounds sexy, right?), which included a free little booklet called "Cooking with Pulses." Mmm. Nothing like the word "pulse" to get your appetite going. Anyway, courtesy of the great province of Saskatchewan, I bring you:

How to eat healthy for the cheap

Ok, so our food budget ran a little low this past week. I had to get creative. Here's how $60 got the two of us through 5 days of eating (and no, there were no Mr. Noodles involved). I'm just going to list dinners, as 90% of the time we eat leftovers from the night before for lunch:

Spicy red lentils and rice

I've had a bit of a mixed relationship with lentils. On the one hand, they're cheap, easy to prepare and a good source of protein. On the other hand, if you don't do 'em right, they're pretty damn bland. And nobody likes bland.

Fortunately, this recipe is definitely not. Just spicy enough for my under-developed spice tolerance, this lentil dish is pretty fulla flavour.

Tip: buy lentils in bulk and keep a supply in your cupboard. If you don't have anything to make for dinner, or the food budget is short one week, you can whip up a double batch with rice to get you through dinner and lunch the next day.

Vegan pesto sauce

I love pesto. Whoever first thought of grinding up basil, nuts and olive oil into a delicious paste - I salute you. And enjoy the fruits of your genius on a regular basis.

Or, or least I did, until I realized I was lactose intolerant. And almost every store-bought variety of pesto has parmesan cheese in it. Woe was me, until one day I was standing at the deli, forlornly scanning the list of ingredients on a tasty little pesto package, and I realized my mistake. Which was - pesto sauce only has about 5 ingredients in it. Why the hell was I buying it for $8 a package at Safeway anyway? There had to be some way I could make it at home, cheese-free. Later, deli.