Donate Rice and Learn some new Vocabulary

I recently came across this donation site, Free Rice, it works through the United Nations, through the United Nations World Food Program, and is totally free to you, they get their money from advertisement as you play the game.

The game is simple, you are presented with a word and four possible meanings for it; click on the correct one, and you donate 20 grains of rice (doesn't seem like a lot, but every grain of rice adds up - the time I looked at it while writing this, 281 million grains of rice were donated the previous day). If you get it right, you get a harder word, if you get it wrong, you get an easier word. Get three words correct in a row, and you get to the next Vocabulary Level (there are 50 in all).

Learn some new Vocabulary. Impress your friends and colleagues. Donate some rice. All good.

Swiss Chalet Festive Special

Swiss Chalet has what they call a Festive Special, it includes the addition of stuffing to their normal quarter chicken meal, plus, for dessert, this package from Lindt, of three Lindor chocolates. There were five Lindors in this package, two milk, one dark, one white and one hazelnut. I like the packaging showing an old-fashioned house. A Swiss Chalet, of course!!

Terra Nostra Organic Intense Dark

The second of the two chocolate bars from the Canadian chocolatier Terra Nostra, in Zellers, of all places, is a bar they call Intense Dark. The notes on the reverse side of the packaging tells me that the cacao content is 73% (which is the Intense part), the chocolate has been conched for 22 hours, to a micron size of 18, and that the cacao beans come from Ecuador, Trinidad and Peru. This chocolate is best paired with Cognac, Shyraz or B&B, or eaten alone. The ingredient listing looks good, all Organic, with added Chocolate Magic, just cocoa mass, sugar and cocoa butter. I like how this bar, and the other, does not have added soya lecithin and vanilla flavour.

How did it taste? Really good, really smooth and quite chocolatey, it also smells good. I would definitely buy this again.

Terra Nostra Organic Double Dark Truffle

I found this chocolate bar in, of all places, Zellers, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that this Organic Chocolatier is Canadian. Terra Nostra is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with manufacturing facilities in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. I honestly had never heard of them before picking up a couple of their offerings, but apparently, they outsell all other Organic chocolate in the United States. They've also been in the chocolatiering business for several generations, five at least. I like how they give you specific information about how the chocolate is manufactured, for this bar, the cacao content is 60%, it was conched for 22 hours (to make it smooth and to reduce the size of the granules, to less than 30 microns), and the cacao is a blend of Criollo and Forrastero varietals. Too, like a good wine, they suggest pairing this with port or espresso or Merlot red wine. The ingredients, all Organic, look good, just dark chocolate, made from cocoa mass, sugar and cocoa butter, and expeller pressed canola and/or sunflower and/or safflower oil (which is what makes the truffle part, I would say). They also add chocolate magic!

How does it taste? Pretty good, my beautiful Bride really thought it was great, I think I would buy this again.

President's Choice Memories of the Tropics Macadamias

Another of the new items that comes from Loblaw's President's Choice line is this 250 g bag of dry roasted and lightly salted macadamia nuts. Macadamias are very rich, with a buttery flavour, that goes well in baked goods, or just to eat like that. I want to use them in some sort of cookie, so likely I'll rinse them off before I use them. Macadamias too tend to be an expensive nut to purchase, this is about $5 for 250 g, that's like $9-10 per pound, very similar to what hazelnuts go for.

Using Food to enhance Soap

We came across these Bath & Bloom soaps in Pier One, they look interesting, they also are made in Thailand. I know about using cocoa butter as a moisturizer, and using vegetable oils such as olive or palm oil to make the soap, but am not sold on just adding various food ingredients, ones that are good for the body, at least on the inside, so as to make the soap good for the outside.

This one adds cocoa powder, and also has rice bran oil, palm oil, olive oil and coconut oil.

This one has turmeric root, apparently used for years by Thai women to smooth and brighten their skin, and honey to moisturize the skin.

Walmart Natural Whole Filberts

I came across these at the local Walmart, I like how they sell them as filberts, rather than hazelnuts, though this likely indicates that these come from the States, rather than Turkey or Italy (where they would be called hazelnuts and never filberts). This is a 300 g bag, which cost between 5 and 6 dollars.

Teebrezel

I had some quark on hand, and needed to make something, so I selected this recipe for pretzels (I also made some Club Teilchen). The original recipe called for coarse sugar, you can make it sweet, or make it salty as I did here. Too, there must be some art to making it the way the recipe calls for, I think the dough is too soft to braid two long dough pieces together, and ended up just rolling one thicker piece of dough to make the pretzel. They turned out okay, I think.

Teebrezel
150 g Quark Cheese, liquid removed
6 tbsp Milk
6 tbsp Oil
75 g Sugar
3 tsp Vanilla Sugar
pinch salt
300 g Flour, sifted
3 tsp Baking Powder
condensed milk
coarse salt

Remove most of the liquid from the cheese (Note: weight of cheese is without liquid). Combine cheese, milk, oil, sugars and salt. Stir until smooth.

Combine flour and baking powder. Add half the flour mixture by tablespoonfuls to the cheese mixture. Knead in the rest of the flour mixture.

Roll out the dough to a thickness of 2 mm and then cut pieces 30 cm long and 1 cm wide. Take two pieces and twist them around each other, then form into a pretzel shape. Place on a greased baking sheet. Brush with condensed milk and sprinkle with coarse salt. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes.

Chocolate Blueberry and Chocolate Ginger Honey Cakes

This is a hard one, I don't know whether I like ginger or wild blueberries more. And, after tasting several of them, I still don't quite know, other than that I like both of them, for different reasons. This is yet another variation on the honey cake theme, I think it makes a versatile and great tasting cake, with lots of combinations. My beautiful Bride preferred the blueberry one. I must admit, it does taste great together, chocolate and blueberries. I had already seen chocolate and ginger together in so many recipes, that I knew that combination would work. Use the best chocolate that you can; I used chocolate chips, as that was what I had on hand.

Chocolate Blueberry and Chocolate Ginger Honey Cakes
225 g sweet butter
250 g runny honey
100 g dark muscovado sugar
3 large eggs
300 g (2-1/4 cups) self-rising flour
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup good chocolate (chips or broken bars)
1/4 cup crystallized ginger pieces
1 cup wild blueberries

Preheat oven to 300F. Grease two 12 cup muffin tins or fill both with paper muffin cups. Whisk flour and cocoa together until well mixed.

Melt butter, honey, and sugar slowly in a saucepan. Boil for one minute. Leave to cool (caramel will thicken).

Add chocolate to caramel; mix to combine. Beat in eggs one at a time in the saucepan. Whisk in flour into egg caramel mixture in two batches. Divide batter into two equal portions. Stir crystallized ginger into one portion of batter, wild blueberries into the other.

Pour into the muffin tins and bake for 55-60 minutes or until cakes are golden brown and spring back when pressed.

Turn out the cake onto a wire rack. Leave to cool.

Taste of Nature Nougat Delight with Almonds

We received this as a sample at the Toronto Vegetarian Festival, and finally recently tried it. Taste of Nature, marketed by Shandiz Natural Foods, makes lots of healthy snacks, with nuts and seeds, mostly Organic. This is from their Nougat line. The ingredients are corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, roasted almonds, crisp brown rice, egg white and flavour.

It didn't taste too bad, not really my idea of a good snack, but probably a very healthy alternative to normal nougat bars.