Happy Mother's Day to all mothers. The weather has been incredible here in Calgary. We've had a beautiful and warm day for Mother's day. On such gorgeous day I don't always feel like cooking, so most of the times I turn to sandwiches. Here's a sandwich recipe, if you want to call it that, that is super healthy. It's full of flavor and it looks great too. It's like a salad on a sandwich. :) Literally! I made ...

I've often talked about how much I love cooking with mushrooms and how much I adore stuffed mushrooms. This is my 2nd stuffed mushrooms recipe this week, and the 4th on the blog. So obviously I love them. :) And I like a variety. I mean imagination is our only obstacle. So far all the stuffed mushroom recipes here on jocooks are vegetarian. One of these days I'll try stuffing them with some meat. But not th ...

May is Vegetarian and Seafood Month at JoCooks. As I mentioned in my previous post, I am doing this to prove to myself that you can cook a variety of dishes with no meat. Today's recipe is one that I am a big fan of. I love mushrooms, and I love stuffed mushrooms. Portobello mushrooms are great for stuffing because they are so big and you can really stuff them with anything. These mushrooms were so deliciou ...

In the month of May I'm going to be featuring only vegetarian recipes and some of them will include seafood. My mission is to prove to myself mostly, that there are many options when it comes to vegetarian dishes. To start this off, I've made this yummy halibut soup. I don't make fish soup often but sometimes I get in the mood for something different and recently I've been wanting to make a fish soup for qu ...

A long time ago when we lived in southern Ontario, we used to go to Mexican Town in Detroit a lot. It was one of our favorite places to go on the weekend. There you'll find some of the best Mexican food in the world and my favorite of all, the best margaritas. It was like a vacation every weekend, it was our getaway. Some of my favorite things to eat were chicken enchiladas, flaming fajitas and the fresh ta ...

I'm developing a passion for cooking with bourbon. My husband hates it when I cook with alcohol for whatever twisted reason, but then when he eats the food, he can't stop mumbling how good it is. So I don't listen to him when he complains because I know later on he'll be thanking me in his own way. I got this idea from a show I watched with Paula Deen in which she made a sort of bourbon rub she brushed on p ...

My latest favorite weekend breakfast is a breakfast pizza. I was a bit skeptical at first, you know, eggs on a pizza, that's got to be strange, right? Not so, it is actually quite nice. Also it's very quick to make, especially if you have the pizza dough already made. I've been making my own pizza dough now for about a couple years and I've never looked back since. It's easy to make and a pizza dough will a ...

I remember I used to hate spinach as a child. I used to hate lots of vegetables as a child but especially spinach. But at some point I grew to really like my mom's creamed spinach, probably after I watched Popeye. :) I'm not sure creamed spinach is a traditional Romanian dish, but I know my mom has made it ever since I can remember. We used to eat it with a scrambled egg, and I think that was my favorite th ...

My passion for alcohol only goes as far as Mojitos or Margaritas, but I do love to cook with it. I've always used red wine and white wine and occasionally vodka, but cooking with Bourbon is fairly new to me. I would never drink Bourbon unless it was in some sort of cocktail, but I do like the flavor of it in food. Although I originally thought that Bourbon Chicken is a Chinese dish, it is actually a Cajun d ...

Ever wonder what Puttanesca means? Well I recently found out while watching the foodnetwork channel. However the history of pasta Puttanesca has many colorful Italian folk tales. The word itself Puttana in Italian means whore. One of these such tales, suggest that a restaurant owner had many such "whore" guests come to his restaurant to eat late at night as he was about to close. As he didn't have enough of ...

So it's almost the middle of April and while other places are enjoying wonderful warm spring weather, we are going through a snow storm. That's Calgary for you, yesterday was warm, beautiful and sunny and today it looks like Christmas outside. If you don't believe me, check out the picture I just took outside. I struggled a bit with taking the picture because I wanted to capture the large snowflakes. They a ...

Have you ever had the popcorn chicken from KFC? I have once and I liked it. I'm not usually a big fan of KFC, I just find their chicken too greasy. But I do love the popcorn chicken, so I thought I'd try and make some myself, only I tried it with turkey breast instead, well simply because that's what I had in the fridge. The batter I made was super simple too. Basically I just mixed flour, milk, eggs and my ...

Happy Easter Everyone! No big dinner for us today though, our Easter is not till next weekend. So chicken for dinner it was. Well I had no idea what to call this concoction of mine, but since I used lots of alcohol in it, white wine and bourbon, I decided to call it drunken and creamy chicken, the creamy part comes from the half and half cream. I think it's an appropriate name. :) I don't know why I mixed w ...

So it's April, it's almost Easter, it is officially spring. Not in Calgary. It is snowing heavy out there as I am typing this post and I am not happy about it. It looks like December out there, but thankfully I am off for the rest of the week and I don't have to go out there. Even Mia (my beagle) would not want to step out there. She'd rather stay inside and watch TV. With me. :) I've probably mentioned thi ...

Since I was a little girl, this version of roasted potatoes with garlic sauce has been my favorite and it was such a popular side dish, I think we had these potatoes every Sunday for dinner. Pair this with a roasted chicken and you've got an awesome dinner. Just the thought of these potatoes and this delicious garlic sauce makes my mouth water. Whenever people ask me about traditional Romanian cuisine, this ...