Friday, October 7, 2016

Wifi, Squash Pie Anyone, Roast Taties,

Wednesday morning  the tech guy comes to change my modem. When he leaves I have wifi. In the afternoon I don't have wifi. Call my ISP and they make me do some password changes so I end up with wifi. Hour or two later I pick up my laptop and I don't have wifi. Get in touch, online, with my ISP and they take over my laptop which I have now hard wired into the modem. I have to use the hard wire from my desktop so I had no internet access at all last night. The tech who was working on my laptop left a note saying I seemed to have a problem with my modem and should change it!!!!!! Er????

Well here's a shocker, coming up to Thanksgiving (here in Canada this weekend) celebrations and here is an article in Food and Wine saying that canned pumpkin is NOT pumpkin. It is, in fact, a blend of winter squashes because real pumpkin tends to be too stringy. It is, according to the article, perfectly legal to call this mixture pumpkin?? I used, always, to use a pumpkin for my soups, but then I was in a hurry one time and bought a can of pumpkin, as I thought, and decided it worked very well so as we found pumpkins so very hard to cut into these days, I carried on with the canned variety. So I guess I have been making squash soup and many of you have been making squash pies. Staggers me that these people are allowed to put 100% pumpkin on the cans when it isn't pumpkin at all.

It seems odd to me that with the influx of English into North America, I have never come across
anywhere or anyone who can make English style roast potatoes which are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. I have a friend who, when we make them for her, will not stop eating them she loves them so much. We use yellow potatoes which we peel, cut into smaller pieces and parboil in salted water until they are just beginning to soften on the outside. Drain them and allow them to cool. We then use a fork and score the potatoes to make them extra crispy then they are put into hot oil (vegetable oil for preference) and roasted in a hot oven (arouud 400°F)  for at least an hour, turning once to ensure the whole potato is crisped. Serve as soon as possible once removed from the oven. Great with any roast meats. I bought a duck this week, they were on special at $14 odd, and will be roasting it on Saturday with all the trimmings. Actually we won't be making roast potatoes because I don't eat potato much and Matt enjoys a baked potato with lashings of butter. I asked him what he wanted and that was his choice. Guess who normally makes the roast potatoes? Just as well really, as I would have eaten some. I can't resist them totally.

Don't often think of buying tilapia, but it is a good fish and I believe not as expensive as some fish. This recipe sounded good and I keep Tapenade anyway. Oh, and by the way, tapenade is nowhere near the jarred olives in my store, it is in the deli department.

Tilapia With Tomato-Olive Sauce

Top tilapia fillets with a savory tomato-olive sauce that comes together in just 5 minutes. Look for
tapenade near jarred olives in the supermarket. Serve with sautéed broccolini and farro tossed with toasted almonds.

1 1/4 lbs tilapia
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved if large
1/4 cup dry white wine
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 Tbs olive tapenade

1. Sprinkle tilapia with salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the fish and cook (in two batches if necessary), turning once halfway through, until golden brown and just opaque in the center, 4 to 6 minutes total. Transfer the fish to a serving platter; tent with foil to keep warm.

2. Off the heat, add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil, tomatoes, wine and garlic to the pan. Return to medium heat, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until most of tomatoes are broken down, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in olive tapenade and cook for 1 minute more. Serve the fish with the sauce.

Servings: 4

Author: EatingWell.com
Source: WebMD

Have a great day
 

25 comments:

  1. Much sympathy with the wi-fi issue. My email has gone crazy lately meaning I am spending a huge amount of time speaking to people who give me a fix and then it unfixes itself again. Grrr.
    Roast potatoes are yummy and I do them the same way you do. Very moreish.

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    1. These computer issues are enough to drive one crazy Helen.

      You are right, they are delicious.

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  2. Hi Jo - gosh I hope they can sort out the WiFi ...

    Roast potatoes are delicious ... but so is duck! The Tilapia sounds such a tasty way of making it ... cheers Hilary

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    1. Thanks Hilary. Doesn't seem to be sorted yet.

      This will be the first whole duck I have cooked in 40 years. It is normally way too expensive here.

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  3. Well, I understand your frustration. I have had so many issues over the years with cable and internet I've lost count. The stupidest thing about my cable company is that they refuse to run the outside lines under the eaves of the house. Instead they run them on the ground where the animals can chew on them and then they come out and replace them. It's ridiculous. Hope your situation gets taken care of.

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    1. I understand you about the cable Denise. Not quite the same, but they refuse to put it under the carpet between the kitchen and dining area. When it was first laid 15 years ago, it was put under the carpet, now it is half under and half not and they will not fix it. Drives me nuts. They are trying with fixing it but don't seem to be getting very far.

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  4. I wonder how many pumpkin pies I've eaten over the years were real pumpkins then?

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    1. It does give you pause Diane. I always made soup from an actual pumpkin until the last couple of years so guess I was making squash soup.

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  5. He should've known you needed a new modem when he was there!

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    1. As far as I understood, he gave me a new one Alex.

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  6. We're going through the same thing with our cable box. Grrr.

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  7. The cable problem must be universal. I have two choices- one I can't trust not to skin me at bill time; the other I can't trust to run properly. GRR.

    I've been roasting potatoes for years. Must be my English heritage coming through :)
    (My French/German grandmother used to tease that my other grandmother's English influence was showing, especially the time I put the milk in my tea as a very little girl. I thought I had invented something unique!)

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    1. I don't worry about skinning me, although none of it is cheap, but this wifi business is becoming a pain in the butt.

      Interesting that you roast them that way Liz. And we always had milk in our tea, added first I might say.

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  8. Hi Jo,

    Interesting about the pumpkin... it makes sense if you think of it... canned pumpkin is never stringy like the real thing scraped out of pumpkins...

    Love tilapia... looks delicious!

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    1. I had never thought about it before Michael. If you just scrape the centre it is stringy, but the flesh itself doesn't seem to be. Never had any problem with it.

      Good dish I think.

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  9. I would be so lost in knowing what to do about the wi-fi and modem etc... You know much more than me. There probably is about 10% of actual pumpkin in there which means that the 1`0 % of pumpkin is 100% pumpkin...yup sad isn't it. I was told that is their interpretation of the ingredients. It's just like when they say 100% fruit juice added. It's mainly sugar and crap but that 5% of juice they put in is 100% juice.

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    1. Well I have been messing around with computers for close on 40 years Birgit.

      Just checked my can and everything it says is 100% pumpkin. No other ingredients mentioned.

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  10. I just figured that the pumpkin flesh/meat was just moistened and pulverized till it got to the consistency for canned. I have a can in my cabinet, I should see what it says in the ingredients.

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    1. The can I have JoJo, is the same as in the picture and the only ingredient it lists is 100% pumpkin. But according to the article, they can get away with that. Not really sure how.

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  11. I did know about the tin not pumpkin, pumpkin. It's rubbish. Pure crap. Recently I roasted a real pumpkin pie pumpkin and it was creamy and amazing. Not stringy. But not cheap and I believe, that's the real reason we see not real pumpkin in tin.

    Rubbish anyway.

    Good luck with the duck. Happy Thanksgiving.

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    1. I wouldn't call it rubbish Ivy, it is still squash and certainly makes an acceptable soup. Maybe not as good as fresh pumpkin but those we get here seem to be almost impossible to cut.

      Duck going in the oven at 3:15

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    2. It's a personal call for me. I don't fancy even real tin pumpkin. Ack. Sorry to hear you get ones that are almost impossible to cut.

      Woohoo for the bird going in.

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  12. I sympathise re. wifi problems. We got back from 3 weeks in the Canaries and had no landline (home) telephone connection or WiFi. Although the line is supplied by BT the fibre WiFi is via TalkTalk (the only providers in our area). They took 5 days to fix the fault and we were climbing the walls by then! Amazing how dependent we've all become on the internet.

    I take a tip from Nigella Lawson re. roast potatoes. I cook them much the same way as you although sometimes I start the cooking process in the microwave rather than par-boiling, but then sprinkle with dried semolina before roasting to give them extra 'crunch' on the outside.

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    1. It is a pain isn't it Sue? It is incredible how dependent we are.

      Like the idea of a) microwave and b) semolina. However, Mr. Potato Cook says he doesn't - his roast potatoes are quite crunchy. Might give it a go one day but Matt would be teed off if I tried to do them.

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