Corn Ice Cream

I'm not really that into corn as an ingredient.  I love corn on the cob and popcorn and sweet niblets (what a stupid name though) - I'm saying that I like corn on its own as a side dish, but not IN the side dish.  I don't really like corn in soup (although if the soup is good, I can tolerate it) or tacos or on salads or just mixed in with other things in general (KFC Chicken Bowls - baaarf), and the thought of creamed corn is almost too disgusting to think about.

I think it's the texture - corn kernels often have a pretty tough "skin" on them unless they are straight off of a young cob.  When corn is mixed in with other things, for example in soup or a salad or something, it's quite possibly going to be the last thing left in your mouth when you've already chewed up all of the other ingredients.  I guess what I mean is that it just doesn't seem to mix well and that sort of grosses me out.  It's got nothing to do with the taste.

So anyway a few weeks ago I started subscribing to a great food and cooking blog called The Kitchn.  I learned lots of great things from it already and tried a few recipes to great success... but today, The Kitchn royally grossed me out with this article.

"Trend Watch:  Corn in Desserts"

And then there is this SICK DISGUSTING picture of a cup of ice cream with CORN sprinkled on top!  Ughhh gross AND THEN EWWW there was a RECIPE for corn ice cream and it's a trend????  Hey trend, please don't come to Canada.

Yummmm hey guys do you know what would make this creamy ice cream even better?  If it had bits of FROZEN CORN KERNELS in it.  I better stop writing so I don't vomit all over my keyboard.

Tim Horton's Iced Coffee

Okay so yesterday I commented that Tim Horton's Iced Coffee was the winner in the least amount of sugar competition for sweetened coffee drinks.

Today I sort of wanted a lot of iced coffee, and I have previously ordered the Tim Horton's variety and enjoyed it.  Today I ordered a large and YUCK, I seriously had to dump half of it out because I just couldn't drink it.  According to the nutritional calculator there is 20 g of sugar in the large iced coffee, but it definitely tasted like a lot more.  I honestly couldn't even taste the coffee.  SICK.

I'm not entirely sure if the iced coffees are being made differently since I've had them last, or if the increased amount of sugar in the large iced coffee (I usually just get a small or medium) is actually that much more noticeable.  But seriously, this experience has definitely turned me off of ordering iced coffees from there in the future, unless they just give me a cup of brewed coffee on ice and let me add my own amount of sugar.  BARF it was so gross.  I literally couldn't taste the coffee.  I want my $2 back.

EDIT:  I just remembered that McDonald's has dece iced coffee.  Or it did like 2 years ago anyway.  Note to self: go there next time I want iced coffee and can't make it at home.

More on sugar content

Instead of editing my last post, I wanted to go a little bit further in comparing cotton candy to other things.  I really only mentioned a couple of types of candy, and some people don't eat candy.  I also mentioned juice, and some people don't drink juice OR might argue that the sugar in juice is more naturally occurring and can't really be compared to the straight-up sugar of cotton candy.

I can guarantee though that everyone reading this drinks beverages from Starbucks or Tim Horton's, at least on some level.  Maybe regularly, maybe only as much as one might partake in cotton candy.  But to further my defense of cotton candy as an okay indulgence, I present some nutritional info straight off the Starbucks and Tim's websites.

I'm just going to go into sugar content for the sake of defending cotton candy, but it's obvious that adding cream (and whipped cream) to any of these beverages raises the saturated fat content pretty quickly too.


Starbucks

• Tall Caramel Macciato - 23 g sugars (keep in mind this is the tall size - does anyone actually only drink the tall beverages except me?)
• Tall White Chocolate Mocha with NO whipped cream - 44 g sugars (go Venti and you're looking at 73 g)
• Grande Caffe Vanilla Frappuccino (Blended) - 37 g sugars
• Tall Hot Chocolate - 32 g sugars (and if you check a few beverages, removing the whipped cream only gets rid of 1 g of sugar)
• Tall Caramel Apple Spice - 53 g sugars!!!!!  IN A TALL holy crap.  Although really what do you expect from apple juice with extra sweeteners added
• Tall Tazo Shaken Iced Green Tea Lemonade - 25 g sugars

Tim Hortons

(I have to say, I really like the way this nutrition calculator works - you can easily see everything you want at once to compare and contrast!)

• Small Iced Cap - 32 g sugars
• Small Iced Coffee - 8 g sugars (the winner!)
• Medium French Vanilla - 31 g sugars
• Medium Hot Smoothee - 28 g sugars
• Medium Hot Chocolate - 38 g sugars
• Medium Cafe Mocha - 24 g sugars

And again, who but me will ever order a medium or small beverage from Tim Horton's?


This time, I do rest my case.  Cotton candy will give you less of a sugar high than a small Iced Cap and almost any of Starbucks' sweet beverages, and it's something you're more likely to share or eat over a longer period of time rather than finish in about 15 minutes.

Cotton Candy:  you're alright.

Cotton Candy: Basically Health Food

My parents brought me a bag of cotton candy from the Saskatoon Exhibition the other day.  I don't eat cotton candy that much, maybe because I've always assumed it is absolutely terrible for you and once I start eating it, I can't stop.

I stretched this bag out over about 3 days and yesterday actually had a look at the label on the bag.  28 g, ingredients:  sugar, artificial flavour, food colouring.

28 g of sugar.  That's real sugar, not glucose-fructose or high fructose corn syrup or any other artificial sweetener.  Compared to 30 g in a Snickers bar, 32 g in a pack of Skittles, or just slightly more sugar than in a glass of fruit juice, 28 g isn't really that bad, is it?  And food colouring, not Red Dye #7 or anything like that.

As for artificial flavour, check out this interesting article from Scientific American - while artificial flavours are indeed created with synthetic compounds, they are essentially a mix of the same compounds nature creates to make the flavour, but omitting the compounds that don't contribute to flavouring or aren't healthy to ingest.  Artificial flavours are often safer than natural flavours AND better for the environment!

So a bag of cotton candy has about as much sugar as a glass of juice, no fat, and no creepy ingredients.  My guess?  Cotton candy is one of the most harmless carnival foods out there.  Woooo!

Mac's Frozen Dinner, Wildlife, and the Fort St. John McDonalds

I remember a few months ago when the convenience store Mac's (or Winks as it is known in some areas) started advertising its own line of frozen dinners.  I distinctly remember driving past the Mac's in Saskatoon right before you go onto the University Bridge with Brahm many times and making fun of this fact.  Do people actually buy enough frozen dinners from convenience stores that they could actually justify starting their own line?  We laughed and laughed.  Learn to cook, people.  Make Kraft Dinner or something.

The other night I found myself in an odd predicament.  I was in a very small town in northern Alberta with the closest major centre 40 km away.  All of the grocery stores were closed and the only restaurants were fast food and Subway, which I was starting to get sick of.  Did I dare go to Winks to try and find supper?

I did, fair readers.  I bought an exclusive to Mac's/Winks frozen shepherd's pie for $2.99.  I had sort of been craving shepherd's pie for about a week since not buying it in a cafe earlier and it was the frozen dinner with the lowest amount of sodium in the store (only 38% DV!!!  Haha oh man).

It looked prettier before I mixed the potatoes in with the meat and veggies but here was my hotel room microwave supper that night:

The surprising part is that it was actually pretty good!  It tasted like shepherd's pie.  Obviously a bit salty but still, it tasted like food and not freezerburn or rubber.  As well the ingredient list was pretty natural.  Who knew?

Mac's frozen dinners:  hopefully will never have to buy again but if I'm ever in the same predicament it would be my frozen dinner of choice.

PS - the next morning I ate lukewarm instant oatmeal out of a styrofoam cup with a plastic fork and got sick of the fork and ended up drinking it.  Then we moved into a kitchen suite and my life improved tenfold.

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In other news, I saw this awesome goat on the weekend.  He posed for a picture.

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And finally, a great quote from some of the kids I've been delivering camps to in the past couple weeks:

Instructors:  Hey kids, which city do you like better?  Fort St. John or Prince George?
Kids:  FORT ST. JOHN!!!!!
Instructors:  How come?
Kids:  (unison)  BETTER MCDONALDS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kind (or lazy?) strangers

So I am staying at this hotel in northern BC right now.  On Monday after I checked in, I did a load of laundry at the guest laundromat but after collecting all of it I discovered that I was missing a sock.  It was a cheap sock and I was sort of too tired to go look for it, and just assumed it had been eaten by the dryer or something.

But TODAY I went down to do another load of laundry and GUESS what was sitting on the table in the laundromat????  My missing sock!  I am sort of amazed.  Someone actually discovered the sock somewhere in the room and left it on the table for me to find and no one decided to throw it out for 5 days?

I'm not sure if this is kindness or laziness.  Probably laziness, but I'll pretend it's kindness.

Macro Grasshopper

HEY GUYZ CAN I COME HANG OUT WITH YOU PLEASE PLEASE

WAVE YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR

LIKE YOU JUST DON'T CARE

Northern BC Signs and a PUPPYYYYYYYYYYY

I have seen some interesting signs during my time so far in northern BC...

I know it means free breakfast and free movies, but the potential misinterpretation is too awesome.

People don't seem to understand when to use quotation marks.  My last hotel was also "Now Offering" a continental breakfast.

You know you're in a small town when you have a laundromat, coverall store, showers, a buffalo meat market, and a naughty boutique all in the same location (and no, it's not an office complex, it's one wide open room).

This is the door sign at my current hotel.  I realize they're just trying to be cutesy and retro but is anyone else mildly offended???  And why is the maid wearing roller skates?

Lastly, here is a super cute puppy that I met last week and I LOOOOOOVED HIIIIIIIIM AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HOW DO PUPPIES GET SO CUTE
AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

AWWWWWWWWWWW HE IS TRYING TO CLIMB INTO THE CAR WITH ME BUT HE CAN'T BECAUSE HE'S TOO LIIIIIIITTTTTLLLLLLEEEEEEEEE JUST A BABY TINY PUPPY AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

DavidsTea

A girl I am currently working and traveling with introduced me to something super awesome - DavidsTea.

It's a relatively new chain of tea stores that make super amazing loose leaf tea.  I'm drinking a cup of their maple rooibis as I type this - so amazingly delicious.

I love tea, a lot.  I think the differences between all the varieties of tea are pretty interesting as well.  This summer I've been growing peppermint, chocolate mint, and lemon balm so I can make my own super fresh herbal teas.  Some of my favourite bagged teas are Celestial Seasonings Chai (black or white, but I think I prefer the black because it's a bit stronger and also, this brand beats all other chais because it is more spice and less black tea flavour), Celestial Seasonings Candy Cane Lane (decaf peppermint green, only available at Christmas), Twinings Pomegranate black, and Tim Hortons green tea.  I've wanted to get more into loose leaf teas but they are so much more expensive and less accessible and I am kind of lazy and hate washing the metal infuser because it's too hot to touch when I take it out of the cup and then I end up forgetting about it until bits of tea have dried into it.

DavidsTea might change that though.  Loose leaf teas that come pre-packaged so I don't have to ask an attendant for ____ grams of every variety I want to get, being able to sample smell the tea before buying, AND they sell disposable tea filters (like tea bags you fill on your own)!  Maybe you can buy the disposable filters at Walmart or something too but I've never seen them anywhere.

The bad news is that DavidsTea doesn't have a location in Saskatoon, but it DOES have a location in Regina and the entire chain has only existed for about 2 years.  So here's hoping for a Saskatoon store in the near future!  Until then, I'll be road tripping to Regina and/or shopping online.

TLC marathon woooo

I don't have the channel TLC at home so when I'm staying in hotels it is sometimes a treat to get to watch reality shows about clothes and wedding dresses and bakeries all night (not so much a fan of the shows about tattoos and motorcycles and giant families though).

Tonight I got to watch Say Yes to the Dress (LOVE IT) and the NEW Say Yes to the Dress, Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta which was so awesome, AND this new show called DC Cupcakes.

The cupcake show is pretty good except that a few of the scenes are obviously staged.  But oh well.  Anyway there was just this scene where a mom came in and was like "hi, I want a billion cupcakes for my daughter's sweet 16 party and here are the swatches of the table linens and also the swatch of the colour of her dress, plz make cupcakes to match."  Ummmmm WHAT???

So anyway they made these absolutely gorgeous cupcake centrepieces.  Cupcakes that looked like yellow roses were attached into clay pots to look like beautiful pots of flowers!  So beautiful.  Anyway the mom took one look and was like "Ummmm these DO NOT look like the swatch I gave you."

What???  I just can't believe people have so much money to throw around that they have massive sweet 16 parties with swatches in the first place, let alone flat out complain about the colour of icing (which totally didn't clash with the swatches and looked way better than the colour of the stupid swatch) without saying how great the centrepieces looked.  Are you kidding me?  Who are these people?  I don't want to know them.

ALSO:  these new iPhone 4 commercials where people are chatting on FaceTime (I think that's what it's called?) are so lame.  They aren't heartwarming at all.