Everybody knows that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles love pizza…

It was a totally bodacious surprise when the tubuloso eatery UNA Pizza + Wine approved the TMNT over the other two pitches of Commedia Dell Arte and the classic renaissance artists. You can check out your four fav turtles, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael and Donatello at UNA for as long as they stay up.

Here is the mural up on the wall at UNA. It goes nicely with the far-out 4-Maggi Pizza and maybe some righteous patatas bravas! Party on dudes!

I’ve been to Una a few times since the mural went up and I’ve even made attempts to get the servers to make disparaging remarks, but overall the mural seems to have been well received.

The big question I’ve had is “Why do the ninja turtles all have the same coloured head bands?”

For those TMNT nerds who can remember way back to the comic book origins of the characters you’ll recall that the original Eastman and Laird foursome all wore the same red bands… but their weapons were enough to tell them apart. Leonardo swings katanas, Raphael sports a pair of sai, Donatello has the reach with his bo staff and Michelangelo gets funky with his nunchaku. Cowanbunga dudes!

And away she goes…

Shelley is the editor who brought Swerve from being a simple listings insert into a pinnacle outpost of the Calgary media landscape. She’s revolutionary visionary in the world of print media and recently won the lifetime achievement award at the Western Magazine Awards. I wondered why, only because I thought you had to be old to get a lifetime achievement award, but Shelley managed to earn it while still in the vibrancy of youth.

I have been lucky enough meet Shelley Youngblut when I used to work as a newspaper feature designer and illustrator. I was comissioned to do several illustrations for Swerve and it wasn’t long before Shelley understood I had a love of food. She suggested coming up with an illustrated food column. I shrugged it off as a lark since I wasn’t a trained chef. When she ordered it be done by the following Monday I had no choice but to come up with what has since become the Easy Cook Column.

The first recipe came out around Easter and it was very nearly a breakfast recipe for Jesus to have after three days being stuck behind a boulder. Luckily it ended up being Hot, Cross Bunny French Toast, which later appeared in Kitchen Scraps.

Working with Shelley is a unique and enlightening experience that I will always cherish. She quite simply recognises more in people than even they do and with a tiny nudge (or a wink) will draw the best out of her contributors. People will go out of their way to produce their best work for less money just for the opportunity to have their work in Swerve and to work along side Shelley.

She is now moving on to work with the Globe & Mail and although she is slotted to be the Western content editor, I expect she will soon exceed expectations of that title and we will see what Shelley will come up with next. It will also be fun to see Shelley do a little writing after spending years fostering the work of others she is sure to have a few stories to share of her own.

Best of luck Shelley!

Here’s an article I recently wrote for Impact Magazine. For the complete article and more recipes pick up your copy at any of these places.

Hop back to the Paleolithic Stone Age and you’ll find that great-great-great-grandpa Grug was hunting and foraging for local, seasonal and organic food.

Since agriculture only became part of our existence 10,000 years ago the food we now produce and consume has been evolving at a faster pace than human evolution can keep up with. This food cannot be processed efficiently so we are not functioning properly. It’s not biologically appropriate to be snarffling all this nouveau cuisine.

The Paleolithic Diet, or Paleo, originated as a diet for athletes, offering peak performance through even energy access, reduced inflammation and faster recovery. It has gained traction through the growing legions of Crossfit athletes who strive for ‘constantly varied, high- intensity, functional movement’.

“It’s about getting leaner, meaner and more importantly healthier.” touts Crossfit Ramsay coach Ken Andrukow. His gym conducts 90-day Paleo Challenges to keep his athletes motivated and to help introduce new athletes to the diet. Andrukow offers recipe ideas, shopping guides, fitness tests and a body assessment to monitor results of the challenge. Andrukow admits “it takes guts to question the status quo and ask ‘Is there a better way?’”.

The Paleo principle is simple, eat the types of food we evolved for 2 million years to eat and avoid most of the stuff we started eating 10,000 years ago. Paleo concentrates on three big food groups to avoid: grains, dairy and legumes.

Say goodbye to grains like rice, wheat, corn and other refined starches. Dump out the dairy like skim milk, yogurt and cheese. Let go of the legumes like lentils, soy, beans and peanuts.

These foods cause inflammation of the gut and digestive system, which limit your cells from absorbing essential nutrients. Grains especially cause havoc on your glycemic levels, resulting in uneven energy and superfluous fat storage.

So what’s left to eat? Free-range meats, wild fish, seasonal vegetables, fresh herbs,  spices, seeds and nuts. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be a little more evolved than our foraging ancestors. Like all lovers of good food and grandpa Grug you can start foraging the markets for local, seasonal and organic food.

Some ingredients are not as black and white as say, the all-zebra diet. There are exceptions to the rules. Reading the Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf will sort out all the finer details and offer better understanding of the science.

With so many people out there eating Paleo, there are a growing number of recipe resources available to athletes looking for healthy and satisfyingly familiar foods that will help you perform optimally in a mammoth fur gonch.

Mammotherd’s pie

With any dietary adjustments, it’s the nostalgia of familiar comfort foods that will drag you back to your old ways of eating. Make this when you need a big batch of food for the week, when you need to feed people who don’t know what Paleo is or when you have a mammoth-sized appetite. It’s actually better than a classic Shepherd’s pie with more tasty flavours and the comforting warm-blanket mashed topper to make you feel all warm and wooly inside.

INGREDIENTS

500g ground lamb, beef, mammoth or any ground meat

2 onions, finely minced

2 ribs of celery, finely minced

1 butternut squash, peeled and grated or minced

1 Tbsp Worcestershire

2 Tbsp tomato paste

1 glass red wine

250 ml vegetable stock

¼ cup fresh chopped assorted herbs (rosemary, mint, thyme, oregano)

zest of 1 lemon or orange

mashed topper

2 head of cauliflower, quartered

2 sweet potatoes, peeled and quartered

olive oil and salt

PROCEDURE

Get two large pots on the stove.

Fill one with water and bring it to a boil for the mash. When the water comes to a boil drop in the peeled sweet potatoes and the cauliflower. Boil on a gentle simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are nice and tender. When the veg are tender remove from the water and leave them to release steam for 10 minutes out of the water.

To mash the cauliflower you can just use a potato masher. For a smooth topper transfer the cauliflower and sweet potato to a food processor and blitz until very smooth. You may need to do this in batches. Set aside in a bowl and adjust seasoning with salt to taste.

In the other pot brown the lamb over medium high heat. Toss in the grated squash, onions and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes.

Stir in the tomato paste, Worcestershire, red wine and stock. Taste it and add salt as needed.

Preheat the oven to 425˚ F.

Bring the whole thing to a simmer. At the last minute, stir in the herbs and citrus (zest and juice) and pour the whole mess into an oven safe baking dish.

Spoon the mash onto the meaty filling and smooth out the top until evenly distributed. Use a fork to make lines and ridges that can get crispy on top. Drizzle the top with oil and sprinkle on some salt.

Blap the whole thing into the oven and bake until the veg are nice and golden and crispy on top.

When the mammotherd’s pie is done let it rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

To freeze, divide into small plastic containers and freeze in small packs.

Mammoth freezes really well for defrosting and eating later.

Here are some Paleo resources that will help you get started and keep going.

robbwolf.com

everydaypaleo.com

marksdailyapple.com

nomnompaleo.com

paleofood.com

In every metropolitan city there is a burger battle with super-mega-beefy contenders facing off for burger supremacy. With so many new and über-powerful kaiju burgers coming onto the scene, how can one ever rise above the rest to claim global superioricity?

Let’s take a look at our contenders in Breakfast TV Calgary’s Big burger battle royal with cheese.

We put 4 of Calgary’s less-than-$10 burgers to the test and here is how they ranked based on the criteria of Taste, Value and Looks.

The esteemed panel of judges included John Gilchrist, Anh Chu and myself.

Here is how the numbers panned out

1. Boogie’s burgers

2. Fatburger

3. Burger Inn

4. 5 guys burgers and fries

Here is the Burger Battle verdict including a big mouth montage at the 4:16 minute mark.

This is the Doug burger from the top ranked Boogie’s burgers… yeah, that’s a corndog on top! and a butterflied wiener on top…

What I don’t get about the butterlied wiener is how they get enough lips and a**holes from a butterfly to make a whole wiener.

You gotta meet this guy.

His name is Randy and he is always busy taking photos or shooting videos. We work together on those food videos for Swerve.

Even though he’s seems to always be working, he finds the time to cook every day.

Plus he’s a vegan… it’s a miracle we get along so well!

Had another great night with the Soup Sisters here in Calgary at the Cookbook Co.

Since March 3, 2009 the Soup Sisters of Calgary have been getting together several times a year with the help of a crew of dedicated volunteers and supporters to bubble up a few large batches of soup. This time we had lots of help from Association of Women’s Lawyers.

The soups, are portioned out into glass tupperware containers and sent to the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter to help women and children who have been the victims of domestic violence. Our collective offering of 200 batches of soup will add to the monthly cross Canada sum  of 8000 batches a month. That’s a lot of soup for a really good cause!

Not in Calgary? There are plenty of Soup Sisters affilliates across Canada in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, and loads of other cities across Canada. Check the Soup Sisters website for more info. And there are more popping up all the time.

And for the gentlemen there’s Broth Brothers who help support transitioning youth for youngsters trying to make a go at it on their own.

Thanks to everyone who gave their time, money and passion to pitching in with the soup.

Like, hey dudes, happy 4-20-2011.

Do you need to make something deliciously righteous? Just wrap your head around the concept of a brownie that you mix and bake in one pot. Did that just blow your mind?

Dude, just wait until you try this gooey, fudgy brownie with a sticky-icky centre like a molten chocolate cake. I guarantee your mooching buds will be rolling around looking for freebies when they catch a whiff of this righteous brownie.

Half baked pot brownies

excerpted from Kitchen Scraps: A Humourous Illustrated Cookbook

4 oz bittersweet chocolate

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, in pieces

2 large eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a medium-sized pot—with a metal handle, not plastic, so the whole thing can go into the oven—melt the chocolate over low heat. As soon as the chocolate melts, remove the pot from the heat.

Add the sugar, and mix with a wooden spoon until grainy but incorporated. Add the cold butter a bit at a time while you continue to mix.

Add 1 egg at a time and mix until smooth.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Add the dry mixture directly into the pot a third at a time, stirring after each addition. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the pot so nothing burns on the edges, and blap the whole thing into the oven for 30 to 35 minutes. It will still be nice and gooey in the middle. If you want it to be more firm, bake for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Let the brownies cool on the stovetop . . . Be careful not to let anyone touch the hot pot handle.

To serve you can either use a big spoon to scoop out individual servings, or if you got the major munchies you can clean out the pot all by yourself with a little spoon.

The upcoming City Bites Magazine (Toronto’s guide to great food & drink) will have some cool cover art as well as a familiar flavour thoughout the magazine as I got the chance to guest illustrate a bunch of articles throughout the magazine. Including an especially startling story by the Gourmudgeon.

Will keep you posted on when this free publication hits stands in Toronto.

This whole project works really well with my plan to illustrate only for food and wine related publications.

Chocosotto

INGREDIENTS

2 Tbsp butter

1 cups of Arborio rice

3 cups of milk

3 Tbsp brown sugar

vanilla bean, split

½ cup of dark chocolate drops or chocolate chips, or more if you’re a chocoholic

2 oz. amaretto (optional)

pinch of crunchy Maldon salt

PROCEDURE

Get two pots on the stove.

In one pot combine split vanilla bean, brown sugar, milk and bring to gentle simmer. Then shut it off.

In the other pot over medium heat melt the butter and add the Arborio rice. Stir the rice to make sure all the grains are slippery with butter.

Add a ladleful of warm milk to the rice and stir to incorporate. When it has mostly evaporated and been absorbed add some more milk. Stir until that milk gets absorbed the continue stirring and adding milk until the rice is tender and the milk is all used up. It should take about 30 minutes to use up all the milk. At the end of the milk, make sure you leave the risotto quite soupy.

While it is still hot add chocolate drops or chips and mix it all in until it’s smoothly incorporated. Add the optional amaretto and stir it all about.

You can either serve the risotto hot from the pot or chill it like a rice pudding.

Serve in a pretty bowl a pinch of crunchy salt on top.

gets along with

Almonds, caramel, peanut butter, cherries, cinnamon, cloves, coffee, cream, dried fruit, ginger, ice cream, milk, orange, port, vanilla.

fresh pick

Bernard Callebaut is a proud papa of a new chocolate venture. After being de-throned at his namesake chocolate shop he not only getting back on the chocolate horse, he’s bringing his family and friends along for the ride.

Expect to see a retail shop opening this April in downtown Calgary, but in the meantime you can get dark chocolate drops (and other tempting morsels) if you ask nicely.

Papa Chocolat’s temporary commercial headquarters location is Unit #24, 13750 Bow Bottom Trail, S.E., 403-3264-7212, www.papachocolat.ca

quick fire

Hot coco-cocoa. Shake up a can of coconut milk (don’t bother with Lite coconut milk) and pour it into a small pot. Whisk in ½ cup water, 1 heaping Tbsp of brown sugar, 1/3 cup of chocolate drops and a pinch of cayenne. Over medium low heat, gently bring the pot to a bare simmer. Stir until all the chocolate has melted. Serves about 4 little cups of very rich hot chocolate.

The cayenne isn’t to make it one of those trendy “Mexican” hot chocolates, it’s there to make your mouth feel slightly warm for a couple seconds longer after you swallow your gulp. It’s a lovely sensation.

nerdbyte

Chocolate is the fermented outer pod of the Theobroma cacao tree’s seed. It’s brown and horribly bitter but if you pump it full of enough fat (prefereably cocoa butter) and sugar, it tastes pretty much like awesomess. White Chocolate is just cocoa butter without the brown bits… and without any raison d’étre.

BONUS… I got a little saucy  with the writing on this column and was asked at SWERVE to scale back the sauce to a more manageable innuendo that you’ve already read above. Here was the previous, unedited version…

Chocolate, the hawtness

Chocolate melts in your hands and makes others do the same. Give chocolate to someone you are attracted and if they are attracted to you they will instantly want to bang on your Bonobo bongo. It causes instantaneous sensational consensual sexual arousal between two people resulting, with a high probe-ability rate, in a two-way boomtangle à la break-dancing octopus. Here are some hawt chocolate recipes to ensure you have a sexellently successful Valentine’s Day.

Check out the latest Swerve video for How to Make an Orange Supreme.

Then check out this Orange Verrine recipe for what to do with those delightful little orange and grapefruit gems.