Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies (Recipe to Riches)

Getting the winning recipe from Recipe to Riches in my inbox on Monday mornings is always a fun little secret between me and a few other food bloggers. (Last time it was the Chicken & Bacon Skewers, remember?)

The show doesn't air until Wednesday, so as tempted as I am to tweet of photo of the baking process or the finished product, I have to sit on it for a few days.

It wasn't easy to keep quiet over this weeks winning recipe: Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies. Created by Recipe to Riches contestant Sonya Walos, they took me out of my baking comfort zone with their preparation, but brought me right back as soon as I tasted them.

First up, a confession: these are my first ever gluten-free cookies, both to make or eat. They certainly won't be my last, and not just because I've got scads of potato starch and tapioca flour (say what?) kicking around now, but because they are genuinely delicious!

Sonya's Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies won me over with their contrasting crunchy and soft textures, rich butterscotch flavor, and milk chocolate chips. The addition of coconut also gave them a lovely chewy texture. The best part? My kids loved them, so SCORE.


Want to make Sonya's cookies yourself? You can head over to the FN website to get the recipe (it should be posted soon!). Sure they required lots of unique ingredients, especially to one unfamiliar with GF baking, but it's always fun to expand one's horizons.

If you're not a baker but still want to taste these gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, the product should also be on shelves this weekend at Loblaws across Canada, so you can pick up a box and see what a winning cookie tastes like.

The popular Food Network Canada show is over halfway finished, with the grand finale coming up soon, where Canada will vote and the winner will receive a whopping $250,000.

I think these Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies could have had a shot at the big prize, unfortunately Sonya has been disqualified from the competition. Get the full scoop on the Recipe to Riches Facebook page.

Missed the episode? It will be available online soon on the R to R video page.

Disclosure: Recipe to Riches is giving their official bloggers a $100 Loblaws gift cards to offset the time and money spent making the winning recipe and writing a blog post. The opinions expressed here are my own, of course!

Roasted Chicken & Bacon Skewers (Recipe to Riches feature)

Food-themed TV is the only television I tune in for, and even then, it's mostly watched online, commercial free. Last winter I gave 44 minutes of my week to Top Chef Canada and this fall it is Food Network Canada's fun new reality show, Recipe to Riches that's got me hooked.

In full disclosure*, my friend, the always-inspiring, Dana McCauley, is a judge on the show, so I'm not tuning in just to watch the hunky host Jesse Palmer. Honest!

While in Toronto recently for the Blissdom conference, I had dinner with Dana (at Pangaea, no less!) and she regaled us all with behind-the-scenes gossip from Recipe to Riches.

When the show aired three days later, of course I tuned in and a new weekly ritual was born. (Tip: If you want to catch up on Episodes 1 & 2 you can find them online.)

This week on Recipe to Riches, three contestants prepared appetizers and competed for the prize of $25K. New Brunswick native, John Grass swept the challenge with his Grilled Chicken Skewers.


I like to call them Spicy Chicken, Bacon and Havarti Skewers, and mine were roasted, not grilled. Basically, they rocked.

Bacon (I used thick-cut), Havarti cheese and thin slices of chicken are rolled up together, dusted with a sassy Cajun-like spice mix, and baked to a crisp. Talk about addicting.

These chicken skewers were created by a man, but hold plenty of appeal for all, especially this always-hungry pregnant mama. I can totally see them making an appearance over the upcoming holidays.

Noah even gave them the ultimate complement: "Mama, may I have these for my lunch tomorrow?" John Grass, I bet you weren't thinking 'school lunch' when you created these!

Head over to the Food Network's official Recipe to Riches recipe page to get the recipe for John Grass's winning appetizer recipe.


* Even fuller disclosure: Recipe to Riches is giving their official bloggers a $100 Loblaws gift cards to offset the time and money spent making the winning recipe and writing a blog post. The opinions expressed here are my own, of course!

Chasseurs d'Epices: A Spicy Adventure Comes to TV

Local food & travel enthusiasts will not want to miss an exciting and unique new show that makes its debut tonight on ARTV.

Chasseurs d'Epices ('Spice Hunters' for the Anglos) follows renown Montreal spice master, Philippe de Vienne and his charming wife, Ethné, on their world travels in search of the best spices.

Last week I attended a small launch party and private screening of the show. Philippe cooked a feast for us and alongside the gracious hosts themselves, we watched the debut episode of Chasseurs d'Epices. Such fun!

Chasseurs d'Epices is like if your favourite travel show merged with your must-watch cooking show. The true personalities of our hosts shine through, making for a colourful, emotional and interesting ride. This series is going to go far.

Just take a peek:

Don't miss the first episode, airing tonight at 8 on ARTV. I'm only going to give one hint: Philippe and Ethné, wedding crashers extraordinaire.

You can also connect with Chasseurs d'Epices on Facebook.

Come Enjoy Cupcakes for a Cause

I probably don't have to tell you where I'm going to be on Sunday afternoon... that's right, scarfing cupcakes at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel for Cupcake Camp Montreal!

Foodies, gourmands, and cupcake aficionados are all aflutter over this event and who wouldn't be? I mean, have you heard?

20,000 cupcakes.

At this point, the organizers are only concerned that enough people will show up to eat the veritable sea of sweetness.

It's practically my duty to go. Plus, it's for charity, raising funds for La Tablée des Chefs and Kids Help Phone. You should totally come too.

What's this? Cupcake Camp Montreal
When: Sunday, November 21, 2010 from 1-5 p.m.
Where: Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, 900 Rene Levesque Blvd. W

A $10 ticket at the door gets you three cupcakes, a gourmet coffee and an opportunity to mingle with local bloggers and bakers. You may even spot your favourite celebrity chef or TV personality, as the panel of judges is quite colourful!



I'll see you there. Come over and say hello! I'll be with the tall guy, probably trying to corral two little boys with sugar highs. Oh yeah, with 20,000 cupcakes to enjoy, there was no way I was getting out on my own for this one.

Come Tour My Kitchen

We're back from a five-day camping trip on the bewitchingly beautiful Maine coast and I have to tell you, I've fallen hard for the sea. Falling asleep to the sound of the surf, walking on the beach in sun or fog, the surf...ah, we were absolutely swept off our feet from our mini-vacation.

I'll be giving you the full rundown of our adventures -a tornado, my first lobster roll, an overly friendly skunk in our camp, and plenty of good eats -shortly, but right now we're busy dealing with the camping aftermath of sandy laundry, sticky dishes, and tired, sun burnt kids. We've got our hands full!

So until I get my photos uploaded & edited, here something for you to read....

I was thrilled to be featured on the Cafe Mom food blog, The Stir, last week. The lovely Kim Conte interviewed me and we chatted about my family, cooking, blogging and Simple Bites.

Included in the feature is a full photo tour of my kitchen, so you can see where all the action takes place. Check out my favorite spot for morning coffee and email check, as well as the counter where I Tweet-&-Cook, a favorite pastime.

Of course I threw in some family shots and plenty of food photos to make you hungry, too!

Head HERE for the full interview on The Stir.

Interviews 1 and 2

These photos are totally irrelevant to the post, but they captured a memorable milestone in our little family: Noah's first skate! We have this wild swampland out behind our place that froze over perfectly smooth and is the ideal playground for little boys. They've been very inspired by the Olympics and we've reenacted many of the events in our own winter wonderland.

Good times.
My super-talented sister, Haidi, made this hat; isn't it just precious?


Alright, I'm really just dropping in to share a few mentions of Under the High Chair that happened earlier this week.

The Montreal Gazette, our major English newspaper, ran an article Monday on the Blog Aid cookbook. They applauded the efforts of all 27 food bloggers involved and quoted me at the end.

You can find the article HERE.


Jessica from I Spy Montreal, read the article and requested an interview, which ran yesterday on her website. She asked about my strategies for getting the boys to eat (pray?), family friendly recipes, and UtHC.

You can read the full interview HERE.

It was fun to chat with her and I definitely recommend her informative website for any Montrealer with kids.


Cooking? Food? Right. I realize we're way off topic here.

Well, we talked 'Muffins' on Simple Bites this week, in case you missed it. I shared tips on how to make them, favorite flavor combinations and divulged my all-time best recipe.

You should probably head over and print it out for the morning.


It's hard to believe two years have passed since this announcement, but yes, the little guy crossing the pond above is turning two on the weekend. My baby!

Even though I've got a simple menu planned, there is still plenty to do before I can receive the 40 or so guests expected, so I'll leave it at that.

Go Canada! #olympics

Cookies and Company

If your December "To Do" list is anything like mine, you’ll find yourself scratching your head and wondering how you can possibly get everything done in the allotted time. Everywhere you look there is a countdown to Christmas, taunting you and reminding you that you are going to have to exercise some super powers to wrap up your list.

However, readers of Under the High Chair may remember last year’s cookie swap, which presented my sweet-toothed friends a fun, practical, and time-saving way to shorten their long list of baking and freezing by coming together to exchange baked goods. Just prepare one kind of cookie in massive quantities, bring them to the swap, and leave with an beautiful assortment of holiday baking worthy of your finest tea tray, like this GQ gingerbread man.

Last year's exchange was such a hit, we knew we had to do it again; this year the bar was set even higher...

Hardly anyone declined the invitation and on a chilly Sunday afternoon, cars lined the snowbanks along our quiet street and ten girls (not to mention a journalist and photographer from Montreal's major English newspaper, but we'll get to that) swarmed my kitchen, burdening my kitchen table with armloads of cookies. We did a rough estimate and figured we probably had about 1200 cookies and squares: enough to make the pulse quicken of any foodie or sweet-lover.

The menu was indeed impressive:

Grandma Fisher's Sandwich Cookies
Cranberry, Pecan and White Chocolate Cookies
Marshmallow Squares
Brownies
Mayan Chocolate Sparklers
Raspberry Swirls
Butter Pecan Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Aimee's Spice Snaps
Noir Bars
Double Chocolate Cookies
Gingerbread Men

While we valiantly did our best to sample all the cookies brought (only a few were successful), the charming Susan Schwartz from the Montreal Gazette quizzed us on the recipe to a winning cookie swap, and a bona fide photographer (not a wannabe like me) documented the event and the pretty cookies.

You can read her kind and enjoyable article here and file away the 6 or 7 cookie recipes included on the same page for your future use. They are all tried and true and worthy of your holiday baking repertoire.

Little Noah's picture made it into the newspaper, and he looks quite adorable, if a little sleepy, as he had just woken up from his afternoon nap.
If only we could all wake up more often to a warm home brimming with fresh, homemade cookies, what a happier place the world would be!

Pecan Butter Cookies
Makes about 50 cookies

This recipe comes from my friend Liz Leon, a Montreal pastry chef and super mom of twin toddlers.

1 cup (250 mL) pecans
1/2 pound (225 g) butter, softened
Pinch salt
1/2 cup (125 mL) icing sugar
1 teaspoon (5mL) vanilla
2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour

Toast pecans carefully in a non-stick frying pan, tossing constantly so they don’t burn. Cool completely, then finely chop.
Beat together butter, salt, icing sugar and vanilla until fluffy. Add the pecans gradually. Then sift the flour over the mixture and stir to blend well together. Roll into 1-inch (2.5 cm) balls and place them on a cookie sheet about an inch (2.5 cm) apart. Press a half a pecan into the center a bit with thumb to flatten a bit.
Bake at 350F (180 C) for 12 to 15 minutes.
Once cookies are out of the oven, let them stand until they become slightly firm. Then transfer cookies to racks to cool completely. Coat with icing sugar.

A Social Experiment

In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.” M.F.K. Fisher

There is a new restaurant ‘phenomenon’ on the Montreal food scene called O.Noir that I must comment on and see what you think. This St. Catherine Street restaurant invites you to experience food, drink and conversation like never before-in the DARK. Their website claims that it is “..a sensual dining experience like no other” and that it is all the rage in Europe, Australia, New York and L.A.

Now if you ask Danny, he’s already experienced this at home during the Ice Storm of ’98, but I think they are striving for something a little classier. The general manager claims that when you eat without your sight, your remaining senses are heightened to savour the smell and taste of food. He does have a point, but really, are we ready to go to this length to experience food at a new level? I’m sceptical. As a chef, the visual aspect in enjoying a plate of food is too important to leave out alltogether. I love the moment when the plates arrive at the table and I scan around checking out the dishes, portion size, presentation and garnishes.

Another twist to this whole dining in the dark is that the entire wait staff are blind and a portion (5%) of the proceeds go to associations that serve the blind. A cause to be admired, there is no doubt; however, what would be really amazing would be if the kitchen crew were blind, or at least worked in the dark. Insurance would be brutal!

Before you decide that this would be the perfect place for a blind date, let me alert you to a few things that I might consider before going to see this place (not literally, of course). I mean, it does sound like it could be a lot of fun if you were with the right person, but there a few too many opportunities for a mishap...such as:

• What if there is a hair in your food? The staff are visually impaired, but no one said anything about follically impaired as well. Hair in the food happens, as much as we would like to pretend it doesn’t.
• What if you have an allergy to nuts and an absentminded cook tosses some toasted almonds into your salad. Oops. Too bad about that one.
• What if the young lovers at the table beside you have a little too much to drink, forget where they are, and loose themselves in the moment?
• What if you are trying a new wine at $60 a bottle and they mess up and bring you a $20 bottle? Would you know the difference?
• What if the waiter removes your plate without asking, or worse, feel if you are finished. Aye!

I guess it would come down to trust, and here we would find ourselves facing some of the issues blind people encounter every day.
Now this would be a lot more interesting if I had actually eaten at this restaurant and was reporting on my experience, but I just don't feel like giving them my coin yet. There are still plenty of other Montreal establishments where I can have a 'sensual' dining experience, or just a five-star fabulous meal. But just so you can have an idea of what to expect if you go, here is a excerpt from Mr. Slutski's (!) recent review in the Montreal Mirror:

“We all felt pretty giddy when we were first seated; the novelty really was very entertaining, and there was a lot of fun to be had in trying to explore this weird new space. After being there for over an hour, though, a certain pleasant tranquility set in. And overall, accidents were few, the tally coming to one thumb in a pat of butter; one waterfall of salad that ended up on my pants; one forkful of risotto colliding with a shoulder and, just when we thought we were out of the woods, one broken wineglass. Also, one of my dining companions later revealed that after a spill with a piece of octopus he proceeded to strip off his t-shirt and spend the rest of the meal shirtless, which must be some sort of health violation.”

I’m sure it is. Montreal has a wild reputation and I think I would be a bit nervous wondering what other people were up to….

The whole Slutski review.

I believe you also have to love the element of surprise to visit O.Noir. In scanning their website I notice that they offer a ‘surprise entrée’, and that they have live music every Sunday-a band of blind musicians and a ‘mystery singer’. No kidding? Are we to know anything at all? Something makes me wonder if we’re allowing the wool to be pulled over our eyes.

Feel free to report back to me if you decide to try it out. I get the feeling that someone lost a bet or else is trying to win one with this restaurant and I’ll be curious to see how long it lasts.

Hotdogs: Concordia's cure-all for traumatized Dawson students

Yesterday, a gunman walked into one of Montreal’s colleges and started shooting students. One person was killed, about 20 injured, and hundreds of were terrified for their lives. It was a shocking, horrifying scene and our condolences go out to the families of those involved. We’re glad our good friend Dave made it out ok. Way to go, dude.

This morning, in an 11 page special report, I found this to be one of the more disturbing Montreal Gazette headlines:

Concordia shelters sobbing, shocked CEGEP students: Hotdogs, blankets and counseling help them deal with a harrowing experience.

Recently been shot at? Watched your friend take a bullet in the leg? Here, have a steamie, you’ll feel much better. Sorry it took three hours before we cleared the building and let you all out, but how about those dogs!

HOT DOGS? Hot dogs?
Talk about adding insult to injury. Now I am all about the necessity of food in times of crisis, staying fueled up for the journey, and comfort food when the going gets tough, but hot dogs??? Geez, Concordia, whoever had that bright idea should have remembered that heavy, nauseous, bloated feeling one gets into the pit of their stomach after eating wieners. These Dawson students were already reportedly feeling sick, nauseous, and uneasy from their traumatic afternoon; what a way to ensure they will be feeling ill well into the evening.

I mean, the Faubourg is right there. Couldn’t they have sent for a few hundred fresh hot bagels? Now that’s comfort food! But, no, Montreal’s cure-all is a soggy hotdog or two….or three.

Seriously, do people even eat hotdogs anymore? Hello, We’ve read Fast Food Nation. We know what goes into them. Dawson is about 80% girls and I don’t know many twenty-something girls who are very eager to rip into a hotdog anymore.

Maybe I am wrong, but I just don’t think steamies were the way to go. (Yes, that is what they are called here in Quebec. No they are not cow pies, but buns and dogs that are steamed and then assembled.)

Concordia, I give you an F.

What’s your take?