Urban Knitting/Yarn Bombing and Miso

I have just recently discovered a new type of graffiti in Waterloo: Urban Knitting or Yarn Bombing.
Here are some examples:

I actually saw the girl knitting the one in the last picture! We were coming home from Ethel's at 11pm and she was sitting there knitting it on! :) Wish I would have had my camera on me.
I'll keep my eye's peeled for new knitted stuff.

UPDATE!: Last night I found tons of new yarn bombs! I guess keeping an eye out for them really worked! I wrote this post yesterday and wanted to post it today so I went out this morning and took pictures of the new yarn bombs that I had not seen before.

The one on the tree had a tag on it that went to this site. Zilliah explains a bit about who she is and what yarn bombing is, and she has a cute blog.
I'll continue to keep my eyes open for more :)

Also, I just bought a tub of red miso and I was trying to think of ways I could use it up. Since I've been taking salads to work a lot recently I figured I should make some miso salad dressing.
This dressing is so amazingly tasty! It's spicy, sour and salty all at the same time! It really livens up salads and you could also use this as a dip for veggies! :)

Miso Salad Dressing
Serves 1


Ingredients:
1 tbsp red miso paste
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1/2 tbsp honey
1 tsp mustard OR 1/2 tsp wasabi

Directions:
1. Add all ingredients to a bowl or tupperware and mix well unitl smooth.
2. Add dressing to salad (or keep in fridge until ready to use).

Crunchy Salad with Hot and Sour Dressing

 I love Nigella Express! I rented it from the library, but after making several recipes I think I might just buy it! :) All of Nigella's recipes are easy to make and easy to adapt! I had this salad for lunch at work and also for a snack at night. The veggies are crunchy and the dressing is just the right amount of spicey and sour. It would be easy to switch the veggies out for whatever you prefer (I am not a fan of beansprouts so I left them out). I did not dress the veggies until I was about to eat them so I am not sure how this would hold up if you stored it after dressing.

Crunchy Salad with Hot and Sour Dressing
Serves 4 (Adapted from Nigella Express)
(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients:

For the Dressing:
2-3 tsp pad thai sauce (to taste)
2 teaspoon sesame oil
4 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
2 tsp honey
4 tbsp canola oil
pinch of salt

 For the Salad:
1 head of broccoli, cut into florets
2 big handfuls of green beans (Or more if you like them), ends removed and cut into 3 pieces
1 can of baby corn
1 box of button mushrooms (or whatever kind you prefer), sliced
romaine lettuce (Use as much as you want in your salad), torn
beansprouts (I did not use these as they only had giant bags at the grocery store and I don't like them)

Directions:
1. Add all the dressing ingredients to a bowl and whisk.
2. Cook the broccoli, green beans, and corn in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and add to ice cold water to stop the cooking and to keep them crunchy!
3. Add lettuce, cooked veggies and mushrooms into a bowl and add the dressing. Toss salad to coat with dressing.

Round up of the last week.

I made several nice meals in the past week but only ended up taking a few pictures.
So I'll post the few pictures I have as well as the links to the recipes I used.

Hope you guys try some of these out! :)

Firstly is the Magret de Canard with Apples and Maple. Don't be afraid my Dutch friends! You can buy this meat at the Rotterdam market! And you can get maple syrup at Dille and Camille. This is a great meal if you're trying to impress someone ;)

It was delicious! I liked it so much that we've made this 3 times so far!
Though I should confess that I didn't actually do any of the cooking for this dish (Martin did it all! I didn't even help a little!).

Next up is the Potato Salad I made for the BBQ at Wayne's place.

I was going to make something a little more fancy, but in the end I settled with a classic recipe (that most people should like/be able to eat). Next time I would use less mayonnaise as I found that there was just a bit too much sauce. I also skipped on the hard-boiled eggs.
It is best to make this the day before, as the flavours really get into the potatoes better :)

Next up is one of my all-time FAVOURITE recipes! Seriously, I love this dish.
The dish is Jamie Oliver's Proper Chicken Caesar Salad.


Sorry for the half eaten food picture, but I had already scarfed all of mine down and this was all that was left on Martin's plate.
We usually use the whole chicken leg with the thigh, but AH was out :( So we used smaller chicken legs instead which led to a quicker cooking time and less fat. But you do want the fat as the fat is what makes the croutons so delicious!
The dressing is also really tasty! It's a nice change from the usual caesar dressing. I would highly recommend actually buying the book this recipe is from: Jamie at Home. It has tons of great recipes in it (Or just rent it from the library!).

And last but not least was Pasta alla Vodka! I served the pasta with some steak and garlic bread to round out the meal.

This recipe is from one of my favourite bloggers, Pioneer Woman! Her recipes are never low fat (she loves using butter!), but everything I have cooked from her recipes has turned out really good. Her blog is also great if you are interested in photography.

I'll try to be a better blogger and actually remember to take pictures! I'd also really like to start writing posts in more detail. So hang in there while I get used to blogging! I'm sure this blog will get better with time ;)