my week in food photos, june 17-23, 2013

toronto food fest 2013 - eater edition

This past Sunday, I got to play two very different foodie roles at the same event. First, Paul and I attended the media preview hour of the 2nd annual Toronto Food Fest (what this post is about) and then I slipped behind the SmashCake booth to see what life was like as a food vendor at an event (which I'll write about in an upcoming post).

Some of the tasty treats available: (clockwise from top left) lemon meringue cupcakes from Bakin' Bits; vanilla and smashed smarties cupcakes from SmashCake; macarons from Francesca Bakery and gourmet sandwich from Bricks and Mortar

Some of the amazing reasons to attend the Toronto Food Fest:

• takes place on a Sunday afternoon so the whole family can enjoy together
• located in the suburbs, so there's lots of free parking
• a great mix of new vendors, pop-up shops and established businesses
• it's FREE to attend (that's right, FREE)

The event was split into two areas - indoor and outdoors. It was a beautiful, sunny day (although seriously HOT), so after taking a quick walk-around the indoor area we headed outside to visit those vendors first.

There were lots of great vendors set up outside, including:

Clockwise from top left: Dutch Frites, Sopsop, Liko's Hawaiian BBQ and Buster's Sea Cove

my week in food photos, june 10-16, 2013

pesto cheeseburgers

Paul makes awesome burgers. Seriously awesome burgers. One of his secrets is to add some "moisture" ingredient to the meat before shaping the patty - it can be mustard, pesto sauce, barbeque sauce, beer...really, there are an unlimited number of options. But that addition really flavours and moistens the burger.

Our next creation with Maison Le Grand sauces was a pesto cheeseburger. It's barbeque season, so of course, we had to include a grilling recipe!  :)

my week in food photos, june 3-9, 2013

rustic chicken pasta bake

Paul and I make our own tomato sauce all the time - in fact, we've never purchased tomato sauce before and we have bought pesto sauce, but mainly because fresh basil is expensive and for some reason, basil is the only plant that refuses to grow in our garden. We have never, however, purchased or made rosee sauce. I've ordered pasta with rosee sauce in restaurants, but we've never had it at home.

Maison Le Grand recently sent me some samples of their sauces, including their new collection of rosee sauces, to create some recipes with. I didn't want to use them to make normal pasta dishes with (ie. make regular pasta, cover with sauce), so Paul and I brainstormed some more interesting dishes.

One pasta dish that I always want to make more often is a pasta bake (or skillet bake), so the first recipe we tried used Maison Le Grand's Rustic Rosee Tomato Sauce.

my week in food photos, may 27 - june 2, 2013