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This week's podcast guest is Julia Kraemer from the Leftovers Foundation, a Canadian non-profit on a vital mission to reduce food waste and enhance food access.

The foundation rescues perfectly edible food destined for landfills, thereby preventing greenhouse gas emissions and delivering this food to those in need through the work of dedicated volunteers.

Julia sheds light on the critical issues of food security and insecurity, revealing that nearly 9 million Canadians face some level of food insecurity, driven by income inequality and lack of access. Astonishingly, one-third of the food wasted in Canada could feed every Canadian experiencing hunger. Julia's insights and the impactful work of Leftovers offer valuable lessons on a global issue.

She also helps us understand the environmental impact of food waste.  Food rotting in landfills produces methane 25 times as potent as CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere. If global food waste was a country, it would be the third greatest greenhouse gas emitter in the world! 

We learned so much from Julia about these important issues and how organizations like Leftovers are doing amazing work to help bridge the gap. You can learn more about Leftovers and the important work they do on their website and social media accounts (links below). 

Big big thanks to Julia and the Leftovers Foundation for being our guest and sharing these important messages. 

Episode Links
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~ Leftovers Foundation Website
~ Leftovers on Instagram
~ Leftovers on Facebook
~ Highfield Farm
~ Regenerative Agriculture: Growing Food for the Community (An Interview with the Highfield Regenerative Farm)
~ Loop Resource
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

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Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
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In today's delicious Three Kitchens Podcast episode, Erin is rolling up her sleeves and getting her hands floury as she learns to make a sumptuous Fig and Goat Cheese Tart from scratch. As we all know, an open-faced tart is perfect for impressing guests at a dinner party or indulging in a gourmet treat at home. 

Full disclosure: we'd never cooked or baked with fresh figs before. In fact, we're not even sure we'd ever eaten one! Since one of our favourite things to do on the podcast is experiment with something new to us, bring on the figs!!

Erin starts with the base, covering the essential ingredients and tools you'll need for the perfect buttery tart crust. This is something she knows well and has great tips for making the perfect crust. 

Next, she explores the harmonious pairing of sweet, caramelized figs and creamy goat cheese, explaining how these ingredients together create a tart that’s not only visually stunning but also bursting with flavour. We’ll also discuss variations and tips for making this recipe your own, including additions like honey and nuts. 

Whether you're a seasoned baker or a complete novice, this episode has something for everyone. So grab your apron and join us for a fun and educational episode that will leave your taste buds tingling and your kitchen smelling divine.

Scroll down for all the links to things we've chatted about in this episode, our social accounts, how to connect with us and support the show!

Episode Links
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~ Fig & Goat Cheese Tart Recipe
~ Springbank Cheese
~ Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat
~ No-Bake Chocolate Tart Recipe
~ No-Bake Chocolate Tart Episode
~ Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
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Episodes Mentioned in the Midroll
~ S1 E19 The Great Scape (Garlic Scape Recipes)
~ S2 E11 Persimmon Puddin'
~ S3 E3 Appetizer Flower (Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms)
~ S3 E16 Falafel and Kohlrabi Salad
~ S3 E24 Kumquat Cake
~ S3 E39 Fiddleheads - What are they and how do you cook them?

 

Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

This week on the podcast, we're making dinner as easy as possible - and the clean-up, too - with a sheet pan dinner.

Sheet pan dinners are one of the easiest ways to cook a meal. Think busy weeknights or feeding a small crowd. By putting veggies and protein on the same pan and roasting it all at once, you're making dinner a breeze.

Heather goes back to a tried and true recipe for a potatoes, sausage and apple sheet pan dinner so easy even her kids can make this one. The addition of apple cider vinegar toward the end of the cook time gives it a nice zing. 

She also tried a recipe that is new to her, a chicken tika sheet pan dinner. The chicken is marinated in yogurt and spices, and then cooked with cauliflower, potatoes and chickpeas. Serve with rice and top with yogurt or tzatziki and slices of quick pickled red onion. She and Erin agree it could have a little more spice, but it's a sheet pan dinner worth having in your back pocket.   


Episode Links
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~ Chicken Tika Sheet Pan Recipe
~ Dinner, A Love Story Cookbook
~ An Introduction to Caribbean Cooking with Chris De La Rosa of CaribbeanPot.com
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

This week on the podcast we welcome Andy De Santis, a Registered Dietician specializing in fatty liver disease. If you're not familiar with this health concern, you're not alone, but Andy tells us it is extremely common among adults. And there's no medication to treat it. Thankfully, we can improve our liver health, and avoid or even reverse fatty liver disease, with changes to our diet. 

Fatty liver disease means that you have fat inside your liver that can, over time, affect liver function and cause liver injury. Andy's philosophy is not to drastically change the diet through elimination. He's more likely to suggest a good balance of healthy foods, while still enjoying the things you love to eat in moderation.  

Here are three food categories Andy suggests as a starting point for good liver health:

• healthy fats, like avocado and nuts
• legumes like beans and lentils
• fatty fish like salmon 

He has lots of great advise for us to ensure our bodies are metabolizing fat the way they should and therefore avoiding or improving fatty liver.

Andy also gives helpful tips for making and sticking with any changes to our diet. We all know it can be challenging, especially if those things we should be eating are not our favourites or require a little extra work to prepare. 

For more information on eating for fatty liver and overall good health, please use the links below to follow Andy on social media, check out his blog for tips and recipes, and don't forget to look into the numerous books he has written on eating for good health. 

Big thank you to Andy for being our guest on the show!

Episode Links
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~ Article: The Best Foods for Fatty Liver Disease
~ Andy De Santis on Instagram
~ Andy De Santis Website
~ Interview with Alberta Pulse Growers
~ Pulse Recipes
~ Roasted Chickpea Recipe

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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

This week on the podcast, Erin is taking us along down a rabbit hole called Matrimonial Cake. She found a variety of recipes in an old recipe box that had belonged to her great grandmother. Some of these recipes originated during the great depression early in the 20th century.

Depression-era recipes are often modified to suit food rations or lack of resources to purchase the ingredients for a more classic cake recipe. There was also a fun tradition with matrimonial cake: single girls take a small piece home from the wedding and place it under their pillow with the hope of dreaming of their future husband. Heather recalls doing this as a young girl attending weddings of older family members. We don't actually know if anyone still does this! 

Anyway, the matrimonial cake Erin makes for us was from her great grandmother's  hand-written recipe. It is essentially a date square - delicious moist date filling between layers of oatmeal crumble. She also adapts the recipe to include her own rhubarb and rose water filling. They were both absolutely delightful. Whether or not you call it matrimonial cake (in fact, we question whether it should even be in the cake category), you cannot go wrong with these squares. They're easy to make, it's easy to adapt the filling to your tastes, and they're a real crowd pleaser.

Enjoy! 

Episode Links
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~ Matrimonial Cake Recipe
~ Rhubarb Oatmeal Bars Recipe
~ Recipe Box
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

This week we're talking about making use of every bit of produce, from potato peels and mushy bananas, to wilted herbs and dairy on the verge of its best-before date. This episode of Three Kitchens Podcast will help you stretch your dollar by suggesting ways of tossing less out into the compost or trash bin and getting more from the groceries you buy.

1. Obviously, composting is a better option than sending things to the landfill. If you don't have time or energy to do anything else with those odds, ends, peels, etc, toss them in a compost bin.

2. The easiest way to use up bits and pieces of produce is to make broth. We like to keep a container specifically for this purpose in the freezer.

3. We have awesome ideas for using up peels from carrots, potatoes, citrus fruit and garlic. 

4. We even have suggestions for using up that milk that is on the verge of going bad, or those sad wilted herbs.

Enjoy these ideas for making the most of your groceries! And check out the many other things we talk about in this episode in the links below. 

Episode Links
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~ How to Breakdown a Whole Chicken into 9 Pieces
~ Arroz con Pollo Recipe
~ S3 E7 Arroz con Pollo (Costa Rican Chicken and Rice) Episode
~ Making Garlic Powder from Garlic Peels
~ Potato Peel Chips Recipe
~ Candied Carrot Cake Topper
~ Oleo Saccharum Recipe
~ S4 E29 Oleo Saccharum - Lemon Syrup from Peels Episode
~ Broccoli & Tomato Salad Recipe
~ Basic Broth Recipe
~ Rotisserie Prime Rib with Herb Paste Recipe
~ S3 E29 BBQ Competitions and Rotisserie Prime Rib with Guest, Ryan Sanderson, from Eat More BBQ Podcast
~ Julie's Crockpot Carnitas Recipe
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

On this episode of Three Kitchens Podcast, Erin is again baking bread. This time it's the Italian sandwich bread, ciabatta. This is her first time trying this recipe and she's got some great tips for you if this is also your first time baking ciabatta.

Ciabatta bread was first baked in 1982 by Arnaldo Cavallari in response to a concern he and other Italian bakers had about the popularity of sandwiches made from baguettes imported from France.  They wanted an Italian alternative for sandwiches and so the recipe for ciabatta came about. Ciabatta is created with a soft, wet dough made with high gluten flour.

Baking ciabatta takes a little bit of planning and preparation as you need to begin with a yeast starter (similar to sour dough), which you make the day before. It's a very wet dough (Erin likens it to cake batter), and it takes some work to form a ball of dough.  Erin gives some good tips for working with it to make buns or loaves. 

Once you have your basic bread dough, you can add herbs or whatever you like. Erin made two varieties for us - one with sundried tomatoes and the other with sliced olives. Finally, she placed a pan of hot water in the oven while baking. It was a soft, fluffy and delicious bread, perfect for toast, a quick pizza or your favourite sandwich. Store-bought ciabatta bread absolutely does not compare to the home-baked stuff. It was amazing and well worth the effort. 

Episode Links
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~ Ciabatta Bread Recipe
~ Fluffy Focaccia Bread Recipe
~ You Gotta Focaccia S1 E15
~ Baking Sourdough Bread with Guest, Larry Harris S3 E25
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

In this Three Kitchens Podcast episode, we take on the fresh artichoke, and the results are, well, you'll see. 

It may be that the artichokes imported to our corner of the Canadian Prairies are sub-par. Perhaps they're harvested too soon or they're actually old. We're not sure, but we do know that the ones Heather attempted to roast for us had basically no "meat" to them. So, we reluctantly have to file this one away in the FAILS category of home cooks recipe testing. However, a cooking fail often makes for an entertaining podcast episode. We hope so, anyway!  We always have fun even if the recipe doesn't work out in our favour. 

If you're lucky enough to get decent artichokes where you live and are new to cooking them, you can still learn a few things about artichokes from this episode: 

• Heather talks us through how to prep them by cutting off the thorns and digging out the choke. 
• We discuss the roasting method and what flavours go well with artichokes (garlic, lemon and white wine were our choices). 
• The way you eat this vegetable is, you dip a leaf in a sauce or melted butter, slide it between your teeth to remove the "meat" and discard the rest of the leaf. 

Heather tells us about a quick recipe for baked canned artichoke hearts that simply involves topping them with a butter, parmesan cheese, breadcrumb and roasted lentil mixture and heating them through until the topping is golden. You get the artichoke flavour without the risk of getting a dud of a fresh artichoke. 

Check the links below for past episodes and other random things we referenced in this episode. 

Episode Links
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~ Antipasto Salad Recipe
~ Canadian Growing Zones

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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

Get ready to learn a whole lot from this episode's guest, Debra McLennan from the Alberta Pulse Growers Commission.

Pulses are the dry edible seeds of pod plants in the legume family. Pulses include field peas, dry beans, lentils and chickpeas and are high in protein and fibre and low in fat.
The Alberta Pulse Growers is an organization representing 5,400 growers of field pea, dry bean, lentil, chickpea, faba bean and soybean in Alberta. And Debra herself is the Food & Nutrition Coordinator with the organization. She knows everything there is to know about growing pulses and bringing them into our diets through cooking and baking. As she says, she's teaching us the basics in this episode, so obviously there's lots more to know!

We learned you can add pureéd lentils to a muffin batter and nobody will suspect they're in there! You've got delicious, moist, protein-packed baked treats ready to fuel your adventures or keep you going between meals. We made two muffin recipes from the Alberta Pulse Growers website, Orange Cranberry and Pumpkin Chai - both were fantastic!  Visit their website for these any many more amazing recipes!

We also tried roasting lentils to use as a crunchy flavourful salad topper or snack. Try them in place of or mixed with breadcrumbs in any recipe, or added to granola (there's a great granola recipe on the Alberta Pulse Growers website, too).

We can't wait to introduce more pulses to our meals and make the most of this locally-grown, nutritious and affordable ingredient.

Keep scrolling for links to the Alberta Pulse Growers, as well as other things we chatted about in this episode. 
 
Episode Links
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~ Alberta Pulse Growers Website
~ Alberta Pulse Growers on Instagram
~ Braiding Sweetgrass Book
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends! 

Send us Fan Mail

This week on Three Kitchens Podcast, Erin makes a great soup and sandwich for lunch.

This Yellow Dahl Soup has a broth base (she used beef but you could do a veg broth or even just water) and is seasoned with cumin, turmeric, garlic, chilli, ginger and shallots. It's a great budget-friendly soup packed with protein from the lentils and flavour from all those add-ins.

The toast Erin made started with fresh sourdough bread (if you're interested, scroll down for a link to our sourdough bread baking episode). She piled it with sumac roasted tomatoes, a garlic and tahini yogurt and avocado. Yum! It's the perfect thing to enjoy next to that delicious soup.

These recipes are easy to make (just use store-bought bread if you're not a baker) and so warm and comforting. We loved all of it. High fives all around!
 
And if you want to learn more about cooking with pulses (lentils, beans and peas), join us for our episode on April 16, 2024. Our guest Debra McLennan from the Alberta Pulse Growers teaches us all about how these products are grown, and how we can all incorporated them into our cooking and baking.

Happy cooking, friends!

Episode Links
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~ Yellow Dahl Soup Recipe
~ Roasted Tomato & Avocado Toast Recipe
~ Lamingtons - An Australian Sponge Cake Episode
~ Amba Sauce Recipe
~ A Pia Sandwich Called Sabich Episode
~ Baking Sourdough Bread with Guest Larry Harris Episode
~ An Introduction to Caribbean Cooking with Chris DeLa Rosa of Caribbeanpot.com Episode
~ Salt Preserved Lemons Episode
~ Salt Preserved Lemons Recipe
~ All About Tea (Plus Pretty Toast) Episode
~~~~

 

Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
Check out our website  where you can listen to all of our episodes and find recipes on our blog:  www.threekitchenspodcast.com

You can support the show with a small donation at Buy Me A Coffee.

Want to be a guest? We want to hear from you!

Join us on our socials!
Instagram @three_kitchens_podcast
Facebook @threekitchenspodcast
YouTube @threekitchenspodcast
TikTok @threekitchenspodcast

Rate, review, follow, subscribe and tell your friends!