Mandy's Meals & More

This weekend I took a trip home to Toronto to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with Mandy, Baby Dylan and the rest of our family.

Me and the boys spend our Toronto weekends at my Aunt Marissa's house with our cousin Bailey.  Bailey has quite the chef's hand and whipped up the most incredible dinner for us last night. Check out the menu with recipes included....

Roasted beet salad with burrata and mintIngredients: 8 beets (Bailey used a variety of colors) , peeled Burrata Handful of mint, chopped Olive oil Balsamic Vinegar Maldon salt Directions: -Wrap the beets in tinfoil and roast at 400 degrees for one hour. -When you take the beets out of the oven, carefully unwrap the tinfoil, slice and douse with olive oil, balsamic and salt so the flavors could marry into the hot beets. -Take the burrata to bring to room temperature while the beets cool. -Once beets are cool add the mint and burrata on the platter with the beets. -Drizzle the burrata with olive oil and top with the salt before serving.

Squash Potstickers Recipe by Martha Stewart

Brie, Apple and Caramelized onion CrostiniIngredients: 1 baguette olive oil sea salt brie cheese, sliced 1/2 sweet onion, halved and sliced thin 2 apples Directions: -Drizzle olive into a frying pan on low heat. Saute the onions stirring frequently until browned and caramel in color. Remove from heat. -Slice baguette and place on baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. -While the bread is in the oven, thinly slice the apples. -Assemble the crostini: layer with slice of brie cheese, 2 slices of apple and a small spoonful of caramelized onions. Serve hot.

BBQ Rotisserie Chicken Bailey used a rotisserie on her BBQ to make these bad boys. They were out of this world. The basic steps here are... Whole chicken(s) Rub with Montreal Chicken Spice Place on the rotisserie on your BBQ and cook on low, covered for roughly 6 hours. Baste with Diana's BBQ sauce (a Canadian favorite - I smuggle it home every time I'm here) after the 2nd hour of cooking, every 30 minutes. Bailey placed tinfoil pans under each chicken to catch the drippings and make for an easy clean up.

Unfortunately I don't have a recipe for this pie because Mandy picked it up from a local bakery. But c'mon people...how gorgeous is this?! Makes me want to eat it...and throw it in someone's face. Don't ask me why.

Of course my Auntie Marissa who is super crafty came up with the adorable idea of having a "giving" tree. She cut out leaves from construction paper and we all filled out a note of what we were thankful for this year. Then we went around the table and read our leaf out loud before placing it on the tree.