Vancouver

A very delayed post on summer vacation which consisted of a few parts and which will hopefully get posted before our next vacation.  This year we went on an Alaska cruise.  More on that at a later time.  This post is about Vancouver.  Before and after the cruise, we spent a little bit of time in Vancouver.  Our approach to city sight seeing is to walk everywhere, which we did.  

On our first day there, before catching the ship, we spent most of the day in Stanley Park.  But on our way there, we stopped into a concourse shopping mall to pick up umbrellas and find somewhere for lunch.  And we found a fantastic place … the best Dim Sum I have ever had.  As a very in-the-moment kind of traveller, I have no idea what it was called or where it was.  This is the same for the fabulous Chinese dinner we had when we flew back into Vancouver at the end of the trip and the pub lunch by the cruise ship dock and Gastown that we had the next day.  Oh well.  Everyone needs to make their own memories, I guess but I'll try to do better in the future.

After lunch, it was on to Stanley Park, with the umbrellas we didn't need for the rest of the day and very satisfied tummies.  Stanley Park is beautiful.  There is no other way to say it.  And we only scratched the surface, walking about 6 km round trip through one section.  

After a stop back at the hotel to change we popped over to Gastown and looked around.  Very touristy but we found some great shops with Native Canadian art, spent some time talking to a man carving a totem pole and watched the clock steam away with all of the other tourists.  

On our return trip from Alaska, we spent most of our time walking again, this time in a steady downpour.  The purchase of the umbrellas was not a waste!

Our main focus this time was Granville Island.  I love it there.  Neat little shops to look around in, the food stands and the water.  I found a great quilt shop and another place with art supplies that I wish I could live close to for their classes.  I am pretty sure I could pick up some new hobbies there.  

We went on one of the cute little people ferry boats just because and ended up touring another part of Stanley Park as we made our eventual way back to our hotel.

My favourite thing about the area, aside from these guys painted on storage tanks … a bakery that I read about on the internet when researching, Beaucoup Bakery.  The peanut butter cookies are apparently the best things ever.  Not that I would have any idea.  I fully intended on the peanut butter cookie as we walked in but, on the counter, shouting my name, were chocolate rosemary cookies.  I love, love love chocolate and can say the same about rosemary, although perhaps with a little less passion.  Chocolate and rosemary together?  Rosemary used in a sweet preparation?  I had to try this mysterious combination.  And it was fantastic.  Super rich, almost like a brownie,  with a hint of rosemary and salt that just make the cookie sing.  

I vowed that I would get creative, suffer failures, but work to figure out how to make them when we got home.  And I did figure it out, but without any blood, sweat or tears.  The recipe is online!  And just as delicious made by me as I remember them being in the bakery.  Thanks to the owner for sharing the recipe with Food Network Canada.  And I should add that the bakery also makes good coffee and my husband quite enjoyed his chocolate croissant, but I'm glad I had that cookie.  

Back to the Start

I still really like the idea of cooking the world.  Getting waylaid by the broken foot put a damper on the idea and then I just got distracted by other things.  So I'm trying again.  Since my random globe trot lacked focus, I decided to start at the beginning with Afghanistan.  Mostly.  By that I mean, there was a little move away from 100% authenticity but I'm ok with that.

The bread and the meat portion of the meal were from Flatbreads & Flavours, a book I've had for many, many, many years and rarely cooked from.  

The bread ... Afghan Home-Style Naan was very good.  It tasted like most whole wheat flatbreads so wouldn't say it distinguished itself in any way.  But it was good.  And looked fancy with the cuts in the centre of the dough.  The downside ... there were sesame seeds everywhere and, despite best efforts to clean them up, I'm confident we'll be finding them around the kitchen for a while yet.

The chicken ... Chicken Street Kebabs with Mint and Yogurt Sauce.  Very tasty.  One of the things that kick started me back into this project was that a number of recipes I was finding in various cusines made use of the grill.  Since warmer weather is here, somewhat, the grill is getting a good workout and I'm always looking for ideas that depart from the same old tried and true recipes.    

Finally, I turned to Global Table Adventure (which I don't want to copy in this project but am going to use as a resource and possible source of some ideas ... why let all of her hard work go to waste!), for Burani Bonjon, or Spicy Braised Eggplant, a very tasty eggplant and tomato combination.  While I enjoyed the whole meal, I would have to say that this was my favourite part.  

At this point, a little bit of cheating happened in my Afghan menu.  At around 5, I got worried that I didn't have enough food.  Since our friends were arriving at 6:30, I didn't have a lot of time to research another recipe and get to the store to buy the ingredients.  So honey roasted carrots came to the rescue.  I rationalized that carrots and honey are part of cuisines the world over and found both in google searches of Afghan recipes.  Also, for dessert, I couldn't pass up the fact the rhubarb is in season, is sprouting in my garden and grows in Afghanistan.  So Rhubarb Crisp it was!  

So while not 100% authentic, most of the meal was as close to "real" as possible.  It tasted great and I'll be making both the chicken and the eggplant again.  

England

I recently bought "Eat the little book of fast food" by Nigel Slater.  I picked it up from the library first and was quite taken with it.  Further to this project, and in general, I want to get more interesting in my cooking especially during the week and this book has already helped me cook outside the box.

While flipping through yesterday for ideas, I saw a recipe for chicken with bread sauce.  I've never heard of bread sauce.  My husband, who lived in England for 5 years, has never heard of bread sauce (but being the type that has never been huge on food, I'm not going to take him as an expert).  But it sounded tasty, Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver both describe bread sauce as an English concoction, I really like Nigel Slater so I was inspired.  My next International night would be England.  No dinner party, just my husband and I, but away we go!  Now, the State Department website lists Great Britain and not the countries within so I've just expanded my list of countries, meaning that instead of the 20 years to complete the countries in my original estimate, I'm now up to 20.5 years!!

With the bread in the sauce, I was on track with my goal of including bread in these international meals.  Along with the chicken, I wanted some vegetables other than the potatoes in the recipe.  Since I was already reading Jamie Oliver regarding bread sauce, I decided to look for a salad in his British recipes section and came up with Root Vegetable Salad - a mix of vegetables I either don't usually eat (radishes and celery) or don't usually eat raw (beets and fennel).  Then there was mint, which is one of my favourite tea and chocolate flavours but not, for some reason a favourite in the cooking department.  And, in my mind, a very English herb.  I think this relates to the lamb and mint sauce stereotype but whatever works.

While bouncing around on Jamie Oliver's site, I noted a crumble/crisp in the British recipes section.  Hah - I thought that was a North American thing but apparently it is British in origin - this according to Jamie Oliver and Wikipedia.  And it is my favourite dessert in the entire world (no exaggeration and not likely to change no matter how many desserts I try during this project).  The menu was done.  Forget the cookies (Jaffa cakes would have been fun to make) but crisp it is.  This is a bit of a cheat because I make it all the time but who cares.  It's my project so I can make the rules!

All was good.  I love the salad (which is good because it makes enough for a large dinner party and we'll be eating it for a few days yet) and the bread sauce was also really tasty.  All in all, a really good dinner and not what I would have expected for the English portion of the project, which made it even more fun.

Whiskey in the Jar

It never fails that my biggest harvests are ready on the hottest day of the year.  So yesterday, I contributed to the unnecessary burning of fossil fuels by:

1. Decreasing my pile of tomatoes to make my most favourite savoury relish … tomato jam from Food in Jars.  After 5 pounds of tomatoes, I still have a good number for munching. And this jam in January is like a ray of sunshine on your tongue. 
2. Justifying the extra peaches I picked up at the Farmers' Market on Saturday, I whipped up Peach Barbecue Sauce from Williams-Sonoma.  Any recipe that includes a half cup of bourbon can't be wrong.  And peaches and whiskey just seem to make sense.  I was a bit hesitant about the called-for cupful of Worcestershire sauce.  It sounded like it would be overwhelming but it blended in really well with the peaches and bourbon.  We had the sauce on barbecued chicken and it doesn't have an overpowering flavour but instead enhanced the flavour of the chicken.  Yummy.  And four jars on the shelf for another winter pick-me-up.
3. Using some sour cherry rhubarb jam from last summer that I boiled too far, making it relatively unspreadable on top of my peanut butter toast, I used Eat Your Books to locate the recipe for Rye Crumble Bars from Molly Wizenberg's blog Orangette. These are fantastic.  The jam provides a perfect contrast to the shortbread crust and oatmeal topping.  I can't remember how many jars of this jam I made but I'll be watching out for them in the jam cupboard to make this again soon.
4. Further decreasing the pile of tomatoes, since the oven was on anyway, for lunch I made the Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage bake from Jamie Oliver's Jamie at Home book.  This recipe was also found through Eat Your Books, my favourite cooking website.  I am exploring so many recipes that I just wouldn't have found the old fashioned way.  This was a tasty wrap to a very satisfying morning of cooking.

The great exhale

Some weeks are challenging to get through.  This week, it is for no good reason other than it is f*(&ing cold outside.  Don't get me wrong.  I actually like winter.  To qualify, I like southern Ontario winter which generally is not too cold (my first winter here I wore a raincoat with a liner the entire season quite comfortably).  But this month-long cold snap is really getting to me.  Leaving the house involves about 17 extra clothing items and 15 minutes of prep time.

Anyway, I had to take my car in to the garage this morning (my car has been in the shop more in 2014 than I've been driving it but that is another very annoying story) and needed to get home from the train without the benefit of my in-house taxi service so, took the bus to, admittedly, not that far from my house, but was never-the-less very glad for my parka, hood, knitted hat, cowl and mitts.  When I got home, I was strongly motivated to order pizza.  Then I remembered that I don't have any cash, don't like using a credit card when ordering food, the aforementioned in house taxi service wasn't home yet and we still have good food in the fridge so … I decided to make some pizza.

The pizza dough comes from Fine Cooking magazine, a very quick, limited rise time dough and a bunch of yummy ingredients from the fridge (mushrooms, red peppers, pancetta, mozzarella, beet greens and goat cheese).  Combined with a nice bottle of Peller Estates Merlot and I'm feeling the relaxing effects of the great exhale.

Rise up

It is rather cruel that when you spend a couple of days and a few hours making bread that you aren't supposed to taste it until it cools for an hour.  Fortunately, I have a braise in the oven and the bread will go very well with it so I'm not too upset.  And the little bit of crust that stuck to the pan when I popped the bread out onto the rack was enough to tide me over for a little bit longer.  We'll have to see if I can hold out all the way to dinner.

About the bread itself … I have two of Peter Reinhart's bread cookbooks and I can't decide whether I like them or not.  I regularly and successfully make a really nice loaf from a fairly simple recipe.  Then I crack open one of Reinhart's books and the bread takes at least two days to produce.  The recipes require pre-mixing of certain parts of the dough the day before the double rising process.  And instead of the standard two loaf recipe, his recipes make one.  And I can't say that I have thought Reinhart's breads were so awesome that they were worth the extra time.  But I have had very good success with bread lately, and I'm giving the proofing feature on my new oven credit for that, so thought I would try again.  More to come after the official tasting later today.

And speaking of braising, I'm back into Molly Stevens' All About Braising book.  Yesterday I made a delicious braised tuna with chickpeas and radicchio.  It is a fairly quick recipe; a maximum of an hour from start to plate.

Today a little more involved braised oxtails is in the oven.  I have no idea if I like oxtails or not but I see them every time I go to my local butcher and decided to take the plunge.  If I don't like them, I can always have another slice of bread!
 

All the Small Things

1.  My first stash busting challenge is done!  It is the 76 Stitches hat made from bits of yarn.  The Debbie Bliss Merino Aran in purple that I've been making a bunch of hats from is, once again, featured here but the colour changes break the monotony of using the same yarn over and over and over again.  In my mind I'm seeing fingerless gloves in a similar colour pattern so think I'll cast on for those too.  That will likely use up most (hopefully all) of the little pile of yarn I started with.

2.  I've made good progress on the Nora Gaughan orange cowl this week.  I'm about half way through the first skein and have acquired the rhythm of the pattern so think things should move faster from here.  I managed about 4 rows on the sweater, had to take them out because I missed one set of cables so gained no ground.  I'll try to get some traction there today.

3.  I have been semi-following the Bon Appetit Food Lovers Cleanse again this year.  I learned from the last time I tried it that I can't keep up with everything and I'm not making two different meals for dinner.  I might be able to trick the husband into eating a vegetarian dinner once in a while but never if it features beets!  So I've made some of the recipes and kept with the spirit of the menus where I haven't followed them to the letter.  After a month that involved a lot more eating out than normal, rich food over the holidays and altogether too much wine and cookies, it feels good to be eating healthy food again.  This plan is less of a diet and more of a launching pad back into eating good stuff again.  I am expecting a bit of a reduction in weight as a nice side effect.

4.  I deleted that annoying Tetris Blitz game and have been getting things done during times I would otherwise have been playing the game.  I did go down a solitaire rabbit hole last night but have now won the Forty Thieves game that was distracting me so can now move on with my life.  I am really glad we never got into PS3 and the like.  I would be toast.

They look messy but these might be the ones

A few unrelated thoughts in this post:

1.  I love the Chocolate Aroma cookies at my local coffee shop, Aroma.  They are chocolate, with icing sugar and are almost perfect.  And the best thing, when you feel like a small sweet with your coffee, they are a small sweet.  They aren't the as-big-as-your-head cookies that Starbucks sells which provide a meal in a cookie and don't actually taste very good.

I've tried a few recipes over the last few weeks to see if I could recreate them and I think I've finally come close.  Since this recipe was passed to me as being a possibility by another cookie-loving friend, I should have tried it first.  They are called chocolate crackle cookies and are from Martha Stewart's website.  As I went over there to get the link, I notice there are several other chocolate crackle cookies that would also be worth a try.  But in the meantime, I have these.  And they are delicious.

2.  Outside today we have a blanket of ice.  Thankfully our power hasn't gone off, despite trying to a few times (touch wood).  I stuck my head out earlier to look around and could hear ice crashing down off of the trees.  It looks pretty but treacherous.  So we're hibernating today.  I baked the cookies above.  We had squash soup from the freezer for lunch with garlic bread made from some leftover baguette and a glass of Chardonnay.  Can't get much better than that.

3.  I made another hat for the Warm Hands Network.  I have discovered that I quite enjoy making hats but am less crazy about wearing them.  My already flat-as-a-pancake hair does not need the added influence of a hat.  With Warm Hands I get to enjoy the making and someone gets to enjoy the wearing. A winning solution all around.

They called this the appetizer

Usually when they call for snow in our area, we wake up in the morning, look out the window, don't see snow, turn on the TV and see that Buffalo got slammed with it instead.  Not today.  For a change the weather forecasters were correct.  The snow we shovelled this morning was called the appetizer.  Based on the continuation in snow all day, I think this was a good description.

So what did I do instead of my normal Saturday running around?  Baked cookies … Now that's what I call an appetizer.  Three new recipes. The chocolate espresso cookies and the ginger spice cookies at the front are from the latest issue of the LCBO Food & Drink magazine.  The shortbread are from In the Sweet Kitchen and I made macaroons, currently cooling in the fridge, from the Toronto Star's annual cookie advent calendar.

So to earn a taste of these cookies, it's back out for the next round of snow shovelling.

I have always liked it as a spice

Last week I was bouncing around iTunes when I discovered a new app.   It is an app that costs money but it intrigued me enough that I did a bit of research and decided to buy.  It is called Paprika and it is great.  I have recipes saved on many websites and Paprika lets me copy them into one app.  So once I copy the recipes from these various websites, I'll be able to search all of the recipes in one place and won't have to remember where I saw a recipe when I want to make it.

The copy process is dead easy and my favourite part of this was getting saved recipes out of the terrible Bon Appetit recipe box and into something much more user friendly. I have only begun to copy recipes into the app but I think I know what I'll be playing with over the Christmas holidays.

One thing I really love about the app is the shopping list feature.  I decide to make a recipe, click the shopping cart box and it makes a shopping list … sorted by section of the grocery store.  I am somewhat irrationally happy about this app.  But after years of trying to figure out how to best sort recipes cut out of magazines, trying a bunch of different methods (file folders, binders, copying into Word, saving on magazine websites), I think I've finally found just the thing.

But next time, for $27, I'll buy a tree

I've been reading about quince (the fruit) in a bunch of different places lately.  And specifically, quince jelly.  I wasn't sure you could buy quince here but I took myself off to Longo's to see if they had any.  They did.  I picked out six and continued on with my grocery shopping.  When the cashier rang me through, she entered 7 quince at $27!  Yikes.  Fortunately, I was only buying 6 so we corrected that and I went on my way, thinking that I probably should have paid attention to the price in the veggie aisle and sincerely hoped that I would enjoy quince jelly.

This weekend, I cooked up the quince and made the jelly using guidance from Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini.  I ended up with 1.5 L of liquid after cooking down the quince so added an additional 400g of sugar.  I only had one lemon but is was larger than average and gave me 6 tablespoons of juice (normally I seem to get 4 out of one lemon) so I went with it.

The jelly seems to be jelling although I'm not sure I love the taste of the bits I got on my fingers.  We'll see.  On toast might be a better taste experience.

But I have decided that if I like quince jelly, I'll buy a tree.

It's that time of year

I'm in the soup mood lately and have made two really good ones in the last couple of weeks.  The first was a Sweet Potato Mulligatawny soup from the Flavour Principle by Lucy Waverman, my new favourite cookbook distraction.  I amended it slightly to leave out the coconut milk, didn't have any cilantro or lemon juice and it was still absolutely brilliant.  I sprinkled some pumpkin seeds on top and enjoyed.

Yesterday I made my favourite butternut squash soup.  While butternut squash is one of my favourite veggies, I really dislike wrestling with the peel so, when making soup, I generally cut it in half, drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast it for 45 minutes to an hour.  The peel comes off easily and the caramelization of bits on the surface of the squash only add to the flavour.   Here is what I do for my squash soup:

1 large butternut squash
olive oil, salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 apple, roughly chopped
4 cups chicken or veggie stock or water
1 tsp (or more) curry powder
pepper

Preheat oven to 400F.  Cut squash in half and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with pepper and salt.  Roast squash for 45 minutes to an hour.  It might not be quite cooked through but it will finish in the stock.  Remove squash from oven, let cool until it can be handled without pain; peel and roughly chop.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in soup pot, add onion and cook gently until soft.  Add apple and squash to the pan, stir around a bit in the oil and onion to mix.  Add stock.  Bring stock to a boil then reduce to a simmer.  Add curry powder and pepper to taste and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.  Puree using favourite method (immersion blender is mine) and enjoy.

And drizzle this a few pumpkin seeds too.

Free style cooking

Keeping with the cottage theme, cooking is always a bit unstructured at the cottage.  And while I often bring a cookbook or two with me, I tend to free style things.  So two notable recipes from the weekend.  One made while there and one made with leftovers last night at home.

I'm still eating yummy goodness from the garden and brought a sugar pumpkin and some pears donated from a local farmer that my husband did some work for and made soup.  The onion that had been in the fridge seemed to have left with the in-laws who left before we did so I made do frying a bunch of green onions (including about half of the green parts), a clove of garlic, the pumpkin, the pears and some rosemary.  No chicken stock, so I used water and a bit of orange juice, turmeric, pepper and cinnamon. Very tasty as an appetizer to the barbecued steaks, also simply done with salt and pepper before grilling and a dab or rosemary butter after grilling.  With a side of foil roasted potatoes and Moose Tracks ice cream for dessert, we were happy and the fridge was that much further to being empty for the end of the season.

We had a bunch of leftover ham from Friday's dinner so I decided to make a ham and mushroom risotto.  I fried up a chopped onion until very soft, added garlic and celery, fried for a couple of minutes more, then added the mushrooms.  Once the mushrooms were mostly cooked, the rest of the process was standard risotto, toast the rice in the olive oil in the pan, add liquid in small amounts and keep stirring.  I used 1/4 cup sambuca instead of white wine as the first liquid added and then chicken stock after that.  When the rice was almost done, I added chopped up ham and finished the rice with parmesan cheese before serving.  The flavour of the ham (which had been baked with a maple mustard glaze) and the mushrooms went very well together.  I think I'm actually overcoming my general dislike of ham.  I really enjoy the things I have made with the leftovers.  The ham and cheese sandwiches on the griddle for lunch today were also fantastic.

Tonight, it is more simple pleasures with a roast chicken and roasted vegetables picked from a big dig in the garden this morning.  I'm really looking forward to the leftovers at lunch tomorrow.

Friday crafting

My husband brought home a new set of frying pans that were on sale at Canadian Tire the other day so I decided to make little quilts to keep them from getting scratched when stacked.  I used leftover pieces from the Christmas quilt that I made for my dad.  I quite like them.  The execution isn't perfect but I think they turned out well enough.  

I also got my favourite bread made and the best bran muffins from the Flavours of Canada cookbook.  These are the only bran muffins I will ever bother making.  They don't dry out if you stir a little too much or bake a little too long like others I've made.  I can mix it up with different ingredients.  I like using bananas, walnuts and a few chocolate chips but pieces of apple and dried cranberries taste great too.  

And on the knitting front, I switched my purple project, partially begun in the last post's photos back to the Norah Gaughan pattern, kaide.  I bought the yarn to make this in the first place, then waffled and started a different sweater.  Today when I was making the pot quilts, I looked at the swatch I made for kaide and decided that the pattern really looks nice.  So, I ripped out and started again.  

More Jars

Cleaning up the garden this morning, I noticed a bunch of tomatillos (which I was hoping would wait until next weekend) had fallen and several others had split their skins, a sure sign that they were ready to go.  So my best laid plans of continuing the yarn stash inventory were put aside to make tomatillo salsa.  I made this last year and thought I wouldn't be making it again this year because I didn't start any tomatillo seeds in the winter grow op.  Lucky for me, tomatillos seem to be quite happy self seeding and I had the 2 pounds needed for this yummy salsa.

And not to be outdone, the zucchini plants are still producing ... 2 more loaves of chocolate zucchini bread.  I'm sure glad it freezes!

More of the same

Just had to say that the zucchini tomato galette from Smitten Kitchen was awesome.  No more on zucchini for now.

And in summary

As I've blogged about again and again, I have been overwhelmed with zucchini.  So, for those in a similar situation and as a record for next year, the top 20 zucchini strategies in my kitchen this year.  Some I've blogged about already but wanted these all in one place.  I should also note when the recipe calls for grated zucchini, I use the grating attachment on my food processor.  In no universe am I hand grating the pounds and pounds of zucchini that I've processed in my kitchen this year.  So here goes ...

1.  Food 52 zucchini bread - a nice change from the traditional chocolate zucchini bread
2.  Lesley Stowe's chocolate zucchini bread - I think I've made about 10 loaves this summer.  I've taken some to the office and the rest has been sliced and tossed in the freezer - easy to pull out for lunch bags.
3.  Zucchini fritters - made up this recipe myself.  Into some grated zucchini, add one egg, a handful of breadcrumbs, some grated parmesan, thyme, pepper and salt.  Mix and add more breadcrumbs until the mix holds together.  Heat a pan with enough olive oil to cover the bottom and drop the zucchini cakes in the pan.  Cook for about 2 minutes a side (until nice and brown and heated through) and transfer to a plate.  Sprinkle with chopped tomatoes and serve.

From the book Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi - so far every recipe I've tried from this man's cookbooks has been delicious and these two recipes are no exception:
4.  Mixed Grill with Parsley Oil
5.  Zucchini and Hazelnut salad

From Bon Appetit magazine, who recently changed their webiste and it is horrible ... slow, my nicely organized recipe box is no longer organized, features don't work ... ugh:
6.  Curried Squash Soup
7.  Squash and Tomato Gratin

From Fine Cooking magazine:
8.  Roasted Ratatouille

From Canadian Living:
9.  Zucchini Pickles - these are really, really good
10.  Zucchini Relish

Quick uses:
11.  Give to friends
12.  Slice and toss in a salad
13.  Slice, brush with olive oil, salt and pepper and grill
14.  Saute with some herbs, maybe a few nuts
15.  Throw into a pasta sauce - ribbons of zucchini with olive oil or mix with tomatoes or other veggies
16.  Add to other veggies in a stir fry
17.  Add slices to a sandwich - really good on a grilled sandwich

Tried but didn't make myself:
18.  Chocolate zucchini cupcakes - pretty much #2, above, in a cupcake form with icing

Haven't tried this year but there's still time
19.  Stuffed zucchini - lots of recipes out there.  I think I like the idea of sausage meat although Ottolenghi has a recipe in Plenty that would likely be a good choice.
20.  Smitten Kitchen's burst tomato galette with corn and zucchini - I think I'm making this for dinner tonight.  Without the corn.  I bought some at the farmer's market on Saturday and we gobbled it down that day for lunch.  Oh well, I think without the corn it should still be tasty.

So there you have it.  My top 20.  Other than the parts of the year with no local produce unless it is from a greenhouse, I am pretty keen on eating food that is in season.  And in a way it is really easy ... I'm pretty sure after eating my body weight and more in zucchini this summer, I will have no interest in eating it out of season.  Although, I really should grate some and throw it in the freezer.  By February, I might be hungry for it again.

I think I may be done ... at least for this week

I had another preserving frenzy day yesterday and I think I need to take a break for a couple of weeks!

We have a huge apple tree in our yard.  I can't even begin to describe how big this thing is or how many apples it produces.  I can estimate thousands; a large number of which fall before they are ripe.  I think in the process of picking up all of the windfalls, we provide endless entertainment for the neighbours and provoke curses from the garbage guys.  Thankfully our town has a composting program.

So, given my new canning energy and my feelings of guilt over the thousands of apples that don't get used by anyone and end up as compost, I decided to get cooking.  I should tell you that I did try to give the better apples away to a food charity a few years ago but by the time the agency came to pick them up (they didn't encourage drop offs), they were rotting on the front porch (they last about one day off the tree).  It should also be noted that the apples in the photo aren't actually at full ripeness but very few stay on the tree until they are fully ripe so I generally use them for cooked applications.

On the bright side, this year there are a large number of apples within my reach so I was able to pick them off the tree instead of the ground which meant fewer bruises and fewer worms.

And just to keep up, the zucchini continues to sneak up on me, becoming massive before I can blink an eye.  Three zucchini went to neighbours and these guys went into more relish, pickles and a zucchini butter from Food 52. I couldn't find the energy to make the muffins I had planned.  Since I'm going to get the oven going tonight for a roasted ratatouille, I think I'll make them then.

Anyway, back to the apples, Food in Jars had quite a few interesting apple recipes and I made two kinds of apple jam and apple sauce.  The first, a honey lemon apple jam, tasted quite nice on toast this morning.  Regarding the second, apple almond honey conserve, I'm still a bit on the fence.  The applesauce tasted quite nice, spicy, sweet and apple-y.

That is all for this weekend.  I have basically been relaxing today, making progress on some knitting, reading and now watching Milos get soundly trounced by Nadal in Montreal.

As for canning, by the time the tomatillos are ripe, I might be ready to get the engine going again.  Until then, I'm listening to podcasts and out knitting on the deck.

Just thought I would check

I have been making bread since we moved back into our new kitchen.  The only bread I have bought from the store has been the occasional baguette.  I like making bread because I know what's in it and nothing tastes like homemade bread fresh from the oven.  But I was also operating under the assumption that baking bread was saving me money.  I finally decided that I should check it out.  So, ala Squawkfox I decided to do the math.  And I'm mostly right.

The kind of bread that I usually buy, the artisan bread from the bakery costs $1.34 more per loaf than my price per homemade loaf.  This doesn't include the impact of the cost of electricity to bake the loaves but my prices assume that nothing is on sale and I'm buying name brands.  The house brand of whole wheat flour at Longo's for example is almost $2 cheaper than the name brand version.


Homemade cost
Yeast                       0.94
Buttermilk               1.12
Honey                     1.08
Canola oil                0.32
Whole Wheat flour  1.22
Bread flour               1.62
cost for 2 loaves       6.30

for 1 loaf                   3.15

Grocery store cost                                                     Savings/cost
Artisan bread from Longo's bakery            4.49 -1.34
Artisan pre-packaged bread                        3.39 -0.24
Pre-packaged sliced bread                          2.99            0.16

So, in addition to really, really liking homemade bread, I feel even better for having confirmed that the price is right too.

Apologies for the funny alignment of the numbers.  I can't figure out how to cleanly copy tables into the blog.

And it continues

The lovely overabundance of produce in the garden continues.  The garlic in this picture is the leftovers after using 1 3/4 pounds of the stuff to make pickled garlic.  I have no idea what pickled garlic will be like but when you have 1 3/4 pounds plus of garlic, you make it.  And hopefully like it because some of the leftovers will are headed for a fall planting in advance of next year.  The recipe says to use the pickled garlic in pasta, in antipasto platters and in salads.

The other preserving done today was a wild blueberry peach jam.  I was going to make wild blueberry and peach separately but both jams would have used up all of my fresh fruit and I would like to actually eat it as is too.  So I combined it.  Since blueberries and peaches go well in a bowl, in my opinion, I thought a tasty jam was pretty much guaranteed.  And I was right.  Yum.  The only sad thing, is that it only makes 2 1L jars.  Since my dad, who is visiting, spent the fortune on the wild blueberries and helped me with the jam and the garlic, one will be going home with him so I really will savour the one that will be left with me.

Maybe I'll try using the tame blueberries in the coming weeks to make some more.  I can't imagine that it will be as good but it might come close enough to satisfy.

And happy birthday to my dad's cousin Norma who was 90 yesterday and you would never know it.  I hope I got her genes in the lottery and look forward to the future birthday celebrations that my cousins are very good at planning.