Me Again

Needless to say, it's been a while. I guess moving from Montreal to Vancouver, living in my in-laws' basement, having a baby, dealing with emotional turmoil and family crisis, moving to our own place, finally unpacking after a year and a half of storing our lives in my parents' basement and watching my baby grow up into a whirlwind of a toddler has taken up a huge portion of my life that hasn't really left any time for creative expression. Or personal reflection. Or baking.

Someone suggested to me the other day that I should start writing again, and I decided that might be a good idea. At least, it couldn't do any harm, right?

So, here I am. I'm not really sure what I'm going to write about, since most of my culinary adventures have turned into futile efforts to keep my almost two year old from alternately flinging flour across the room and sticking her nose (literally) into the bowl of whatever batter I'm mixing. So we'll see how that pans out. With any luck, I can turn this into a place to take note of things that I love and am thankful for - like the beautiful nature walk (above) that I took with my husband and baby in the spring sunshine, or dripping popsicles made with orange juice and mint simple syrup. Maybe once in a while I'll say something intelligent about current events or theology or the latest episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine...but then again, maybe not. I'll just have to see where my path takes me.

The Perfect Oatmeal Cookie

There's this oatmeal cookie recipe that I've had since I was a kid that never turns out quite right. It was passed on to me by my mother, who says they've never turned out right for her either. I didn't care all that much because they were delicious - sweet, stuffed full of oats, and oh so buttery - but they spread. They spread a lot. I remember tugging this recipe out of my mother's very overstuffed recipe box time and again, hoping that this time I would miraculously find the solution. I'd whip up a batch with a bit less butter or a bit more flour, plop them onto a cookie sheet, and look through the oven window with dashed hopes as the fluffy little balls of dough melted into nothingness, flat and crumbly on the pan. One batch fell apart as soon as I picked them up, so I scraped them into a jar and called it granola.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine served up some oatmeal cookies after dinner, sandwiched with peanut butter icing. The icing was fantastic (read about my love affair with peanut butter frosting here), and the cookies had that same sweet buttery flavour as my old recipe, but they were too hard to work well as sandwich cookies. I'm sure you've all had this problem before: biting down so hard to get through the cookie that all the frosting squishes out the sides, forcing you either to lick the extra frosting off and eat the remainder of the cookie sandwich sans filling, or shove all the filling back into the middle with your fingers, only to find yourself in the same situation after the next bite. (First world problems, I know.)

Anyway...I asked her for the recipe. 

Now that I had one recipe for too soft cookies and another for too hard cookies, I did the logical thing. I morphed them together. I have played with this recipe a few times, adjusting the egg, sugar and oatmeal content and adding a bit of flair with browned butter, and I'm pretty sure I've created the perfect oatmeal cookie. These babies are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, sweet, full of oats and oh so buttery. And best of all, they hold their shape beautifully.

The Perfect Oatmeal Cookie

 - inspired by my mom's family recipe and my friend's sandwich cookie recipe, perfected by me

1 cup unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3 cups oats (not instant)

Brown the butter. (Here's a good instructional video on how to do this.) Be careful not to let it get too dark or it will taste burnt. Remove the butter from the heat and let it cool slightly. Pour into a large bowl with the sugar and beat until the butter is no longer hot. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add gradually to the wet ingredients, mixing just until combined. Stir in the oats. Refrigerate the dough for about half an hour. 

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Scoop the dough by tablespoon and roll into balls. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Changing of the Seasons (Marked by Pie)

**Disclaimer: This blog post is about as old as the hills. I wrote it last year but didn't add any pictures, and then I absolutely forgot about it. But since it's sitting here all ready to go, I don't see any reason not to share it with the world! Hopefully I'll get my act together to start writing more timely posts soon.

Yesterday I finally pulled all my clothes out of the winter box. I put away all the shorts and swimsuits and stuffed my closet with sweater dresses and scarves. I've started turning up the heat in the bedroom, and most mornings when I get out of bed now, I have to put on my fluffy slippers. The world has become decidedly autumnal.

One of the lovely things about Montreal in autumn is the changing of the leaves. Fall on the west coast looks very much the same as winter - wet -, but farther east, there's a definite changing of the seasons. The light shining through the living room window has a golden cast, there's a nip in the air, and the trees are aflame with different shades of red, orange and yellow. I absolutely love it. It's gotten cold enough at this point that I've had to upgrade my coat, though I haven't pulled out the heavy duty winter coat and boots yet (that's another stage entirely), and I'm getting a lot of use out of my drawer full of pashmina scarves. Autumn, in my opinion, is the greatest season for fashion. Also for food. 

Last week I did something that seems as quintessentially fall-ish as jumping in a leaf pile, yet being from the west coast, I had never done before. The school that I work at organizes all kinds of interesting activities for the students at the end of sessions and last Friday, we went apple picking. I'm sure I was the most excited person on the trip, and I must have looked like a very giddy (and nerdy) little kid bouncing around in the front of the bus as we prepared to leave. We drove about an hour out of Montreal to a place called Les Fromages du Verger (french for Cheese Orchard) in St-Joseph-du-Lac and, after a short tractor ride, were set free in the orchard. We wandered about in a dreamy autumn haze, happily picking to our hearts content and filling our bags to the brim with Spartan, Empire and Cortland apples. About two hours later, we got back on the bus feeling very satisfied with ourselves and headed home.

 So then I found myself with a huge bag of crisp, ruddy apples and I thought, "What else is there to do, really?" So I made an apple pie.

Now, first of all, I don't really like apple pie. There's just something about the texture of cooked apples that I can't handle. My husband thinks I'm a crazy person, and maybe he's right. But when one finds oneself with a bumper crop of perfect apples, so eager to be cuddled up in pastry with a bit of cinnamon and sugar, well...let's just say, I didn't feel I had a choice.

Also, I had just found this apple pie recipe in the newspaper that called specifically for Cortland, the very variety I had stocked up on that day. Now, do you call that providence or what?

Quinn Farm Dutch Apple Pie
as seen in the Gazette, Wednesday October 3rd, 2012

For the pie:
6 cups of thinly sliced apples
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 T heavy cream
1 recipe single-crust pie
**I made my pie crust, which I always think tastes better, but I'm sure it would be just fine if you use a store bought crust. Just make sure it's fresh and not freezerburnt! Nothin' worse than a freezerburnt crust.

For the crumble: 
1 cup oats (not the minute kind)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the apples, cinnamon and sugar in a large bowl and set aside to marinate for a few minutes. In another bowl, combine the crumble ingredients and blend, using a fork, a pastry cutter, or your fingers. Fill the pie crust with the apples. (The apples will shrink while they bake, so put in more than you think you need. Pile 'em high!) Sprinkle the crumble mix on the top and drizzle cream all over it. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the top is a nice golden brown. For optimum results, let sit for an hour or so until the juices have firmed up.

I have to say, for a non apple pie lover, this baby was pretty good. I actually ate an entire slice and enjoyed it, which is really saying something for me. Top it off with a spot of whipped cream and you've got yourself a pie to be proud of!

Thrills, Chills, and Apple Fennel Salad

I try to make a meal plan every week and do my shopping all at once. I generally find that this cuts down on the cost of groceries and prevents us from staring into the refridgerator with a look of consternation every night going "So...should we just have toast again?" Instead, I take a stack of cookbooks into the living room and pour over them for ages looking for new and challenging recipes, things which are sure to impress. I love looking through my cookbooks and dreaming of feasting on the sumptuous morsels inside and presenting my picture perfect replications to guests, especially since receiving a much desired new book for Christmas this year, Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking".

The only problem with doing this is that I often forget to plan myself one or two simple, throw-together meals for the days when I just don't feel like whipping up a masterpiece - because Julia herself admits that her book is not for those faint of heart or short on time, and Jamie Oliver may say that his meals are easy to throw together, but he obviously has no inkling of my potential for bungling in the kitchen. So, Julia's ratatouille pictured above was delicious, but was actually suggested as part of a larger meal, and by itself took me longer than an hour to prepare. As for the delicious morsels to set before guests, I have a bad habit of making things for people that I have never made before and not checking beforehand how long they will take or how many they will serve. So I slaved over a lovely porkloin with roast leeks which I set on the table for a group of six very hungry people, though it was only meant to serve four. Everyone got a small plate, and I ended up offering round toast after dinner. Erg.

This past week I had the flu, during which time I had simultaneous chills and a fever, ached in joints I had forgotten were there, ate practically nothing and drank a lot of orange juice. While I was still not feeling my greatest, I had to make dinner for a few people, and I was determined that I wasn't going to kill myself for hours or spend any more time near a hot stove than absolutely necessary. Here's what I made:

 Cauliflower Cheese Soup - Moosewood Cookbook
Cut up a carrot, a potatoe, a cup of onion and a head of cauliflower. Put them in a pot with some stock and boil until the vegetables are soft. Puree. Add a bit of cream, a teaspoon of caraway seeds, two cups of shredded cheddar cheese and some salt and pepper. Heat through and serve.

 Custardy Popovers  - Moosewood Cookbook
Preheat oven to 375. Brush a muffin tin with melted butter. Whisk 1 1/4 cups of milk with 2, 3 or 4 eggs (depending on how custardy you like your popovers). Add 1 1/4 cups of flour and 1/2 tsp salt. Mix (some lumps are ok). Fill the muffin cups 2/3 full and bake 25 minutes, adding five minutes for each additional egg (ie: 30 min for three eggs, etc.) Remove from the pan and prick with a fork.

Apple Fennel Salad
I had this when I was over at a friend's house for dinner and I thought it was so lovely and simple that I immediately added it to my repetoire.


You need: two or three crisp red apples, a fennel bulb, a block of parmesean cheese (not the pre shredded stuff) and some nice olive oil.

Cut the top and bottom off the fennel bulb and slice thinly. Wash and core the apple and slice thinly. Alternate slices of fennel and apple, drizzling each layer with a bit of olive oil and parmesean shavings (a vegetable peeler works well for this).

This meal took me less than an hour from start to finish, left me with few dishes, and was an absolute cinch to prepare. I was able to spend my time relaxing and chatting with my guests instead of running around trying to get everything ready at the same time. I need to cook like this more often. 

Zucchini Bread Grilled Cheese??

A few nights ago as I was taking stock of our refridgerator while trying to decide what to have for dinner, I saw two beautiful zucchini sitting in the crisper and remembered this video that I saw last week on Chow.com of chef Michael Bulkowski making a sandwich that blew my mind: grilled cheese on zucchini bread.

 These are the kinds of things that I dream about making but stop myself because it just sounds too crazy...but this video is evidence that real sane people out in the world make the things that I only dream of making! Chef Michael has set me free!

I whipped up this recipe for zucchini bread and waited in agony patiently for an hour and a bit while it baked and cooled, filling the house with its intoxicating smells.  

I used this very strong goat cheese that I picked up at Atwater market. (I think next time I would use a not-quite-so pungent cheese, as this one was a bit like a kick in the mouth...in a good way...sort of.)

I ate this totally delicious sandwich. Mind officially blown.

I feel like a world of possibilites has been opened up to me with this sandwich! I'm already dreaming up sequels. Would a fried peanut butter and jam on banana bread be crossing the line?

Oh my gosh. I want one right now.

Quinoa Tomato Salad & A Good Ol' Romp in the Great Outdoors

I grew up in White Rock, BC. Our family always had two cars in the driveway. When my brother and I learned to drive, it became three and later four, as each of us needed our own car to get to work and school, respectively. When everyone was home, it looked like we were having a party at our house. Living in the suburbs means a lot of driving, because nothing is within walking distance and public transit basically sucks.  We in the suburbs think nothing of a daily hour long commute. That's just the way it is. 

This past year in Montreal is the first time I have ever really lived in a city. It's been a great experience, and there are things about it I absolutely love. I love that there's a 24 hour bagel place down the street from us where we can also buy milk and eggs. I love that we can decide to go out to dinner after 8 'o clock at night and have a choice between a dozen different restaurants on our street. I love walking around downtown and suddenly running smack dab into the middle of a festival that I didn't even know was happening. There is always something interesting going on here. 

One of the things I really miss about living in BC though, is the openness - looking out over the ocean and not being able to see the other side; going an hour in any direction and hitting farmland or wilderness; that feeling of wanting to head out on the highway and drive off into the great unknown. I miss being able to get away from it all. I miss nature. So when a new friend asked my husband and I if we wanted to go hiking with her last weekend, we were all over the idea. Although the weather was not what we hoped it would be (read: it poured with rain), the chance to leave the confinement of city buildings and spend some time in the great wide open was irresistible, and something I think we both needed. I myself took great pleasure in packing us an energizing and delicious lunch, and we ate it with relish on a forest path by the water, the wind blowing in our faces. 

Victory is Mine!!

This is a picture of the chess board after my winning game with Shaun. (I'm brown, in case you couldn't tell.) This is the first game I have won against him in longer than I would like any of you to know...and it was SO AWESOME!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and bask in my glorious victory. Talk amongst yourselves.

It All Pans Out

Montreal is a very convenient city in terms of public transit, so I've never minded not having a car. Truth be told, it's a bit nerve wracking to be a driver here (or a pedestrian for that matter). No one pays any attention to silly things like stop signs, and it's not uncommon while walking down the street to hear several people leaning enthusiastically on their horns. There are only two reasons I really miss having a car (other than the opportunity to actually leave the island of Montreal once in a while). One is that it makes it a lot more difficult to buy furniture - especially now, since our land lady has decided to sell the house and with it all of the things she had furnished it with. For the last little while we've been bringing new pieces into the house bit by bit, trying to fill the large empty gaps in our decor as our previous furniture slowly trickles out.

The other thing that makes having a car so very useful is the ability to shop at Costco. As a child, I spent many a happy hour chowing down on Costco hot dogs, scouring the clothing section for new fashion trends (which never amounted to much), and getting lost among sky high rows of stuff. As anyone who shops at Costco knows, it's impossible to leave the store without a truckload of new things and an empty wallet. It's just not the kind of shopping trip one can take if one has to travel by bus. Fortunately, we've been able to pilfer borrow a car from a very generous friend of ours in order to take these little shopping excursions whenever we need to. But a Costco membership is not cheap, and having only gone three times this year, we decided not to renew ours at the end of the summer. However, we were able to make one important purchase before saying goodbye to our favorite hub of consumerism:

A new set of pots and pans!! Hurray!! I have been wanting these ever since we moved here, and they're finally nestled (very) snugly in our kitchen cabinet.

This one is my favorite. What a long way we've come from this:

which is what we cooked our first meal in. (Don't worry, that paint stirrer is clean.)

I am very happy with my newest purchase, although my husband has been having a fit trying to figure out how to fry an egg without having it weld itself to the pan. Any suggestions?

Marching On

Yesterday was daylight savings, and although the ground here is still covered in snow, the extra hour of cheery sunlight we now get to enjoy is wildly exciting. Not only is it an indication of the beautiful spring weather that's just around the corner, but it means that soon I will actually be able to wear a pair of fashionable shoes outside without destroying them in the evil sidewalk salt. Hurray!

In the meantime, here are a few tidbits from the last month or two (or six) of my life.

Comfort Food: Lavender Rice Pudding

I've spent the last few days being very sick. Like, stayed in my pajamas all day, went through two and a half boxes of tissues, had to slather lotion on my poor little chapped red nose to keep it from falling off kind of sick. It made me realize that I need to see a dentist, because every time I sneezed it made my teeth hurt.
I started off the week with a sore throat (which I managed to ignore by drinking beer, eating Reese's peanut butter cups and going to see a very cheesy movie), and ended it with sinus congestion, chills, and a headache the size of Milwaukee.

An appropriate mural down the street from our house.

My husband believes that there are two kinds of people: those who call in sick at the first sign of a sniffle, and those who keep working until they're almost dead. I definitely fall into the latter category.

I had promised weeks earlier to take charge of the dessert and coffee for a ladies meeting at my church on Saturday night, so I arranged to have a friend come over in the afternoon to help me bake. By the time she arrived, I looked like a character out of Zombieland and felt like my head was going to explode, but I managed to suck it up and disinfect myself long enough to make a batch of  butterscotch blondies. At that point I should have called it quits, but I insisted on going to the meeting and staying the entire time. My friend sat beside me and looked on in pity as I honked and snuffled, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat. When the meeting was over, I took my streaming eyes and nose and hightailed it out of there as fast as I could. I was halfway home before I realised I'd forgotten my purse.

The moral of the story is - keep your diseased self at home. Stay in your pajamas all day. Sit on the couch and watch six episodes of "Jamie at Home" in a row. Make rice pudding. You'll get the rest and delicious dessert that you need, and your friends won't be exposed to your contagion. Win win.

Back to Reality

I'm back! Back to life, back to the grind, back in the game…though not without dragging my feet a little bit, I must admit. I realize it's been well over a month since my last post, and some of you may have thought I'd fallen off the edge of the earth. The truth is, returning to snowy Montreal after spending a month in a South African summer was a bit of a culture shock, and left me with a strong desire to hibernate.

To give you a little taste of what I mean - this was the view from my bedroom window at the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi game park on my first morning in Africa:  

The sunlight came streaming in the window in the early hours to gently nudge me into consciousness and the only sound was...well, actually, it was pretty noisy. My dad had to turn off his hearing aids while we were there because the high pitch of the insects was causing uncomfortable feedback. The rest of us adapted more easily. Waking up essentially in the middle of the wilderness was breathtaking, and the morning sun accompanied by the droning of insects was the greatest alarm clock ever.

This, on the other hand, was the view I awoke to this morning: 

Not exactly the kind of day that makes one want to frolic in the morning air. On the contrary, I made myself a pot of tea and went back to bed. It seemed an appropriate reaction.

On the day after I returned, Shaun and I started an excercise program called P90X (see very cheesy promotional video here) which, aside from getting me out of bed much earlier than I would like every morning and causing intense pain in muscles that I didn't even know I had, comes with a low carb, low sugar, low fat nutrition guide...everything that I am opposed to when it comes to food. Needless to say, my opportunities for baking have dwindled considerably. My opportunities for eating have followed suit. And why, you ask, am I subjecting myself to such a masochistic ritual?

This may have something to do with it.

Also this. 

And these.

Beer sampler? Yes please.

(I didn't eat this entire chocolate bar myself, but only because my family knew better than to leave me in a room alone with it.)

In short, when we arrived home our bellies showed the evidence of much enjoyment and little restraint, the effects of which we are still working hard to remedy.

Of course, there were other enjoyments besides food. 

A Feast Fit For a King!

On Thursday we had the first big gathering at our humble abode: an early Christmas dinner! Isn't that a glorious spread? We provided the turkey (my husband would like me to draw attention to his expert carving job), gravy, stuffing, and the famous Ross family ginger yams, and our guests came through with the rest! It was truly a magnificent feast, and the very first time we have ever cooked a turkey.

 

Here's the beast beforehand...

...and here's the beautiful bird after!!! I have to say, I think we did a dang good job, even if we both burned ourselves in the process. It was worth it. 

 

Unfortunately I didn't really take pictures of anything other than food, but let me just say that it was a wonderful evening, and I'm so glad everyone was able to come! We had a blast. 

As evidenced here. 

We had this dinner for a few reasons. One is that we simply enjoy good food and good friends and love to take every opportunity to combine them. Another is that the majority of our friends here are students and out-of-towners and we wanted everyone together for one last shebang before we all fly off to the four corners of the earth. And, as many of you know, Shaun and I will be doing our own adventuring this year...we'll be spending Christmas in Africa. 

We'll be gone for a few weeks, and as such, for the past few days I've been trying frantically to use up all of the food in our house. Last night I made a fantastic dessert that I've been wanting to try for awhile, which also allowed me to use up some very, very mushy persimmons that had been sitting in my refrigerator for over a week. Win win!

Home Sweet Home!

Alright, so I know I've now been living in Montreal for about three and a half months and still have not shown anyone any pictures of our new abode. This is mostly due to the fact that I wanted each room to look complete before showing it to the world, and most of our finishing touches (ie: pictures and various knick knacks) have been forlornly sitting on our dining room table waiting for a home. As we haven't had all that many guests over for dinner (not having any dining room chairs), it seemed like a perfectly sensible spot to leave them. However, we have recently received a dinner guest and hosted an early Christmas party, and I thought it might be a good idea to make the house look a little more presentable.

So! Being the very handy woman that I am, I hung our pictures crookedly and then asked my husband to finish the job (don't judge me) and otherwise tied up all the loose household ends, finally bringing our home into a state fit to be seen by outsiders.

Stock Up!

It's raining buckets right now, and I feel oddly at home. The rainy weather is comfortably familiar...even though I had to walk home with a heavy bag of groceries and no umbrella in it. (Who knew there were so many puddles down memory lane?)

The weather here generally tends to be more drastic than I'm used to. We've had a few wind storms that nearly blew the house down. 

 Exibit A: a garbage bin in the metro station on a windy day. Perfectly coiffed hairstyles beware.

So far I'm a fan of the drastic weather situation, though I do feel badly for the squirrels. They sit shivering on branches outside my kitchen window, imploring me with their beady little eyes to leave large bowls of pumpkin seeds out on the deck. I feel my resolve weakening every day.

The squirrel population around here has reached epic proportions. I generally pass about fifteen squirrels on my way to the bus stop. I once saw a squirrel fall out of a tree and land on top of a truck driving down the road.

It's a hard life for a squirrel these days.

It's things like this that make me glad to have a cozy yellow kitchen to sit in and a nice cup of tea in hand. It's also things like this that remind me of the importance of stocking up on provisions for the winter. Naturally, that means making stock!!

Soup for the Snow

It's snowing, it's snowing, it's snowing!! *jumping for joy*

In case you couldn't tell, I'm a bit excited. Is that weird? In Montreal it might be, especially when nearly every Montrealer I've met so far, on hearing that I'm new in town, has treated me to an ominous "*GASP!* It's your first winter here??!" Not exactly something to inspire confidence in someone from the wet and mild west coast.

These look a bit ominous as well. They've been popping up all over the place, which I guess should give me a hint as to the amount of snow that's normally expected here. Lots!

It's an awning for your driveway, in case you couldn't tell. No need to break your back shoveling every morning! Clever.

In an ironic twist, it's been snowing back home for several days now and we had yet to see a single flake here before today. However, that's not to say it hasn't been nose chillingly, ear achingly, finger numbingly cold anyway. Normally under such circumstances I'd make a nest of blankets and empty muffin wrappers (muffins ingested, of course....no muffin left behind!!) and hole myself up until it's all over... but I had to venture out into the cold to buy the ingredients for this soup so I could warm up.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

Who Gives a Fig?!

Some of you may have noticed (as I certainly have, judging by the sudden appearance of twinkle lights and dancing polar bears popping up in store windows downtown), that the holidays are drawing near.

"What do you mean!?" you may say. "We just had Christmas not 12 months ago! It's still the middle of November! What are you trying to do to me???"

To that I say, Good people! I know it's early! I understand that Christmas can be overdone. I, for instance, would rather shove cauliflower in my ears than be forced to listen yet again to Boney M.'s Christmas album in the middle of July. (That's right, you know who you are!)

However, I must admit that I am a very traditional, down-home kind of girl at heart, and the Christmas season allows me to indulge in all the wonderfully cozy and creative things that are simply not sanctioned at other times of the year.

For example, when else can you take down all the pictures in your living room and wrap them up like Christmas gifts (complete with elaborate bows) without being hauled off to the loony bin? Never, that's when!

These are the simple pleasures and mild eccentricities that Christmas allows us.

You may well wonder what the heck figs have to do with Christmas. Well, basically nothing, aside from a few references in song to something called "Figgy Pudding" (which sounds made up, but actually isn't.)

However, one of my west coast friends mentioned that she and a group of people were doing a canning exchange this Christmas! (Genius! Why didn't I think of that??) and although I no longer live on the west coast, I felt could not sit idly by and let the opportunity for greatness pass me by.