Vegedible

Chowing down on a different platform

2011-11-10T17:13:00.001-07:00

Oh boy, that last blog post was just a terrible, terrible tease. No, I didn't get around to updating the blog at all this summer because I was so busy being a reporter. I promise you I did eat a lot. Mostly I ate very well, but sometimes not so well (including some guilty, guilty pleasures. Confession: a whole lot of McDonald's and Tim Hortons breakfasts were consumed over my keyboard in our newsroom in Fort Frances).

On the bright side, I am back in the food blogging biz. You can find me at Tumblr, still under the Vegedible moniker.

While it doesn't look like it from here, I am actually blogging a lot these days. You can find my work at OpenFile Calgary.

Enjoy!

You may see more of me soon...

2011-03-31T01:03:00.000-06:00

I'm moving east for a few months this summer to work as a journalist full-time for the first time.

I'm absolutely excited for the challenge of the job.

But there will be another challenge: moving from a city of one million, to a town of ~~9000~~ 7,500, as a vegetarian. In fact, when I told the publisher in my job interview, that I'm a vegetarian, he laughed.

I will stock up on nutritional yeast before I go, I think.

New Blog!

2010-10-07T00:02:00.000-06:00

Not to say this one is done for... but I have a new blog, on journalism: http://zoeyduncan.tumblr.com/

Please enjoy :)

An illustrated guide to a sandwich.

2010-07-28T01:51:00.000-06:00

Here I am again with no photos to show you, so I'll have to paint you a word picture.

My summer grocery trips have not generally been well-planned. I'm ending up with sad, clam-shelled mixed salad greens because I can convince myself at the store that I'll totally make salads to eat with lunch and dinner for the next week. That doesn't happen.

Instead I'm all about the sandwiches.

June saw plenty of tomato-basil sandwiches, often complemented by whatever cheese I had around the fridge, and a few slices of avocado.

During Stampede there were asparagus-tomato sandwiches slathered with Bulls-Eye Barbecue Sauce on crusty buns from Rustic Sourdough Bakery (via Kingsland Farmers' Market).

Last week I picked up a loaf of "European" bread from a vendor at the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Farmers' Market. It may have been a sort of light rye. All that I'm sure of is that it was good. That led to tomato-thyme-lettuce between slices of bread.

Now, I'm all about building a work-appropriate sandwich. This had nothing to do with immodest dressings, of course. Profanity could occur if you are not careful in the pre-office construction of the sandwich.

I've tried two approaches so far, both with delightful results. Now, I assume that most of my humble assemblage of readers are at least somewhat versed in sandwich-making, so don't think I'm trying to insult anyone's lunchtime intelligence. It's just that I'm so pleased at how much better my work sandwiches are these days that I was inspired to share this with you at 1 a.m.

1. Make a sandwich of cheese slices and a condiment that won't become disgusting and coagulated (Good: pesto. Bad: mayo, I assume) in a toaster. Wrap it as you would normally. Separately, wrap/contain all those juicy, messy, moist veggies: today was tomatoes, lettuce and pickles. Toast the bread-cheese portion of the sandwich to desired melty crispiness when mealtime rolls around, then place your veggies between bread slices and you're good to go. (See illustration for clarification as necessary.)

2. Make a sandwich of cheese slices (today was applewood smoked cheddar — a boon to vegetarians who are former admirers of smokey, salty bacon) and any condiments that will complement your chosen veg. Wrap that baby up. Choose and wrap your veg, as above. When mealtime arrives, assemble those two parts, and enjoy a fresh, non-soggy sandwich!

Salsa Hangover

2010-07-25T22:37:00.001-06:00

I spent much of this weekend dashing between places. From home to work; work to Folk Fest; Folk Fest home and then back again 11 hours later; back home and then Sun & Salsa Festival.

I ate so much salsa today, folks. There were purportedly over 40 salsas at the Salsa Fest, which we, the eaters, are supposed to vote on. I've been to the festival at least 4 times, but have never formally voted. I haven't even seen the opportunity to vote in recent years. Ah well.

Some of it was cheap or bland or salty. Some of it was so, so good. I didn't take notes; as you may know, it is hard enough to balance a platter of multigrain Tostitos and a teetering tower of teeny salsa samples, but add in a pen and notepad? Nuh uh.

Standouts included the Naked Leaf with a peach-mango salsa (c/o Una Pizza+Wine) that was beautifully complemented by organic ginger-peach tea leaves (that's assuming memory serves me right after a conversation with owner Jonathan; he tells me the tea is reminiscent of chai, but isn't quite there. A seriously cool tea shop, my friends. I wrote a little story about it in my early days as a journalist).

Mayoral candidate Craig Burrows chatted us up for a few minutes right as Al was asking me if he was (I will paraphrase here) "that crazy MLA." [Nah, that was a different Craig.] Burrows was very personable and very passionate about an open city council — starting with sharing his salsa recipe on his website. It's not posted up there quite yet, but he did assure us that he cared about salsa accountability. Burrows upped the nightshade-ante by using organic (local?) tomatoes that he got from Kingsland Farmer's Market. It was a great, fresh salsa that let us taste the flavour of the fruit and vegetables in it.

Ric McIver had a pretty decent salsa too, but it was one of those runny ones, which I am not so interested in these days. The volunteer who dished it out told us that it had a kick that could be attributed to Common Sense. Cute.

A couple teeny disappointments, though. There was no Foo-King Hot Relish booth. ~~I don't feel inclined to pay $8 a jar plus whatever shipping costs, even though it is really darn delicious. I hope they get a local distributor soon~~. Haha, awesome. I just read their website properly and they do have distribution now! I will hit up Cookbook Co. Cooks soon for a jar.

And the Broken Plate, which annually whips up a cheesy, pepper-flecked dip that is so-totally-not-salsa but usually really delicious. It was really too salty to enjoy this year. Maybe this is nothing new, though. I'm starting to think that my tastebuds have evolved drastically in the past year.

I still have a salsa hangover. It is a hangover that wants to be cured by a fabulous home-cooked meal like the lasagna that I made on Wednesday (lemon-thyme tomato sauce sandwiched between homemade spinach pasta sheets? The most beautiful combination since sunshine and vacation). Unfortunately, my fridge is currently filled with stuff like: half a jar of apple sauce, 3 meatless buffalo 'chicken' wings, a huge sack of peas from the farmer's market and some sad and limpy celery (I assume it's limpy as I'm afraid to feel it...). I think I need to make some soup but this beautiful weather is so not conducive to soup.

It is, however, conducive to Strongbow...

[By the way, I was lucky enough to cover the 2010 Calgary Folk Music Festival for the Reflector! At your leisure, check out my slightly jealous/very proud reflection on the volunteer menu, my chat with local seemingly anti-folk (but actually pretty folk) folk singer Chris Gheran, and my interview with one-half of local experimental pop wizards Axis of Conversation.]

Putting a face to a cake

2010-07-20T10:39:00.001-06:00

Can you smell that?

No, not the banana bread, or the date squares. And it's not the mojito or the brewed ice tea with homemade ginger syrup. It's not even the deep dish pizza or the vat of hummus and it's certainly not mini donuts.

That, my friends, is Blogger's Guilt. So I am writing this to break the seal, and hopefully a flood of blog posts will come pouring out. It could happen, right?

I baked into a new frontier last week, actually. I baked a birthday cake from scratch, made icing (from scratch) and decorated it with an astonishing likeness of the birthday boy!

He's a very animated teenager. (Rimshot!)

Both recipes were from the Joy of Cooking: Four-Egg Yellow Cake (it wasn't at all yellow, but it was delicious!) and Quick White Icing. My mum reported that the cake far outshone the icing and I have to agree...dark chocolate ganache would have been wonderful! But the birthday boy requested white icing.

Speaking of the Joy of Cooking, have you ever read The Joy of the Joy of Cooking? It's one woman's ambitious blogging project wherein she is attempting to cook each of the 4500 recipes in that thickest of tomes. It's kind of a slow go, as this is year 3 and she is a busy woman, but it is interesting to read some of those entries.

Thanks for sticking with me folks. Here is a goat.

Salsa & Beans! Tortillas & Rice!

2010-06-25T12:25:00.000-06:00

This week I got promoted from “We’re assessing your abilities as a copy editor” to “You’re a copy editor!” I’m stoked that I’m an official employee, but there is a bit of uncertainty because my shifts revolve more around gaps in the schedule than they did before. At first I let that bother me, but then I remembered my horoscope, having read it in Metro on the way to work. It said something about how there would be some unexpected changes in my life on that day, but that it would only be a problem if I let it be. (Really, it’s not a horoscope at all, but it is solid advice to live by.)

And in talking to some of my coworkers, I’ve been assured that there are plenty of people going on vacation who I will be able to cover for.

But in food news: I made some fantastic Mexican-like food (I’m hesitant to call it straight Mexican because who am I to declare such authenticity?).

First: the Tortillas.

I love this recipe for tortillas from Homesick Texan. She has tonnes of great Tex-Mex recipes on her website, and plenty of them are easily turned vegetarian. While I’ve made a couple different tortilla recipes, this one is great because it uses a miniscule 2 teaspoons of oil, as opposed to 5 tbsp of shortening like the recipe in the Rebar cookbook. (Side note: does anyone else have the Rebar cookbook? I haven’t used it in a while because they have so many fancy ingredients, but it really does have good stuff in it. Next on the to-buy list: The Coup cookbook!)

Next: the Salsa.

I’ve never made salsa before! Seriously. I decided to put it together the night before my friend was coming over for breakfast. Super easy, of course.

Salsa Fresca

2 tomatoes
half medium onion
1 jalapeno
2 cloves of garlic
Fresh lime juice
Salt & Pepper

Chop the tomatoes and onion roughly. Dice the jalapeno and garlic finely. Mix together in a bowl, add lime juice, salt and pepper to taste. Optional: use an immersion blender to food processor to break down the salsa slightly. I let the salsa sit overnight in the fridge, but I’m sure you could consume it immediately.

Third: the Rice.

Again, Homesick Texan to the rescue. I have a recipe from AllRecipes.com that I usually use, but it is almost always a bit overcooked and mushy. This new recipe is super easy and really delicious, even though I didn’t measure my lime juice and overdid it a bit.

Finally: the Beans!

These turned out so very well… I hope am remembering the recipe properly. It was one of those ones that just get created on the fly, based on all previous bean knowledge.

“Yes, this is taco heaven” Black Beans

1 can black beans
1 red hot pepper, halved and seeded (that’s what it was labeled as at Safeway. It looked like a red jalapeno… but pointier.)
half an onion, cut into chunks
3 tbsp good barbecue sauce (I use Bulls-Eye Bold Original)
½ bouillon cube (what you would use for one cup of stock)
1/3 to 1/2 cup of water

Rinse beans.
Put all ingredients into a medium pot. Bring to a boil then reduce to simmer for 20 minutes. Add more water if necessary to thin it out a bit.
Process beans in a food processor or with an immersion blender.
Season to taste with fresh lime juice.

Other things I ate this week:

Cake for breakfast. Twice. (Angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream courtesy of Alan's mum. Score!)
An ice cream sundae at work.
CPU pizza at 11:30 last night with the roomie.
A lot of eggs.
Thing I didn’t eat: egg-white omelet. It looked horrible (I made it myself) halfway through cooking so I threw the globby mess out.
My own slightly burnt cheese biscuits (luckily the rest of the folks at the party didn’t seem to mind).
Amazing chocolate-caramel tart from Food Blogger Bake Sale. I don’t know who made it though, and I’d love the recipe!

Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale!

2010-06-18T16:09:00.000-06:00

Hoo! After a feverish morning of baking delicious desserts, I am finally ready to tell you about the Food Blogger Bake Sale!

Saturday and Sunday at Market Collective in Kensington there is going to be a table chock full of fabulous and varied desserts. You ain't seen a bake sale until you've seen the Calgary Food Blogger Bake sale!

There is more information available from Vincci at ceci n'est pas un food blog. Vincci organized this entire thing from scratch and I have no doubt that it will bring smiles and sugar highs to hundreds this weekend.

My contribution is lemon-shortbread squares. It's like a cookie slathered in lemon curd. Hell yeah!

I'll be blogging it properly when I return from a lovely little excursion to the delightful mountain town of Canmore, Alberta!

Recipe right here!

Putting the Veg in "Vegedible"

2010-06-15T13:07:00.002-06:00

All this cloud and rain makes it tough to feel like it's summertime. It's tough on my little business-casual wardrobe too; I could get a lot more use out of it if I could pull on a skirt a couple times a week.

But despite that, it is only a few days away from that actual, literal first day of summer. I'm going to use these cloudy, cloudy days as time to stock up on vitamins. I'm going to start sticking to our friendly government's recommendations for eating veggies, because I've gotten into a pretty unfortunate habit of eating food that's pale and greasy. Also pizza (ah, pizza). And as good as pale and greasy is (ugh, that even sounds gross), I'm pretty sure this bod would prefer dark green and orange and steamed.

My unofficial personal challenge started yesterday. According to Canada's Food Guide, I should have 7-8 servings of fruits or vegetables every day.

One serving is a bit hard to measure:

1/2 cup of fresh/frozen/canned vegetable or fruit
1/2 cup of 100% juice
1 cup of leafy greens/salad
1 piece of fruit

Yesterday I went a little overboard with Kale, trying to make up for last time. It was probably 3 cups before steaming. I ate it with salad dressing and it was a bit of a struggle to eat it all. I also cooked up some potato and sweet potato with onions, hashbrown-style. (And let's not talk about the veggie dogs I ate...) I had lentil and veggie soup at work so I'm hopeful that was at least a couple of servings.

Today, I'm on track, thankfully. Breakfast was not so fruitful (hah!) with just a few tablespoons of apple sauce with my oatmeal. But lunch was delicious! I made a spicy tomato sauce and served it over 2 cups of steamed asparagus and kale, with a toasted tomato-cheddar sandwich on the side. So I'm on the right track at least, even if I can't really calculate these servings completely accurately. There's certainly no harm in overdoing it on veggies, right?

Fresh Pasta and Goat Cheese-Tomato Sauce

2010-06-10T23:23:00.003-06:00

Despite the three-hour preparation time, I am positive that I will be making pasta from scratch again and a again.

Most of my experience with homemade pasta has been in restaurants where a plateful is priced exorbitantly but is so silky and flavourful that you really can’t blame them for charging $20 for some tomatoes, a few eggs and a cup of flour.

I don’t clearly remember eating it growing up — all that prep time when you could just throw a handful of spaghetti in a pot and boil it for 10 minutes? Though I do have a mental picture of my dad cutting up noodles for a big batch of his infamous “Delicious” (kind of a beef stew with veg, always served over egg noodles).

Last night was date night and it was raining all day. Alan texted me to see if I had any ideas for dinner. I suggested pasta. From there, we both though, “Oh, that will be really simple to put together.” Then, our thoughts diverged slightly. I texted him, “How about we make the pasta from scratch‽” He: “You’re relentless! Sounds good!”

Sauce ingredients: deceptively plain-looking, but oh, so flavourful. Especially if you cook 'em in butter!

I’m lucky enough to have a pasta machine (or access to one, though I know my mum hasn’t used it in over three years) and I’m not sure I would have had the patience to do this with a rolling pin. We followed the Joy of Cooking pasta recipe and had no trouble at all. If you don’t have access to that holy tome, I’m sure Canadian Living and Jamie Oliver will steer you right. It smelled really eggy and I thought that might come through in the final product, but it absolutely did not.

As good as this fresh pasta was (silky, supple, sauce-bearing) it was nearly overshadowed by Alan’s amazing Tomato-Goat Cheese sauce.

Saute diced onion and a handful of sliced cremini mushrooms in butter until onions are soft and transluscent, being careful not to brown them. Add 3 cloves of garlic, diced. Add half a teaspoon of crush red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper to taste. Add a splash of red wine. Cook for a few minutes. Strain most of the juice from a large can of whole tomatoes (reserve the juices for later, in case) and add them in there. Add a handful of fresh basil, torn or chopped. Start to break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon, but don’t worry too much because they’ll break down some more as they cook (we blended ours because we used all the tomato juice in the can). Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer for 45 minutes.

From here, you can either go with a chunkier sauce, or bring out the immersion blender for a textured, but smooth one. Blend it (or not) and be sure to leave some lumps and bumps. Add the chevre (we used about 1/3 cup for the batch), and stir through until the sauce becomes a pinky, pale red.

Indulge.

(If it hadn't been 8 p.m. when we were rolling things out, I would have been very tempted to make ravioli. It's coming though, some day!)

Farmerless Market (Updated)

2010-06-02T23:11:00.004-06:00

Aw dang.

I got to the Hillhurst Sunnyside Farmers' Market around 6:45 this evening. I knew it was running 3:30 to 7:30 and that my late arrival might decrease my chances of finding my coveted local asparagus, but I actually had a pretty busy early evening.

My plan was to find a bunch of lovely – if expensive – local veggies, steam or roast them and pour vegan gravy on top. But there were no vegetables to be found.

OK, I think I saw some ~~hydroponic~~ bio-dynamic scallions sticking out of a basket, but I certainly didn't see any of the B.C. fruit or local veg that was touted by the HSFM website.

We went and bought the fixin's for tacos instead at Safeway. Walking back through the farmer's market with a plastic Safeway bag (I somehow dropped my reusable on the floor of my closet instead of putting it in my purse. Can't tell ya how I managed that) almost felt like it should be shameful. But, irked as we were that there were no vegetables to be seen, the shame was gone almost immediately (also the thought of tacos helped).

I couldn't help but tweet my disappointment when I got home.

Though nobody from the Market has been available to give me the scoop yet, at least I wasn't alone:

Oh well. My assumption is that the vendors sold out and headed out once their wares were gone. I only bought things a few times there last year – I think it was either because they didn't have the vegetables I was interested in, or because we were taking regular trips to Crossroads. However, I would really like to be able to pick up some fresher, more local items there this year, seeing as it's so very close to my apartment.

Stuff I did see? Mead, some frozen pizzas, bison meat, a bouncy castle, kids playing soccer, Thai food, and some surprisingly entertaining music (although I don't think that will be a regular feature).

I will do my best to hit up earlier next time and find something delightful to report back!

(P.S.: My buddy Kelsey wrote up an article for Beatroute about Farmers' Markets in Calgary!)

An update!

Lunch time!

2010-06-02T11:13:00.000-06:00

I don't want to jump the gun here, but it's starting to actually look like spring again! For those of you not in Calgary: we've seen a lot of snow and snow-rain in the past couple of weeks and we're quite tired of it all. Plus, it makes the #yyc feed on Twitter pretty redundant, "I'm so mad, I woke up to snow," "I'm also mad, due to the snow."

Today is the first day of the Hillhurst Sunnyside Farmers' Market! It's a few hours yet until it opens, but I will be there to scope out the goodies, and perhaps even take a few snaps to share with you folks later! (Here I go, overselling the probably post-less reality again...a girl can dream!)

Thanks to a friendly and encouraging reminder from Monica, I'm finally posting about one of my work lunches!

This was yesterday's rather large meal. It was the second day in a row that I felt super full without finishing it all. From top: avocado and hummus on pumpernickel; half an Everything bagel with cream cheese I mixed with dried thyme, onion powder and pepper; guacamole; soba noodles in tom yum soup with broccoli and spinach; cuke slices to dip in the guac. Not pictured: banana!

Since I work slightly odd hours form 3-10 most days, this serves as a late lunch and late supper. Unfortunately, my soup was real short on flavour, so I mostly just picked out the veggies and ate some of the noodles (Soba = amazing, btw. Will post on that eventually.)

Last week's meals featured peanut butter and jam sandwiches (with homemade blueberry jam from last summer!), lots of steamed asparagus and Tricuits.

Food Mayors Like

2010-05-31T23:25:00.001-06:00

I’ve started reading the National Post with some regularity because we get copies of the paper at work. I’m a sucker for their design, use of illustration and even a decent dose of humour.

There is, however, a little twinge of smug superiority whenever I open the paper. That’s because last fall, a few of my friends and I applied for internship positions at the Post. They had reporter positions through the different sections, and copy editing spots. Time passed and they emailed our internship coordinator to tell him that they weren’t interested in hiring any of us because (I’m paraphrasing here) we didn’t have daily experience and we didn’t want to write about business.

So besides the fact that internships are generally important for getting such experience, and that at least one of us had worked at a large daily, the smug superiority comes from the copy editing errors that I keep finding (Come on: “slinger” instead of “singer” on the Arts front?). But enough about work!

Here comes the (just barely) food part of this mashup!

The Post interviewed a few mayors at the Federation of Municipalities conference in Toronto. The brief Q&As are pretty similar in their queries: What do you envy about Toronto? If you had to, where would you move? What food best represents your city? How do you spell South Dildo?

Bronco wasn’t included in the article, but I just imagine his answers were the same as Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel’s answer; that is, he doesn’t envy anything about Toronto, and has challenges with the oil industry. Probably would say beef is more iconic than perogies though.

The worst response was Pat Fiacco in Regina. He said they have the best pizza in the country (that’s certainly debatable). And then he said that Regina is like a panda bear: “They’re adorable and charming.” Hey, Pat! They’re also ridiculously poorly evolved animals: the stomach of a carnivore, but they eat undigestible bamboo; they have to eat all day because they can’t process the bamboo properly; they can’t live together because they can’t afford to share food; the females are only able to conceive three days a year; if they miraculously find a mate on one of those three days AND they conceive, they have twins, but only raise the least-runty one, and leave the other one to die.

I’m not sure what the Saskatchewan metaphor should be with those facts in mind, but I just thought it was important to put that information out there.

Gregor Robertson in Vancouver said that the city’s most iconic food is wild sock-eye salmon. He then went on to say that if Vancouver was an animal, it would be a wild sock-eye salmon: “it serves a lot of roles in our city.”

OK, it made me laugh heartily inside my head.

Cafés and Employment

2010-05-14T11:10:00.000-06:00

I am sitting in a coffee shop with a dark, burly Americano between me and my keyboard. This simple ritual is fast becoming a favourite. I’m staying open-minded about the elements of the ritual, though. It doesn’t have to be a strict equation of me + coffee + coffee house. I’ve explored me + two pints + Neapolitan pizza, and that was just fabulous.

As I was saying, I am sitting in a coffee shop. It’s one of many in this little neighbourhood that is so well-known for its lattes, tea shops and hippies. But today, Vendome wins out thanks to @ugonnaeatthat’s latest blog post.

I made my way over here, following a path behind the C-Train tracks, and past a small flock of ravenous pigeons. The café is furnished with dark wood tables and chairs, and a panoramic photo of historic Calgary. This is the second time I’ve visited now. Last time I had a mocha, and to be quite honest it was no better than a mocha from Second Cup. But this time, I indulged in a $6.95 croissant sandwich with spinach, mushrooms, emmenthal and gruyere to go with my Americano. Now, I’m stuck in this delightfully drawn-out eating affair where I feel like I could eat the crisp and soft and buttery slab of glee in the time it takes to shotgun a can of Lucky Lager. But I've managed to control that side of myself and the one that's won out is the side that wants to cut the sandwich into dainty pieces — with this ineffectual butter knife —and savour every bite.

Okay, poetry over. I finished eating my sandwich.

Today, a Friday, marks the last day of official unemployment for me, at least for a few weeks. And friends, there is so much good about this job (she says, before working a single hour). It’s journalism-related, I got it thanks to a recommendation from one of my profs and it requires my brain. While typing up a job-hunt spreadsheet earlier this week, I started to consider serving and bartending positions, because I did spend nearly three years cultivating those skills before being booted out of the bar. But I am very thankful that this new job is based on a rather different skill set that has cost me thousands of dollars to develop over the past four years.

I like to call it a “real-person” job, at least to whatever extent you can call journalism a “real” job. Maybe “real” is the wrong adjective, because of course it’s literally real. Any fellow journalists will know what I mean. In this context, I mean it’s a job where I go to a place and do a thing — or things — for a bunch of consecutive hours. Often while sitting in a chair. That makes it sound boring, but I am really excited.

You may soon be treated to posts about what I pack in my lunch box. How cute will that be?

Contemplating the grocery bill

2010-05-08T00:05:00.003-06:00

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about my lack of productive writing. What is inspiring about a flashing cursor and an off-white window frame in OS X? ( It’s OS 10.4 by the way, I’m still taming the Tiger up in here)

Right now I’m reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

At parts, I can hardly make my way through it. That’s not a reflection of the writing, because the writing is beautiful:

I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel love about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because is looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don’t care.

I’m on page 45 and that quote is from 42. Maybe it’s weird that I chose that quote because a) I can’t relate to the travel bit or the baby bit, and b) I don’t remember reading it, even though I certainly read around it while eating lunch in a cute café this afternoon. I really do like it though.

But I am having severe trouble staying focused on this book that is written so much like I would write it (had I the skill, of course, and hopefully minus the crippling depression that hung over the first couple dozen pages). I suppose it is because Liz (she calls herself that, so I feel like I should, too) is being so personal that I’m inclined to mull over my own life decisions. For me, there’s not a whole lot to reflect upon at 21, but there is a very significant and encouraging outlook.

And not to suddenly change the mood, but damn I need to invest myself in the job hunt. How about Monday? In the intervening hours, let’s ruminate on my latest grocery purchase. I am going to be honest, in the spirit of Ms. Gilbert, because this was not a well-planned grocery outing…

I’ll start at the top with that lovely romaine lettuce. I bought it Monday and haven’t sampled it yet. Yeah. The tomatoes; I’ve managed to eat 90 per cent of both of them, but the last bits are stored together in a Ziploc container, awaiting something better. On their left (our right) are a couple of cans of soup because it was snowing the day I went shopping and I kind of wanted soup. Apparently I wanted soup enough to stand in the soup aisle ruminating for 15 minutes, but not enough to actually eat the soups, which remain in my pantry, but at least they're not perishable like my romaine.

Then there’s my deodorant.

I mostly bought the frozen OJ because I had white wine-citrus sangria in my fridge for a week and every morning I briefly thought it was orange juice, then, devastated, remembered it was spiked with three kinds of booze and was not an appropriate accompaniment to my multivitamin.

If you’ll look across the bottom of the photo, you’ll notice a couple bags of perogies. Another moment of weakness, perhaps, but those two bags equal $5 worth of potatoes, cheese and egg albumen (I dunno what that is, but it’s in the ingredients). Part of a well-balanced diet, when paired with that romaine. Oh! And that Frozen Whole Leaf Spinach underneath the two tomatoes. That’s been absent from my meals, too.

Then there’s the onion. Safeway has the grossest-looking onions.

I bought two $0.49-packages of Mr. Noodles. What is it exactly that inspires me to do such things? I’m no pro, but I’m capable of creating a pretty satisfying meal out of ingredients such as the ones I mention just a couple paragraphs above. Yet I bought instant ramen. And then I ate it on two consecutive nights. Confession over.

And we end on Silk Vanilla fortified soy beverage—more familiarly referred to as soy milk. Am I alone in feeling just a teensy bit uncomfortable with soy milk these days? Food Inc. made me feel like all the soy beans in existence were evil. Oh well, it’s delicious.

So there you have it. And in the spirit of the unbelievable budgeters over at 30 Bucks A Week, here’s a scan of my rather overpriced receipt.

More talk of journalism

2010-04-27T10:28:00.000-06:00

I just want to write. Ideally, I want to write in a way that yields money so that I can continue to write instead of doing things like mixing hiballs or pulling shots of espresso. School has ended and instead of putting my nose to a grindstone (AKA MacBook screen) searching for jobs, I’ve sort of just been reveling in this newfound existence of mine.

This is the envelope that my first freelance checque came in. I will remember it always, for its crumples and tears.

I’ve now conquered four years of post-secondary. Much of that schooling took place while I had two jobs. Now, I’m unemployed and out of school for the first time since getting my first real-ish job at the Saddledome when I was 15.

During this in-between time, I’m trying to responsible with my budgeting. Part of me is whispering “take advantage of these precious days and party!” but that part is only getting moderate attention. The other part is being more reasonable, but is also hungry. That part convinced me to buy ingredients to make pasta and challah from scratch and I fully intend to fulfill that desire sometime this week…or next.

This is the last slice of a quiche that was not only fun to make, but it provided much-needed sustenance throughout a ridiculously busy week at the Reflector.

As an unemployed person I’m also trying to use my increased downtime to my benefit. For example, I am spending even more time on Twitter and yesterday, through a fortunate chain of events and Googling skills, I won a pair of tickets to see Body Worlds at the Telus World of Science. Only days ago I’d said aloud how much I wanted to go see the absurd plastinated corpses, so I was really very pleased with my tweeting skills.

Risotto is actually an awesome budget food because you can pretty much throw any stir-fry or soup-friendly ingredients in and end up with deliciousness. Unfortunately the price of the rice is a little steep here.

So, uh, maybe that’s the only real accomplishment that I have made since writing my last exam on Saturday. But I have also been cooking more frequently and often deliciously. Last night I had a girls’ night at my place to give a send-off to my friend Nori who is moving west to go do some journalism. We kept the food pretty simple, and it was delicious.

Bread baking and unemployment go together well, especially because so many of the recipes I have take about six hours of commitment to accomplish.

I didn’t take any photos. Shame, I know. But I’ve been trying to take some simpler photos throughout the week in order to add some content to these totally recipeless journal-style blog posts. That’s good for something, right?

I was so inspired by the previous quiche that I decided to make another. I only had three eggs left and one of them fissured in the carton so I did what I could to increase the volume of this little pie. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as the first, but it was a good snack.

A discovery: In which I tweet in square brackets instead of on Twitter

2010-04-07T19:54:00.000-06:00

I’ve been inhabiting an otherwise empty house for the past week and I think it’s had an effect on my tweeting habits. I stated officially (in an officious class presentation about Twitter) [I just learned the word officious.] that you shouldn’t be afraid to Tweet, because people following you are doing so because they enjoy what you have to say. [I abhor telemarketers who don’t leave messages. I would call back if they left messages.] Even so, I feel uncomfortable clogging up my channel with the fairly mundane narration of my life.

But having nobody to speak to while I am sitting at home lamenting my workload, or, conversely, while I am sitting at home feeling particularly inspired, has resulted in more tweeting. [Almost time to break out yesterday’s enchilada’s, methinks.] I’m a bit addicted to Twitter, I guess. It’s been dubbed micro-blogging, and I think that’s accurate. There’s still a chance to [why are there no synonyms for the verb version of craft?] articulate yourself intelligently, but you’re not as pressured to produce something substantial.

Maybe that’s the problem with me and Vegediblogging lately. I feel so much pressure to produce something that fits the criteria of my three blogging communities or even just something that I've made out of the blue, that I just put it off, put it off, put if off. In fact, I even made onion jelly for last month’s can jam, but still haven’t posted it.

This didn’t start out as a post to relinquish me from my posting duties. But I think this quasi-stream of consciousness has led me to the point where I needed to come. I’m a word addict and I do love blogging, but I have to find a way to make it work for me.

Let’s try this: I’ll start blogging things other than recipes (but recipes too!) that reflect me a little bit more. Things like my burgeoning pipe dream [gosh, pipe dream sounds a lot like pipe bomb. Wondering about the etymology of the phrase] to sell mustard at the farmer’s market across the street, or links to other food and journalism blogs that entice my taste cells and brain buds.

Yes, let’s try that.

(PS: I was totally going to post photos but Photoshop keeps freezing when I do simple things like press file + open. Sad.)

Daring Cooks March: Risotto

2010-03-18T10:13:00.001-06:00

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

If you've ever watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen, chances are good that you've probably seen Gordon Ramsay dropping f-bombs all over the place. Chances are also good that a few of them were dropped over risotto: too salty, too bland, too mushy, too firm! Well, friends, I certainly hope that hasn't made risotto into some unattainable dish in your mind; something that you'll never hope to recreate at home with $5 worth of ingredients and something you'll have to plunk down $19 for, or even $27 because restaurants really like to put seafood and sausage in there.

To make a tasty risotto, you could really get by with just broth, an appropriate breed of rice and oil. If you've got more than three ingredients in your pantry, add butter, cheese, onions/shallots/leeks and some fresh cracked black pepper.

For this challenge, I used arborio rice, which is a short-grain variety that cooks up firm, creamy and chewy. I would have loved to use some soft, pungent goat cheese and shallots, but I decided to stay reasonable and instead used feta cheese and a leek I bought at Wal-Mart (I can't believe I bought produce at Wal-Mart!). I used dehydrated mushrooms for the first time, and though I wasn't super impressed with them, I will give them another chance.

Other than preparing the risotto, we also had to make our own stock. There was no mandated veggie stock recipe, so I worked with one from Epicurious and made my own edits based on what I had on hand. A good veggie stock is pleasantly simple.

Basic Roasted Vegedible Stock
adapted from Epicurious

8-10 crimini mushrooms, halved
1 medium onion, chopped into 2-inch chunks
2 carrots, chopped into 2-inch pieces
2 celery sticks, chopped into 2-inch pieces
1 red bell pepper, chopped in 1-inch pieces
Any vegetable ends you've been saving in the freezer
4 garlic cloves coarsely chopped
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup of dry white wine
2 bay leaves
2 litres of water

Preheat oven to 425 F.
In a roasting pan (I use a pyrex casserole dish), toss together veggies, garlic, thyme and oil.
Roast in middle of oven, turning occassionaly, for 30-40 minutes or until veggies are browning
Remove pan from oven and transfer veggies to stock pot. Deglaze the roasting pan with 1 cup of white wine, by boiling it for 2 minutes, and scraping down the sides of the pan. Or, do like I did and just pour the wine in, scrape a bit and dump it into the stock pot.
Add bay leaves and water to the stock pot, bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer uncovered for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Strain stock, pushing against the veggie solids to release their juices. Season with salt and pepper. Stock should keep one week in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer.

Once you're ready to make the risotto, head on over to the Daring Kitchen for the recipe.

I forgot to save some wine for the risotto (i.e. I drank it all the night before after making the stock) so if you also forget, just use some broth instead. I actually forgot to do that part too... And then I got confused because I hadn't measure out the stock I needed, I just heated up the stock I made the night before and added it a bit at a time, like when I normally make risotto. So I suggest that you measure out the amount of stock required, because otherwise the directions are very confusing.

My final risotto was spinach, feta, leek and mushroom. Not runny, not too firm, not too mushy and not at all crunchy!

A condiment for what ales you

2010-03-08T08:22:00.002-07:00

condiment ˌkɒndɪm(ə)nt
noun
a substance such as salt or ketchup that is used to add flavor to food.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin condimentum, from condire ‘to pickle.’

I really, really, really like condiments. Once, I read a blog post by dee Hobsbawn-Smith and she wrote that her fridge was full of homemade condiments. That was a couple of years ago, and at the time I couldn't really picture what kind of condiments she could possibly have in there. What condiments can you actually reproduce at home?

Beer, vinegar, mustard and seasonings marinating in a 1L jar.

As you may have guessed, I've been enlightened in the last year or so. In fact, my own fridge is home to a fair collection of homemade sauces and toppings: mixed pepper relish, hot pepper jelly, ketchup, pickled peppers, honey-lemon marmalade, blueberry jam, and, most recently, a delicious grainy mustard.

Before blending.

After blending.

This mustard has a bit of heat, a dash of texture and a wallop of flavour. Now, it's your turn to make it.

A Spicy Mustard for what Ales you
Adapted lovingly from pictures and pancakes
yields 3 1/2 cups

1 341 ml oz bottle McNally’s Extra Ale (or Guinness, or any other dark, flavourful beer. Don't use Bud Light Lime)
10 oz (300 gr) brown mustard seeds
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground cinnamo
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp turmeric (for colour, skip if desired)

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive mixing bowl (i.e. not aluminum) or a 1-litre jar. Cover with plastic wrap, or a lid, and let sit at room temperature for 1-2 days.
Transfer the mixture to a food processor and purée, scraping sides of the bowl as necessary.
Process until most of the seeds are coarsley ground and the mixture thickens.
Transfer to jars and refrigerate up to six months.
You may find the mustard slightly bitter at first. I liked mine more after it had mellowed out in the fridge for a week or so. Of course, results will vary based on your beer of choice.

Daring Bakers February: Tiramisu

2010-03-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

The cookie dough: a lot lighter than your chocolate chip in a tube!

Wow. I am posting this very late, even though I made the delicious cake about 2 weeks ago. I’m going to chalk it up to photography once more, unfortunately. So I don’t have a final photo, because even though there is a piece sitting in my fridge, I just can’t put this thing off any longer!

Cookie dough ready to pipe out

This was a pretty intense, from-scratch recipe. I made mascarpone cheese, zabaglione (coffee-based syrup-like stuff), pastry cream, whipped cream and savoiardi biscuits, which are meringue-ish ladyfingers.

I don't know how, but I piped that dough real pretty!

I will absolutely make this tiramisu again, although next time I might dip my ladyfingers into something a little more punchy than the sweetened coffee concoction. Some Daring Bakers used fruit juice, and the recipe said to use espresso or marsala. My mum suggested I try it with Grand Marnier, and I think amaretto would be pretty delightful too.

Macro lens means a good view of bubbles in the ladyfingers.

My favourite part was the ladyfingers, or savoiardi, which are mostly egg, but lightly flavoured with lemon zest as well. They were not super special on their own, but when smothered in a pool of zabaglione-pastry cream-whipping cream, their lightness provided great balance to the cake. Next time though I will probably pipe the cookie batter in a shape that is more conducive to fitting my cake dish. I didn’t think I had enough cookies for my 9x9 inch pan, so used a couple of large circular ramekins instead, breaking the cookies to mostly fit inside.

This part was kind of complicated. I guess I don't have my sifting skills down yet.

If you’re interested in making a tiramisu, plan your time wisely. It was a multi-day project, including making mascarpone cheese from scratch. The final result was absolutely delicious, but I felt a little guilty eating so much of it myself…

Voila! A little overcooked, but still delightful.

February Can Jam: Carrot Relish

2010-02-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

I must say, when the February Can Jam feature ingredient turned out to be carrots, I was not excited. I am no carrot enthusiast. I do love a good, fresh springtime carrot from the farmer’s market, but those days are many weeks away. Inexperienced as I am in the ways of preserving, I still thought it was silly to go out of my way to can something out of season that I don’t like. But I did it anyway, in the name of education and condiments!

I considered pickled carrots, but aborted that idea after thinking about woody, wintertime carrots. Eventually, after getting a pickling book from the library, I settled on the idea of a relish.

Now, this was a silly idea too, as I’ve never been into relish. I made a hot pepper relish in the summer which was pretty good, but couldn’t name you another relish that I’d volunteer to sample. But I did it anyway.

I settled on carrot-onion relish, and the preliminary tasting yielded a pretty sweet, carrotty concoction. I’m going to let it sit the recommended 3 weeks and try again, and I will update you then.

Meanwhile, if you like the sound of it and want a jar (and you’re in town) let me know!

Carrot and Onion Relish
Adapted from The Complete Book of Pickling by Jennifer MacKenzie

8 cups shredded carrots
2 cups finely chopped onions
2 small yellow hot peppers, finely chopped (this is my only mod)
2 tbsp pickling salt
1 ¾ cups sugar
2 tsp celery seed
1 tsp dried thyme
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 cups cider vinegar
1 tbsp minced garlic

1. In a large non-reactive bowl, combine carrots, onions, peppers, and salt. Cover and let stand at a cool room temperature for 2 hours.
2. Meanwhile, prepare canner, jars and lids.
3. In a colander lined with cheesecloth, working in batches, drain vegetables and rinse well. Drain again and squeeze out excess liquid. Set aside in colander to continue draining.
4. In a large pot, combine sugar, celery seeds, thyme, pepper and veingar. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often until sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to medium-high and add drained vegetables and garlic; return to a boil, stirring often. Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring often, for about 15 minutes or until vegetables are translucent and mixture is slightly thickened.
5. Ladle hot relish into jars, leaving ½ inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace as necessary by adding hot relish. Wipe rim and place hot lid disc on jar. Screw band down until fingertip tight.
6. Place jars in canner and return to a boil. Process for 10 minutes (add 10 minutes for Calgary). Turn off heat and remove canner lid. Let jars stand in water for 5 minutes. Transfer jars to a towel-lined surface and let stand for 24 hours.

Daring Cooks February: Mezze!

2010-02-19T09:13:00.001-07:00

Along with the alternating spring-like and wintry weather, February also brings Reading Week. For some university students, this means a week off to gallavant somewhere hot and humid. But for others, it's used as its name implies: a week to catch up on readings and assignments.

For me, it meant doing some more creative cooking than I have for the past few weeks. Last week, I did a one-week intensive cleanse much like the one I did a year ago. There was a lot of grumbling out of me, and more of the same kinds of refusals that I used last time – no horrible alkaline soup, for example. And I meant to blog about it, I really did! But the week before Reading Week was packed with newspaper production and midterms and lugging around a bajillion-pound broadcasting camera.

But I promise you (eep!) I am back on the Glorious Kitchen Unicorn of Blogginess. I have ideas that will probably, at some point, come to fruition, but I dare not mention them yet.

If you're on a reading break too, I implore you to make a little hummus. And if you have the fortitude, make some pita too. Yum.

The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

I cooked this up on Feb. 14, the day the challenge was due to be posted to my blog. I was down to the wire around 3 p.m. when I got home from an improv comedy class (horror of horrors! But it was kind of fun and I survived) and had an hour to get the house together before a friend arrived for sparkling wine and two kinds of cheese pie.

I make hummus with some regularity, but my past couple of batches have been kind of lumpy and...just wrong. But this recipe turned out just right. I think I might use a little more garlic in the future, but even as-is, it might be my new recipe. I halved the batch and added a couple of chipotle peppers with adobo sauce for a spicy smoky version.

I made a simple guacamole when I fixed myself a hummus snack. Just mash half an avocado with some lime juice and a bit of salt.

Hummus – Recipe adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
Prep Time: Hummus can be made in about 15 minutes once the beans are cooked. If you’re using dried beans you need to soak them overnight and then cook them the next day which takes about 90 minutes.

1.5 cups dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight (or substitute well drained canned chickpeas and omit the cooking) (10 ounces/301 grams)
2-2.5 lemons, juiced (3 ounces/89ml) *I didn't have fresh lemons so I used 4 tbsp of lemon juice.
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
a big pinch of salt
4 tablespoons tahini (sesame paste) OR use peanut butter or any other nut butter—feel free to experiment) (1.5 ounces/45 grams) *Seriously, use tahini though. At my grocery stores it's either with the peanut butter or the in the "health" food area with almond butter etc.
additional flavorings (optional) I would use about 1/3 cup or a few ounces to start, and add more to taste
Directions:

Drain and boil the soaked chickpeas in fresh water for about 1 ½ hours, or until tender. Drain, but reserve the cooking liquid.
Puree the beans in a food processor (or you can use a potato masher) adding the cooking water as needed until you have a smooth paste.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

The pitas were delicious too, and a little time-consuming, but not very difficult. My friend had the brilliant idea to put cheese into it before baking: amazing! I rolled out a couple pieces of dough, put a handful of grated old cheddar in the middle, then wrapped the bundle up and rolled it out again. It only took a couple of minutes to cook and it was one of the best – nay, THE best – cheese pitas I've ever had. I think I will try additional fillings next time.

Not all my pitas puffed up as they were supposed to, and I think they would have browned more nicely if I had used a pizza stone instead of baking sheets, but they were all fabulous.

I put together a little tasting platter, all for me! It included one pita, some hummus, guacamole and a few olives.

Pita Bread – Recipe adapted from Flatbreads & Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Prep time: 20 minutes to make, 90 minutes to rise and about 45 minutes to cook

2 teaspoons regular dry yeast (.43 ounces/12.1 grams)
2.5 cups lukewarm water (21 ounces/591 grams)
5-6 cups all-purpose flour (may use a combination of 50% whole wheat and 50% all-purpose, or a combination of alternative flours for gluten free pita) (17.5 -21 ounces/497-596 grams)
1 tablespoon table salt (.50 ounces/15 grams)
2 tablespoons olive oil (.95 ounces/29 ml)
Directions:

In a large bread bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water. Stir to dissolve. Stir in 3 cups flour, a cup at a time, and then stir 100 times, about 1 minute, in the same direction to activate the gluten. Let this sponge rest for at least 10 minutes, or as long as 2 hours.
Sprinkle the salt over the sponge and stir in the olive oil. Mix well. Add more flour, a cup at a time, until the dough is too stiff to stir. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 to 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Rinse out the bowl, dry, and lightly oil. Return the dough to the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until at least doubled in size, approximately 1 1/2 hours.
Place a pizza stone, or two small baking sheets, on the bottom rack of your oven, leaving a 1-inch gap all around between the stone or sheets and the oven walls to allow heat to circulate. Preheat the oven to 450F (230C). *I stacked 2 crappy baking sheets on top of one another.
Gently punch down the dough. Divide the dough in half, and then set half aside, covered, while you work with the rest. Divide the other half into 8 equal pieces and flatten each piece with lightly floured hands. Roll out each piece to a circle 8 to 9 inches in diameter and less than 1/4 inch thick. Keep the rolled-out breads covered until ready to bake, but do not stack.
Place 2 breads, or more if your oven is large enough, on the stone or baking sheets, and bake for 2 to 3 minutes, or until each bread has gone into a full balloon. If for some reason your bread doesn't puff up, don't worry it should still taste delicious. Wrap the baked breads together in a large kitchen towel to keep them warm and soft while you bake the remaining rolled-out breads. Then repeat with the rest of the dough.

January Can Jam: Honey Lemon Marmalade

2010-01-22T10:03:00.002-07:00

This is a quickie version of a post I hope to update properly tomorrow.

The Can Jam has begun! Short version: Can a monthly ingredient, from now until December. Long version: here at Tigress in a Jam.

I made Buckwheat Honey & Lemon Marmalade adapted from Food In Jars, and combined with the methodology in the Joy of Cooking.

Okay, so I didn’t read the direction exactly right, but things still set up beautifully, so I think it’s a-okay!

Honey-Lemon Marmalade
9 organic lemons
1 cup buckwheat honey
2.5 cups white sugar
1 package no sugar needed fruit pectin
1.5 cup water

Put lemons in freezer for 5 to 10 minutes prior to slicing with a sharp knife.
For each lemon: cut off just enough of each end to reach the flesh of the fruit. Halve length-wise. Slice into strips about 5-7 mm wide: you will have a bunch of semi-circle shapes. Chop the strips into small square-ish chunks of peel+flesh, place into medium-sized bowl and repeat with the rest of the lemons. Remove seeds as necessary and reserve.
Add enough water to lemon bowl to cover them. Pay attention to how much water you add. I added about ¾ cup, so added another ¾ cup during cooking. Cover and place in fridge for 6 hours or overnight to soften the peel.
Next day: simmer the fruit in a medium saucepan with the rest of the water until the peel is tender and can be broken with a wooden spoon against the side of the pot.
When peel is tender, add the honey and 1.5 cups of the sugar. Wrap reserved lemon seeds in cheesecloth and toss it in the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. *Once sugar and honey are both incorporated, taste your marmalade to see if it is sweet enough. Add sugar until it makes you smile..
Add pectin and let boil gently for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and fill sterilized jars. Process for 10 minutes at sea level (I did 20 minutes here in Calgary at 3300 ft).
Remove from canner and let sit overnight to allow pectin to fully activate.

This made about 2 pints.

Marmalade and Hoar Frost

I don't even know if I've ever had marmalade before this. Maybe only from a little half-ounce packet at Nellie's (ugh). And even though it turned out firmer than what would be optimal, it is quite delicious, and a good balance between bitter and sweet.

My in-use jar of marmalade.

Daring Cooks January: Tofu Satay

2010-01-19T16:00:00.001-07:00

The January 2010 DC challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day.

Considering how much writing and how much cooking I have done in the past few weeks, it’s really quite surprising that the two haven’t overlapped until now.

I apologize if you’ve been visiting my page, wondering what’s happened. I apologize that I promised to post a delicious vegan biscotti recipe around Christmas time, but still haven’t (it’s coming, I swear!)

But there is tasty stuff to come…

Like this tofu satay that I made for January’s Daring Cooks! (Recipe here: http://thedaringkitchen.com/recipe/satay)

The photos are a bit rough, I was in a hurry, or hungry or something. I actually made this two weeks ago, so it’s a bit fuzzy.

Directions:
First, I pressed the water out of half a block of extra-firm tofu, for about an hour. Then I sliced it into four 1-cm thick strips and marinated them for another hour.

Marinade:
1/2 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 T ginger root, chopped (optional) (2 cm cubed)
2 T lemon juice (1 oz or 30 mls)
1 T soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 tsp ground coriander (5 mls)
1 tsp ground cumin (5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric (2-2.5 mls)
2 T vegetable oil (or peanut or olive oil) (30 mls)

I didn’t have coriander, but then borrowed some from my mum, and I am so glad I did. Coriander is amazing. Eat some!

While the tofu is marinating, make the amazing peanut sauce.

Peanut Sauce:
3/4 cup coconut milk (6 oz or 180 mls)
4 Tbsp peanut butter (2 oz or 60 mls)
1 Tbsp lemon juice (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 Tbsp soy sauce (0.5 oz or 15 mls)
1 tsp brown sugar (5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground cumin (2.5 mls)
1/2 tsp ground coriander (2.5 mls)
1-2 dried red chilies, chopped (keep the seeds for heat)

1. Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Add soy sauce and lemon, mix well.
2. Over low heat, combine coconut milk, peanut butter and your soy-lemon-seasoning mix. Mix well, stir often.
3. All you’re doing is melting the peanut butter, so make your peanut sauce after you’ve made everything else in your meal, or make ahead of time and reheat.

Now, mine turned out a little gelatinous, because I had to make some adjustments. I didn’t have coconut milk so I used some coconut juice that has been in my pantry for a year or so, and added a paste of arrowroot powder and water to thicken it up a bit. It was delicious anyway, just not very pretty.

After the tofu has marinated for at least 30 minutes, broil it until it’s golden brown and starting to darken at the edges.

Make a few servings of basmati rice. I added half a bouillon cube to the rice for a little extra flavour.

Good meal overall, and I’d definitely do it again.

Daring Bakers December: Gingerbread House

2009-12-27T10:57:00.001-07:00

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

When I took on the December challenge, I knew I wouldn’t be eating the final product. I mean really: rock-hard icing covered with cheap, gelatin-laden candies atop rigid, bland cookies? Not my idea of a delicious dessert. Having said that, it was mostly really fun to assemble the house and decorate it with our ridiculous candy artwork. But if Brian hadn’t been there with me, I might have given up. After sitting in the fridge for a day, the dough was rock hard and yet so dry that it was crumbling. Brian hammered it into submission, glued it together with some water, and rolled it out for me. In the meantime, I made a template based on this one.

The recipe was cheap to make, so I would consider making it again next year, but with more water! The recipe that was given for royal icing was suspicious to me. I made two batches: the first we used the posted icing recipe and used it for decorating, for the second I followed the Joy of Cooking and we used that one to glue the walls and roof.

Photos here are a combination of mine and Brian's, before and after.

Letting the icing dry before assembling the house.

The front of the house, decorated by me.

The back of the house...it's supposed to be Santa, and a little heart on the side of the house. Brian designed this half.

Here is the recipe that I used (from the Daring Baker's challenge)

Scandinavian Gingerbread (Pepparkakstuga)
from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas
1 cup butter, room temperature [226g]
1 cup brown sugar, well packed [220g]
2 tablespoons cinnamon
4 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ cup boiling water
5 cups all-purpose flour [875g]
1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until blended. Add the cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix the baking soda with the boiling water and add to the dough along with the flour. Mix to make a stiff dough. If necessary add more water, a tablespoon at a time. Chill 2 hours or overnight.
2. Cut patterns for the house, making patterns for the roof, front walls, gabled walls, chimney and door out of cardboard.
3. Roll the dough out on a large, ungreased baking sheet and place the patterns on the dough. Mark off the various pieces with a knife, but leave the pieces in place.
4. [I rolled out the dough on a floured bench, roughly 1/8 inch thick (which allows for fact that the dough puffs a little when baked), cut required shapes and transferred these to the baking sheet. Any scraps I saved and rerolled at the end.]
5. Preheat the oven to 375'F (190'C). Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until the cookie dough feels firm. After baking, again place the pattern on top of the gingerbread and trim the shapes, cutting the edges with a straight-edged knife. Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Make some Butterscotch in 7 minutes

2009-12-16T23:15:00.001-07:00

"Caramel is simply sugar cooked to the point where it melts and then beings to burn. Old cookbooks refer to it, appropriately enough, as burnt sugar. Butterscotch is similar, except that butter is added to the sugar as it caramelizes, resulting in the characteristic deep, nutty taste." - The Joy of Cooking 'About caramel and butterscotch sauces'

I am not a frosting kind of a girl. Nor am I a girl who slathers sugar-saturated peanut(ish) spread on toast in the mornings. I am, however, willing to experiment, and to trust those who ply me with delicious photos of amazing sauces that I eat less than once a year. So when I read the Smitten Kitchen recipe for Butterscotch sauce, I was so on it.

Pardon the soft-focus, warm photos, please. My flash died and I am saving our last batteries for the upcoming holiday festivities. As I was saying earlier, I am not a frequent consumer of candy-like sauces. When I made this butterscotch I didn't really know what I wanted to accomplish flavour-wise, and I didn't actually have anything to drizzle it over.

But it was so easy, and so unintimidating and I already had everything in my fridge. I've started keeping heavy cream on hand, because it can be so easily turned into delicious things. The little carton in my fridge was best before Dec. 11, but those are just guidelines. And they're for suckers.

There is a just a bit of whisking involved, to mix up the salt, the sugar and the butter. Then you boil it "gently" for five minutes, remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Then you're supposed to add additional salt and vanilla to taste.

But I don't really have a taste-memory of sublime butterscotch, so I just tasted it, felt blissful, and scurried around for a clean jar to keep it in. So I could put it under my pillow and dream about it...

As I start to package up homemade Christmas gift-goodies, I am understanding the importance of keeping cute, functional and clean jars around. This one is a pesto jar. I would love to share some of my gift ideas...but some recipients might just read this, and I love surprising people :) I will tell you that I am going to be doing some canning this week, and it's going to be epic...

This is completely unrelated, but is anyone out there a CBC 2 fan? I'm listening to the Signal right now, and it's kind of perfect. Hard to beat Rich Terfry/Buck 65's show (as he's been my favourite music making man since 2003), but this is a very, very close companion to that spot. Do yourself a favour and tune in sometime.

Bread you should make if you've never made bread

2009-12-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

If you follow me on Twitter you may have been taunted a month or two back when I was baking loaf after loaf of bread. Well, I'm finally ready to do a bread post!

In this photo is a delicious loaf of English Muffin toasting bread (recipe from King Arthur Flour). It's really easy, really quick and ridiculous delicious. Now, mine didn't turn out esthetically great because I used the wrong size loaf pan, but it was a hell of a lot better than when I tried to make the Joy of Cooking's White Bread...

That was the second, slightly better loaf after an utter failure the first time. The problem was that I was short a whole cup of water. At that time I was using a copy of Joy from the library, and it was an earlier version of the 2006 edition, where they misprinted the recipe for White Bread.

I've baked the English Muffin Toasting Bread four or five times now and it's been wonderful every time, both when I've used milk in the recipe and when I substituted soy milk. The best part is that it is so very quick to make compared to the more complicated multiple-day recipes I was making before discovering this delight.

I guess this is something of a review/gush-fest, as opposed to a "this is how you cook this" post. But seriously, bake this bread. It crisps up perfectly and the cornmeal on the side makes for an extra delightful crunch.

Mmm... If it wasn't 10:30 I would be getting up to bake this right now. Actually I am rather weighed down with baking project for gifting and holiday snacking, which would be just wonderful if I didn't also have an exam to study for. But I'm balancing alright, and it will all be worth it when I get tucked into my food coma on the night of Dec. 25.

Squat and flat, but we still love it.

Daring Cooks December: Stuff en croute

2009-12-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Yes! I'm still here, still cooking, still eating. I promise to get back on the update wagon immediately. No more 20 days hiatuses.

Well, December's challenge came at a time when I was feeling very frugal and very busy. Adding to that, my first read-through of the challenge made me think that us vegetarians got to make an inferior version of the challenge recipe that was, in my opinion, neither challenging nor exciting. So, I made the recipe within a week of it being revealed, and didn't think about it again until now.

I wish I'd looked back at it, because then I would have realized that I could have done so much more with this recipe, and cranked it up, Vegedible style! In fact, maybe I will do that once I get brave enough to go outside again in this -30 C weather...

Anyhow, here's my results:

The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

I used biscuit dough from the biscuits that I was making earlier in the evening. I realize now that one of the main parts of this recipe was to use pastry of some sort...but I also knew that the challenge hostess said we could just buy some puff pastry, so I thought it would be alright to use biscuit dough.

I was following this recipe, which was provided as a vegetarian alternative, sans chicken. But, as I said earlier, I was feeling frugal (AKA I was broke!) and decided to just use what we already had in the fridge. This means that we were short on spinach, and short on mushrooms, and had no cheese of any kind. I also didn't use the eggwash on top because Bri doesn't do eggs. I know, I really should have taken another stab at it (maybe today!) when I had a bigger budget. Oh well!

So, as could be expected, the spinach cooked down and the dough baked upwards, so we were left with a big gaping hole in the middle. On the bright side, this meant lots of room to pour in the fantastic gravy we made!

Then I ate it like a taco.

I'm open to taking another stab at it with proper pastry and more stuffing, because I do love pastry and stuffing.

I haven't decided what to make for the vegetarian entrée at Christmas dinner so maybe that will come to me through future experiments. Suggestions are welcome!

Daring Bakers November: Cannoli

2009-11-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

In preparation for this month's challenge, I went to Lina's Italian Market and tried one of their Sicilian Cannolo.

Mmm, it was scrumptious! The pastry shell was dense, slightly sweet and flaky all at once, and the sweet ricotta filling had a kick (brandy?) that offset the richness. Somehow I was able to eat the whole thing. Then, I embarked on my own cannoli journey...

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

I made the dough with cheap red wine instead of sweet marsala cooking wine, which I couldn't find. The dough is pinkish thanks to the wine, and I think that is part of the reason they were far more tender than they're supposed to be.

I used a cup to cut out circles, and then ran them through the pasta maker again to make them into ovals.

The dough, wrapped around metal cannoli forms. The recipe said to use egg white to seal, but I used soy milk and it worked perfectly.

The first cannolo frying...

This one popped off the cannoli form, I think because I only sealed it with water.

Cooling the forms so I can remove them from the shells.

Finished cookin'!

Lovely blistering of the pastry.

A beater from the filling-making process. I thought I took photos of the ricotta that I made from scratch but I guess not. It was wonderful, though! I combined ricotta with sugar, cinnamon, amaretto, and chocolate chips.

I meant to make a nice little finale photo out of the finished product. But I got so frustrated using my piping bag that I just took a shot and ate one of 'em. The chocolate chips I used were too big to fit through the tip of the bag and a huge mess ensued. Sigh...

I also fried up all the dough scraps and dusted them with icing sugar, mmm.

Sushi Rice: Fail!

2009-11-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

Well, I was not happy with how this challenge turned out for me. The problem was the rice: it was too dry, and did have enough seasoning.

I believe I did everything correctly, but the rice is SO important and it turned out poorly. I don't do the rice soak when I usually make sushi because everytime I've tried, it's too dry and just not good. I'm guessing it's due to Calgary's dry climate, but there was nothing in the challenge about that so too bad for me!

The challenge included making the rice, rolling a dragon roll, spiral/decorative rolls and nigiri. Most of them look pretty good, but yuck. Bri liked them though, and it's not as if they were inedible, just a pain in the ass because it took about 3 hours to make it.

These ones were a bit ridiculous. Before I cut the roll into pieces, the whole thing was the size of a sub sandwich. And not one on squishy bread either, the kind on a big baguette that you can't even fit in your mouth. Not my kind of sushi unfortunately.

Oh well, I will feed my sushi craving properly another time!

Hashing it out, loafing around

2009-11-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Seriously, you should make this. Try it!

Veggie Loaf takes over the world! With her sidekick corn & edamame salad!

This recipe is made easier with a food processor and a shredding attachment, but it can be done with a regular box grater as well. The ingredients are pretty versatile, so use what you have on hand for seasonings. While I recommend that you pick up some nutritional yeast, I can understand if you're hesitant, or if you just can't find it where you live (Calgarians may not complain, I found nooch at Superstore last week! Although it doesn't have B12 in it, strangely). You can leave it out and substitute a bit of vegetable bouillon powder, or maybe some dry soup mix, or a tablespoon of miso, just be aware of how much sodium you add. Enjoy!

Ready for the oven.

The Thrifty Vegan's Mouthwatering Hash Brown Loaf

1 largish onion (should be about 2 cups once shredded)
3-4 medium russet potatoes (should be about 4 cups once shredded)
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup spelt flour (can substitute with regular, whole wheat or rice flour)
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or rice vinegar
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp dried basil
¼ tsp paprika
¼ tsp thyme
black pepper to your tastes

Shred onion in food processor or with box grater (be careful!). Transfer to large bowl. You will cry, be prepared.
Shred potatoes, squeeze dry in cheesecloth or do the best you can with a colander. Transfer to same big bowl of onions. (NB: Don't let the potatoes sit too long or they will turn black. That won't affect the taste, but it won't look very nice. If you have to leave them for awhile–more than a couple minutes–cover the potatoes with water).
Add rest of ingredients, plus anything else you might like to spice things up with. In fact, after you’ve added the vinegar, you can be pretty creative with the spices.
Mix thoroughly with a spoon, or your clean, flu-free hands, until the potato shreds are clearly covered with delicious flavour.
Transfer mixture to lightly oiled or non-stick loaf pan. (NB: If you don’t have one, try baking it in a pie dish, or individual lunch-sized ones in muffin tins. Just make sure you adjust the cooking time accordingly–that means don’t cook it as long if it’s in a smaller container).
Bake at 375 F for 1 hour.
Serve with steamed veggies and nutritional yeast gravy or miso gravy.

Lovely ridges from the bottom of the ungreased pan.

A Week of Chow in Review

2009-11-10T22:01:00.001-07:00

The past week’s been a little bit crazy. Friday before last was Journal production. Although it went more smoothly than the October edition, I still stuck around for about 11 hours straight. The new issue looks great, but there’s still learning to be done.

The next day I got a call from my mum inviting me on a grocery trip to Superstore. She actually called me while I was working on my Menu for the Week! Yes, you heard right, I made a menu last week! I made one this week too… My greatest tip is to look through your cookbooks, or your favourite blogs for recipes that you can try. This makes it easy to know what ingredients you will need, plus takes the pressure off of needing to invent anything. I already feel more enlightened thanks to the new recipes from this week.

Another strategy I tried out was preparing ahead for more prep-heavy meals. I baked potatoes for soup ahead of time, and soaked chickpeas overnight to get a better bang for my buck than canned beans.

So I tagged along to ol’ Superstore and, staying within my $30/person food budget, picked up the necessary ingredients for the week’s meals. Here’s what we ate last week, and a bit more of what I learned.

Sunday
Vegan Hash Brown Loaf (delicious, I promise to share the recipe) with Nutritional Yeast Cheezy Sauce (from the Veganomicon) and steamed bok choy with lemon-olive oil dressing.

This loaf was a result of my third try at recreating Kootenay Kitchen’s “Végé Pâté.” The real thing is a delicious spread made from potatoes, onions, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast and plenty of delicious spices. It’s great on sandwiches, crackers or straight up, but at $5+ for a little 130-gram package, it’s not budget friendly. I looked at the “how it’s made” photos on their website to get some clue as to how to recreate the little loaf. The only thing I really gleaned is that I should shred the potatoes and onions. I used the shredding disk on my food processor, and I got lots of long strings of raw potato (I’ve tried using boiled potato and ended up with a disappointing loaf of mashed potato).

It’s the long, crispy strings that make this dish reminiscent of hash browns. I think I might further process the shredded potato next time to get closer to the texture of the Pâté that I’m looking for, but the results this time were delicious anyway.

Oh! Also, I bought a silicon loaf pan at Superstore for $6. It worked great for this dish, highly recommended!

(PS: I made this again this Monday, but pretty much stuck to the same recipe: awesome again. Recipe to follow…)

Monday
Mushroom & Asparagus Risotto

Chef Ramsey would not approve, but really, does he ever?

Now, you may be thinking that this is a weird dish to make on a budget. Asparagus risotto in November? But the asparagus was the same price as broccoli (Only $1.88/lb!) when I was at Superstore, so I couldn’t help it. I was going to use crimini mushrooms, but they were not available bulk so I just grabbed the ol’ white button mushrooms. I was sorely tempted by the cello-packs of mixed wild mushrooms, but then I saw a little bug crawling around inside the package. Ick…

Tuesday
Twice-baked Potatoes with feta & broccoli; chickpea & roasted red pepper “pâté;” steamed asparagus

I didn’t grow up with twice-baked potatoes. Once in a while we would have those ones from M&M Meat Shop, but I realize now that they’re nothing like the real thing. I’ll post a recipe for ‘em soon, because they’re so freaking easy, and delicious. The version I make now sprouted from a recipe that I used when I was on that crazy cleanse back in the winter. That version used Roquefort and Manchego (from sheep’s milk) cheeses. The bacteria used to make Roquefort are a type of penicillin (called (Penicillium roqueforti). It was in the cleanse recipe primarily because it aids in digestion, but also because the sharp flavour means you don’t have to use a lot to add a kick to the potato.

The chickpea-pepper side-dish is sort of like hummus, but with more texture, and a few more interesting ingredients. I added it to this meal because I always feel like the meal lacks protein.

Wednesday
Baked Potato & Kale Soup with crispy cornmeal-potato croutons (Recipes from the Veganomicon)

Brian made this amazing soup on Wednesday, which turns out to be pretty chilly. It was hearty and comforting. The only downside was the baked-potato croutons, which were total tater overkill. The soup came together pretty easily because I baked the potatoes the night before with that meal’s potatoes. Clever, eh?

Thursday
Popeye Pasta (recipe from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan)

Bri was going to make this one too, but he was out with a 24-hour bug and couldn’t do much other than nap and look adorable. Luckily, it was a super easy recipe. It was tomato sauce almost from scratch–used canned crushed tomatoes–plus frozen spinach.

It was nothing to rave about, but it was good sauce, and encouraged me to make some more pasta sauces from scratch.

Friday
Chickpea patties and “Thick n Rich” miso gravy (from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan), with roasted yam fries

Oh man, this was a good one. The chickpea patties were made from: chickpeas, brown rice, onions, celery, oatmeal and spices. The recipe said it would make 4 servings, but it probably made at least 6, and I was short one cup of rice. We crammed some of the leftovers into pitas for lunch for the next few days. Will definitely be making these again, and experiment to make the recipe my own.

Even though I own two of them, I haven’t been using Dreena Burton’s vegan cookbooks much recently because I was turned off by how often she used fennel bulbs in recipes. Really, she doesn’t use it all that much. Unfortunately, the last/first time I ever cooked fennel (it wasn’t even her recipe) I did a crappy job and I haven’t wanted to try again since.

That being said, this gravy was probably the best ever. Brian raved about it immediately, and proclaimed it way better than our beloved nutritional yeast gravy. This Thick N Rich Gravy is a bit like The Naam’s bottled miso gravy, but with a bit more…depth, and a more seductive tang.

Seriously, that recipe alone is worth the cost of the book! But if you can’t bring yourself to buy it, I might end up posting my own hybrid version of it in the upcoming weeks, so don’t worry.

On yam fries: ah, so good. Usually my fries stick to the tin foil, but I used a little extra oil and actually made sure each individual fry was coated in it. So very good!

Just a Tease

2009-11-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

I'm going out of town this weekend so I thought I'd leave you with a reason to come back to me after these weeks without posts...

Budget stuff! Hallelujah, right? Last weekend I wrote up a week-long menu, shopped for it, and then Bri and I cooked it together. Here are some things you can expect to hear about on Sunday or Monday...

Vegan Hash Brown Loaf (delicious, I promise to share the recipe) with Nutritional Yeast Cheezy Sauce (from the Veganomicon) and steamed bok choy with lemon-olive oil dressing.

Mushroom & Asparagus Risotto

Twice-baked Potatoes with feta & broccoli, chickpea & roasted red pepper “pâté,” and steamed asparagus

Baked Potato & Kale Soup (Recipe from the Veganomicon)

Popeye Pasta (recipe from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan)

Chickpea patties and miso gravy (both amazing and both from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan), with roasted yam fries and steamed bok choy

Stay tuned...

What've I missed?

2009-11-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well this past week has been a doozy. Projects, applications, newspaper production, job hunting. Even though I pushed blogging to the side, I certainly didn't push cooking or baking to the side.

Actually the past few weeks I haven't been very bloggy, have I? I apologize. To help fill in the gaps between posts, follow me on Twitter! On Twitter I've posted snippets of my baking adventures that I don't have the energy to write in detail here yet.

Here's a bit of what's been going on:

Recipe here. Not super delicious, a bit bland, but the crumb was right I think. I'll try again with a sourdough started at some point.

My first tomato soup! Recipe here. Pretty good, although I used the whole roma tomatoes that we canned a few months ago and I think they were a bit overripe, because the soup was a little too tart.

My new KitchenAid Mixer! Got it from Costco online, hence the "Professional HD" name that you won't find on the KA website. Very happy with it so far!

Wonderful enchiladas with Safeway enchilada sauce, homemade flour tortillas and some awesome peppercorn-laden cheese.

Ciabatta! I needed my mixer to make this (but I swear that's not the only reason I bought the mixer...) because the dough is about the consistency of muffin mix (ie very moist). You don't even use the dough hook, just the beater attachment. This is my most recent bread.

Made with the leftover Grasshopper keg from my birthday. I'll definitely be making these again. Awesome sandwiches.

Daring Bakers October: French Macarons

2009-10-28T09:07:00.001-06:00

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Yum! Almost-pink macarons with almost-cinnamon plum-flavoured chocolate ganache

When this recipe was revealed a month ago, I had no idea what a macaron really was, other than a fancy cookie that seemed to be pervading the blogs I usually browse. I can't think of anything else I've cooked or baked in the past where I had no idea what the outcome was supposed to taste or feel like.

That being said, it was a pretty successful cookie-making after all! The almond-meringue base was chewy, sweet and nutty, and the chocolate ganache was smooth and not overly sweet.

Next time, I will draw circles to pipe the batter into. It didn't occur to me until later that if I was going to sandwich the cookies together with a filling, they'd better be the same size...and shape. The cookies are in the drying stage here, prior to baking. This helps form a shell on the outside, and contribute to the elusive "feet" ... I think.

Macarons, as I learned, are notoriously difficult to perfect because there are so many variables. I guess that is true in most baking, but I think it's exacerbated in macarons because of all the finicky steps.

My mess of a make-shift piping bag. Hoping to have a proper bag by next time, I like this piping thing!

The challenge definitely pushed me beyond my comfort zone. In the process of making my first macarons, I made my first: meringue (by hand, took almost 20 minutes), almond flour, and ganache. As well, I piped for the first time since I got to sneak behind the scenes at Dairy Queen back in high school.

Little feet! They're a bit flatter than they're supposed to be, but they've got little teeny feet, so that's a start. They stuck to the parchment so I stuck them in the freezer for a while to cool off.

I had intended to try making the cookies again before the reveal date, partly because there was another method I wanted to try out, and partly because my flash was dead. I haven't yet, but I think I want this cookie in my arsenal!

You can see the feet a bit better this time. I think the thinness was at least partly due to my meringue. I got tired after 15 minutes of mixing by hand, and at that point I realized that I might already have the required stiff peaks. In retrospect I don't think I did.

Snacking on the cheap

2009-10-26T19:58:00.002-06:00

I really do like potato chips: salty and crispy Lays, crunchy and vinegary Miss Vickies, home-baked and toothsome sweet potato chips. Satisfying and indulgent for my savoury tastebuds – and they tend to bully the sweet-loving ‘buds into submission.

Popcorn as modeled by Bri.

However, as you’re probably aware, chips are just not particularly nutritional, nor particularly cheap. And homemade ones take a lot of effort, even if you have a fancy mandolin to slice ‘em them tantalizingly thin.

Homemade popcorn, on the other hand, is cheap. Compare a $3.50 bag of chips, or a $6 box of microwavable, chemical-laden corn to a simple $2-$3 bag of unadulterated, whole-grain popping corn! Plus, some places (Superstore) sell it in bulk, which is sometimes even cheaper. It shows up on Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating because it’s high in fibre and iron, low in calories and there’s no sodium or sugar at all…until you spice it up!

Here’s my take on stove-top popcorn.

Hot and Tasty Popcorn
Makes 2 perfectly generous servings

Generous 1/3 cup popcorn kernels
3 tbsp canola or other vegetable oil
1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast
¼ - ½ tsp lemon pepper seasoning
¼ - ½ tsp paprika, or cayenne if you like it hot

Set a 2-quart (1.89 L) lidded pot on stove. Add oil and turn heat to med-high. Immediately add popcorn and shake to distribute the kernels across the bottom of pan. Cover lid and gently shake back and forth to roll the kernels in the oil. Don’t lift the lid of the pot as you will let the heat out which could result in your popcorn burning before it can pop, or never getting hot enough to pop. Don't let the pan or oil heat up before adding the popcorn, or you will just burn stuff. I've been there. Repeatedly.
Stop shaking the pot for a couple of minutes, until the popping starts. Then, continue to gently shake the pot, with your hand on the lid if necessary. If you were a bit generous with the popcorn, or if you used a smaller pot, then you may need to dump some of the popcorn into the serving bowl so it doesn’t topple all over the stove.
Dump about half of the popped popcorn into your large bowl. Sprinkle half of the nutritional yeast on top, and repeat with the lemon pepper and paprika or cayenne. Shake your bowl or use a spoon to distribute the seasonings further. Pour the rest of the popped popcorn to fill bowl, and repeat the seasoning process.

Enjoy!

Of course, you can skip the nooch if you don’t have any, and just use whatever seasonings you’ve got. Other options from the spice cabinet include: curry powder, mustard powder, dill weed, pepper, sea salt, Tabasco sauce (makes it a bit soggy though).

The Grocery Bill

2009-10-20T21:44:00.000-06:00

I meant to post this nearly a week ago, but like the saying goes, time makes fools of us all. So this is all about what I bought for groceries a week ago at Superstore.

…

~~Today~~ (Wednesday October 14) I did the week’s shopping. While I meant to be responsible about what I bought, I hadn’t taken the time to organize things as well as I should have. Ideally, I would have planned at least a general menu for the week instead of planning my meals as I walked down the aisles.

This resulted in a somewhat surprising bill at checkout. However, I took the following into consideration after lifting my jaw off the dirty grocery store floor:

Some of the purchases were toiletries, etc which should have a separate budget
Some of the purchases were kitchen tools (like parchment paper etc)
Plenty of the larger expenses were things that will last at least 4-6 weeks, and won’t need to be replenished on my next few trips
Brian’s back today! So most of the food cost will be split in half.

(click the read more link below to read on!)

I will share with you my intended list, and what I actually bought.

As you can see, I actually did stay on budget for food. I felt better about the list after breaking it down in my little chart here.

Combined with what I have in my pantry, here are some of the meals I concocted with this grocery list (and grocery list ingredients in brackets):

Cinnamon rolls (flour)
Beer bread (flour)
Tom Yum Soup - spicy thai (bok choy, onion, half jalapeno, garlic)
Twice-baked potatoes with caramelized onions & feta (onions, oil, side of steamed bok choy)
Shanghai noodle stir-fry (peanut butter, bok choy, oil, tofu)
Spicy Tofu Sandwich (tofu, aforementioned beer bread)
Regular ol’ pasta with an egg (1 egg)
Oatmeal (soymilk, banana)
Toast (peanut butter)
Chinese scallion pancakes

Let me know in the comments if there are any recipes that interest you and I’ll do my best to share them!

As you can see, the few ingredients I actually used went a long way. However, since I didn’t actually use up most of what I bought, I could have spent less money overall. I’ve been very aware of my expenditures since officially ending my $30 challenge, although today was deplorable ($2 on Starbucks drip coffee, $6 on highballs at the bar at school…hehe). Tomorrow we’ll have to get some more groceries, although I’m pretty sure we can get away with just picking up fresh vegetables.

I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with my progress so far. I would call myself a bit of a foodie; buying, cooking and eating my meals is a treat! It’s been good to cap my expenditures and still eat delicious, interesting and pretty nutritious meals. Stay tuned...

Day 7, eating on...well, less than $30/week

2009-10-14T21:33:00.000-06:00

Whoops! Left this one hanging for a while. My apologies to anyone who was following my progress, and thank you if you came back to check up on it!

Okay, so I don't actually remember what I ate on day 7... but I know I stayed on budget! I did indulge in a London Fog from the Starbucks at school, as it was a snowy day, which kicked my total food expenditures to a mere $14!

I think my success was based on having a good pantry, making and freezing the soup and chili, and of course those treats from my mum. Also, changing my point of view on leftovers was important. I have a bad habit of throwing the leftovers in the fridge and forgetting about, or ignoring them until they're rotten enough for me not to feel bad about throwing them out. It's honestly quite bizarre and I'm not sure where it started. There's less wasted food around here thanks to Brian, who almost compulsively eats all the leftovers as soon as possible (yet won't take a lunch to work with him unless I'm staring him down in the morning).

But now I've begun to get into the groove and I'm comfortable making soup, preparing at least part of my lunch the night before and using those leftovers for somethin'. My next goal is to plan the week's menu before doing the weekly grocery trip. We'll see when that comes to fruition...

Recipes for Day 6, eating on $30/week

2009-10-12T21:12:00.003-06:00

I was going to use Day 6’s post to share the contents of my pantry with you, in the hopes that you’d get something out of it, or at least find it interesting.

But seeing as I have an exam tomorrow, I feel like I need to put the effort into studying instead.

However I will share two recipes from today to attempt to make up for my poor time-management.

Today was mostly a day of leftovers, supplemented in part by ingenuity. I had my dad over for a Thanksgiving lunch and an hour beforehand I decided that I’d like to make some dressing, seeing as it’s completely delicious.

I brought up allrecipes.com and found a recipe that I figured I could work with. I halved the recipe and subbed at least half the ingredients for something else and I came up with a delicious recipe that I will be using again very soon.

Vegedible’s Any Day of the Year Dressing

1 loaf of slightly stale bread, torn or sliced into cubes
2 cups of hot water
1 tsp veggie bouillon
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
¼ tsp thyme
½ tsp rosemary
pepper to taste
½ cup fresh crimini mushrooms, quartered (optional)
¼ cup dried cranberries (optional)
½ cup chopped hazelnuts, pecans or walnuts (optional)

In a large bowl, combine bread cubes with thyme, rosemary, mushrooms, berries and nuts.
In a separate bowl or measuring cup, mix water with bouillon, nutritional yeast and Bragg’s. Once seasonings are dissolved, taste the stock and adjust as necessary.
Pour stock over seasoned bread cubes and make sure all the bread is thoroughly moistened using a spoon or your hands (more fun with your hands!)
Transfer sticky bread to a greased loaf pan (or you can try shaping it into a loaf and just wrapping it in greased foil). Bake for an hour at 350 F, checking after 45 minutes.

Note: If you’re making this recipe with less than a whole loaf (i.e. to use up the rest of a loaf) just adjust the cooking time at the end to make sure nothing burns.

I used the rest of the challah which, as you know, was getting pretty stale and it was a wise choice. Yum! I didn’t take a photo because a) it was pretty messy and b) it was so tempting to eat it immediately, which we did.

Forgot about this photo yesterday!

As I write this, I am actually making a pizza. I got a craving about an hour ago and again, brought up allrecipes.com to see if there was a reliable-looking recipe for quick pizza dough.

Indeed there was! And this is my adaptation of it, plus quickie toppings. This recipe is perfect in many ways: it is as delicious as you can make it: easy toppings that you might have on hand include cheese, olives, peppers (pickled!), spinach, and mushrooms. Plus, it takes as long as it would take you get a pizza delivered, at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, it's far better for you than those awful frozen ones. Yeah, read the nutritional information on those monstrosities. 45 per cent of my sodium in 1/8 of the pizza? No thanks! Plus, once you read my eventual post on stocking the pantry, you'll always have the dough ingredients on hand.

Vegedible’s Late-Night Pizza Craving Recipe
Makes 2 personal-size pizzas

For the Crust
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 cup warm water (not hot!)
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 tsp vital wheat gluten (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt

For the sauce
2 tbsp tomato paste
2-4 tbsp water
dried Italian herbs
pepper
hot sauce
dehydrated onion
dehydrated garlic

For the toppings
Whatever veggies and cheese is in your fridge :)

1. Preheat oven to 450 F.
2. Combine water, sugar and yeast and let sit until foamy, about 8 minutes.
3. Stir in flours, oil and salt until it’s difficult to stir, then knead with your hands for about 5 minutes)
4. Let rest for 5 minutes while you make your sauce.
5. Combine tomato paste, with half the water and your desired spices, adding more water until you achieve desired consistency.
6. Divide dough into two. Using your hands, start to shape one ball of dough into a circle, stretching at the edges (or you may roll with a rolling pin, or just spread out on a greased pan).
7. Place dough into greased pan of your choice. I chose a 9x9 pan with 2-inch sides. Create an raised edge if you like.
8. If you make a thicker crust, spread your sauce and then bake the crust for 5 minutes before putting the rest of your toppings on, so the bottom won’t be soggy before your toppings start to burn.
9. Spread the rest of your toppings, then pop into the oven for 15-20 minutes!

Of course, you don’t have to use whole wheat flour in that recipe, I just thought I would try to get a little extra fiber in this late night snack.

Breakfast

Cup o’ coffee
“holiday bread” of some sort. It was delicious! Many fruits in it. Was a treat from mum

Lunch

slice of mushroom pie, roasted sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and challah dressing
couple of bottles of Rickards Red

Dinner

chili

Snack

Pizza…heehee

Thankful for Day 5, eating on $30/week

2009-10-12T00:04:00.001-06:00

Over time, my family’s Thanksgiving meals have evolved from the old standby equation of turkey + stuffing + potatoes + gravy + something green.

There have been many years where can-shaped cranberry sauce trumped a homemade sauce (the catch with that is that once you make your own cranberry sauce you seriously can’t go backwards). And I remember one exciting year when mum barbecued a couple of turkey breasts – in what was probably pretty chilly October weather. My little brother has almost always been tasked with mashing the potatoes. One year – it may not have been a holiday – I remember making a big deal out of putting together the mashed potatoes, saying I didn’t know how to do it since Steele "always gets to do it."

Of course, the “Great Canadian Chowdown*” is a little different when one or more of your dinner guests doesn’t eat meat. I went vegetarian sometime in November 2007, and I was only going to try it out for a month, but, as you know, I stuck with it.

The first Christmas meals were tougher on other cooks than they were on me…I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m still holding grudges, but I guess I’m still a bit incredulous at some of the Meals That Forgot About Zoey. It could just be the haughty, holier-than-thou vegetarian in me who likes to get righteous about food, but I was grumpy at the time.

My first cranberry sauce! With half an apple, cinnamon and black pepper.

One such dinner was a gathering of friends from high school, hosted by two folks who were enrolled in a cooking program in town. The menu was something like this: tomato soup (with chicken stock), chicken, potatoes (can’t remember, but I seem to remember they put chicken stock in this too), buns, salad. Maybe they had made the chicken stock from scratch and were really proud of it, hence using it in everything?

My mum’s dinner was great, I assume, although I don’t remember the specifics. In our younger years, mum had been cooking at least slightly different meals for my bro, so along with all of her other kitchen magic, she was well-equipped to make some edits to dinner.

Today's veggie potpies. The big one with crimini mushrooms and potatoes, the little one for the picky bro with potatoes and jalapeno.

Another less-satisfying turkey-less feast was a second family dinner where my beloved stuffing was all cooked inside the bird, and I think I was picky about the veg – maybe it was green beans or something. So I nibbled on potatoes and bread and felt left out. Boo hoo.

Perhaps the problem was that I was bewildered at the difference between a meal with and without a single ingredient. As I’ve learned more about vegetarian food, eating seasonally and cooking in general, it turns out that Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to show off the versatility and comfort to be found in vegetarian and vegan food!

Just enjoying my 50 mm lens. This is thyme, pepper and salt for the pastry crust.

This year I am being a bit ambitious given my budget. I imagine that for many families, holiday dinners are a time to splurge a little bit. I figured that since I'm not cooking the whole thing myself anyway, I could stick to my budget, and maybe get a few things from my mum as needed.

*took that one from the Globe & Mail

Breakfast

cup of Earl Grey
toasted challah (it's staling!) with peach jam

Lunch

soup from the freezer: apple-squash that I didn't really like when I made it because it was so sweet. But today I mixed in the rest of that brown rice from earlier in the week and a tablespoon of cream cheese and it was quite lovely

Dinner

Crimini Mushroom Pot Pie with pepper-thyme pastry
Roasted Sweet Potatoes with cinnamon and paprika
Apple cinnamon-spiked Cranberry Sauce
mashed potatoes, dressing, steamed broccoli, steamed Brussels sprouts (from mum's)
chocolate-ginger ice cream adapted from the Veganomicon and oh-so delicious

A couple of surprisingly large carrots.

Day 4, eating on $30/week

2009-10-10T22:51:00.005-06:00

It's damn cold in Calgary right now. Here is a list of things I am interested in doing tomorrow:

making pie
roasting sweet potatoes
eating bread
drinking tea
eating stuffing
drinking wine

Perhaps in that order, but any other order would do as well. Here is a list of things I ought to do tomorrow:

the dishes
the "take-home" portion of my "theory" "midterm" (note the sarcasm-laden quotation marks)
study for another theory midterm
my laundry
sweep the kitchen (I'll probably actually do that one)

We shall see how it all goes. I would probably be less concerned with the weather if I were wearing my slippers

Today was my first day of work on the budget. I am usually very tempted by the food at work, even though plenty of it is meaty pub food that I don't eat. I brought my soup from yesterday and I believe I got some jealous looks from coworkers.

A Sort-Of Recipe for Vegan Chili
Before heading to work I threw together a crock of chili. It's easier said than done, of course, even though it wasn't particularly difficult it did eat up a portion of my limited morning time. Along with the soaked-overnight beans I added: a big can of diced tomatoes, one jalapeno lopped in half, about 1/3 of an onion, 4 tbsp chili powder, 1 tbsp cumin, some Frank's Red Hot Sauce, couple tbsp brown sugar, and 1.5 cups of keg beer. I let it cook on low from about 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m though I don't think it needed that long. About 30 mins before I ate I added 3 tbsp tomato paste and another 1/2 tbsp of chili powder because I didn't think it was hot enough.

It ended up having a pretty decent bite to it, and was thick enough to feel like chili, although there's a sort of faint burnt taste to it, which might just be the chili powder. There's a huge amount of it, of course, so I am going to refrigerate a couple servings and freeze the rest. I'm low on tupperware though, so perhaps I'll use some freezer bags.

I spent nothing today, but borrowed flour from my mum for the pie I'm making tomorrow.

Here's what I ate today:
Breakfast

a few pieces of challah with homemade cinnamon-peach jam (Sooo good!)
a banana

Lunch

a big bowl of Day 3's coconut curry soup

Dinner

a piece (or 3) of challah dipped into the chili...y'know, to taste it
a smallish bowl of chili
a little bun (yes, because I needed more bread :)

Day 3, eating on $30/week

2009-10-09T23:19:00.004-06:00

Today was an early rise [insert bread joke here] due to an early class. The temptations were staring me in the face, but luckily, I’ve already been staring them down for two days, so what’s one more, really?

After a coffee at home, I knew I’d be in need of a bit more caffeine in our 3-hour long news meeting so I brought a really quite big mug (actually it’s a stein…) and a few bags of jasmine green tea to school with me to stash in the locker. While not as satisfying as a freshly whipped up mocha, it was still nice.

Lunch wasn’t too special, but I was glad to have the leftovers, which were easy to grab in the morning.

The real difference between today and previous days was that I did groceries for the first time of the challenge! I thought I would probably spend almost all of my budget at Safeway, but miraculously, I didn’t!
I scrutinized every item that I felt the slightest longing for: berries, sauces in jars, vegetarian chili on sale (but for $3/can!). But I waded through the usual temptations and tried to make up some quick menus in my head – something I obviously should have done before going shopping.

In all, I spent exactly $11.
The Breakdown:
Diced Tomatoes - $2.09 (for tomorrow’s chili!)
3 Bananas - $1.01 (because I haven’t had an appetite at breakfast and bananas will hit the spot!)
1 Broccoli crown - $0.48 (because it’s good for me!)
Crimini Mushrooms - $3.43 (needed portobellos for the pie on Sunday, but criminis are very closely related – I’ve heard them called baby portobellos – and $3 less per pound than their big bro)
10 lb of Russet Potatoes - $3.99 (regular $6! I needed some for Thanksgiving anyway, and I knew I could use them in a few different ways [gnocchi, twice-baked, etc.] plus they’ll keep in my pantry for a couple weeks if need be. In contrast, the loose russets were selling for $1/pound.)

Tonight was an evening of cooking. Right now I am in the midst of baking the longest-ever bread recipe: challah. It look beautiful but man, it takes a long time. More on that tomorrow perhaps.

I also am soaking one cup of each of three types of dry beans that have all been in my pantry for ages. I figured tomorrow would be a good day to make chili because I can turn it on in the crockpot in the morning and it will be ready for me when I get home from work, and the apartment will smell all cumin-y, which is also good. I made a pretty darn big pot of an awesome curry soup for dinner so that will serve as lunch tomorrow, with a few snacks scavenged from the fridge (i.e. olives and pickles, which I have about 5 jars of, combined. Oy.)

Did I learn anything on my little shopping trip? Well, it was reiterated that I am an impulse shopper at the grocery store. It was good for me to really think about everything before buying it. I have never given myself a real grocery budget before, and I tend to go a little overboard. It was great not to have to buy every little thing I would need to create a meal, thanks to the pantry items and seasonings I already have. However, today I ran out of vegetable oil while baking bread and that's going to take a chunk of change out of my budget. I still have some olive oil, but I'm not sure it will be enough to roast my sweet potatoes this weekend.

Breakfast

A bowl of Brian's wheat cereal that’s been on top of the fridge for months.
Cup o’ coffee

Lunch

Leftover stir-fry from yesterday
Cake (from mum’s) with frozen blueberries (froze them during summer when blueberries were on sale at Superstore).
Marinated Olives

Dinner

Coconut curry soup with potatoes, beans and a couple of weird rhizomes

Based on a recipe that my friend recited at lunch earlier this week, this soup was comprised mostly of leftovers, but did incorporate some of the potatoes I bought today. I will post the recipe soon as this is probably the first soup I’ve ever made without an actual recipe AND it was delicious!
I used fresh turmeric for the first time! My mum picked some up at T&T a few days ago because it was interesting but she didn’t want to use it. It turned my mouth yellow when I chewed a piece. It looks like a skinny, bright orange version of ginger, but tastes more like carrot, with the slightest kick of some flavour I can’t really place. In contrast, the powdered turmeric that I’m used to using to add a bright yellow hue to rice or cous cous is absolutely flavourless)

Day 2, eating on $30/week

2009-10-08T21:44:00.002-06:00

Okay, well this post was meant to be another somewhat informative piece so that you could get something out of my semi-struggles. However, it's been a long day, so it will be a little short, again without photos.

The good news: I didn't spend anything on food today.
The bad news: the point isn't not to spend, it's to stay within a budget. I guess technically my week should start on whatever day I do groceries, but whatever, as long as we learn something, right?

First, a couple of links:
An article I wrote on nutrition on a budget. It also mentions that according to a study, the price of food in Calgary is rather inflated.

“Read the food flyers and plan your meals around what is on sale that week,” said nutritionist Elizabeth Christianson. “Make a shopping list and stick to it. Don’t shop for groceries on an empty stomach, and if possible, leave the kids at home. Buying in bulk saves packaging costs and can cost less.”

Things you should not eat on a budget (or ever).

Today's munchies:
Breakfast

that hard-boiled egg from yesterday (eggs are cheap, but I should have combined it with old reliable: steel-cut oats which are also affordable in bulk)
a cup of tea

Lunch

brown rice stir-fry with baby bok choy, onions, mushrooms and coconut milk
home made ginger snaps
weird Asian rice snack from my mum
I had time to make lunch in the morning, and the process is a no-brainer for saving money if you're out of the house for lunch. Brown rice is high in protein and pretty filling. I think the 5 lb bag cost less than $10 at Superstore when I bought it months ago. Add some dark leafy greens and seasonings (I used soy sauce, coconut milk, peanut butter, hot sauce and sesame oil) and you've got yourself a sustaining meal.
Brown rice takes about an hour to cook though so it's a good idea to cook it up the night before and eat it for the next couple days.

Dinner

Spaghetti and tomato sauce with roasted pepper, zucchini and cauliflower
I got lucky again and had dinner at my mum's, but this is a dinner that's easily adaptable for a budget. Try making your own tomato sauce with a cheap can of basic sauce, a can of crushed, stewed, or whole tomatoes (i.e. whatever's on sale) and your choice of seasonings such as dried basil and thyme, hot sauce or peppers and onion and throw in some frozen spinach for a painless dose of greens. Roast whatever veggies are in season, they're the cheapest and probably travelled the least distance to your grocery store. Bonus if you can make it to a farmer's market and score something super fresh and local.

Tomorrow: will I brave the snow and cold to go to the Farmer's Market or will I wimp out and go to Safeway? How to overcome the desire for coffee on the first wintry days of the year...

Day 1, eating on $30/week

2009-10-07T22:34:00.000-06:00

I was buying boots last winter with my mum and we stopped for a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks stand in the mall. The coffee was mum’s treat, and I think she offered because I was getting so visibly stressed out by the impending expenditure. It was time for me to step into a pair of well-made, totally-not-vegetarian, totally-not-Payless boots.

As I sat fretting and sipping, mum recalled a similar shopping trip years ago, when I was very small, four maybe. I had just spent all of my money – probably $12 – on a new purse, and after paying the cashier I burst out crying.

Since then, I have changed my shopping etiquette slightly.

One thing I’ve begun to tell myself when I spend more than I probably should is that: “it’s only money.”

And it’s true. It is just money and I will make more of it. That’s not to say that I advocate blowing your student loan or racking up your credit card bill to have a good time, but it’s a better stance than feeling guilty or anxious.

Other strategies to legitimize or limit your expenditures:
Calculate how much something costs in terms of pints of beer:
“Well, this dress sure is cute and it’s only $38! But how many pints of Velvet Fog will I have to sacrifice to stay on budget?” ($38 / $6.25 pint = 6 pints at regular price; $38 / $4.75 = 8 pints on special).

Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it isn’t. I like that one because it usually talks me into buying things that cost two to three pints.

Another probably more useful calculation is to convert price tags into hours of work.
“Wow! This Sony Bravia 40" 1080p LCD HDTV is on sale for $1299.99. But how long am I going to have to pull shots of espresso to pay off that one?” ($1299.99 / $12 = 108 hours, or 13 and a half eight-hour shifts).

I like that one because it usually talks me out of making poor purchases.

But, enough about that. Onto the food!

Breakfast:

2 cups of coffee, brewed at home (almost out of beans, either I spend part of my budget on more beans, or I switch to tea for the rest of the week)
1 hard-boiled egg with hot sauce (meant to have two but ran out of time, but the extra one will be quick and easy for tomorrow’s breakfast)

Lunch:

Portabello Ravioli, Salad, & two breadsticks at Olive Garden

(no, I didn’t break the bank already. I had a lunch meeting and it was paid for by the organization I was meeting with. It was alright, but far, far, far too salty. I can still taste the salt and I finished eating an hour and a half ago.
Oh God. I just looked up the nutritional information. 2 Breadsticks contain 800 mg of sodium and the ravioli dish had 960 mg. That is so very bad! It is very rare for me to eat at chain establishments and this reinforces my general disdain for their low quality of food.)
Read my review of Olive Garden and other restaurants at Urban Spoon

Dinner:

Homemade pizza on ancient grain tortilla with mozzarella, peppers, portabellos and red onion.
Side salad of shredded beets and carrots with olive oil and lemon juice dressing.
(Now THIS is a meal I can feel good eating. I didn’t make it though, I had it at my mum’s place).

Snacks:

2 homemade, accidentally-low-fat gingersnaps
a pint of slightly flat Grasshopper Wheat Ale from the birthday keg in my living room.

Total Cost, Day 1: $0
Total Cost, overall: $0 (obviously)

Okay, sure, this day was a bit of a write-off because I didn’t have to try very hard. I didn’t have school or work or really much of a schedule at all, plus I didn’t have to do groceries, but believe me, I was tempted to grab a latte to wash the taste of sodium out of my mouth, while waiting downtown in the swirling snow (yes, snow!).

Tomorrow: Less blabbing. What to eat after the gym when you can’t buy a protein shake. Whether to buy coffee!

P.S. Sorry about the lame, old photo. I will take some photos of what I actually eat tomorrow.

Financial Times

2009-10-07T09:33:00.001-06:00

Around this time every year, when the leaves are yellowing and the flurries are arriving, I realize that it would be really quite wise for me to make a budget.

I work at a bar where shifts are cut down by half around Thanksgiving when we shut down our patio. And since I already have a fairly scant availability due to a demanding school schedule, we end up with weeks like this one, when I have a single (lucrative but not sustaining) shift.

I came across a post on one of my new favourite food blogs where the writer was planning her menu for the next week in order to eat on $30 as a way to empathize with Americans who have a tight budget. At first I thought that that didn't sound so hard, but then I took a moment to think about it and do the calculations.

That's about $4.25 a day to spend on food. Of course that would completely negate eating out, or buying a coffee (even a teeny little Timmies one!) It makes me wonder if I could conquer that challenge. It does help that I have an (almost) fully stocked pantry and a slew of condiments and spices at my beck and call already.

...

Okay, let's do it!

I will report everything that I eat for the next week, and all of my expenditures, and hopefully a few handy tips along the way (take note, fellow students, good cheap food on the way!)

Snapadoo! A Cracker Recipe

2009-10-05T22:19:00.003-06:00

I'm sitting in my apartment alone, reading the Joy of Cooking (which was a birthday gift from Brian, who is on the east coast until next week) and drinking leftover Grasshopper from my birthday keg. And then it occurred to me that I had planned to include a couple of recipes from my birthday spread on my humble blog here! The time is riper than $3 pumpkins at Superstore!

I made crackers a couple of weeks ago based on this lavash cracker recipe which was a Daring Bakers challenge in September of last year.
(My recipe after the jump)

As a side-note, I just joined the Daring Kitchen myself! For those who are as unfamiliar with the food-obsessed blogging group as I was a few short weeks ago here's the run-down:

The Daring Kitchen is comprised of the well-established Daring Bakers and the newly minted Daring Cooks. Every month, a secret challenge is put forth to members of each group. Daring Bakers receive their challenge near the start of the month, and Cooks near the middle, so that members who are part of both groups have different deadlines. Everyone reveals their results on a set date about a month after the challenge was set.

September's challenge for bakers was vols-au-vent with homemade puff pastry. Of course, I can't say anything about October's challenge (my first!) but I'll be posting the run-down around October 27 or later.

Getting back to the task at hand–crackers–here is my version of the recipe, because the way I made the original wasn't cutting it for me.

Sesame-studded Rosemary & Thyme Crackers
makes a whole bunch of crackers, like if you put them in bowls, probably 4 litres of crackers. I know that is probably the worst measurement ever, and I apologize. Let's say...the equivalent of 2-3 boxes of crackers.

3 cups all-purpose flour + some for dusting
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup warm (not hot!) water
2 tbsp black sesame seeds
1-1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1-1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves

Combine yeast, sugar and water and let sit 5-8 minutes to allow yeast to proof.
Stir in salt, oil, seeds and herbs plus enough flour to form into a ball.
Turn dough out onto clean, floured surface and knead, incorporating the rest of your flour, until your dough is smooth and elastic, and not sticky, about 8-10 minutes. It's a little bit firmer dough than regular bread doughs.
Form dough into a ball and place it in a large, lightly oiled bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise for 90 minutes, or until doubled in bulk. My apartment is usually a bit cool, so I let my dough rise in an oven that I heat at 200 F for a minute and then turn it off and place my bowl of dough inside. The first time I made this recipe nothing rose much at all, but I kneaded some more after about an hour of rising time and then it finally started to rise.
Oil your work surface – I use a brush and paint the oil over a sizable area of my kitchen table, probably 70 cm wide x 50 cm high, although if you have spray oil that would be great also. Divide the dough into two or three sections. Press the first section of dough into a square with your hands and then roll with a rolling pin until it is as thin as you can make it – about 1-2 mm. You may need to let the gluten in the dough relax for a few minutes if it is pulling back into a smaller shape before you resume rolling.
Use a pizza cutter or other knife to cut dough into vertical strips, and cut those into rectangle- or square-shaped pieces. (NB my pizza cutter is sharper than I thought and now I have a few light, vertical lines carved into my table. You may choose to move your dough to a cutting board if you were not already on such a work space).
Preheat your oven to 350 F. Transfer cut pieces to an ungreased baking sheet. Bake sheets one at a time for 12-18 minutes, until they become golden brown on the bottom. Your time may vary depending on the thickness of the crackers.
Repeat 5-7 with remaining section(s) of dough.
Serve with cheese, preserves, bean dip, salsa or snack on 'em plain!

A basic sushi how-to

2009-10-04T16:36:00.001-06:00

Well folks, here we are again, many weeks removed from my last post. The truth is, I've been cooking and experimenting all over the place, I just haven't made the time to write.

My birthday just passed so I'll be posting a couple recipes from that delicious spread. In the meantime, I am going to write a little sushi how-to here and I hope you'll be inspired to give it a try sometime based on my experience. This is as much to give me practice of writing good directions as it is to be informative for you so feel free to leave tip if you thought something was confusing, inadequate or if you liked it!

The photos were also a bit experimental and some of them aren't particularly good but I think they get the point across.

Ingredients:

Sushi Rice (adapted from imakesushi.com)

1-1/2 cups sushi rice (you must use sushi rice)
1-1/2 cups water
1/4 cup rice vinegar (if you buy seasoned rice vinegar, omit salt and sugar)
1-1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Everything Else

Sheets of Nori (toasted seaweed) - at least 6
Whatever delightful fillings you would like!

cucumber (seeded and cut into long thing strips)
carrots (long, thin strips)
avocado
asparagus, steamed
sesame seeds
peanut butter (really really delicious!)

Wasabi & Pickled Ginger for garnish

To Prepare Rice

Rinse rice until the water you're using runs clear. It will take a few times, but it is essential in order to achieve the individual, sticky grains later on.
Bring rice and water to a boil in a large saucepan with the lid on. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, don't peek under the lid, and let steam for 20 minutes.
While rice is cooking, combine rice vinegar, sugar and salt and dissolve (you may need to heat it in the microwave or a saucepan). Skip this step if you are using already seasoned vinegar.
When rice is done, transfer to a casserole dish and gently spread the rice out in the dish.
The next part is a little tricky and somewhat tiresome, but this is how you turn standard rice into the glossy, sticky, firm but tender grains necessary for making delicious rolls. Drizzle in seasoned vinegar one tbsp at a time. Using a wooden spoon you are going to gently – without smushing the rice – cool down the rice by sort of sifting through it, or folding it as if it were dough, with the spoon. Simultaneously, use a fan or a plastic Tupperware lid to fan the rice and cool it to slightly above room temperature.

Regular Maki

I struggled with this roll for a while before being able to regularly roll it properly. Often the guts come spilling out if you overfill it or use too much rice, so keep practicing!

A bamboo rolling mat will cost you about $1 at any grocery store and it's worth the investment.

First, cut a sheet of nori in half, width-wise and lay it on your mat. Use about a 1/2 cup of rice and spread it on the nori, leaving about a centimeter at the top and bottom. (My nori is wrinkly because it was from an old, opened package.)

Place your fillings about two-thirds of the way down the rice. Here, I've used sesame seeds, carrot and asparagus.

Use the mat to roll the bottom third of the nori over top of fillings. Use both hands to press firmly, but not violently, along the length of the roll.

Pull the mat forward so you aren't rolling it inside the sushi, and finish rolling your...roll! Again, use both hands to press firmly along the length of the roll to shape it. It might turn out a little square until you get used to the rolling motions.

And voila!

Wet the blade of a very sharp knife and cut your roll in half once, then arrange as in the photo. Cut both pieces in half again, and then slice each of those halves, wetting your knife as necessary to reduce stickiness. Always cut into 6 or 8 pieces, as 4 is recognized as bad luck.

If I am making the rolls myself it usually takes me a while and they can dry out, so it's usually a good idea to throw some plastic wrap over top, or put them in Tupperware.

For inside-out rolls

These are my go-to rolls most of the time. It definitely showcases your painstakingly prepared rice and for me it was easier to roll these than the standard rolls. Rolling the finished product in sesame seeds is both pretty and tasty.

Start with half a sheet of nori as before, but this time lay some plastic wrap down over your bamboo mat. I find that a bit messy sometimes and choose to use wax paper instead. This is to keep the rice out of the little cracks in your mat, which is a total pain to clean out.

Use a bit more rice than last time, and don't leave a gap like I did in the photo! Spread it evenly across the nori and then flip the sheet over so the plain nori side is facing up.

Assemble your fillings two-thirds of the way down the rice. This roll has wasabi, cucumber, carrot, asparagus and wasabi mashed potatoes (which didn't turn out so well after all).

Follow the same directions as above to roll it up!

I saw the error of my ways here, with that missing strip of rice. Cut as directed above.

Click on this photo to go to flickr.com and learn more about the fillings I used.

And that is that my friends! I'm still experimenting with other interesting vegetarian fillings. Often I just use whatever's in the fridge. There's a great recipe in the Veganomicon for a tempeh filling, and another with sweet potatoes. When I have mushrooms around I slice em thin, simmer with soy sauce and mirin for a little while and then use them. Quite satisfying!

Biscuits of Love

2009-09-09T16:56:00.009-06:00

This recipe is adapted from The Joy of Cooking's Buttermilk Biscuits & Rolled Biscuits recipes.

Biscuits of Love

1-3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-3 tbsp fresh dill
about 5 tbsp chilled butter or shortening, cut into 2 cm x 2 cm blocks
3/4 soy milk
2 tsp vinegar

Preheat oven to 450 F.
Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, dill and salt.
Cut in butter or shortening with 2 knives (crossed like scissors) until they become small pea-sized balls.
Mix vinegar into soy milk. It will curdle - this is your vegan buttermilk.
Make a well in centre of dry ingredients and pour in milk mixture.
Stir with a big wooden spoon just until the mixture starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn dough onto lightly floured cutting board or counter (if your counter tops aren't as old and decrepit as mine). Knead gently 8-10 times.
Roll out dough with floured rolling pin to about 1/2 an inch thick.
Cut with a floured cookie cutter (obviously I used a heart-shaped one), and place biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet.
Re-roll dough scraps as necessary and repeat #8.
Bake for about 12 minutes, or until lightly browned.

These turned out really well although I slightly over baked the first pan. Awesome with a dot of butter and hot pepper jelly or any kind of jam...or plain...or with a fried egg on top. Just so good!

Can-o-rama

2009-09-05T11:07:00.005-06:00

Our hot pepper jelly.

Cooking the relish.

Oh dear am I ever getting behind!
I've spent the past week or so canning with my mum, which has taken most of my experimental cooking energy. We canned peaches, tomatoes, pickles and peppers and made blueberry & peach jam, hot pepper relish, pepper jelly and ketchup. My kitchen smells faintly of vinegar still.

This morning I made some heart-shaped dill buttermilk biscuits. I overcooked them a bit so they're not as soft as they could be, but still delightful! I used the recipe from the Joy of Cooking (75th Anniversary edition). My mum has had the original cookbook as long as I've been around and it's something I've sort of always considered a standard in our kitchen. I just have it out from the library right now, but I think I will have to put it on my birthday list.

Other projects... Last night I tried to make that potato-veggie pâté again, but this time was almost total failure. The texture was all wrong, as I boiled the potatoes to mashable softness before shredding them so it ended up baking like mashed potatoes. And the peppers I added were sweeter than they were hot so that further skewed the flavour. I'm not too happy with it. Next time I will shred the potatoes while raw and see what I can do from there.

I'm off to work now, here's hoping I can put together a few blog postings before school gets back in.

Lentil Nachos

2009-08-20T08:42:00.002-06:00

We made nachos when we got home last night, for some reason we both had a craving on. No photos for you but you've seen nachos before anyway, and the more useful part of this is the recipe anyway!

Lentil Nachos

For the lentils...

one can lentils, drained and rinsed (rinsing gets rid a lot of the salt used in the canning)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp veg oil
few drops Tabasco or other hot sauce
salt to taste

Heat oil in saucepan. Add rinsed lentils to pan.
Add your spices NB this is totally versatile as far as spices, so don't fret if you have none of this. I really like the cinnamon and a bit of salt is good. Just don't use salty seasonings and taste as you go.
Mix 'er up and warm til heated through.

For the nachos...

multigrain Old Dutch tortilla chips (great texture, less sodium than Tostitos; we used about half a 280 gram bag for the two of us)
1/4 cup sliced black olives
1/3 cup pickled banana peppers
1/3 cup shredded old cheddar
fresh diced tomato (we didn't have this but it would be a good replacement for salsa)
1 recipe nacho lentils (above, obviously. Best if still warm because your nachos may cook before the lentils can heat up again)
salsa for dipsies (watch the sodium in store-bought stuff. It may be 8% of DRV but that's for a small serving size of 2 tbsp)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Arrange chips on a foiled baking sheet.
Spread olives, peppers, tomatoes evenly with your hands. Use a spoon to get your warm lentils all over the place. You may have some leftover, which makes a lovely snack later or lunch side. Top with cheddar.
Bake in oven for ~10 minutes or until cheese is melted and before all your chips burrrn.

Enjoy!

Absence!

2009-08-19T10:57:00.002-06:00

Oh dear! I didn't realize just how long it has been since I updated my blog. I am citing a number of reasons: vacation out of town, so many news articles to write, and the end of my work term as well as nearing school.

But that doesn't mean we haven't been cooking! And we have certainly been eating: we basically gorged ourselves in Vancouver on sushi, Thai, Indian, and the most amazing cupcakes.

This week we made ramen from scratch, Brian baked bread two days in a row, I started building adorable bento box lunches with knickknacks I bought in Vancouver. Busy busy busy!

I will try to get back to it very soon, once I have got my work life organized so that I don't have to worry about anything.

Ahh...

Badlands and Bean Dip

2009-08-03T15:44:00.005-06:00

[scroll down if you're just interested in the bean dip!]

Bri & I spent yesterday driving around our lovely province. Our intent was to visit Drumheller and maybe hit the Royal Tyrrell Museum. After driving through green and yellow prairie landscapes for an hour and a half, we finally began to descend into the dusty and pale Badlands. The temperature was hovering around 30 C, with zero humidity, so I would liken it to being inside an oven. After trying and failing to find somewhere to eat in Drumheller, we decided to see if there was a cafe at the museum. As it turned out, a couple thousand other people (and their hyper, screaming broods) had a similar idea to us; the museum was crawling with sweaty families out for Heritage Day.

Defeated, we tromped off to find somewhere else to eat. We tried a giant pub (kinda like Kilkenny, but with a family restaurant attached) called O'Shea's, where we sat in a booth for 10 minutes without a waitress talking to us (or cleaning the remains of the previous occupants). We decided they did not deserve our money and walked across the parking lot to Boston Pizza, where we had a very underwhelming and overpriced meal of bad cheesey pizza bread and sad little yam fries. It was not good.

But things looked up once we headed to the little ghost town of Dorothy. We had a fab afternoon exploring and taking photos. My photo collection from the day is pretty limited, as I was feeling a bit ill all day from this cold and I was happy to be Brian's model instead.

After Dorothy we hit East Coulee/Rosedale, where we crossed their famous suspension bridge and took a little hike up some hills (not sure if they have a fancy name or something like the hoodoos).

It was a really nice way to spend Brian's almost-birthday. Definitely worth renting a car for the day!

On to snacks!

Vegedible's New Favourite Black Bean Dip

1 can black beans, rinsed
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tsp Frank's Red Hot Sauce Original
2 tsp Rice Vinegar
2 tsp lime juice
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 dashes smoke flavour
1-1/2 tsp ground cumin

Combine all ingredients in your food processor and whizz until all are combined and consistency is fairly smooth and thick. Eati right away with fresh veggies and pita chips or store in the fridge a couple hours to let flavours mature.

We had our dip right away with broccoli, carrots and ryvita crackers, as well as some pickles and Queen olives. Deeelightful!

Tonight's menu is homemade birthday pizza!

Ill Blogging

2009-08-01T10:58:00.004-06:00

Still here folks!

I've been busy this past week and now I've gone and caught a cold. It's not terribly debilitating, but it is very inconvenient because this weekend we're celebrating Brian's birthday, and next week we're going to Vancouver. Oh, and of course working two jobs. Geez!

Anyhow, here's a snapshot from last week's BBQ night. Oiled up some potatoes and carrots with dill and slivered almonds to throw on the grill.
They were quite tasty but I'm not used to the timing of grilling things yet, so we had to wait around for the potatoes to finish and they still could have use another 10 minutes. We also threw a couple of tempeh (fermented soybeans) patties on the BBQ. I wouldn't bother doing that again as they really didn't taste like much.
I wish I'd had some big onions to grill as well, but alas, I only had yellow zucchini. Bri liked it, but I still have an aversion to that fickle squash after last winter's cleanse.

I'm off to get ready for work. It's forecast to be over 30 degrees C today. I'm not looking forward to it.

Weekly Roundup

2009-07-24T11:54:00.010-06:00

I guess I am still trying to figure out some sort of a schedule for little bloggy here. Ideally I'd update daily, but I haven't set aside the time yet. Which in turn leads to posts such as this one which will be photo heavy and retrospective.

On to the show!

This past week saw Summer peek her sweaty, sunburnt brow from behind the clouds for the first time of the year. Temperatures were toeing the torrid line of 30 degrees Celsius (86 F) and the ultralow humidity of this prairie city turned downtown into an enormous and cruel sauna.

That meant minimal cooking for me as our apartment is not well equipped to deal with hot weather. I was tempted to bake biscuits and muffins but each sweaty time I opted instead to boil or panfry something tasty instead.

Exhibit A: Thai Peanut Stirfry. Adapted from this Allrecipes.com "Best Thai Peanut Sauce" link
Here is my version:

1/2 cup organic peanut butter (no sugar or other junk added) creamy or chunky
1/3 cup coconut milk
1 tbsp water
1.5 tbsp lime juice
1.5 tbsp soy sauce
1.5 tsp sesame oil
1.5 tsp hot sauce (I use Rooster Brand Chili Garlic Sauce)
.5 tsp ginger powder
1.5 cloves garlic

Mix together in a bowl or shake in peanut butter jar, making sure all the peanut butter lumps are softened and mixed in. Let sit 30 minutes-1 hour to allow flavours to develop.

After that, it's completely versatile as far as starch, veg and protein. For this particular time, I made jasmine rice and Bribot stir-fried broccoli, cauliflower, cremini mushrooms and garlic. We pour our sauce onto the almost-cooked veg and let it thicken and cook for a bit before serving over rice. I think I may have gone a bit overboard with the coconut milk this time, because I was using up a can from earlier in the week. But it turned out amazing and very filling. Highly recommend you incorporate it in your repertoire.

The night after, we had gnocchi with jarred tomato-basil sauce. Very delicious and Bri was raving the whole time, and I was of course flattered because the man does eat a lot of pasta. Anyhow, it wasn't particularly filling so after dishes were done we decided to make movie snacks for during James Bond.

Exhibit B: Vegan Cheezy Sauce "Fundue" with roasted potatos, mushrooms and pickles.

Honestly, the pickles were a bit weird but the sauce is just so good that it doesn't even matter. I usually make the Cheezy Sauce recipe (from the Veganomicon) but Bri offered to do it this time, and it was divine.

Here's our version of the nutritional yeast gravy:

2 cups prepared veg broth
1/4 cup spelt flour (AP flour is fine too)
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of dried thyme
1/4 tsp sea salt (depending on saltiness of veg broth)
fresh ground black pepper
1 tsp turmeric
3/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes (essential ingredient but we find it's still good if you only have 1/2 cup too)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp prepared mustard

Whisk flour into broth in a measuring cup and the until big lumps are gone.
Cook garlic in olice oil in small saucepan over medium-low heat about 2 minutes
add thyme, salt and pepper and cook for a few seconds, then add broth turmeric and nutritional yeast and raise heat to medium. Stir constantly with whisk.
It should thicken in about 3 minutes but just turn the heat up if it needs a bit longer
After it had thickened, let cook for another couple minutes, then add lemon juice and mustard. Taste for saltiness, adjust as needed, then remove from heat and cover until you're ready to eat. Irresistable. Keeps well in the fridge for a few days.

If you're unfamiliar with nutritional yeast, this is the time to try it! It's a bit smoky and cheesy in flavour and is a wonderful addition to all sorts of sauces, or even just sprinkled inside a wrap. High in B12 also!

Okay, so this is getting long so I'll be brief with Exhibit C: Back of the Fridge Sushi! Yesterday's dinner earned its name due to the rapidly thrown together fillings I chose. I had my weekly sushi craving but wasn't up to spending $20 on typical boring veggie rolls so after tossing a frisbee with Bri, I set to work on a big batch of sushi.

Fillings included: dill pickles, cream cheese, pickled banana peppers, vine tomato, pepper relish, dijon-Vegenaise, salad greens and barbecue sauce-marinate tofu strips.

Dinner turned out quite tasty in the end but not as good as previous sushi nights at home because I messed up the rice a bit, it was overcooked with too much moisture which made it tough to cute nicely and the rolls weren't as luscious as they could have been. On the bright side I actually rolled 3 whole regular maki (i.e. not inside out) and they all mostly stayed. Also experimented with some fat rolls, which turned out alright.

If you're interested in making sushi at home I suggest you read imakesushi.com and google some sushi rolling videos, that's how I got to this point. The price is so so much lower than a restaurant and it's really not difficult once you've rolled a few.

Mid morning snack

2009-07-21T10:17:00.002-06:00

I was just scanning through recent entries and noticed that I didn't post an update on the Veggie Paté attempt! I can't believe I didn't take a photo, so maybe it's hidden on one of my many memory cards somewhere still. It was very delicious, but it did indeed turn out very hasbrown-y. I shredded the potatos and onions but I think they were too undercooked to achieve the consistency of the original paté. However, the dish was delicious and I still put it into a sandwich. I will make it again in the coming weeks and post a recipe along with it.

As for the photo of the pasta salad there, that is jsut to show off the super cute vintage ramekins I got at Honey B's during Salsa Fest. I'm very pleased with them. The pasta salad was not as good: it was a tossed together affair at the last minute to go with Brian's delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. I used 2-day old pasta and because it was whole wheat to begin with, and a little bit stale, it just wasn't up to scratch. Still, it looks quite pretty, doesn't it?

Will try to update tonight with photos of last night's amazing and rich thai peanut stirfry.

Italian experiments and Salsa Fest

2009-07-19T23:42:00.004-06:00

Just a quicky update before bed, it's been a few days! Spent a few hours today at the Sun & Salsa Festival, sampling the various concoctions available to us from businesses in the neighbourhood. Most of them were some variation on tomato, onion, peppers and cilantro but some restaurants eschewed the theme almost entirely, choosing instead to whip up something from their menu that could be scooped into tiny paper cups and slathered on a multigrain Tostito.

Delicious Thai had a crock pot on the go and I got mad at the lady scooping it out because when I asked her if it was vegetarian she just said that it was green chili curry. I vowed not to vote for them (and I didn't - but I didn't for any, whoops!), but it was quite delicious. Didn't go well with the chips though.

The Broken Plate did some sort of cream cheese-feta-pepper combination that was delicious but so very not-salsa. Sungate Cafe was hawking some sort of curry too but it was cold and lumpy and I was not impressed.

Other booths were more creative, most notably The Naked Leaf, which integrated organic veggies from Sunnyside Market in their recipe, as well as tea from the Naked Leaf. They even gave us a recipe card. I wasn't blown away by the salsa, though it was lovely. I am very interested in using tea leaves in a future recipe though. I was also impressed by Foo King Hot Relish, I'm not sure if they were actually in the salsa portion of the festival because they were selling their product (I bought some and yum!) as well as giving away samples.

Sorry about the lack of photos, I took my camera but I wasn't particularly happy with any of the shots from the festival.

However! I decided I wanted to make gnocchi tonight because, well, it's delicious!

And make it I did! I was a little bit wary because the recipe I was following warned of the difficulties of pulling off gnocchi, particularly without using egg as a binder, which is the route I took because Bribot prefers not to eat egg.

I followed the aforementioned recipe fairly closely, although I didn't know how many pounds of potato I had - I used 4 medium russets. I didn't have any trouble at all with the recipe. I think that my experience kneading pizza dough is a huge asset, because I felt confident during that rather important portion. The original recipe, while poetically written does have some downfalls such as "Very gently, with a feathery touch knead the dough," I'm not sure that that is physically possible, as kneading is a rather forceful process. And then "It [dough] should feel almost billowy." My dictionary has this in the entry for billow "a large undulating mass of something, typically cloud, smoke, or steam." A mite confusing! So I just ignored those bits and pretended like I was kneading bread dough.

The gnocchi turned out very soft and tasty - success! The downside is that they really haven't got much flavour on their own, so a girl's got to have a good sauce. I went basic so that I could taste the actual pasta with a butter, olive oil, garlic and dried basil sauce. I finished it off with a few shavings of this fabulous 3-year old cheddar we picked up at Janice Beaton during the Salsa Fest.

I think next time I will try incorporating ricotta into the gnocchi, or just go with a completely ricotta version - yum!

Cook cook cook!

2009-07-13T18:13:00.004-06:00

So the jalapeno poppers from last night were a double-edged sword kind of thing. They would have been wonderful but they were so terribly spicy that I couldn't enjoy them. I was happy with my panko coating, which I also used on some portobello slices. I'll have to try a more mild pepper in the future.

Today has been a day of slaving in the kitchen basically. It's been raining like crazy outside. My brother turns 18 tomorrow so I am helping with a bit of the food prep for his legion of pals. This meant two kinds of hummus (traditional and chipotle) as well as 20 deviled eggs.

After pricking my fingers on broken eggshells for an hour I wanted to do my own project and decided to try to mimic Kootenay Kitchen's Veggie Pâté. They have a gallery of the Making Of the product so I used that as a guide. I think it might just turn out like a baked mashed potato thing, but I guess I'll find out when it is done cooking.

Next on the list today is some sort of Thai stirfry to use up the rice I've cooked the past couple days. Yum!

Food Update!

2009-07-12T19:08:00.011-06:00

Alright! So I embraced my kitchen today since I had the day off with the BF. We made a fabulous brunch and presently I am making baked jalapeno poppers...mmm! (Edit: they burned my face off. Not really. But they were really, really hot.)

Earlier in the week I did indeed tackle the seitan project and snapped some photos to share.
The seitan has to be boiled for half an hour or so and during that time it expands a fair bit. I didn't know what to expect, never having had seitan before so it seemed a bit weird looking to be honest.I sliced up one of the four "chunks" of seitan once it was done and kept the rest in tupperware along with the cooking liquid. Sort of looks like a chicken breast.The final product! Seitan and nooch stirfry. I forgot to take a photo before we started eating, sorry about the mess there. Contains seitan, flat rice noodles, broccoli, nutritional yeast gravy (based on the Veganomicon's Cheezy Sauce, but not as good as usual because I was out of boullion and was in a hurry) and a side of mixed greens.

Since it is Sunday, I decided Bri and I should make an epic brunch to enjoy together. Since he doesn't have much of an appetite in the mornings we pushed the meal back to about noon and nursed coffee through a morning which included a trip to the post office and flea market.Frying up some tomatoes in olive oil with dried Italian herbs in one pan, and heating up our first ever tofu scramble (season with turmeric, sea salt, black pepper and sun dried tomatoes) and a pair of veggie sausages.
Ahhh yes! Clockwise from top: French's Dijon mustard, PC organic ketchup, buttermilk crumpet with butter, fried tomatos with sprinkle of swiss cheese, white potato hashbrowns (middle), poppyseed pancakes (courtesy my mum), caramelized yellow onion with fried cremini mushrooms, tofu scramble with sundried tomatoes.

Last night we had delightful appies at my mum's place: diced tomatoes, black olive tapenade, artichoke-asiago dip and 3-year old parmesan on dark rye crisps. And ice cold Corona bottles! I'm not even usually a big Corona fan, but I couldn't resist and it was just great.

After that, we sampled a little takeout from the new sushi place that just opened across the street. At first when ordering we were disheartened a bit because all the sushi on their menu had fish (totally legit, but neither of us eat fishies or other seafood). We spotted their single-order "basic" sushi menu on the way out though and ordered from there. They were out of inari so we missed out there, but we got tamago, cucumber-cream cheese roll, avocado roll and a futomaki salad roll. The rice was super fresh and the salad was crunchy and delicious. Very nice! Mum says they were happy to make rolls to order for her so perhaps next time we eat in there we'll ask about a tempura yam roll (Midori makes a fabulous one).

And I made my own sushi this week. Combinations of inari, creminis simmered with soy sauce & mirin, carrot & cucumber and avocado. They looked more lovely than usual thanks to black sesame seeds as garnish.

I guess the bottom line is that I'm hooked on sushi!

Foodism

2009-07-06T11:52:00.002-06:00

I haven't blogged too much about food lately, but it is still an entertaining part of my life. I have decided to make an effort to cut down on wheat and salt as well as get back into my rollerblading regime(ish) schedule because I've been feeling a bit listless lately.

The salt effort is mainly going to be me cutting down on processed foods, something I don't indulge in too often anyway. As for wheat, it's really just that I have been slowly incorporating more processed, nutritionally deficient white breads into my diet lately and I don't want to make it a habit. Somehow, wandering downtown on a hot summer night after a few drinks makes a girl crave veggie dogs from street corners and dried out but delicious CPU slices.

Last week I unofficially set a goal for myself (i.e., posted it as a facebook status update), that I wanted to make Seitan which is a wheat gluten "cutlet," or vegan meat substitute. I have most of the ingredients so all I need is to set aside some time but I didn't accomplish it within my unofficial time limit (i.e. last week). Darn. But this has led me to think that maybe I should give myself a weekly food project in an effort to have some fun, experimental "me" time that will probably be practical as well.

Stay tuned for Seitan!

Communication Biznatch

2009-06-18T17:52:00.004-06:00

Bri bought an iPod Touch yesterday. Now I can contact him when he's at work and anywhere else that there's wifi, hahaha.

Work has been super busy. I can't believe I've only worked their four days! It's been a lot of fun, although technically I haven't had too much to do. Today I was working from home because I am working on a story about the Stampede. I was out interviewing streeters about their opinions on it. Honestly, the info I got from my friends via facebook was much more interesting than their answers, but I ought not use them lest it become a bad habit.

We're supposed to put this old issue to print on Saturday but My Editor isn't sure that The Old Editor will be ready on time. Meanwhile I will write my 1000 words on the stampede and a 500 word food review (which has to be written between eating the meal @ 6 and going to work at the bar at 8!) It will be a stressful finish the workweek, followed by two busy shifts at the bar, back to back. Hopefully I can keep up both jobs. We'll see.

Here's a snippet of the Stampede story so far, feel free to give feedback!

It’s lunchtime, two weeks before the Stampede parade marches through the downtown core and Stephen Avenue Walk is conspicuously flush with cowboy hats.

A small amount of sleuthing reveals the source of the shiny white Stetsons is the Calgary Stampede Promotions Committee. A handful of committee members are distributing the trademark caps out of the back of a chuckwagon, handing one to each of the hundreds of people who have stood in a line that stretches down the entire block before wrapping around the corner. Stampede mascot Harry the Horse, a goofy but endearing fellow, is mingling with the crowd, entertaining toddlers and businessmen alike.

The line moves quickly through the already bustling eighth avenue. The sun beats down hard as people eat lunch out of Styrofoam containers and others sample various types of food-on-a-stick and meats-on-a-bun. Between the crowds of people standing brim to brim and the sidewalk shops selling trinkets, it’s not hard to imagine that the “Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth” is already in full swing.

Nobody is under the illusion that the legendary Calgary Stampede is truly limited to within its ten official days. However, whether the infectious Western spirit is more like that of laughter or influenza, is in the eye of the beholder.

The first hours

2009-06-15T12:26:00.005-06:00

Well, I am 2.5 hours into my internship! 437.5 hours to go!

We've got three pages to fill, plus an empty 2-page spread so I've spent the morning writing out contact info for potential advertisers. Now I've moved onto calling businesses to find out who the actual contact for advertising is. My office is extremely echoey (yes! I have my own office with a desk and doors and everything!) which makes it a bit awkward to talk on the phone, but I think I'm doing alright.

The only people left to call on my list are restaurants and I know from experience that restaurants think your company is stupid if you call them during lunch, so I decided to wait it out.

I am looking forward to decorating this place a bit. It's got nice doors and marble-looking floors but plain white walls and lots of empty flat space. Some photos at the very least, I think.

I think the real excitement will start later in the week when we get to start talking about the next issues and making dramatic changes.

Completely unrelated to food

2009-06-11T12:58:00.004-06:00

Hours after my last blog entry I had a meeting set up to discuss a possible internship. At least I thought it was a "possible" internship, but it turned out to be a case of "we really ought to hire a reporter for our magazine, and didn't we hear about a young journalist looking for an internship?" on their end! So I went in for a meeting with the EIC and she was very sweet and excited about what the magazine will become in the next year - we will be completely overhauling the design with a brand new team of young folks.

So yes, I am starting my internship on Monday! I thought I'd be starting a lot sooner but they had to figure out the payment logistics (positive results!) and scheduling etc. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing from day 1, but I know that it will include research, reporting, layout, photography and related things. Writing for example.

My biggest problem at this point is the school side of things. This being an internship, I am obligated and required to pay $600 and somethin' dollars so that I can do some little assignments to chat with one of my profs via email. I don't have problems with that financially, but I do have problems with the technology. I was told to change my password to my school email due to maintenance they are performing on the system. Unfortunately I did so and now I'm locked out of the system. Arrggghhh.

And the work experience coordinator who said he would work things out so that I could sign up for this class waaay past registration date is on vacation now so I don't know if he accidentally sent the info to my school email or what. Maybe I'll check the email right now...

Oh! Hahhaha. It's fixed! Sweet.

Holy shit! So, work exp coordinator is on vacay, but he got some lady to get me registered, so I got an email (dated yesterday at 12:56) saying that I'd been registered and that I had 24 hours to pay my fees. That was scary because I assumed that I had missed the opportunity since I woke up at 12:55 today, but it seems like I made it../ Now I have a suspicion that I overpaid because I popups blocked the first time I used my VISA, and the second time I used it it was declined (weird) and the third time I used my mostly-stagnant mastercard and it worked. The good news is that I have to pay another $3000 in August anyway for next term so it's not like the money won't go somewhere. Whew.

I think I did pay it on my VISA, on closer inspection...because I only have $17 available credit there now...hahaha

Geez

Poised for a comeback

2009-05-27T10:34:00.003-06:00

Okay, so the whole not buying stuff week never worked out. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough, or maybe it was because I just didn't really have a goal or motivation to do it. Maybe another day I will try it out.

As for ignoring my blog since March - whoops! Partly it was the busy nature of school, then it was my computer breaking down (just got a new [Free!] hard drive from the Mac store, woohoo!). But since I've started reading the blogs of friends, I am definitely in the mood to write.

The summer isn't exactly going as I imagined it would. In my late-winter era mind, I foresaw myself get a sweet internship, possibly one that paid at least minimum wage. I would be wracking up my story count, or at least learning how to use excel and writing some intra-office memos.

But, as the cold winter stumbled clumsily into a brisk spring chill, I was still short one internship. An awkward interview at the University followed an uninspiring face-to-face with some honcho at CBC.

And now, the job board is empty, the only mailed-out "self-identified" job offers are not remotely journalism, nor am I capable of creating the diversified and dynamic communications plans that they want me to make. As if.

So I am an intern shipwreck at sea, perhaps.

All through the winter I vowed that I will fill the potential gap (of no work term) with volunteering in a writing capacity, somewhere. And I am nervous about writing for the Journal, although that is not for any good reason, to be honest.

But I really do want to work on my portfolio because I don't want to be in the exact same situation a year from now when I am under the proverbial gun to do my work term.

I'll be fine though, I feel positive about the next three months.

In the meantime, I am bartending at Broken City. It should be a fun time once again, but it doesn't exactly develop integral journalism skills by any means.

Anyhow, I am going to go enjoy some fresh air!

Still not buying it

2009-03-07T16:06:00.003-07:00

So, I spent $10.25 on my cab home last night. This was taken from tip money that I made last night, which totalled $52 before cab and after tipping out the doorboys. I don't think I really broke a rule there. Maybe stretched it though because there were other ways for me to get home: could have walked to the train, took the train, walked from station to home. But when it's cold and almost 1 a.m., I think a cab is a safe choice.

Today I spent four hours at the Jubilee Auditorium volunteering for the Kiwanis music festival. It is for an assignment on altruism. I didn't really feel very altruistic, but I know that my time did go to a good cause. Considering I would have probably just sat at home playing Valkyria Chronicles otherwise, I think this is a good thing. The volunteer coordinator suggested I grab lunch at a nearby food court (more money I didn't need to spend) while I waited for my first session to start. Instead I had a complimentary coffee (I even had cream in it! It's not as good as soy, but it was actually quite lovely) in the volunteer lounge and read some of Brave New World.

The rest of the day will include dinner with the boyfriend - cooked by us with ingredients from our combined pantries. I'm thinking asparagus risotto and somethin, but I'm not sure we have enough veggies to make it properly. I really want to pick up some mushrooms and/or chard. But I'll see what I have first. Part of this whole exercise, a big part in fact, is to clear out my over stuffed food stores. It's good to have supplies so I can whip up a meal anytime. But when I have so much food and just keep buying more, it means plenty of it goes to waste.

Then we'll probably watch some Firefly and take some photos before we both go to work at 9. There's a new menu at work and I'm sorely tempted to try the new homemade vegan burger, but there's no sense in eating at 9 pm anyway. I'll wait until I'm working next Saturday afternoon.

All the bus transit was paid for in my tuition months ago, so that isn't an expense either.

So far, so good, I'm thinking. But now I want some wine.

Things I want to Buy

2009-03-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

Since 5 pm today, I have thought about purchasing:
- shower head
- french fries
- cup coffee
- a fancy briefcase
- hot air popcorn popper
- soy silk creamer
- michael rault cd
- slice of pizza

And I am going to break my rule a bit because it's really cold and late and I am going to take a cab home from work. And in the morning: hashbrowns!
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

A month after

2009-03-06T14:29:00.002-07:00

Okay, I really did intend to post frequently in the days following the cleanse. Unfortunately, I got so busy eating and with school, that I neglected the blog completely.

The bad news: I'm slipping into snacking habits again, so I'm going to make a great effort to get outta that. I've been eating wheat bread a little more often than I should. I haven't baked a loaf of spelt bread since the cleanse, so I'll hopefully get on that soon too. Too much beer in my diet! I am not completely bingeing, but I will be cutting down even more on beer and pop-based hiballs. I'm digging red wine though. Check out a bottle of pinotage sometime soon, it's got a lovely sweetness. I've gained some weight back and my complexion isn't the glowing, smooth loveliness that it was in week 2.

The good news: I am eating better and healthier than before the cleanse. It's hard to eat as much veggies as I was before, but I think I am doing a decent job of incorporating them and will keep going. I still remember how good I felt and looked when I was eating that awesomely healthy food so I have a great incentive to get back on the wagon.

Unrelated: today is day one of my week without buying. So far, so good. But it's only 2:30. If there are groceries that I need, I will buy them, but nothing else is allowed. I have so much food in my house, it's ridiculous for me not to have SOMETHING to eat. I'll make my lunches so they're ready to take to school. I'm excited for this little challenge! I don't really think it will be terribly challenging but a good experience nonetheless.

First day off the cleanse

2009-02-09T11:44:00.002-07:00

Well, the day has finally come, I am done the cleanse!

After waking up early and tidying up a bit, I brewed my first cup of coffee in more than 3 weeks. I put a heaping teaspoon of raw sugar in there and a few tablespoons of Rice Dream rice milk.

It was a steaming mug of liquid gold.

Mmmm. I'm waiting until my boy shows up before I indulge in another cup. Dr. Rau's "Maintenance Diet" says I should limit myself to 1 cup of coffee or decaffeinated tea in the morning and then only herbal/decaf after that. I'm giving myself some leeway. I have no intention of following his maintenace diet religiously, but there is some good stuff in there.

Today in the Globe & Mail my horoscope said

Avoid trying to ram your opinions down other people's throats today. Not only wll you not succeed but you will almost certainly turn even your friends against you. You are entitled to your views, of course, but there are many other ways of looking at world.

I think that is both eye-opening and reinforcing to my current state of mind. I've definitely been a bit preachy while I follow this cleanse, because I feel strongly about what we as Canadians eat on a regular basis. I'm going to concentrate on toning down the gospel of Dr. Rau and not try to cut people off of cow's milk, get them hopped up on whole grains and reduce their intake of processed white flour and wheat in general.

My new method will be conversion through gentle coercion. That is, I will invite people to eat whole grain vegan/vegetarian with me and feed them awesome and wholesome food that is far beyond the realm of boiled veg and bread.

Today is the cook-a-thon! I started early so that the Boy and I could eat a lunch of fresh Mexican goodies: spelt (mixed with a bit of whole wheat and white flour) tortillas, Mexican rice, Guac (I have so many avocados!), refried beans (cooked overnight in my crockpot. I accidentally bought Romano instead of Pinto beans and it turns out that they look identical, but are slightly different. They taste fabulous though), and salsa.

I also roasted some veggies and boiled bejeezus out of them for veggie stock. It was a good way to use up veggie scraps (dying red pepper, asparagus ends, fennel trimmings) and have a healthier stock for the soup I'm going to make (probably Pea Soup).

I'm off for now, it's time to work on the tortillas!

Let them eat tarts!

2009-02-07T22:59:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow is the last day of the cleanse. It isn't getting easier right now because the cleanse keeps giving me delicious things to eat like the spelt cookies, creamy polenta, risotto, lentils with feta cheese and sundried tomatoes. I have been eating extra cookies...

It's so close...on Monday I get wine (because I say so) and I'm spending a whole whack of time cooking and baking healthy but delicious food. The biggest annoyance with this cleanse is that all the recipes are for about 4-6 portions and the dips especially are inconvenient because we only get to eat it once, or in the case of dips, once and then not again until 4 or 5 days later, when it's gone off. Ergh! I feel like a lot of food has gone to waste :/

Anyhoo, on the bright side, I'm making a tart tomorrow! There is catfish on the menu for lunch, yuck. Not sure exactly what I will have, probably extra asparagus and a little bit of feta or goaty gouda! Mmmmm

I bought grapefruit juice to finish up the week, instead of buying another grapefruit (I'll wait until they go on sale). It's not as delicious at all but it'll make for a quicker breakfast.

The cooking has been wearing me down, I am so ready to clean my fridge and start a new, college-style healthy eating. I'm excited to sign up for The Good Food Box, it's SO cheap and the drop off is super duper close.

And as I've mentioned before, I bought 3 cookbooks, and there is a plethora of opportunities for eating too too much.

But honestly, I do intend to stick to these large doses of vegetables and whole grains. FYI: Quinoa is tops!

Plus, it's about time that the boy and I go to Buddha's Veggie or some such place of deliciousness.

It's time for bed, happy munching!

Spelt Flour

2009-02-03T16:33:00.004-07:00

Holy crap, formatting photos on this blog is a huge pain in the ass. Here are more anyway:
Kneading the dough for my spelt bread. It was a long baking day.

And voila!

Here are the maple pecan-walnut cookies I made today:

Quick Peek

2009-02-03T16:24:00.003-07:00

Some breakfast shots:
Steel-cut oats and organic banana

Half a grapefruit (on sale!)

Home-made spelt bread with delicious goat gouda!

Asparagus stir-fry with carrots, swiss chard, kale and
brown rice (it was FABulous).
And $12 of organic asparagus, oh dear.

Baked

2009-02-02T00:00:00.003-07:00

The stress!!

I think I spent 8 hours cooking and/or eating and/or planning week 3's cooking today. Breakfast, as usual. But I woke up late so it wasn't long until I was shredding greens for salad, then prepping asparagus, chard, kale and carrots for a stir fry. Also cooked brown rice at the same time. But before that I started baking a couple loaves of spelt bread. Then ate with mum and figured out next week's food decisions. Then I went to the post office to pick up a package from Amazon (Vive le Vegan; Eat, Drink & Be Vegan; and Veganomicon). Punched down the bread and let it rise again.

Something must have happened for the next hour, anyway, and I baked the bread.

Toasted cumin seeds for lemony hummus, and made that recipe. At the same time, prepped and cooked tomorrow's lunch: braised kale with carrots and potatoes.

Finally, I ate dinner around 8:30. It was a steamed Artichoke and a slice of fresh baked bread with (goat) feta cheese. I've never had artichoke that wasn't from a can, but it was pretty tasty, although I ate it upside-down and got poked by the little thorns...

Anyhoo, I didn't get anything done other than cleanse-related stuff which was quite disappointing considering my to-do list at present. Ah well though, everyone needs at bit of stress to keep things a-hoppin'!

Or something?

There are plenty of food photos from the last few days, but I really ought to be reading my ethics textbook right now. They'll be up laterish!

Food Porn

2009-01-30T13:27:00.001-07:00

It's sort of weird that food photos are known as 'food porn.' It seems like a good way to make your photo, and the food, seem sort of dirty and gross. Even though porn isn't necessarily dirty and gross. Still, there's got to be a more interesting way than simply "food photography" but with less connotative meaning than porn.

I'm in class and we're watching Helvetica. It's a documentary on the ubiquitous typeface and about design in general a bit. While quite an interesting look at design and typefaces (a passion of my not so long-ago youth spent making websites), it's easy to become distracted while sitting in front of a sleek widescreen Mac.

I've been browsing vegan cooking blogs, and it's making my friend salivate a bit.

Check out Veganachronism, a blog that veganizes historical recipes. The most recent post is for tater tots! Not historical, but still delicious.

Or Vegan Cookies, pretty self explanatory. The blogger is developing a cookbook so there are only a few recipes, but a plethora of sugary cookie photos that I feel guilty even just glimpsing.

Next week on the cleanse there are plenty of sugary treats: maple pecan cookies, baked maple apple and a lemon-freaking-tart. But I've got to concentrate on this week and appreciate the tantalizing offerings (afternoon snack is baked tortillas with fresh guac; tonight is black bean cashew burgers) compared with last week's army of wiggly steamed veg.

Friends of Cleanse

2009-01-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

I had one more photo for that last post but it's on a different topic so I'll slide it in separately.

Here are some of the tools of this cleanse:Back row: Clockwise, from bottom left corner: delish steel-cut oats, my happily coloured melamine measuring spoons, baking soda, Brita water jug, Pyrex measuring cup, loaf of spelt bread and three expensive cobs of white corn, PC sea salt, Lakewood Organic Carrot Juice (real good, not too sweet), Fairwinds Farms Goat Milk yogurt (very tasty), steel steamer, LifeSource strawberry preserves.

Front row: my beloved tetsubin, bosc pear, grapefruit and lemon

Not pictured: Mr. Olive Oil, Mr. Balsamic Vinegar, Ms. Goat's Milk Gouda, Ms. Colander, Mrs. Sweet Potato-Yam and Mr. Red Tater.

Story with pictures

2009-01-28T13:04:00.001-07:00

Ugh, I am going to skip out on zucchini til I am off this cleanse, I think. It's meant to be eaten the Italian way (breaded and fried or baked) or maybe the French way (deep-fried, stuffed zucchini flowers). Not steamed. Yuck.
Edit: Also, zucchini are "an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower."

I was supposed to have Swiss Chard with lunch but I bought Kale on accident. The Kale was pretty decent, but not especially delicious so I decided to learn what was good about it, from wikipedia:

Kale is considered to be a highly nutritious vegetable with powerful antioxidant properties and is anti-inflammatory.
Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium.

Kale, as with Broccoli and other brassicas, contains sulforaphane, a chemical believed to have potent anti-cancer properties, particularly when chopped.

I can deal with that! Also, Chard is actually beet greens! I much prefer chard to the beets, beets are tooo sweet, and can only be my friend if they are in borscht.

The Swiss Potato Salad was quite nice. I added a bit of chopped celery for texture. Lentils were flavourless and blah.

Dessert though! Ohhh, dessert! Quite smashing, maybe a little sweeter than I needed. I had a sliced Bosc pear dressed with organic dark maple syrup and chopped cashew. It was a treat!

I hope to get in the habit of includng photos with posts, at least on these days where I have all my meals at home. It's the least I can do to properly log my experience during my first cleanse. And now that I am not complaining and dreaming about food all the time, hopefully my posts will be increasingly interesting to look back on.

For the record, current emotions include:

glee
energy
excitement
optimism!

This is in comparison with about a week ago, when I was:

weepy
uninterested
whiny
disheartened

Ahh, how the times have changed! Also, I ordered a few vegan cookbooks off amazon that should get here during week 3. I am excited to cook more (again).

Week 2, Day 3

2009-01-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I am all talk sometimes when it comes to blogging. Anyway, today will have a good post or two (three?)

Week 2 is like a week of forgiveness to evil Dr. Rau who has inflicted steamed vegetables upon my humble life.

Breakfast is full of stimulating flavours and hearty goodies. After my warm, alkalizing mug of baking soda and water (it's growing on me!) I eat half a grapefruit (on sale at Safeway! 6 for $3, regular $7). I linger over the paper, usually the National Post, or the Globe & Mail if it's at my door while my steel cut oats cook. Today I ran out of dates, which is the sweetener for my oatmeal, but it was still delicious with my morning banana.

And today included a new, soft-boiled egg with my spelt toast! I was pretty excited leading up to it, and though it wasn't as fantastic as my imagination described it, it was still satisfying.

Week 2 means green (i.e. caffeinated) tea in the morning and I enjoyed a pot of lavender jasmine that I bought on a trip to Canmore at the start of the month.

Today's snack was 5 cashews, hahaha.

Now I'm cooking lunch, which has been a bit laborious because it includes lentils, that I needed to cook, and Swiss Potato Salad, also not yet cooked. But now it is time to eat. Photos upcoming!

Cravings

2009-01-23T15:01:00.001-07:00

As I was eating my Spice-Steamed Chickpeas and shredded veg, Ed microwaved 2 deluxe Pizza Pops. The agony!

Really I just want a big bowl of pasta with a good, chunky tomato sauce.

I decided to clean the bathtub so I could have a warm bath on such a cold day, when I opened a new pair of latex gloves, I swear they smelled like chocolate chips.

I don't wanna finish my steamed veg for lunch...steamed cabbage? I guess if I ate it out in the snow I could pretend to be a Ukrainian girl who has no heat because Russia doesn't wanna give it away for cheap anymore.

It's mid-morning snack time anyway: avocado! Actually fabulous with lemon juice and sea salt. I'm out of apples though, as well as cukes so I'll have to stock up soon
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

Day 5

2009-01-23T12:15:00.001-07:00

I'm falling behind on blog posts so I've converted to mobile blogging! Expect more updates.

Day 3 ended with an against-the-rules fresh salad at the pasta retaurant. House-baked bread, sauce-drenched pasta and freshly grated parmesan and I was eating romaine and olive oil. I admit though, I also ate 4 kalamata olives...

Day 4 brought some woe, nothin specific, but chatting with mum helped reinforce my motivation. Was supposed to have steamed artichoke for dinner but Safeway and Community Natural Foods were outta them.

The carrot juice I bought at Safeway (something-house farms?) Is bad, sickly sweet carrot-ness. I'll try and drink my $8 worth but the organic, 1% lemon juice kind is far far better.

I went to a rock show last night, late. It was fabulous (Key to the City!), and I don't regret being out late. Even so, it was a sleepy rise this morning and I had to finish breakfast at school.

I'm going to be making my cheese, spelt bread, and spelt pasta shopping list this afternoon! I'm already salivating.

In other news, I think my boobs got smaller and I'm going to try on my red pants today, and see if they fit better than they did during christmas.

In the past week the temperature has dropped between 30-40 degrees following the exit of a chinook. Apparently that is harder on the body. It certainly makes it tough to take a walk. I might have to go mall walking like the seniors up the hill. Oh dear.

Day 3

2009-01-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

Just a quick recap:
Day 1:

Was at the boyfriend's house but I'd brought almost everything over to his place for the cleanse so I figured I'd make the alkaline soup and get 'er started.
While the soup was cooking, I tried to drink the daily cuppa baking soda + warm water. That was not fun. I think I gulped down an ounce or so. After that came the flax seed oil.
I have heard plenty of good stuff about flax seed oil and all of it's benefits with the omegas and what not. Since the menu for the day said 1 tablespoon flax oil, I decided I would just have it like that.

Great idea, that one. It came up as quickly as it had gone down, and it tasted just as horrible.

Day 2:

I made the soup again, but cheated by adding garlic and some sea salt. It didn't make it especially tasty but it's palatable now. Had broth for breakfast and tried to have the baking soda and water but it wasn't agreeing with me. The 1/2 organic grapefruit was delectable and the steel cut oats were actually pretty decent with an apple. Still not willing to try flax oil again. I made it into a garlic-balsamic dressing instead.

Lunch was sorta disastrous because I understeamed my veg in the microwave at school, but couldn't resteam them since I had already drizzled them with oil. A sad meal.

Dinner was better, although my mum (also on the cleanse) was displeased that I wasn't following the exact meal plan (i.e. the flax thing). I am so lumped that I can have potatoes on this cleanse, even if they are steamed.

Day 3:
Breakfast was much smoother today. Still no flax.
I sliced up the date that I am supposed to cook with the oats and didn't notice a difference, but it was still good.
The broth was also pretty decent.

It takes forever to eat breakfast on this cleanse but it was nice to linger over the newspaper and read about Obama's inauguration.

I'm eating lunch right now. I am working on a beet salad that is full of beets which is unfortunate because I am not a fan. They taste too earthy for me. This shredded salad is a monster, with probably more than necessary greens in it. Red lettuce, spinach, parsley, cuke and 1/2 cup of alfalfa sprouts. I still have to eat the steamed sweet potatoes and broccoli and I didn't have my midmorning snack. I'm surprisingly full.

Nonetheless, my craving for sodium and bread is raging and I can't stop thinking about cheese. Thank god I don't eat meat anymore.

I think I've been a bit grumpy but I don't think it's related to the food.

Tonight is a dinner with brother and father, not sure if I will eat or try to order just steamed veggies. Hmmm

Coronation

2009-01-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the premise, folks.

I have been a bit obsessed with food since I began eating vegetarian in November 2007. Not in a bad or unhealthy way, of course. But not eating meat forced me to get more creative in the way I get my nutrients.

Cooking for myself lead to cooking from scratch when I could. I baked focaccia bread for the first time, learned about new whole grains, ate cous cous and bok choy and sometimes freaked out my roommate.

But of course, the holiday season wreaked some havoc on my food intake. Cheeses, beer, pie, wine, and so many cookies.

I won't call it a New Year's resolution, but I decided to start a cleanse in January. I'm doing Dr. Rau's Way which was recommended to my mum by a friend of her's.

Read on, followers.