Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Slo-mo

I have a parcel on its way to me. And in these days of electronic tracking I can watch it wend its way to me. I was hoping, since it is coming from Vancouver and not Toronto like the previous parcel, that the time it takes to get here would be a few days.

I'm wrong. Given that it apparently left Vancouver on the 21st of the month and only managed - in nine days - to get as far as Richmond BC, I'll be lucky if it gets here by Thanksgiving. Christmas?

I can see clearly now



Remember this? Well, the vanilla is still sitting in a dark cupboard getting darker and richer waiting for the day I'll combine it with the sugar syrup but the Portuguese Milk Liqueur is done.




It worked! Actually, it more than worked; I did it because I couldn't believe that a liqueur made with milk could be clear. Didn't even think about whether it would be tasty or not, I was more interested in the science of it all. Turns out that yes, it ends up clear. But even more amazing is that it tasted amazing. Truly it does. Pretty strong, so more of a drink you'd have at the end of an evening, like ice wine or port. Very lemon-y but much tastier - to my palate - than Limoncello. There is a nice chocolate after taste too. Very yummy!




The down side was the PIA factor. So much straining. I think, should I ever choose to do it again, I'd use paper coffee filters for all three strainings. The recipe said to do it once, but a reviewer I read did it three times and I think that's the better call. It was still cloudy after the first filter. I also think that the fact that I used a little one cup coffee filter made it all harder than it should have been. What can I say? I'm a tea drinker and I don't have anything other than a little one cup thingy for visitors to use.




So....don't believe me that it turned out clear? I took pictures, just to show you. Ha!




ps: this is the post that should have been here yesterday, but I was at a conference. Sometimes promises like "I'll kitchen blog every Tuesday" get broken by the real world pushing in.






Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Saving Salisbury

So I tried the Salisbury steak recipe. The beef part sucked*, but the mushroom wine sauce was fantastic. And I HATE mushrooms. A stand I suspect I will have to renegotiate to something along the lines of "don't particularly like mushrooms". Maybe the fact that it Port was used for deglazing that made me like the sauce. Or the butter. Mmmmm....butter.

So I would use the sauce again, on steak or even roast beef. But the rest of the recipe was...unpleasant. If you'd like the recipe for the sauce let me know and I'll send you an email.

*In the interest of being more helpful, it sucked because it was basically a bland, dry hunk of cooked ground beef. The meat may have been too lean, or perhaps I cooked it too much before putting it in the sauce to finish off. Nevertheless, my mistake or a bad recipe, I won't be doing it again.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Noooooooooooooooooooo!

I read a romance short story over tea break this morning. Back off, I can read what I want and it's been that kind of a week. Despite this being merely Tuesday.

Anyway, read the story and then the introduction. An introduction where the author explains that she was asked to write a story about and for older women. And the heroine is my age. Great googly moogly.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Home, but not on the range.

There’s a limit to how close to farming one can get living in the city. Growyour own veggies? Yes, I do that. We’ve just about finished year two at the community gardens. It was a terrible growing year, so the plot didn’t produce anywhere near as much as I was hoping, but it was worth it nevertheless. My little bit of farmland.

There is an added complication of living in what is primarily grain – farm land. I’m more interested in the livestock aspect of things. In the end perhaps I’ll have to wait until I’ve retired, and moved. Which will happen when I win the lottery or – far more likely - when I’m too old to look after anything more than a lame lamb.

There are other things I’ve been looking into. For instance, I’ve been waiting to take a honey course. Beekeeping, actually, to be more accurate. The local college offered a course in 2004. They say they’ll do it again but in the meantime I guess I’ll just eat honey and read books like "Beekeeping for Dummies".

Also on the reading agenda these days is anything and everything regarding livestock share programs. Basically, this means you (who live in the city) get in touch with a farmer who has land but not enough capital to make full use of the land she/he has. You buy livestock, they look after said creatures, profits at sale are split. The actual procedure is far more complicated than that, of course, as there are a number of different types of arrangements. So I’ve been talking to everyone I know who is even vaguely related to farming*, going to government and private websites and reading books/articles on the subject. If you have anything you’d care to tell me by all means say something in the comments.

*I got some excellent help, some moderate discouragement and one “ah, just find some farmer to date. Much cheaper than lend lease”.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Overheard at Safeway

I normally hear the weirdest statements in the public washrooms at work, thanks to the incredibly shallow women who used to work in the office on the second floor. That office has since moved downtown and I thought my days of overhearing strange sentences were over. Not so, as it happens.

I was in Safeway yesterday and standing in line I heard someone (on a cell phone, sadly, as I would have liked to see who was receiving the comment) say the following:
"
How'd you lose that many teeth in a single fight?"

I guess there is a limit to how many teeth per fight one should be expected to lose. No idea what that number might be. Two? Three?

Review: Cook's Illustrated American Classics (ATK)

Although my general rule of thumb for borrowing or buying a new cook book is finding at least three intriguing recipes, there are two exceptions to that rule that can convince me to pick up a cookbook on the spot, potential recipes or not. Exceptions that relate more to the book’s ability to entertain than its ability to provide me with a slew of new recipes.

The first is when the cookbook is ethnic or unusual in some way and the author includes anecdotes about the country in question. One of my favorites in this arena is Let’s Go Dutch, by Johanna (van der Zeijst) Bates. Although she lives in Canada, she grew up in Holland and includes lovely little snippets of Dutch history, along with some of her own fond food memories. One bit I always remember is where she explains her lack of weight gain– despite the ever available pasty – in Holland. Her family, like most Netherlanders, walked or biked almost everywhere they went. The weight gain didn’t come until, as she put it, “I ate like I was in Holland and drove like I was in Canada”.

The other exception is a cookbook where the author(s) have loaded the recipes with lots of interesting extras. Where did the recipe originate? What is a common mistake that makes the recipe fail? Better yet, what can be done to guarantee success?

My newest purchase falls into the latter category. The book – more a cross between book and magazine – is Cook’s Illustrated American Classics. I’ve been so enamoured with the televison show America’s Test Kitchen that I would likely have grabbed it even if it didn’t have all the extra information. This show, by the way, is the only cooking show I watch with pen and paper in hand. It’s been on for years but I never paid it any attention until about a month ago.

As per the title, the recipes are American Classics. Some perhaps a bit too American for me. I suspect my Canadian palate will never acquire a taste for Southern style greens or baked cheese grits! The rest of the recipes are popular here as well as south of the border. North American Classics, I think.

A number of the recipes are for simple and familiar dishes, and with fewer people spending time learning the basics, this is a good thing. The science and testing that went into something as simple as the recipe for Hearty Scrambled Eggs made me want to go out to the store for eggs the minute I read it. At ten o’clock at night no less! I like my scrambled eggs plain but my son – no surprise at eighteen – likes it when they’re more of a complete meal. I can’t wait for the weekend to get here so I can make these for him.

My daughter is excited about the equally simple Great Iced Tea in 15 minutes and Perfect Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. Two things that you’d think wouldn’t need a recipe, but we’ve all had our disappointments, at home and in restaurants.

There were a couple of surprises, too. I almost skipped reading "Reclaiming Salisbury Steak". I’ve never had good Salisbury steak so for me there was no “reclaiming” involved. I have, however, had many a nightmare inducing Salisbury steak. I never dreamt that someone could write so temptingly about something that has been so firmly entrenched in my not-if-I-can-avoid-it psyche. How can I argue with an article that concludes with “now I had tender and perfectly cooked beef patties and a gravy that was infused with deep, rich mushroom flavour…this recipe demonstrates what Salisbury steak was originally meant to be”?

Also a surprise was "Rethinking Apple Pie". I make a pretty close to perfect apple pie, and didn’t think there was much they could offer me on that front. But this is apple pandowdy, more like apple-pie-in-a-skillet. And sometimes I just don’t have the time for the whole fuss and bother of pie making. This fits the “feel like apple pie but don’t have the time” niche perfectly.

As usual with America’s Test Kitchen they included some excellent reviews of kitchen toys and tools. Serendipitously, they reviewed slow cookers when not only am I in the market for a new one, but the day after some Home Hardware gift certificates arrived in the mail from my dad. That review was an aside to the really excellent piece "Slow-Cooker Country Captain Chicken – This Southern stew should be tender and spicy, but a slow cooker can render the meat stringy and the sauce bland. Could we fix its faults?” After reading it I’m convinced they did. So convinced, in fact, that that’s what we’re having for supper on Sunday. And if we should happen to finish the meal off with "St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake", well, a long walk in the lovely fall weather is also on my list of things I want to do right away.

Thanks to all the authors – and testers! – at America’s Test Kitchen. You’ve done it again; straight forward delicious recipes that have me itching to get to work in my own kitchen.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Les Filles have let me down.

Dear two-thirds of Amandolyn and Ky;

Just two thirds because really, Amanda has no responsibilities re: keping me posted on impossibly attractive UK actors.

You two, though, you do. How am I supposed to keep track of all the swoony British actors out there if not for you? Why do you think I read your blog? Ok, I read it because I love you ,but still, all the tasty photo attachments of your latest discoveries are not to be sneezed at.

So imagine my surprise when I got caught up watching a BBC crime show and came across the surely-he-can't-be-real Tom Ward. I could have been day-dreaming about him for YEARS by now if you were on top of things! Pull up your socks, ladies. And you who are leaving us for England, I expect some emails with English actor encounter stories. Please?

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Is being old an excuse?

I have reached a new high in distraction. Or perhaps a new low? There are times when I get so involved with what I’m doing that I forget where I am. Or who I am with. Much to the surprise of the babies, I have on occasion referred to their friends as “honey”. Easy to do, yes? I mean, there’s a bunch of kids, two of them are yours, you call them honey and somehow it just slips out. Actually, that has happened elsewhere too. I called a client honey once. With any luck he didn’t notice. Or if he did, didn’t care.

I once answered my front door wearing shorts, a bra and an apron. Thank heavens it was the Mrs. from next door, not the Mr.!

Anyway, for reasons that might be unusual for others but aren’t for me I am currently doing all the laundry at a Laundromat. I have come to enjoy it, actually. I even have a relationship of sorts with the owner. I just avoid Saturdays as that seems to be when the crazy people who must talk to you do their laundry. I don’t mind crazy people but I prefer to read during the lulls between washing and drying. I do have a bit of fondness for the one woman who, on my first day there came over to me and whispered – in the appropriate voice for profound secrets – “everything has already happened”.

This past Sunday was laundry day. No kids with me (The Girl got tickets to the Labour Day Classic so they were at the game) so I packed four sacks of dirty laundry, money, soap and a book and off I went. I was wearing green, but not specifically Rider Gear.

For those who may be reading from elsewhere the provincial CFL football team is the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. Every labour day weekend they play a game against perennial foes The Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Regina is a sea of green on game day. The majority of the population wears green, and there are flags and signs everywhere you look. So – yes for the green, no to the specific Rider green/gear.

Four washes and many quarters of drying later I was folding clothes for The Girl when I came across a Rider T-shirt. I looked at it and thought “hey, I should change into that”. And I did. Right there. Without thinking. Without shame. Until I saw the looks on the other patrons faces and realized what I’d done. Whipped off a shirt in public. Geez, you can’t take me anywhere!

Liquid Kitchen. With Corrections.

One would think I’m a dedicated drinker with all the brewing of alcohol I seem to get involved in. I’m truly not, but things have a way of happening whether you plan them or not. Mainly. I have to admit that the repeated creation (batch three is working away in the cupboard, should be ready by Christmas) of vanilla cordial may have more to do with drinking than anything else, but the other two are less about the drinking and more about the making.

The first thing I ever made were the aforementioned vanilla cordial. It involves rum as a base instead of a vodka base. Use a middle of the road rum if you’re going to try this. Cheap tastes exactly as you would expect and expensive is wasted by the time all is said and done. To this you add five split vanilla beans. Let the bottle hang around in a cool dark cupboard for as long as you can bear it, two months at least. Shake it every now and again. Doesn’t have to be every day, and really I suspect that if you leave it long enough it won’t need shaking at all, I just do it because every time you shake it more seeds come loose from the pods. The more seeds, the better the flavour.

So, you’ve let is soak for a couple on months. At this point the rum is no longer white but a lovely amber, with lots of little seeds floating about. Pour the rum through a sieve into another container. Put the beans into a sauce pan with one cup of water and a cup and a half of sugar. Bring to a boil. Cool. Mix the rum with the sugar syrup. Don’t include the beans, but let the seeds that are in the rum – and any the syrup may have – stay. Add 1 tablespoon of glycerin. Re-bottle, some in the rum bottle and the extra wherever. You can let this sit for a few weeks but if you can’t resist trying it then give in and give it a slurp. I use it in a lot of recipes and I must confess that I do indulge in the occasional rum and root beer. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it!

My second attempt at home made liqueur was somewhat less successful. Having an herb garden at the front of the house that is backed by something we call Mint Mountain, I decided to make my own crème de menthe. There really is a limit to how much mint jelly one family of three can consume. I don't know that many lamb eaters, so there is also a limit as to how much I can give away. I do make herbal tea with it, and dry it, but seriously a mountain of mint makes a mountain of tea. Hence the liqueur!

It did work out but I don’t often use it because I wasn’t paying attention when I added green food colouring. We have several boxes and jars of food colouring and in my haste I picked up the box that The Girl bought one year. The box of neon food colouring. So my crème de menthe is electric green. Very toxic looking and consequently unappealing. I still have it, partly because I can’t bring myself to toss something usable away, and partly because you never know when some recipe – preferably chocolate, to hid the green – might call for a healthy dose of mint liqueur.

This brings us to the third and final liqueur making attempt. I’m trying out the Milk Liqueur from The New Portuguese Table. Why? Is it because I want to have milk liqueur around to drink or cook with? No. Might it be because someone asked me to make it? No, not that either. It’s because, according to the recipe, when you’re done it’s completely clear. How can that be? It it made with milk! So I’m trying it. Right now – I started it yesterday – it looks truly disgusting. I’ve got vodka, milk, chocolate, sugar and chopped lemon stewing in a gallon jar in a dark cupboard. It’s all curdled looking and very evil scientist lab-like. I’ll keep y’all updated on how it’s going.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Photos!


Or photo singular, rather. I went to the plot to do some weeding over the lunch break, and since I had my camera with me, and the talking-to-the-computer-cord I thought I'd have a shot at putting a photograph onto the blog. Ky explained how to do it and it does sound idiot proof, and she was right!
Some potatoes left, mainly the Pacific russet although there are some German Butterball too. Not a one of them showing any signs of blight, but I'm keeping my eye on them. Apart from the peas, the huge empty spaces you're looking at are where the blight-ridden tomatoes and potatoes were. There are still lots of onions and some beets which are for Mayb. The beets, that is. The onions are getting eaten on a regular basis.
Speaking of onions - that 2.99 I spent on spring onions in July (to fill in a blank spot) were worth it. There are seven plants up now, four of which could be used any time. Those four alone are worth the three bucks I spent!

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

I thought, for a moment today, that I was having a mid-life crisis. But I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to paying attention to using the right word for the right time. And crisis is simply too much for what I’m feeling. It carries a sense of urgency with it, of something that, if not dealt with, will be a problem.

What I’m feeling is more of a certain restlessness. Not because the weathers changing, really. After all this is Saskatchewan – fall actually starts sometime in August most years. I think it has more to do with fall being when the kids go back to school.

We have all spent our early years with our lives running to a particular cycle: the end of summer is the end of the cycle, fall is the start of the new one. Forget January first to December 31st, that’s merely a convenience. Everyone knows that life starts again when you’re back in school. Seeing friends you haven’t seen all summer, finding out who the new kids are, starting new classes, learning new things. And you’re one step closer to becoming an adult. All very new, all very exciting and all very definitely something I’m not doing.

All of which is exacerbated this year by The Boy starting university. Truly new for him, more than the change between elementary school and high school. I’ve done what I can as a parent and now I’m struggling to let him be an adult. He’s still my baby, but I’m working on not holding on so tightly. Which leaves me, of course, more time to wonder about what on earth am I doing.

So all the change going on around me – without involving me - is making me antsy. I’m not sleeping as well as I used to, and according to the kids my leg twitching is getting way out of hand. I feel like there is something I should be doing. There is, of course, I should be doing house work and yard work and Lord knows what else. But really I mean I feel like I should be doing something important. Something epic, as the young folk say. I just don’t know what that might be. I don’t even know what direction I should be looking. Or which direction I want to be looking! High time I headed to the kitchen. It’s canning season, and not only is working in the kitchen calming it is also, paradoxically, invigorating. Not to mention productive! Now I just need to find someone with concord grapes that they don’t use. Curse the school for ripping out the vines they had planted!

(Title is Longfellow, by the by. In case you were wondering).