It's staggering when you think about how far we've come in so little time.
Yeah, I know.  I've heard people making the same stupid comment more times than I care to even consider.  And in one sense it is a stupid comment.  What does that even mean?  'Progress', change has been happening steadily since history has been documented (arguably therefor it was going on before we began documenting), this we know.
However, when I think about the difference that 75 years has made in the way we eat, the way we think about food, the way we consume energy and goods... that's when my head starts to spin.  I could argue that the wars changed everything.  I could argue that cars and the switch from coal to oil changed everything.  Thing is though that everything changed... one way or another.


My Dad grew up on a farm outside of Belleville Ontario.  A little place called Thomasburg.  He was in high school before they got running water in the farm house.  In my Dad's day you had a big garden and you had the garden because you had a root cellar to fill and if you didn't fill the root cellar than you had to pray that you had friends that could help you out because at the grocery store there was maybe sugar and spices and then a few other things that were insanely expensive and that was it.... (yeah, I know that's a run on sentance).  You killed your own (you don't kill in the spring when babies have just been born - they'll have no mother to feed them) meat in the fall and stored it at the local butcher shop by renting freezer space.  Remember, no running water... and either no electricity or not enough money to use it for a chest freezer.
My Mom was a Minister's kid.  She moved from place to place in rural Ontario.  She also grew up with a garden, as much as they could establish with all the moving around that they did.  They also relied on parishioners to give them food from their gardens.  A bag of onions, a cabbage, potatoes, maybe even a chicken.  However, there were times when there just was not food.  No food!  Imagine.  Maybe it was a tough growing year.  Or it was either financially not feasible to buy the bulk of your food from a grocery store or the grocery store itself just didn't have the food.  Sometimes all they ate was onion sandwiches and boiled cabbage... because that's all there was.
Just recently, I've been reading phrases that go something like:  'There's nothing like sitting down to a locally sourced, home cooked dinner with friends and family.'  This is something we have to work towards now.  We have a new vocabulary for this kind of eating.  Less than fifty years ago once strawberry season was over you didn't get strawberries until.... next season.  Now, locally sourced is a big deal.  We have to look for it outside of the grocery store for the most part.  We don't really grow any of our own food.  We walk into a grocery store and buy most of our 'food' from a box with a list of ingredients and nutritional information on the side.  Home cooked is a subversive kind of thing when you consider that about 50 percent (yeah, I wrote that correctly) of the average household food budget is spent on fast food.  Fast food, not even 'sit-down-order-something-from-a-waiter-kind-of-place'.  We don't have to cook, some of us don't even know what a tomato looks like growing on the vine.
The disconnect is staggering when I stop and really ponder.  I'm sad that things are the way they are.  I hope that they change.  I hope that I can be a part of it in my own little way.  Somehow knowing makes a difference.


I made this cake with rhubarb from my back yard and frozen blueberries from last years harvest.  One small step.


Rhubarb and Blueberry Streusel Cake
adapted from Canadian Living

1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup (make it a generous one) chopped fresh rhubarb
1/2 cup (generous) blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Streusel
3 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup melted butter

Grease and flour a 9 inch springform pan and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine all the ingredients for the streusel and mix until it forms a crumb.  Set aside.
Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in another bowl and set aside.
Beat the butter and brown sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time and continue to beat together.  Add in the vanilla and mix well.
Add the flour and buttermilk alternately to the egg/butter mixture.   Begin and end with the flour.  Mix thoroughly after each addition.
Add the rhubarb to the batter and mix.  Pour the batter into the prepared pan.  Sprinkle the blueberries on top of the batter.
Sprinkle the streusel on top of that.


Bake for about 1 hr and 10 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Cool for about 20 minutes before removing from the pan.

I made this bread this afternoon.  It's rad.
I should be asleep (you might notice that this has happened before) but I'm not.
So, in my sleepless exhaustion, I've decided to write.  I got inspired by this post recently and thought it might be fun to give it a test drive here too.
So here are some random (and possibly incoherent due to the sleep situation) musings about ME.

1.  I pee fast.  Really fast.  I'm in and out in no time.  My friends are shocked and YES, I do wash my hands... damn people.
2.  I'm reading this right now.  And though it's terribly depressing I'm only just halfway through and I hope that it gets... well, maybe not happier but more hopeful... because next I'm reading this and I'm not sure that it's going to be a step up on the 'happy' metre.
3.   I eat my food in shifts.  Salad first... like an hour before kinda first.  French fries before anything else on the plate (they're small and get cold fast, and once they're cold the grease just doesn't taste the same).
4.  I hate heels.
5.  When I was a kid and doing skating lessons I was terrified (beyond terrified really) of the Zamboni.  I would slowly but decidedly skate backwards away from the class and towards to exit before the class was over as soon as the gates opened for the machine to start.  Never really have gotten over that.
6.  I read my books in the order that I received them.  Look, even I think that's weird.  There it is though, I feel completely out of sorts if I mix it up.  Magazines don't count.
7.  I hate it when people post a salad on their blog.  I've been holding that one in for a long time and it feels really good to get it off my chest.  It doesn't mean that I don't like the blog, I just think that posting a salad is lame.
8.  Sometimes when I'm at work and just in my studio doing computer crap I put on music videos on Youtube and turn the volume wayyyyyy up.  It feels badass.
9.  I do my best not to be perceived as a 'girlie' girl or as a tourist... ever.
10.  I run.  A lot. To work.  It's sweaty but running 8.5 k to work feels badass too.  I like that.
11.  I prefer beer over wine (red only please) and champagne trumps the lot.  Veuve Cliquot - there is no other.
12.  I hate talking on the phone and I also think that texting is a pain in the ass but I'll gladly do it if it means I don't have to talk on the phone.
13.  I think tattoos are hot but not the stupid-ass butterfly-on-my-shoulder and tiny-flower-over-my-butt things.  I like the stuff that clears out your bank account and crawls up your neck and down your arms and looks nasty.  That's hot.
14.  I probably cuss too much, although I don't do it on my blog because I don't want to come off offending any of my readers (I love all twenty of you that much).  Left to my own devices though, it would be bad and my favourite blogs are pretty fresh.
I wasn't going to post all this crap because I really didn't think that anybody would be into reading random crap about me.  But now I'm thinking that I should just put it out there.  Like some sort of liberation act or something.  And yeah, it's kinda my own therapy/I'm-really-a-self-absorbed-ego-maniac thing.
Here's a picture of me that my kid took - after not getting enough sleep... I like it.  That doesn't happen often... so I'm sharing.

Anticipation.
It's in the air right now.  It's palpable.  You can slice it with a knife.
We are all waiting right now.  It's almost the end of school.  The high school boys at my school are already done and writing exams.  Another gr. 12 class is graduating (I'll miss these ones - they're a nice group of guys).  The elementary's are in school for another week or so and we're just putting in time.  These guys are ready to go.
At home, we are waiting too.  Waiting for school to finish.  Waiting for some fun to begin.  Waiting for the garden to grow.  Waiting for visits from far away friends.  Waiting for my BFF to get home from her vacation.


We are also waiting for a new season to kick in as well.  Summer temperatures are not quite here yet.  The spring garden season is beginning to ebb now.  Fiddleheads... done.  Rhubarb... done.  Garlic Scapes... almost done.  This will be my last week for asparagus and what a run we've had.  I've got another bunch to go so I'll be coming up with another recipe but this one turned out very nicely.  It's like the harvest lull before the storm.  My beans and tomatoes (let's please not talk about my stupid-ass carrot and zucchini seed fiasco) and going crazy so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns into real food at some point in the near future.  If I can get tomatoes, beans, herbs and raspberries from my garden this year I will be happy enough.


So I plan.  My summer reading list.  Summer concerts.  Getting ready to start training for an October marathon.  Getting summer camps down (just one happening this summer so it's easy).  What I'm going to do with all my beans and tomatoes (yeah, right).


Asparagus, Spinach and Rice Casserole
serves 6

2 bunches of asparagus, hard ends snapped of and then cut in half (like cutting down a tree)
1 onion
1/4 cup of garlic scapes, chopped OR 3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large bunch of spinach (at least 4 cups), roughly chopped
2 cups rice
4 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup mixed fresh herbs, chopped
dash of cayenne (or pepper sauce)
dash of mustard powder
salt just to taste
3/4 cup Parmesan shredded
1/2 sour cream

First saute the asparagus in a little oil for about 6 - 7 minutes over medium heat.  Remove from heat and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Heat a large pot or dutch oven and add some oil (2 - 3 tbsp).  Throw in the onion and garlic scapes.  Saute those in the oil for about 5 - 7 minutes or until the onion is limp beginning to caramelize.
Add in the  Rice and swish the rice in the oil and veggies until the rice is nicely coated.  Add in the veggie broth and mix.  Cook for about 6 minutes over med/low heat.
Remove from the heat and add in the herbs, mustard powder, pepper sauce (if you are me) and salt.  Mix well.
Add in a 1/2 cup of the parmesan cheese and all the sour cream.  Mix well.
Pour the rice mixture into a largish baking dish.
Arrange the sauteed asparagus over the top of the rice mixture.  Sprinkle with the remaining parmesan cheese.
Bake for about 25 min or until the parmesan is just beginning to brown.
Cool for a few minutes before serving.

I think it's funny that an food author would call his book 'Baked'.
Why? You ask...
Honestly, what's the first thing you think of?  I would half expect to see a few recipes suggesting that the butter or oil be cooked together with some 'herbs' before adding to the cookies or brownies.
Alas, no such recipe exists in this book.  I bought it.  I looked.
I have some strong opinions regarding the legalisation of said 'herbs' for various reasons which I won't get into just now.  Suffice it to say that I really don't think it's a big deal and that I would definitely consider baking with 'herbs' - I wonder if I could post that recipe?  A time and place for everything... does that make me the consummate hippie... whatever, I can handle it.


So although the book didn't contain recipes with 'herbs' it did have plenty of recipes with chocolate.  Not just chocolate though which is even better.  I definitely appreciate chocolate but I have to admit that I'm moving away from it a little as my dessert of choice, well honestly I'm moving away from desserts in general.  Chocolate though can be a little overdone and even badly done.
This cake turned out surprisingly well.  I would recommend setting the iced cake in the fridge for a bit though if you want to dig in the same day.  Also, we all agreed that it tasted better the next day.  Definitely worth it though and very easy.
Baked (giggle) does have a rather nice collection of baking and I'm looking forward to trying out more of these recipes.  The Buckeyes that I posted earlier in the year were also from this book.  Ugh... those damn buckeyes.  I can still remember trying to dip those stupid things without them dropping into the melted chocolate and kids smeared with chocolate and smiles... ugh!  Arguably, if I had been baked it would have made the whole situation very funny and might have caused me to consider making them again sometime...




Sunday Night Cake
adapted only slightly from Baked Explorations (which unfortunately has nothing to do with pot)

Cake:
1 3/4 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sour cream

Icing:
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
3 1/2 tbsp corn starch
1 cup boiling water
3 oz good quality unsweetened chocolate chunks
6 tbsp (3/8 ths of a cup) unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line or grease and flour a 9 inch square pan and set aside.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and set aside.
Beat together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time until incorporated.  Add in the vanilla and mix thoroughly.  Add the flour alternately with the sour cream, beginning and ending with the flour.
Pour the batter into the square pan and bake for about 35 minutes (just under in my oven) or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Cool in the pan for about 20 minutes and then remove to a cooling rack.


Icing:
Whisk together the sugar, cornstarch and cocoa powder in a heavy bottomed saucepan.  Add in the chopped chocolate and pour the boiling water over everything.  Let it sit for about 30 seconds or so and then whisk until everything gets all melted.
Turn on the heat to medium or so and whisk continuously for about 5 minutes or until the stuff begins to thicken.  Remove from the heat and whisk or beat vigorously until the steam escapes and it's room temperature.  Add in the butter and continue beating/whisking for another 3 minutes or so (longer if you want it fluffier).
Frost the top of the cooled cake and chill for a few minutes to set the frosting.

Here's to Firetrucking RED Poppies.
Here's to it being warm enough to really want to have a beer in between job #1 (school teaching) and job #2 (home teaching).
Here's to actually doing it.
Here's to hearing this voice on the radio this morning.
Here's to things not always working the first time and still going back to it again.
Here's to having tomatoes and beans fresh from the garden (in about 5 weeks).


Here's to 8 more days of school - give or take - and being a total bum after that.
Here's to biking to work in the morning and being HOT when I get there.
Here's to Sunday nights that stretch on and on because it stays light outside until all hours... and I subsequently forget that I have work the next day and totally enjoy myself.
As of now Sunday nights are about enjoying the fact that an evening doesn't stop at 7pm, that I can sit outside without a jacket and not freeze my ass off, that friends can enjoy it all with you and that summer is God's way of rewarding us for a job well done... ie. surviving another bloody winter.


In the midst of all the crazy try not to miss the moments... reading a book to your kid before work, taking a minute to actually put on lip gloss, stopping to listen - I mean really listen - to what your friend is saying, truly enjoying that cold bubbly beer as it's going down.
I'm just in that kind of mood right now, what can I say.  It's probably because I had the beer (see above). I often wonder though whether in 20, 30, 40 years whether we'll be happier about our accomplishments or about the mistakes we made and what we learned through them.  Just sayin'...


Potato, Yam and Spinach Curry
serves 4 - 6

3 medium potatoes chopped into thick chunks
2 med/large yams chopped into thick chunks
1 onion, diced
1 rib of celery, diced
3 lg cloves of garlic, crushed
1 bunch of spinach (about 4 cups or a little more), washed and roughly chopped
1 can of chickpeas, drained (reserve the liquid)
1 can of coconut milk
1 tbsp of Madras (mild or hot) curry paste
3 tbsp garam masala
2 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 tsp salt
dash of cardamom, cinnamon and coriander

Heat a large dutch oven over medium heat.  Add in some oil (your choice) and begin to saute the onion and celery.  Cook for a few minutes and then add in the garlic, the potato and the yam.  Cook together for another 5 minutes or so.
Add in the spinach and the chickpeas and turn the heat down to med/low.
In a small dish mix together the curry paste, garam masala, turmeric, salt, cardamom, cinnamon and coriander until it forms a thick paste (use a little chick pea liquid to get the paste).  Add the paste to the vegetables and mix well.  Add in the coconut milk and mix.  Add just enough of the reserved chick pea liquid to almost cover the vegetables.  Mix well.


Turn down to low and let it simmer for about 20 min or until the potato and yam are cooked through.
Serve on it's own or with rice or Naan.

Calling all gardeners.
My garden sucks... please help me.
Ok, I'm being a total drama queen here.  It's mostly doing ok it's just the seeds that I put in that are sucking.  My zucchini seeds haven't taken at all.  Only one plant started to peak through the ground and the next day it was dug up by a stupid squirrel.  I even followed the directions on the stupid seed packet, Geez.  My carrot seeds haven't faired much better.  So far I've only gotten a handful of seedlings and I planted a whole packet.  I'm not sure what I've done wrong.  I seem to have consistently bad luck with zucchini - a few years in a row now - but the carrots, that's a new one.  I'm trying to stay focussed on the positive.  My beans and tomato plants are going gangbusters and my herbs are doing well (parsley, chive, basil, dill and oregano).  It's not a complete failure but the stupid zucchini/carrot crap is really bumming me out.  I've gotta figure something else to plant there so that I'm not constantly looking at this bare patch of ground with nothing happening on it.
This whole garden 'thing/crap/bum/downer' got me to thinking though.


Just a little while ago I was emailing my friend C back and forth.  She is holding down the fort while B works out of province.  Right now she's swamped with a very large garden and a small orchard to tend.  I have volunteered to come up every couple of weeks to help out with things.  I can't wait to get my hands in there and learn some gardening chops from a serious gardener... plus, I'll bet that she has carrots and zucchini coming up.
I've got a strawberry season coming up too so C and I are going to pick together and then do some jammin' ... that sounds funny.  I'm still working at clearing out my freezer.  I'm obviously not working hard at it though because I've been at it for a while and I've got a small freezer... and remember, I'm not a horder.  Anyway, slow and steady wins the race after all.  I pulled out a container of egg whites and a bag of frozen blueberries and I don't want to think about how long the blueberries have been hibernating in there Please.  I know that I have to try making meringues or something with egg whites - maybe a 'pavlova' but at the moment when the egg whites and the blueberries were in my hand something magical happened.  And then I was making this....

I think that my angel food cakes still come out looking weird.

So I'm now feeling better about my garden blank spot (thanks for the blog therapy) and looking forward to helping my friend and wondering what the hell is going to come out of my freezer next.


Blueberry Orange Angel Food Cake
adapted from foodnetwork.com

1 1/2 cups egg whites
1 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 1/8 cup cake flour
zest of one orange
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (tossed in flour)

Glaze:
juice of one orange
1 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 3    degrees F.
Grease and flour a tube pan.
Combine the cake flour, sugar, salt and cream of tartar.  Sift the mixture four times in total and set aside.
Whisk the egg whites until they form peaks and have at least doubled in volume.
Gently fold the flour mixture into the egg whites using a big whisk.  Add in the orange zest and whisk a little more.  Fold in the floured blueberries.
Gently pour the batter into the tube pan, running a knife through the batter to remove air bubbles.
Bake for about 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and cool completely before removing from the pan (the sides of the cake should be completely pulling away from the pan).
Glaze:
Combine the juice and the sugar.  Simmer over med/low heat for about 15 minutes or until the mixture thickens to a syrup.  Pour over the cooled cake.

I think that I can now announce with confidence that my yeast fears are behind me.  I hope.
Admittedly, I have kinda set myself up though.  I have organic bread from Ace Bakery delivered via my food box every other week.  I was finding that we weren't getting through an entire loaf each week.  Might have been just a phase.  Maybe all things like this are a phase.  Either way, right now we are in a bread eating phase... school lunches, toast and jam, toast and honey.  It means that we're getting through more bread now than we have all through the school year.  I know it's weird but the upside is that I've made more bread.


Am I totally happy with my bread?  Do I feel like it's awesome and rises so high and tastes mind blowingly different and all that crap?  No and No.  It's bread people.  I make it and it tastes like bread.  It's not the biggest loaf going but it fills a whole (I'm really not selling this here).  I guess that what I'm trying to say is that because I don't have a big bread obsession that I don't really care if it's the best bread in town.  It's bread.  It gets sliced and then stuff is put on it to make it taste even better.  There.
Having said all that.  This bread upped the ante a little.
Mixing the oatmeal and sugar together first and then soaking it for a while was a really cool idea and made for a sweeter loaf with a nice chewing texture (I'm not sure if that's a real turn of phrase or not).  I'd make it again.
The bigger deal is that I'm making my own bread.  It's not hard.  It's really not.  The kneading part is like 10 minutes at the most - I doubt that I did it for that long.  I'm just using plain old all purpose flour, nothing fancy.  I'm not going out of my way by doing anything extraordinary... just some flour, yeast and liquid.  And you know what?  It's a nice feeling, that 'bread rising and then baking in the oven' feeling.  Baking a loaf of bread feels substantial and almost subversive at the same time.  That's a weird combo, I know.
If you decide to give it a try, making that loaf of bread you've been thinking about for so long, then let me know what it feels like for you once it comes out of the oven and doesn't suck.  It's good to share these things.  If you have a recipe for two loaves (like this one) then you could do more than just share your feelings.



Oatmeal Brown Sugar Bread
'More with Less' Cookbook
makes 2 loaves

1 cup quick cooking oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups boiling water

1 pkg yeast (not instant)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup warm water

5 cups all-purpose flour

Combine the oats, whole wheat flour, brown sugar, salt and boiling water together in a bowl and set aside for about 15 min.  Letting it cool to room temperature or so.


meanwhile combine the warm water, sugar and yeast together.  Set aside for 10 minutes to proof (it will smell yeasty, get very foamy and double it's volume.
In a large bowl combine the oat mixture and the all purpose flour.  Mix until the two are well incorporated. Add in the yeast mixture and combine.
Put the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 - 10 minutes.  Place in a buttered bowl, cover with a clean cloth and let it rise in a draft-free spot for 1 hour or until doubled in volume.
Punch the dough back down and shape the dough into two loaves.  Place each in a greased loaf pan, cover with a clean cloth and let rise 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Bake the loaves for about 35 - 35 min. or until golden on the top.  Remove from the over and brush a little butter over the top.  Cool about 20 minutes before slicing.