Starting afresh

I got myself a new address:  www.desperatelyseekingsustenance.com 

I'm starting anew over there - click the hyperlink above to take a look (it's under construction for the time being, but it'll get better soon, I promise).

Opposites attract

My son is nearly nine months old. It's hard to be believe, but also not at all. Motherhood is similarly nothing like what I expected, but exactly what I expected. 

Baby is a delight and full of personality and quirks.  Motherhood however is, by turns, messy and fresh, slow and invigorating, boring and busy. I've never felt as unsure of myself as I have these last nine months, or as certain of purpose.  Not the purpose of my entire life, no, it's not my style to pin all my worth on one undertaking, but sure of the reason for getting out of bed every day, the reason why I will continue to work, the reason why I want to create a beautiful life. It's all for my family, our unit of three. 

It's lonely though, sometimes even with people around. It's isolating and periodically friendless, and there's an overwhelming feeling that everyone around you is judging everything you do. I disliked receiving advice before I became a mother, and now I positively loathe it. It's likely a personality failing, but my experience isn't the same as others, and support is better than advice and opinions, well-meant or not. 

The next three months will likely be much the same as the last nine, except with the knowledge that I will soon entrust the care of my baby to someone else for eight hours a day, five days a week. That'll be anxiety-ridden and liberating simultaneously - more to add to the list of opposites of which motherhood seems to be made. 

An introduction

So, I had a baby six months ago. He's lovely and entirely perfect. I'm a lucky girl.

User Guides

My husband and I are from two separate cultural and religious traditions.  He’s of Indian Sikh extraction, and I’m of Irish-Canadian Christian background.  While all that culminated in two kickass weddings that took place about five years ago, now that we’re having a baby there’s some interesting things to consider.

I love my faith.  I don’t love dogma, because I don’t think that anything can be incontrovertibly true, nor should anything be so blindly followed as to prevent questioning or challenging over millenia.  Never have, never will.  I actually love the idea behind all faiths, because I’m fond of the idea that each one is essentially seeking the same thing – to make our human experience more understandable in the greater scheme of the universe. 

My husband is probably more culturally Sikh than religiously so.  He keeps his kesh and his turban, but his leanings are more scientific than spiritual.  He, too, abhors dogma and the ignorance that results from blind adherence to codified sets of rules that don’t adapt to changing times or attitudes. 

We’ve been asked how we’re going to raise our kid, probably because people see us, don’t see an obvious outward match, and then get curious about the myriad possibilities for our plans for our progeny.  It’s an interesting question to a lot of people, and every single person who’s asked has an opinion of their own.  They’re sometimes far less interested in our response than in the opinion that they already hold.

This child of ours will grow up knowing a little bit about every faith, and a fair bit about two in particular.  He or she will say grace before dinner, and will be able to greet older Indian family members with “Sat Sri Akal”.  Baby will know the stories of Jesus and the apostles and prophets, and those of the Gurus and brave sardars and sardarnis who fought for their place in the world, because baby’s Dad and I will tell him about all of them.  I’ll probably sing hymns to the baby, and maybe my husband will sing shabads.  No choices regarding religion will be made for this child, because we believe that being born in a family like ours provides the ultimate in faith learning environments.

We will ensure that our baby grows up equipped with enough knowledge to be able to find a path.  I’m pretty sure that’s all that parents can ever really do. 

All the comforts of home

If you’ve been pregnant before, you’ll know that what was previously a perfectly serviceable, even comfortable and pleasant home becomes the Source of All Discontent at some point during the 40 weeks of gestation.  I’m there at the moment, and can barely stand the sight of anything in our condo.  It all infuriates me, from the bed to the stove to the shower. 

What’s funny is I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way about a place that I heretofore considered to be a solid representation of whatever home means to me.  The world of pregnancy websites tells me that I’m “nesting”, a term that of course brings to mind all sorts of birdy imagery.  It just seems as though the magnitude of the clear up and clean out that we need to do before the baby’s arrival is perhaps a bit too much.  Instead of lining a nest carefully and diligently with feathers, I want to rent a dumpster and throw all of our belongings into it. 

Of course we won’t be doing that, and have taken a more selective approach to making sure that we have the right stuff in the right places.  The baby’s crib has arrived, but we won’t be setting it up for real until after my parents have gone home (about two weeks after the baby has made its world debut).  I’ve used the image below as my inspiration for what I’d like the baby’s room to look like eventually – it’s about as non-baby as you can get, but the colours and general sense of room zen are what I’m really going for:

Image credit: https://abigailahern.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/nate.jpg

We’re being really choosy about what we buy for the baby, as we don’t have any extra space at all in our 875 square feet of beautiful downtown Toronto.  We’ve agreed that the only necessary home items are this crib, bassinet, bouncy seat, and change pad.  No toys, no random accoutrements – we just don’t have the space.

We’ve cleared out our closets and made room for baby clothes, went through stuff in storage boxes and separated out stuff we think the baby will enjoy, and hidden stuff that we’d rather never be broken or misplaced.  We’ll clean our soft furnishings, move a 1930s dresser in from my parents’ place, find actual bookshelves instead of the makeshift stuff we’ve been using, and maybe then my nesting instincts will be satisfied.  Maybe.  A few extra feathers here and there won’t hurt I guess.  

Apprehending apprehension

One of the strangest things that I've noticed about being an expectant mother is that a formerly perfectly rational mind can suddenly, and without warning, become the opposite of perfectly rational.  

Don't get me wrong - I've always had my moments of utter ridiculousness, but I've noticed that they come far faster now.  Take, for example, the events of last week:

1. Eat more frequently, but still very healthily, all day at work.

2. Have another snack at home.

3. Start casually looking at a couple of pregnancy-and-baby-related websites.

4. Find articles about food-borne pathogens.

5. Read articles with increasing terror, especially lists of symptoms.

6. Become convinced that at least one of the aforementioned food-borne pathogens is circulating in my bloodstream.

7. LISTERIA.

8. No, wait, TOXOPLASMOSIS.

9. Start reading about other things that can happen during pregnancy.

10. Decide it is neither LISTERIA or TOXOPLASMOSIS but instead PRE-PRE-ECLAMPSIA, and I'd better wake my husband up to tell him the prognosis.

Of course, I have none of those things, but the high jumps my mind can take are medal-worthy. I'm lucky to have so many friends, including my mother, who have been through this process before and can, at the bing of a text message, put my mind at rest.  I haven't had to call on them as of yet, but just having them there is a significant comfort.

This is a toxoplasma cyst in a mouse brain.  Not particularly comforting, this.

Now, Ain't That Love?

Here's a funny thing - in about 5.5 months, my husband and I will be parents.  I'm currently in the throes of the second trimester, and things so far have gone extraordinarily well.  No nausea, very little pain, no impending sense of doom.  I've been very, very fortunate and I hope that continues.

Of course there's lots to do, places to go and stuff to see, but mostly I just want to chill out and enjoy the next few months with my husband.  To me, this is our time in which we can wander around and plan and dream and do the things we may not have as much time for when our baby arrives.  

We've told most people now - we chose to announce to our friends and some select family by a card, because I'm not big on telling people in person.  It's superstitious of me, but I have a tendency to feel that the more people know, the more chance there is for bad feelings and bad wishes to percolate.  We have been lucky to receive lots of good wishes, excitement and happiness for us from others.  

Announcing this has been a bit bittersweet for me, mostly because of who isn't here to hear our news.  Over the last few months I've missed my brother in a really fundamental way - I can't call him to tell him about hearing the baby's heartbeat, or send him emails to let him know what's up, and I certainly can't just call round and see him.  Even though it's been nearly five years since Brent died, sometimes it's been hard even to see my husband with his sister, because I don't have that kind of relationship with anyone anymore.  My baby will have only great uncles and aunts on my side, which is a challenging thing to try to wrap my head around sometimes.  I'm not interested in creating "honourary" uncles, because it seems extremely disrespectful to Brent, who, along with my brother-in-law, my own uncles and my husband's uncles, are the only people whom my kid should call by that honorific.  

But despite the bittersweet nature of this particular announcement, and despite all of the warnings of upcoming changes, my husband and I are very, very excited to meet our new daughter or son later this year.  We understand that this week it is the size of an onion - a whole onion, just hanging out inside of me - and next week it will be the size of a sweet potato.  We hope and pray that baby will continue to grow and develop into a healthy, well-adjusted tiny person and adult, because really hoping for anything else seems pretty greedy at this point.  We have, and are, all we need.

      

Leaving London

My husband and I traveled to London over the holidays this year - left on December 26th and returned (sadly) on January 7th.  We were there long enough to do some wandering, visit some of his family, and, at least in my case, actively wish that we lived there full-time.

It's funny when you have to leave a place that you really love - even arriving there is bittersweet, because that's when you start the countdown for the day that you will, inevitably, return to your point of origin.  

During this visit, we found the whole place to be extraordinarily full.  Full of people, mostly, but also full of events and happenings and ideas, including our expectations.  We hadn't realized that it would be as busy as it was, so we periodically found ourselves disappointed that we wouldn't be able to do whatever it was we had imagined doing, at least not without 10,000 other people who wanted to do the very same thing. The thing about London, though, is that we know our way around sufficiently well that we can change our mind and our plans in a minute, and wind up somewhere even better than we had planned to be originally.

Our goal in being there over New Years Eve was to see the fireworks in person - to see what we see every other year on TV in real life.  That mission was accomplished, and I'm so happy that we were able to be there.  A family member had to buy our tickets for the event, which said we had to be through the gates by 10:00.  It was a freezing night, so the two hours between 10:00 and midnight were spent trying to stay warm.  The fireworks were incredible though, and hearing 100,000 people singing "Auld Lang Syne" beside the Thames was very cool.

We stayed in an attic flat in Bloomsbury, which was perfect and made our lives very easy, even with the 85 steps up to the flat itself.  If you're looking for London short term apartment rentals, try Acorn London, a letting agency.  The view was gorgeous too, right beside an old, seldomly-used church.

Staying in Bloomsbury means that you don't have very far to walk to anything, but there's enough distance between you and the intensely touristy places that you can relax a bit more.  Lots of buildings with English Heritage blue plaques on them, as well as good pubs and shops.  You're very close to several Underground stations there, and also to the British Museum if that's something you're interested in exploring.  You're also really close to  ICCO, a great and inexpensive pizza place on Goodge Street.

We actually ate in the flat a fair bit, given that the busy-ness meant long waits or (understandable) snorts of derision when you said that you didn't have a reservation.  We did however have a nice shared plates lunch at Elk in the Woods in Islington (Angel underground station) - in particular, the beet and horseradish hummus was very tasty.  The restaurant is located on Camden Passage, which is a great little street filled with shops offering both vintage/antique items and modern fashion.  

We were there in time to see the Christmas lights - the first photo in this post are those of Carnaby Street, and below is Piccadilly.

While London at Christmas and the New Year proved to be exceptionally busy, far busier than I had anticipated, I think we'll likely head back another year to see a bit more.  The lights and the crush of people were incredible (and that's coming from someone who lives in the largest city in her country of origin), and I'm not sure that I'll be able to stay away over the holidays for too many years.

Gorging Ourselves

November has arrived - the clocks have "fallen back" and winter, for all intents and purposes, is upon us here in Toronto. 

Before winter really settles in and puts its feet up for a long, comfortable visit, we decided to go out to Elora, a small town north of Guelph. Elora itself is a pretty place and worthy of a trip, but we also wanted to go and wander around the Elora Gorge. 

The gorge is operated by the Grand River Conservation Authority. If you're there in the summer, there's tubing on the river - for a fee, you rent your gear (including tube, helmet and life jacket) and then launch yourself onto the river for a ride down the gorge. It's super fun and you should go. 

Beefing Up

After dalliances with vegetarianism and even "vegan weekdays", I believe I've come to a point of being a conscientious omnivore.  I know there's a whole universe out there that doesn't believe that those two words belong together, but I like to think that I can prove them wrong.   I eat meat once every two days or so, and I've changed my shopping habits to make sure that I'm getting meat that was responsibly raised and slaughtered.  To me, that means cows, pigs and chickens that were raised the way that my great-grandparents would have raised them.

So this is a recipe for beef stroganoff, which is something that I've loved since I was a little kid. It's Russian in origin, but apparently became immensely popular in the 1970s.  It's really, really hard to take an appetizing photo of beef stroganoff, so you'll have to excuse the image below.  I find it hard to really get excited about a recipe when there's no photo, so I figured that even a rough photo would be better than none at all.  Just rest assured that it tastes way, way better than it looks.

Beef Stroganoff

1 lb grass fed beef - a good cut, like a ribeye or even tenderloin - sliced thin
3 cloves minced garlic
2 or 3 minced shallots (1/3 cup of minced onion will do if you don't have shallots)
1 teaspoon of vegetable oil
1/4 cup of butter
3 tablespoons of flour (if you're gluten free, you can sub in your favourite gluten free flour but you'll only want about 1-2 tablespoons of it - soy flour works for me, or even cornflour)
1/2 cup of sherry, port or red wine (each will have a different flavour, so my advice is to pick what you'd normally like to drink)
1/4 cup beef stock
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups of sliced cremini mushrooms
3/4 cup of sour cream
1/2 teaspoon of chopped dill
Salt and pepper to taste

To serve: egg noodles or rice (this should feed about 3-4 people, so go for about a package of broad egg noodles and 1 to 1.5 cups of basmati or other long grain rice - follow package instructions to cook)

Instructions

First off, make a choice - do you want to use two pans or one to cook the stroganoff?  I leave the decision up to you.

Heat butter in a pan over medium heat.  Add shallots and cook till translucent.  Add garlic and cook till it doesn't smell raw anymore.  Be careful not to burn.  Add flour and stir to combine.  Allow to cook - keep stirring - until it starts to smell a little bit like toast.  Add in whatever of the three alcohols mentioned makes you happy, and stir to remove lumps.  Cook down for a minute or two till it doesn't smell so... alcoholish.  Add beef stock.  Stir.  

If you're using one pan, take the mixture and empty it into a big bowl now.  If you're using two pans, just set this mixture aside and heat the second, larger pan on the stove now.  

Melt butter in whatever pan you're using over medium-high heat.  Add mushrooms and cook for five minutes until they shrink down and look sort of browned.  Add sliced beef and stir, allowing the beef to sear/cook/brown, but being careful not to overcook (it's easy to overcook because it's sliced thin).  About a minute on its two sides is pretty much good.   

Into this pan, add the liquid mixture and stir to combine.  Add the sour cream and bring to a simmer.  Add the dill.  Taste.  Add salt and pepper to your taste.

Either combine with noodles, or serve over rice.  A side of sauteed green beans is a good veg option.  

Unappetizing Photo:

Going Rouge

Summer is becoming fall very quickly here in Toronto.  I'm a low-to-mid twenties kind of girl (degrees celsius, of course), so I'm enjoying the transition.  People are layering and canning and putting summer away, sort of bedding down for the winter still to come.  Our social calendar goes into overdrive at this time of the year - I guess everyone tries to get all the visits and the dinners and the drinks in before it starts to snow and we're more homebound.  

This time of year makes me want to go outside; to just go and see trees with leaves and green grass and flowing water, none of which can be seen here past November.  This past weekend, we went to Rouge Park, which is currently run by the Rouge Park Alliance but is on its way to becoming the first National Urban Park in Canada. It's located in both Toronto and York Region, running north-south from Markham through to Rouge Beach on Lake Ontario.  We went through only a small section of trail (Orchard Trail), but it made me want to see more of the massive Park and also to let others know that it exists and is more than worth a visit (or five - it's really, really big).  

Links and Photos

Trail Heads

Map

History

While on our walk, we heard the creek and also plenty of birds.  We startled a blue heron that was fishing in the creek, which then flew right over our heads on its way to a place with less annoying company.  Our walk took about an hour or so, and it wasn't hard hiking or anything - just pleasant mild exertion.  

You should go.  We'll see you there.

Relishing the Moment

As some of you probably know, Ontario's corn crop has been wonderful this summer.  So wonderful that I wanted to preserve it for the whole year ahead, until next year's corn crop arrives. Corn relish is a golden yellow, vinegary-sweet mixture that is excellent on sandwiches and burgers or as an accompaniment to various roast or grilled meats.  It's hard to find good corn relish in grocery stores, so I thought that I may as well try my hand at making my own.   

A confession: I've never canned anything before.  Not for me the boiling of jars and lids, filling, boiling again, and testing for seals - I wasn't sure that I had the patience necessary for the process.  Turns out though that I could manage it, just as long as it was done in a small quantity.  It may turn into a yearly thing - we shall see.

But for you, a few photos and a quick lowdown on the canning process.  As you can see, I chose tiny jars - the Bernardin 125 mL ones - because I will likely be gifting these, and I don't like to gift a huge amount of something I made just in case it turns out that the recipient isn't as big a fan as I am.   

Canned Corn Relish - cooking the relish

(I'm not going to include a recipe because I used an amalgam of several recipes I found online and adjusted to taste.  The main ingredients to have are the kernels of about 9 cobs of peaches and cream corn, about a cup of red pepper, three cloves of minced garlic, a cup of some kind of green pepper which can include jalapenos or spicier varieties if that's what you're into, a couple cups of white or cider vinegar and one cup of water, a half cup of brown sugar, at least a tablespoon of pickling salt, a teaspoon or so of dry mustard, and a tablespoon or more of green Tabasco sauce.  You boil all that up together for about half an hour, then you taste and see what might be missing.)

Canning Process for Dummies

1. Sterilize your jars.  If you have a "sterilize" option on your dishwasher, use that.  If you don't, set a giant pot of water to boiling, then boil those jars and lids for about 5 minutes.  Remove everything.

2. Even if you have the sterilize option, you will still need to get a big pot of water boiling, so do that now.

2.  Put some of the hot water into a bowl, then set the lids into that.  The lids need to be hot.  

3.  Ladle your mixture into the jar while mixture is hot and jar is warm.  Leave about a half inch of space from mixture to the top of the jar.  

4. Grab a (sterilized) knife and run it through the mixture in the jar to remove any air pockets or bubbles.

5. Put the lids and the rings on fairly snug.  Not "snug" as in you will need 3 strong men to remove them, but snug enough that they won't come off in the boiling water.

6. Put the filled jars into the boiling water, and boil for about 15 minutes.  

7. Remove very, very carefully.  Don't touch - they're hot.  Place on a towel to dry and cool off.  Give them about an hour or so, then press gently on each lid.  If the lid "gives" when you press down, that means it didn't seal.  Set any that don't seal into the fridge to eat right away.  The ones that did seal can go into a nice dark cold cellar or cupboard and will keep for about a year.  

Hot town, anda in the city

Toronto has a shimmer about it in the summertime.

I'm not talking about the streets themselves, or the weather... it's more about the people who live here or who come here to visit making things seem really shiny.  Everyone and every place seems extra beautiful, extra special, extra real.  Whether they're old or young, talking and laughing in a group, or a couple, or a solitary person with somewhere to get to (and fast), they're out and they're on patios or they're in backyards or they're just walking or on the TTC or on their bicycles... being gorgeous.

And it's nice.  Really nice.  I've lived downtown for over seven years now, and each summer has astonished me.  This summer has been no exception.  

We spent yesterday morning just wandering about the Beach - walked a beach/boardwalk combination from Northern Dancer Boulevard over to Kenilworth Street, then back along Kew Beach Avenue.  The beautiful residents and visitors made the already lovely surroundings sparkle, and it was a really excellent way to spend a couple of hours.

  

To make sure we had energy for such a jaunt, I made breakfast of anda bhurji, an Indian spicy scrambled egg dish (recipe below), and warmed some chapatti.  This was first made for me by my mother-in-law, and it was love at first bite.  You'll note that I've added corn - I had roasted some Ontario corn the night before, so I had some leftover that I added to the recipe.  Corn is not a traditional add-in, so don't worry if you don't have it.  It added a nice touch of sweetness to the dish, however.

Anda Bhurji (spicy scrambled eggs)

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup of minced onion
Scant1/3 teaspoon of turmeric powder
2 cloves minced garlic
1.5 inches of ginger root, peeled and minced (about 1 tablespoon of pureed ginger)
1 to 3 small green chillis to your taste, deseeded and minced (alternatively, you can cut a slit down the side of a whole green chilli or two and throw them in like that)
1/2 teaspoon of cumin powder
6 eggs (free range, organic - think of the hens, please!)
1/3 cup of water or milk
Half of a tomato, diced small
1/2 teaspoon of garam masala (my favourite blend is also included below)
1/4 cup of cooked or frozen corn
Lots of chopped cilantro - probably about 3 tablespoons' worth
Want it spicy?  Add 1/4 teaspoon of Indian red chilli powder (not to be confused with Western chilli powder, which is a blend of spices - Indian chilli powder is just ground up chillis)
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in frying pan on stovetop - medium heat.   Add onion and turmeric, and cook until the onions are softened and becoming translucent.  Then, add your garlic, ginger, green chilli, and ground cumin and fry for two minutes, till the garlic loses its raw smell.  

While onion mixture cooks, beat your eggs in with the water or milk till a little frothy. 

Add diced tomato, corn, cilantro, garam masala, and optional chilli powder.  Stir well.  Let cook 1 to 2 minutes.  Then, add the egg mixture, and salt and pepper the whole concoction.  Keep stirring to scramble the eggs.  Once it looks like it could be ready, taste to see if salt is to your taste.  Add more if necessary.  

Serves 4.  Eat with chapattis or on its own.  

Garam Masala blend
Notes: 
1. I will unequivocally state that everyone probably has their own preferred taste when it comes to garam masala.  This is just what I prefer.  It's great to experiment with your own blend.
2. You need a coffee grinder that's dedicated solely to grinding spices for this.  If you use your regular coffee grinder, it's probably going to make your beans taste like Indian food for at least three grinding sessions.

1/4 cup whole coriander seeds
2 tablespoons of whole cumin seeds
2 green cardamom pods
4 black cardamom pods
3 inches of cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon of black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon cloves
1 dried red chilli pepper
Pinch of grated nutmeg

Buzz everything up into a powder in your spice-specific coffee grinder.  It'll keep in an airtight container for about a month or so.  

You can also dry roast the spices before grinding them, but that gives a different flavour.  I tend to prefer this one for most cooking.  

Hanging in Halifax

My husband and I spent an extended long weekend in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) to celebrate his 33rd birthday.  We were able to visit with great friends while we were there, and to enjoy all the hospitality Halifax and the surrounding area could offer.  

The following is a bit of an annotated triptych of our time there.  Photos were mostly taken with my iPhone, so they're not amazing quality, but they're better than having no photos at all.

Day 1 - drive to Lunenburg (it's on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites)

Lobster roll lunch at the Salt Shaker Deli - the lobster was lightly dressed, not overwhelmingly mayonnaise-y, and very tasty.  We had mussels in a tomato-sausage broth to start - they have several options for mussels, but they make their own sausage, which made our decision easy.  

Shopping in Lunenberg - Dots and Loops for handmade stuff, like housewares and jewelry and accessories; Amos Pewter for pewter jewelry, housewares and ornaments; Luvly for Canadian designed/made women's clothing.

Dinner at Two Doors Down in Halifax - we shared kimchi fries and some calamari to start - the fries were great, and the sauce for the calamari was balanced really well between sour and sweet and salty.  My main dish was a bowl of scallop and basil pesto spaghetti, which was a wonderful dish with fresh flavour from the basil and the scallops in each bite.  

Day 2 - drive to Annapolis Valley (Grand Pre is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites, too) and the Bay of Fundy

Mussels for lunch at the Port Pub in Port Williams

Walked the ocean floor at Burncoat Head Park during low tide, and watched the tide start to creep back in by marking its progress against a rock.  Views through Grand Pre are incredible (sorry, no photos at the moment) and well worth the drive.

Drove back in time for dinner at Cafe Chianti, an old school Italian place right in Halifax.  To start, I ate seared scallops served with a panzanella salad (possibly my new favourite combination), and for main I had beautifully cooked pasta and meatballs.  

Day 3 - day in Halifax proper

Shopping and breakfast at the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market.

Lunch of shared "social plates" at the Stubborn Goat - see photo below of our heaped table that included arancini, stuffed meatballs, and house made pickles. 

Dinner at home of oysters, lobsters, and veg from the farmers market.
Watched fireworks for Natal Day and then managed to sneak in to Cows for ice cream right at closing time before we went home.

Day 4 - last day in Halifax

Breakfast at home with farmers market haul.

Wander around the harbourfront, and picked up a chocolate rum cake to bring home to one of my husband's colleagues at Rum Runners.

Lunch of beet salad and poutine at the Henry House pub. 

Easy?

I've been thinking about the word "easy" lately.  It seems to be applied to everything; sometimes in a way that appears dismissive of the time and effort that someone put in to something, and sometimes to try to make an activity seem like it might be more fun.

I also tend to apply it to my own accomplishments or things that I've made, often in an effort to be modest.  The thing is, though, most things that I consider to be worthwhile aren't easy.  They take time and effort and dedication and creativity.

Take cooking, for example.  I cook for a lot of reasons: to eat healthily, to enjoy new flavours, to gain new experiences, to connect with my culture as well as other cultures, and so on.  Whether I'm making a tomato sauce that takes 10 minutes or food for a party of 40, cooking is not easy.  It needs my full attention, no matter what it is.  

The aim is always to be proud of what I've made and served.  That's why it can be quite disappointing or disheartening when someone says something about how easy something is to make.  For the time it took for me to make the dish, I was thinking of nothing but the end product, and all the steps it took to get from start to finish - the right way to chop, how often to stir, when to taste, how to season.

We all do this in our everyday lives, at home, at work, with our friends and our families - just because something doesn't seem challenging or interesting to others, we downplay it and our own abilities.  I plan to stop myself from measuring things in terms of easy from here on out.  Or, instead of describing something as easy, maybe I'll go with "not too complicated" or say that it "comes together quickly".  No more dismissing accomplishments.   


Not-Too-Complicated Tomato Sauce
(for pasta and pizza and anything else you'd like it for)

1 clove of minced garlic 
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tin of San Marzano tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon of sugar - keep aside in case you want more
1/2 teaspoon of sea or kosher salt - keep aside in case you want more
3 torn up fresh basil leaves

Heat a heavy-bottomed pot on the stove at medium-high heat.  Add olive oil - swirl to coat.  Add garlic and cook till it no longer smells raw - about 1.5 to 2 minutes (don't let the garlic turn brown - golden is okay, but brown is not).  Add tin of tomatoes, sugar and salt.  Bring to boil, then turn heat down to simmer, stirring occasionally.  Simmer only 10 minutes, then remove from heat.  Add torn up basil leaves.  Stir.  Taste to see if sugar and salt are correct, according to your preferences.  

Sauce can even be made into a soup if you puree it and add a little bit of water or stock.  Great with a baguette rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil, then grilled, or even a fontina grilled cheese sandwich.

The Chain

It's sort of silly to remark on the length of time that has passed since I last posted on here, given that I don't think anyone reads this.  But the reason is that in a lot of ways, I haven't had much to say.  I haven't made any major changes or done anything significantly different with my life in the past... oh, let's say two years.  Instead, I grew busier and busier at work and allowed that to consume my days and nights.  In addition to that, I traveled a little more, I saved a lot more, I took on new responsibilities and pushed off others.  

I grew fat and tired.  Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at 32 years old.  Made some lifestyle changes, and attempted to say yes more often to fun opportunities, and to say no when I meant it.  Took a good long look at myself both as an individual and as part of a family and as part of a community.  Tried to be a better spouse, a better daughter, a better friend.  Tried to be better to myself, even when I felt like I didn't deserve it.  

Still haven't figured things out, really: what I want from my existence, and what my existence seems to want from me.  However, the constant for me throughout all of this was my kitchen, and what I could make with my own two hands.  Maybe it's time to chronicle that publicly.  Maybe it's not.  I think I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Here, fishy fishy fishy

So, I'm kind of ambivalent about a lot of things at the moment.  I blame it on the winter, on the steady greyness that permeates everything.  However, it's nearly February and that means it's going to get brighter every day going forward.  

In an effort to eat my way out of apathy (should work, right? right?), I've been trying to incorporate more fish into my diet.  Gotta tell you that fish is not my most favourite thing, but I'm learning, and since I count shellfish in this total-fish-eaten tally, it's been pretty good really.  Oysters and lobster and mussels and shrimp - to me, those are the most delicious items the ocean has to offer.  But for diet-based doses of omega-3s, you have to go for the oily fish, so that means salmon once or twice a week.  I like wild Pacific salmon best, but you do you - I'm not going to recommend one ocean over the other.

This is a super easy recipe.  You may not even call it a recipe.  But it is tasty.

Mustard-Garlic Salmon 

Preheat oven to 425

2 tablespoons grainy mustard

3 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

1-2 minced garlic cloves

Dried chili flakes, to taste (I like to take a half a dry chili pepper and whir it around in my spice grinder - which is actually a coffee grinder - I think they taste better when they don't sit around in flake form)

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon of dijon mustard if you're really super keen on mustard

1 big salmon filet - like a side of salmon, if you will - skin on one side

Another 2 tablespoons olive oil

First, mix the mustard, the olive oil, the lemon, the chili, and the salt and pepper together to make a paste.  Set aside.

Next, you can line a baking pan with foil or just leave it foil-less.  Drizzle the rest of the olive oil onto the pan/foil where you're going to be placing the fish.  I like to paint it into a uniform oil glaze with a pastry brush, but the value of that is debatable.  Place the fish skin-side-down onto the pan.  Grab the mustard paste and spoon it out onto the salmon.  Then, take a pastry brush or whatever you have around and make sure the paste covers the entire fleshy surface of the salmon.  An even coating ensures a good end result.  

Throw the pan into the oven and let the fish cook for about 15 minutes.  Fish is finicky so I'm not going to really give a proper time for it.  You know it's done if you stick a fork in, rotate it, and the fish flakes readily.  Because I like a bit of texture, sometimes I put the broiler on for a couple of minutes at the end to make the coating slightly crisp.  

Serve with something green to maximise the benefits of the omega-3s - some sauteed garlic spinach, or asparagus or broccoli or whatever.  

Apple Pie and America

It's at times like these that I think of this Conway Twitty song my grandparents used to play... it went "Hello, darling.  Nice to see you.  It's been a long time..." And yes, it's been a long time.  Things got in the way, as I suppose they are wont to do.  But the blog name was far too good for me to let go of, so I figured I'd come back and maybe just start posting somewhat randomly.

Today, I'm putting my recipe for apple pie out into the universe.  Reminded of it by my first trip to New York ever, which was last weekend, the recipe has received nothing but rave reviews since I debuted it last fall.  It's sort of an amalgam of a number of different apple pie recipes from t'internet, so apologies if this looks familiar to anyone.  But here goes.  If I may suggest an accompaniment, it would be either whipped cream with a little tiny bit of vanilla whipped in, or vanilla ice cream from Ontario's own Kawartha Dairy.

Apple Pie

(full ingredient list at the end of the recipe)

Get your stand mixer out - it makes pastry-making a joy, honestly.  I'm never going to use a food processor again for pastry.  Into that stand mixer, measure out:

2.5 cups flour (not self-raising, just regular old flour - i think if you wanted to use whole wheat, you could probably do .5 cups whole wheat to 2 cups all-purpose)

2.5 tablespoons sugar

Half a teaspoon of salt

Turn mixer on low (like speed setting one or two), and let those dry ingredients combine.  Then, take: 

1 cup of the best unsalted butter you can find, straight from the fridge, and cut it into half inch pieces

Piece by piece, while the stand mixer is still mixing, throw the butter into the mixer.  When I say piece by piece, I actually mean it.  You want the pastry to get a nice crumbly looking texture.  Once you've added each piece of butter, let it mix another 5 seconds, then take

1/2 cup ice water

And, very slowly, trickle the water into the bowl of the mixer.  This is where you need to be very careful as you only want the pastry to just stick together, no more, no less.  You are unlikely to need the full 1/2 cup.  The dough should not look sticky or tacky, if it does then you've got too much water in and you're going to have to add more flour or start all over again.

Turn the nice, just barely holding together dough out onto your counter and gather it into a ball.  Roll it about with your hands to make a nice smooth ball, then divide the ball in half with your hands.  Flatten the two halves with your hands into discs.  Wrap each disc up individually in saran, then stick them in the fridge to rest for about an hour (yes, this is necessary - pastry is finicky and needs time to just exist before you do anything with it).

So, while your pastry is chilling, in a big bowl you can combine:

6-7 Cortland or Northern Spy apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into thin-ish pieces

1-2 tablespoons cinnamon (whatever your taste is - I usually stay at about 1.5)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice      

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

4 tablespoons white granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon mixed spice or straight nutmeg

Stir everything together - the apples will look somewhat coated.  You're going to let this mixture rest as well - it's called macerating - so that the excess juice from the apples will mix together with the sugars and spices and then run off.  It takes about a half hour.

 

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit.   

Grab a strainer and place it over a pot.  Empty the apples from the bowl into the strainer and shake vigorously.  Lift the strainer and see how much apple-y, sugary liquid there is.  Shake it again just to get any more liquid, then you can empty the apples back into that first bowl.  Turn your stove burner on medium-high, and then boil the liquid down into a syrup - it takes about five minutes.  While it's boiling, mix about

2 tablespoons cornstarch

into the apples in the bowl.  Once you've got your syrup, mix that into the apples as well.

Flour your work surface and a rolling pin, and get a nice deep glass pie plate out - now's the time to grab 1 disc of the pastry from the fridge.  Put it onto the floury surface, and start rolling out.  You want to roll it into something approximating a circle, and it needs to be big enough to cover the bottom of that pie plate all the way up to the edges.  Place the rolled out dough into the pie plate - you've now got a bottom crust - and then empty the bowl of apples-cornstarch-syrup onto the bottom crust and even them out.  Re-flour your surface and your rolling pin, grab the other disc from the fridge, and roll that out too.  It needs to cover the top of the pie plate all the way out to the edge of the lip.  Place the rolled out dough on top of the apples.  Press the edges down using a finger to make a ruffled edge.  Cut some slits in the top crust to let the steam out as it bakes.  

Throw that pie into the oven for 45 minutes.  Check on it after about 25 minutes to make sure the edges aren't getting too brown - if they are, you can make a little ring out of tinfoil or parchment paper and cover the edges up with it.  At 45 minutes, remove from oven and let cool.  You should now have a beautiful pie to share and enjoy.          

Ingredient List:

Pastry:

2.5 cups flour

2.5 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of cold butter

1/2 cup ice water

Filling:

6 or 7 Cortland or Northern Spy apples

1-2 tablespoons cinnamon (whatever your taste is - I usually stay at about 1.5)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice      

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

4 tablespoons white granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon mixed spice or straight nutmeg

2 tablespoons cornstarch