Stolen

Once a month, we go out for dinner.  We rarely go to white tablecloth places; our budget doesn’t accommodate that.  Instead, we enjoy family restaurants in and around our town.  Despite the humble destinations, these dinners are a fairly big deal for us:  We save up in order to afford them.  They are a special occasion and much care goes into deciding where we’ll have our monthly treat.

When we bought our place last year, we were delighted to discover a fish and chip restaurant just a couple of blocks away from us.  It was small and dowdy, with friendly, middle aged waitresses who called their customers “dear,” and it served not only very good fish and chips but also an excellent sticky toffee pudding.  I’m really fussy about my fish and chips so having this restaurant only five minutes walk from my front door has been a boon to me.  It’s been a favourite choice when deciding upon a destination for our dinners out.  Thus it was that we made our way there this evening.

Our first clue that something was amiss in our neighbourhood café was a change in décor.  We walked in the door to find the walls painted bright white.  The old souvenirs and hand-written signs were gone, replaced with trendy, expensively framed, black and white photos of London.  The tables and chairs had been replaced too and the windows—once covered with reflective film—replaced with new, untinted glass. 

Gone were our familiar waitresses, replaced by pert young things in short black skirts.  Our new (polite and efficient) waitress presented us with a new (shiny, laminated, graphically pleasing, emblazoned with Union Jacks) menu. 

We ordered cod and chips, just as we would have from the old menu.

Our meal arrived quickly, presented prettily on new, square, white plates…and sitting in a pool of grease.  The fish was Atlantic cod and the chips were pre-cut.  From the texture of the finished product, I surmised that both had been cooked from frozen, in oil that was not hot enough to crisp them properly.  Even the coleslaw appeared to have come out of a bag, and the tartar sauce was cloyingly sweet.

Some of you will have read my previous blog about fish and chips so you’ll know how I reacted to this meal.  We live on Vancouver Island for Pete’s sake!  There’s ocean all around us, and Pacific cod is available at every fishing dock and fish market! 

Good fish and chips require fresh local fish, hand cut potatoes, the right cooking fat, and the correct cooking temperature.  When all of those things are just right, you get a marvelous meal.  When even one of those things is wrong, your meal can be very bad indeed.  When—as with tonight’s meal—all of those things are wrong, the result is nigh on inedible. 

Because we had ordered it and would be obliged to pay for it, we ate what we could of our meal.  I commented on the poor quality while paying our bill, and we made our way home to take an antacid. 

Five hours later that meal is still revisiting me and I find myself feeling that we were robbed.  The new management at the fish and chips shop stole not only the pleasure from our special evening out but also the happy knowledge that we had a neighbourhood place we so enjoyed.  I’m angry that our money was wasted on food of such poor quality.  I’m angrier still that the new owners should invest so much in appearance and so little in substance. 

I understand that every restaurant strives to make their place both comfortable and attractive in the hope of drawing new customers in the door, but if you serve bad food it doesn’t matter how appealing your dining room is or how pretty your waitresses are.  People won’t come back.

Lesson learned.  We’ll be going somewhere else next month.

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Photo:  webmastertalkforums.com

Harvest Cake

I have a folder full of recipes written on scraps of paper, torn from magazines and newspapers, printed from emails my friends and family have sent me.  I keep promising myself that I’ll organize them into a book or onto a computer file but so far that goal has eluded me.  Yet I go back to many of these recipes again and again.  The paper gets more and more crumpled and spattered with cooking ingredients.  They have become old friends.

Harvest cake is one of those recipes.  My daughter Barbara made it for me during a long-ago visit at their house and I so liked it that I phoned her after we got home to request the recipe.  I’ve never re-written it from the original piece of paper on which I jotted it down all those years ago, but I’ve amended the ingredients to better suit my tastes.

I like recipes that use ingredients I keep in my pantry and I like them better still if they can be adapted to use up a bit of this or that.  Harvest cake suits my needs exactly:  I almost always have all of the ingredients on hand, and it affords me a means of using up the last bits of whatever seasonal fruit are residing in our fruit bowl.  I’ve made this cake with rhubarb, soft fruits, berries, pear, and apples.  I’ve even made it with sweet yellow tomatoes.  I’ve never had it turn out badly.

 

To make Harvest Cake, you’ll need:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1-1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1-1/2 cups finely diced fresh fruit (I used peaches this for the cake in the photos.)

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar.  Add the beaten egg and vanilla and mix until well combined.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and stir it in just until incorporated.  Follow with half the buttermilk. Continue to alternate the flour mixture and buttermilk, ending with the flour,  mixing after each addition.  It’s important not to over-mix the batter.  It should be slightly lumpy.

Once the batter has been mixed, gently fold in the fruit pieces until they are distributed throughout the batter.

Turn the cake batter into a buttered 9-inch-square pan and bake it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until a tester inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.  The original recipe called for a baking time of 30 minutes but I find it can take longer—up to an hour—depending upon how much moisture the fruit adds to the batter.

Harvest cake makes a wonderful dessert, served warm, with ice cream.  If you choose to let it cool, it can be topped with your favourite cream cheese icing.

Marché Saint Georges

I was in Vancouver for a family visit yesterday and my sister introduced me to Marché Saint Georges.  It’s charming.

The market is in a circa 1900 house, and is very simple in its furnishings and appointments.  The front door is painted with black board paint and lists the shop’s hours.  The walls are covered with a very old, and now faded, wallpaper that has been there for decades.  There is a tiny service kitchen, an espresso machine, a pastry case, a refrigerated display, some dry goods, and a display of locally woven linens.  Outside are organic fruits and vegetables, together with a few tables and chairs.  Café au lait is offered in bowls and if you choose to take tea it’s served to you in proper—if mismatched—china cups.  There is music playing.  It’s every North American’s romanticized vision of what a French neighbourhood shop should be.  I loved it.

Besides being beautiful and providing a place for neighbours to meet, Marché Saint Georges takes pains to offer good, locally produced foods.  They do their baking in-store.  The refrigerator contained locally made sausages, Fraser Valley milk, butter and yogurt, artisanal cheeses, organic eggs, and a colander of beautiful yellow and green string beans.

I appreciated the care taken in choosing the items offered for sale and in creating such a charming and welcoming atmosphere. 

Here are some photos from my visit.  You can find some more pictures, and information about the shop on their website at http://www.marchestgeorge.com/.

Feeding My Meatatarian

Once, when I returned from a couple of days out of town, my husband bragged to me that in the entire time I was absent he’d eaten nothing that was not brown.  His diet had consisted of bread, peanut butter, cornflakes, fried meat, wieners, and baked beans.  Immediately an old Wendy’s commercial popped into my mind:  The one where the guy justifies his choice of a double hamburger to his salad-eating date by saying “I’m a meatatarian.”

It’s not that my guy refuses to eat fruit and vegetables exactly, more that he refuses to prepare them and is apt to complain if I feed him too many of them in their unadulterated state.  Since I am concerned for his health and my own, it means that meal preparation at our house has, for 30 years, been a game of hide-the-healthy-stuff.

Here are some of the tricks I’ve learned over the years:

Oatmeal is a vehicle for fruit.  I always add raisins to oatmeal.  They’re a very good source of iron.  I also add diced, in-season fresh fruit at the beginning of the cooking time.  This week it was peaches.  In the winter it’s most often diced apple.  I spice the finished dish with cinnamon and add some brown sugar and vanilla yogurt.  It eats like a treat but it’s good for you.

Soup is a good thing.  My fella never complains about vegetables in his soup, and soup affords me the opportunity to add them twice:  First they give their flavours and nutrients to my stock and then, once the stock has been strained, I add more to the finished dish.  I also add legumes in the form of reconstituted dried beans, lentils, or peas.  I add whole grains in the form of barley, brown rice, or whole wheat pasta.

My husband is a huge ramen fan.  Me, not so much.  Those flavouring packages are composed of nothing but artificial flavours, salt and bad-for-you fats.  Over the years I’ve figured out how to make a ramen that is more acceptable to me.  I slice cabbage and onions very finely so that they’re about the same thickness as the ramen noodles.   I grate zucchini and carrots using the fine shred side of my box grater.   I discard the flavouring package from the ramen and cook the vegetables in home made stock.  My target proportion for the finished dish is equal parts vegetables and cooked noodles.  The noodles go in for the last three minutes of cooking, and then the stock is strained off.  I transfer the noodles to a large bowl and dress them with a little toasted sesame oil and some salt and pepper.  My meatatarian sees the carrots but doesn’t even realize the rest of the vegetables are there.   He thinks he’s getting a real treat when I put this on the table for lunch.

Any mom will tell you that you can hide a lot of veggies in spaghetti sauce.  I make my red sauce with tomatoes of course, and onion, garlic, celery, shredded carrot and zucchini, diced bell pepper, pitted and chopped olives.  At various times I’ve also included spinach, and artichoke.  Fortunately I don’t have to hide the vegetables in my red sauce.  After so many years, my guy thinks that all red sauce is made this way.  He does occasionally ask for ground beef in his sauce and, if I have some in the house, I’ll oblige him.  If not, I’ve discovered that I can coarsely grind chickpeas in my food processor and add them instead.  The texture of the chickpeas makes this substitution acceptable to my husband, and the added plant protein and fiber make me happy.

You can get a fussy eater to eat most everything if you wrap it in pastry or bread.  If’ I’m making pastry, I’ll splash out and make some baked pocket pies , but more often I’ll make something resembling a mini calzone.  I’ve made these with white bread, foccaccia, whole wheat bread, and multigrain bread.  My husband prefers the white or foccaccia  bread calzones and I’m willing to concede the point in order to get him to eat his veggies (but I do mix some Fiber Plus into the dough).  I roll the bread dough into thin rounds about 6 inches in diameter and then spoon in a filling.  I’ve used bocconcini and my red spaghetti sauce, cheddar sauce and broccoli (or other green vegetables),  mushrooms, carmelized onion and cream cheese or brie, and even a borscht-like filling made from shredded cabbage, beets and onion bound with sour cream,  tomato paste, and paprika.  I fold the bread dough over to make a half-moon shape , crimp the edges together, let the bread rise, brush it with a little olive oil, and then bake the calzoness off.  I serve them hot out of the oven but my fussy eater will happily consume the leftovers cold, direct from the fridge or reheat them in the microwave.

If he won’t eat it in its original form, my husband will often eat a vegetarian dish presented as a burger.  He’s no fan of black bean chili but if I make the chili into a burger patty by processing it to a coarse grind, adding brown rice and a bread crumb binder, then serve the patty on a burger bun with lettuce, tomato and lots of condiments, he’ll scarf it back.  I’ve made burgers from eggplant, from grilled portabello mushrooms, from falafel, and from lentils.  They’ve all been hits.

Other things that work for me?  Veggie laden pizza, baked eggs on butternut squash or on cooked spinach , fritattas topped with vegetables, scones or muffins with fruit baked right in, topped with more fruit and some yogurt…You get the idea. 

To be honest, the hide-the-good-stuff game is fun for me.  I love a challenge, don’t you?

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photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/muammer/2409582661/

This post is linked to the Gallery of Favorites hosted by The 21st Century Housewife and Premeditated Leftovers, to Kitchen Tips Tuesday by Good (cheap) Eats and Tammy's Recipes, to Guy Food Recipes hosted by Balancing Beauty and Bedlam, to Busy Mondays hosted by A Pinch of Joy and to Trim Down Thursdays hosted by Coping with Frugality and Eco Baby Mama Drama.

Canning Day

 

I have a love/hate relationship with canning.  I love the scent of cooking fruit, I love sight of jewel coloured jars lined up in rows on my pantry shelves and I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I’ve finished my work.  I love the sense of connection it gives me to my grandmothers, and to countless other women around the world who put food by for their families.  I don’t love the tedium and repetitiousness of canning prep, I don’t love standing in one place for hours and hours,  I don’t love how hot my kitchen gets, and I certainly don’t love cleaning up the mess.

This year, canning poses some special challenges and rewards for me.  An on-going health problem is causing my muscles to spasm.  It’s kind of like having a full body charley horse, all the time.  The looking-downward, hands-low-and-forward posture required for cooking is painful to me.  At the same time, I really do need to put food by this year.  My recent health problems have been a hard hit for us financially, and the fruit and vegetables I put by now will help us to make ends meet during the winter months.

Yesterday I bought forty pounds of beautiful Okanagan peaches.  They were things of beauty: carefully packed, unbruised, perfectly ripe, shaded from pale orange through blush red, and velvet in texture.  They smelled heavenly.  I made some into ice cream to enjoy today and set aside a few for a pie tomorrow.  The rest I preserved.

Canning was a long process.  It involved regular doses of pain killers, frequent breaks to go for walks, and lots of distraction.  I strung an extra long cable and moved the TV to a spot where I could see it while I was working.  My visual focus was mostly on the task at hand, but I listened to the TV as I worked and the distraction made the task less onerous.

I got it done.  I have to show for my efforts some jars of peach and red jalapeno jam, and many pints of peach pieces canned in simple syrup with a little lemon added.  The last of the jars are on the counter right now; the lids making reassuring pops as they cool and seal.  I’m happy with the results.

When I count my blessings this winter, I’ll be thrice grateful for these peaches:  First, that I had the means to buy them when they were in season, second that the nutrition they provide will help sustain us during the lean winter months, and third that I was physically able to do the work required to put them by. 

It’s funny how an illness or setback can make us stop and appreciate the little things.  I’m a fortunate woman.  Maybe I’ll can some cherries tomorrow.

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Photo: allthingsgrandma.com

The Craving

Do you ever get a food craving that just sticks with you?  One you can't shake?

Usually I find that, if I ignore a craving, I’ll get distracted by something else and it will go away.  This week, though, I was craving an egg salad sandwich and the craving just wouldn’t leave me alone.  The longer I ignored it, the stronger the craving got.  It grew in particularity too, until I could literally taste the bread, the egg, the mayo, every time I thought about it.

This morning I decided to give in to my craving and to cater to all its particularity.   

First came the bread.  I baked some whole wheat loaves with molasses; dark, substantial, and ever-so-slightly sweet.   

Next I boiled the eggs.  Not just any eggs either; speckled, brown, free range eggs from a local farmer.  I put the boiled eggs in the fridge to chill.  

Then I made the mayo.  I used two more of my beautiful eggs, Keen’s mustard powder, sea salt, canola oil and—because I wanted the extra flavour—juice from my bread and butter pickles in place of regular vinegar.  I put the mayo in the fridge to chill too.

When the bread had cooled and the ingredients were all chilled, I set about making my sandwich. 

First I made the egg salad, with my boiled eggs, chopped green onions, celery, and mayo.  No fancy stuff...I was craving plain and simple. 

Then I toasted the bread.  I buttered it, spooned on a generous amount of egg salad, seasoned it with salt and pepper, topped the egg with lettuce, and put the lid on my sandwich.  It was a thing of beauty.

I set the table, and sat down to enjoy my treat.  It took five hours from start to finish to make that sandwich and it was worth every single minute.  Rarely has a sandwich tasted so good to me, and now that nagging craving is gone.  Sometimes the simple things really are the best.

Blackberry Sour Cream Pie

Every year, with the first picking of blackberries, I make a blackberry sour cream pie.  It’s not the prettiest girl at the dance, but it tastes glorious.  We love it.  I make it but once a year and my husband anticipates it from the time he sees the early berries, still hard and green on the vine.

My blackberry sour cream pie is adapted from a traditional Mennonite recipe found in Edna Staebler’s book, Food That Really Schmecks.  Edna used raisins in her pie but I think the rich, caramel filling calls out for something tart; blackberries, rhubarb, or even tart apples make this a more appealing pie to me.

It’s a simple recipe, made from readily available ingredients.  To make it you will need:

• Enough pastry to line a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate
• 2 cups sour cream
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp. good vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp. sea salt
• 3 cups fresh blackberries (or other fruit) rinsed and drained

You will need to blind bake your crust before you add the filling.  Don’t pierce it with a fork before you do this; the filling will leak through the holes and make a soggy mess.  Instead, fit foil snugly into the formed pastry and then cover the foil with a layer of dried beans.  Bake the foil covered pie shell at 425 degrees for about 12 minutes. 

Once you have baked the crust and removed it from the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Remove the beans and the foil from inside the pie crust.  Save the beans.  You can’t use them in recipes but they’ll come in handy the next time you need to bake off an empty pie crust.

While the crust is cooling, make your filling:  Combine the sour cream, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, and salt, whisking them together until they are well combined.

Put the drained blackberries in the pie crust, arranging them so they are evenly distributed, and then pour the sour cream mixture over the berries.  Place the pie on the middle rack in your oven and place a baking sheet under it to catch any drips.  Bake the pie at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking until the custard has set.  This often takes an hour, sometimes even more. 

You’ll know the pie is done when you can insert a thin knife into the center and it comes out clean.  The pie will be quite puffy at this point and its center a little jiggly.  The filling will settle as the pie cools.

Chill the pie before serving it.  If you want to, you can top it with whipped cream but it’s not really necessary.  This pie is grand just as it is.