weekending & double-doubles

eating a banana-cocoa-kefir popsicle while browsing some Jamie books from mom's fantastic all-alone date at the library

an array: fragrant peppermint pot, library treasures, pizza dough under the seersucker bowl cover, roasted beans in the mason jar (garlicky and spicey, a snack du moment here), fruit, roasted broccoli and corn for the quiche tomorrow, ready to go. I've been trying to precook for Sundays to make it more fully a day of rest, prayer and fun for us - the quiche has been made, and I used duck fat from our last roast instead of butter. It smells good!

sprouts

green apple tibicos

on my way home from my library outing, I went to the grocery store to get milk. I was also pondering pizza toppings for tonight, but this is a small store and the veg selection this week is particularly pitiful. I had just enough cashola to get three lemons for $1.25. Lemons are like sunshine in my mouth. Pizza will have thin lemon slices, onions, potato and olives. anyway - that wasn't enough. I needed MORE LEMON. So I created double-doubles, the groundwork for which is in the picture above...

double-doubles, omnomnom

Double-Doubles (Amy's Chocolate-Lemon Cookies)

Preheat the oven to 350F.
1 c butter, soft
1 c sugar
--> beat, then beat in 2 room temp eggs. mix in 1 tsp lemon flavouring (I use an organic oil blend, sunflower and lemon) and 1 tsp vanilla.
--> mix in 1/2 tsp each salt and baking soda.
--> stir in:
2 1/2 c oats, quick (I have whole rolled oats so I grind them mostly into flour in the blender)
1 c flour - 2 tbsp (I used sprouted spelt)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
with...
1 lemon, finely diced, seeds removed, put in a measuring cup (is about 1/4 c)
chocolate chips, about 3/4 c (to bring the +lemon measure up to 1 c)

Bake about 15 m, let cool on a wire rack.

Happy weekending! What's on your pizza??

my little pets

My friend Julia told me this week that she finds my collection of SCOBYs and other fermentation projects amusing, like a little menagerie - my "pets", she called them. I found this cute.



See, it's true! This is tibicos (aka water kefir), my most recent acquisition, well-matured, fermenting lazily. You can see grains of the tibicos, as well as carbonation bubbles, floating around. It's kind of like having an aquarium, it has that same soothing quality as watching fish swim around. Except you don't have to feed tibicos smelly fish food, and every other day or so you get a delicious probiotic beverage!

Food Culture

So, like any good foodie would do, I always use the travelling excuse to dive into new foods that I would probably not try at home. If Im going to spend money on eating out, might as well be extraordinary things I cant find or make at home. I love to go to places and say to them, just bring me whatever it is you eat. I havent been lucky enough to go overseas yet, but Ive learnt that food can be completely different even if you live just a few hours away.

My parents gave us a vacation to Isle-Aux-Coudres for our wedding gift, which is maybe 5-6 hours away, and in the middle of the two coast lines of Quebec. And coastline doesnt mean anything to me but beautiful views and extremely fresh sea food. But what I also discovered, was their love for fresh food, and best of all, how they dont talk about eating seasonally and locally, they literally live it. As a local told me, they import all kinds of fancy food for the city folks, but they what they got in their earth and in their water (and by fancy foods, we were talking about asparagus). The hotel had their huge herb garden right in their front yard, and their menu changed every day to include whatever was freshly caught that morning and what was available.

This is the first meal I had on the island. I looked at the menu of the only restaurant not in a hotel on the island (which houses about 1000 people), and saw full of unfamiliar names, closed the menu and asked the waitress to bring me whatever it was that she would suggest I try. The fish are called perlans (which I cant for the life of me find the translation of). Tiny fishes, they roast them then fry them with a spicy batter, and then serve it as you see. To be honest, I had an issue getting over the tails, fins, partial heads and spine still being attached, in fish that grosses me out. Once you get over that, its delicious.

Lunch we had right before going on a whale cruise. CHECK OUT THE VIEW. This was a shrimp and citrus salad. What I didnt know, was that there would also be flying fish eggs on the plate. Both of which, the eggs and shrimp, had been freshly caught and extracted the morning of. The waitress even pointed out the fishing boat that had delivered them. And the price of this most excellent dish you ask? A ghastly 12$. Im sure that could run easily upwards of 25$ in the right place downtown.

There is a miniscule SAQ where non locals can get their alcohol should they need, but there is a cider press house on the island where practically all locals get their drinks from. They make all kinds of alcohol, and grow every single fruit they use in it. They had  selection of hydromels as well, using honey from their hives. I tried the mistelle au pommes-poires (a sort of light pear apple cider) which was absolutely delicious, but I found out I was allergic to it (as I sometimes am to alcoolized fruit liqueurs). Later on, I tried non-alcoolized mout de pommes gelees, where they pick frozen apples, cook them down and press them. Fantastic!

I wish we could have had more time and more meals, but we ran out of both much too fast! Definetly going to explore the coastline of Quebec again!

kombucha!

I made an elasticized seersucker punch bowl cover specifically for our kombucha, to keep out dust and flies reliably - we started our first batch 2 weeks ago, so I took it down today to check it out and bottle it.

Ooo! What you see here is the new SCOBY with bubbly things on the surface of the kombucha, and the one we started with - kind of a ripped circle on the bottom half of the bowl - below that.

A close-up of the SCOBY!

Bottled.

New batch, decaf, half plain black tea, half chai, up top there - second from the right.

We like it! This batch was quite sweet, perhaps because the mother SCOBY we used was a bit worn-out? I figure we'll let this batch sit 3 weeks and see how it is. We had to add vinegar to our first batch to acidify the solution, to keep out undesirable pathogens - normally you just use a bit of mature kombucha, but we didn't have any - so I was afraid it would taste vinegary. Not at all! It was wonderfully tart and sweet and a bit fizzy. Hooray!

Sandor is the man when it comes to fermentation:

natural superfood smoothie

I bought kelp meal awhile ago from Ecollegy with stars in my eyes: "it's so full of minerals!!". But actually I hate seaweed. So here is my compromise:

Boil 250 mL of water in the kettle. Pour this over 4 tbsp of kelp meal and 2-4 tbsp green tea (for extra antioxidants). Cover immediately and let steep for at least one hour. Let cool completely, then strain out solids. Tea will be very strong.

In a blender, put 1 banana, 1 peach, a handful of blueberries, a small handful of flax seeds, some yogurt, kefir or coconut milk, and your crazy tea mixture. Blend it until no chunks remain. Taste - if you need it sweeter, use raw honey or some dates. If you really want to go all out, throw in some freshly peeled ginger and/or oats. Add peanuts or other nuts if you want... mmm peanut butter. Drink it cold.

lately in the kitchen

soup served in bread bowls (it looks good in pictures but really, each bowl was way too much for us to eat!)


making blueberry-coconut chutney - dried blueberries, soaked 24h (I bought them at the Bulk Barn as a snack for Ambrose, but about 30% tasted strongly of curry - ew! not nice for a snack - delicious in chutney), a handful unsweetened coconut, an onion, some garlic, crushed chilli peppers, salt, and kefir whey to ferment.



hot Italian sausage-stuffed stromboli (with carrot, leek, mushrooms and rosemary, sprinkled with salt and pepper over an egg yolk glaze)... so good...



St. Joseph's day was yesterday! We had minestrone with garlic bread (pictured above) with cream puffs for dessert - basically eclair puffs, but with a filling of ricotta, yogurt, sugar, hazlenuts, grated chocolate, and vanilla instead of vanilla custard folded with whipped cream like normal eclairs have. They were yummy but I prefer the custard, oh well!


My God-son's cracker, celery and garlic bread creation...


canning leftover minestrone in 500 mL portions.


making ginger bug for ginger ale - you can see that the bug (center) is bubbly and frothy, this was taken around day 3. Weirdly, it died after that :( Not sure why this happens sometimes. I will start again tonight and let the water sit overnight - hopefully allowing the chlorine to evaporate will give it an extra healthy edge? The failure really puzzled me, though... it's the same brands and quantities I always use... weird!


Cream cheese and butter with whole wheat pastry flour was the winner! Pictured here in galette-ish form with a vanilla drizzle, stuffed with sour cherry jam, cottage cheese, and fresh green apples. They were da bomb! Recipe forthcoming.

chai latte mix

Sam sent me a link to this chai latté syrup, and I'd been meaning to try the recipe from Cynthia Lair's Foods for the Whole Family, so I decided to sorta combine them. It went well! I am thinking this will be one of our mass-production Christmas presents this year, oh joy!

My ultimate quantities were:
4 c water
3 tea bags
2 cinnamon sticks
1 bay leaf
10 peppercorns
10 cloves
10 cardamom pods
2 tsp ground ginger (accident - I'd meant to use 1 tsp - but it was fine)
1/2 pod vanilla, sliced open
4-5 tbsp honey (I used a kitchen spoon rather than a measuring spoon - 4 of those)


I then strained the nearly-spent spices into a small pot with about 1 1/2 c water, 1 decaf tea bag, and about 1 tbsp honey and made a weaker baby chai for Mr. Angel, above. He enjoyed it, can you tell?