weekending and other notes

cassava pizza is really rocking our world. my current recipe is 1 c cassava flour, 2/3 c kefir, 2 eggs, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, and a dash of oil. spread onto the smooth side of a silicone sheet, bake 15 minutes or so, then let cool. elevate on an oven-proof wire rack (as pictured), rub with a bit of extra oil, then dress and bake till cheese is as you like it.

paleomom's plantain muffins are amazing. going to try a vegan version this week with ripe plantain and flax.

salad for dinner - with hard-boiled eggs, just-cooked broccoli, cubes of mozarella, thinly-sliced peppers, apple, lettuce, and a balsamic dressing.

new batch of kraut fementing away - with red cabbage, rutabaga, carrot, jalepeno, cranberries, ginger and garlic.

the table set for valentine's day

valentine menu

Sunday supper - mussel pasta dish based on nonno's mussel linguine in Jamie Oliver's Italy, except we have no anchovies, so I used smoked herring, it was just so delicious, prominently but not overwhelmingly smoky, with the sweetness of the tomatoes and the fresh garlic - definitely a keeper. with orange and endive salad and white wine - fabulous.

I am reading French Women Don't Get Fat - as you may recall, I have a major thing for French food culture, so I am enjoying it very much. I knew I would like it because I once picked up the sequel at a second-hand store and gave it to my mom as a gift. It is all about pleasure, n'est pas? I have realized, reading it, that I do sometimes eat mindlessly or out of stress. Oui, meme moi! I am very determined to slim down my portions, say no to seconds, savour every morsel of calorie-dense food I indulge in, and lose 5-10 pounds by May (as I don't have a scale I suppose I'll have to be content with fitting better into my black wool skirt, which has sadly gotten a little tight at the waist). So I turned down a second dish of pasta last night (while Tony had THREE, which if you have observed Tony eat, you'll realize is  an enormous quantity for him), and did not eat my third egg at breakfast, but instead kept it for my slumbering husband. I cannot wait for the spring to come, to start seeing early greens and fresh goodies at the Atwater market, bien sur! I am so done with winter. Anybody with me?

summer lovin

I made jerky with some leftover ham last month. And it's still good!

I also have been making some simple fizzy drinks. I still have this one, which had plums, and grapefruit as a secondary fermentation flavourer. I wonder if that's still good...

I eat eggs almost every morning. So over the guilt.

Sam made us her traditional seafood BBQ as a goodbye a couple of weeks ago... sniff, sniff.

Some soup.

My first zucchini harvest!! Last year the squirrels ate all my cucumbers and pumpkin babies. This year I have been using human hair to deter them. Whenever I comb by hair out after a shower, I usually put the loose hairs in the sink, then trash or compost them. So I've been taking them outside and tucking them into the garden. Seems to be working!

cookie contemplation

noms. (GF cookies are one of the easiest transitions to make in baking, in my experience. This is an old, well-beloved recipe for us. It requires no modification other than switching wheat flour for rice flour 1:1. And this batch turned out PERFECT. Do not overbake is the golden rule of GF cookies.)

a dish of shredded cabbage, quinoa, tomatoes and their juice, cheese, and herbs.

I'm reading this amazing wonderful book, Salad for Dinner, from the library. It's gorgeous and educational and inspiring. I highly recommend it.

another spread

he likes using knives.

it makes the food taste better when he does it himself, you see.

A bunch of random pictures

So I took a real silly video of me making brunch last week but I cant seem to make it into a nice smooth running little movie, so that's on hold till I can figure it out. In the meantime, here is a bunch of random pictures I collected and meant to post individually, but you now get them in a nice big bunch!

Summer is for salads, I feel, because slow cooking roasts in the oven for hours doesn't make me a happy girl.

Broc, cauliflower, bacon, hardboiled egg with a cheesy dressing

Simple cucumber and tomatoes with some herbs and a bit of vinegar and oil. I live on this stuff.

Black cracked pepper Triscuits are a bit of an obsession lately, with a tuna salad that's got a bit of whatever's in the fridge. Pictured here with green onion, corn, carrots, red pepper, and tomato.

 

FARMER'S MARKET! I am so friggin thankful to live where I do. The stuff I pick up is grown 10 minutes away from my home, and since my mother grew up on such farm in the same area, everyone knows each other. The stand I go to most often is Mr. Poirier's, right on the main road in Mercier. The experience of buying from them is incredible. Apart from actually knowing these people, they treat everyone like family, and Ive heard them try to explain to an American the layout of their fields with extreme broken English and broken French from both sides, it was beautiful. And Mr. Poirier sometimes sneaks an ear or two extra of corn in my bag, with a wink. It feels more like a social occasion than shopping.

Them tomatoes had no chance.



Some corn I roasted from them. I thought the yellow looked like jewels or something.

 

Went to the Echoes of a Proud Nation Powwow at Kahnawake, and let me tell you, the first thing I did when I walked in, as I do every year, is make a straight bee-line to the food stands. In particular, the smoked sausage stand where this guy makes his own sausages of meat he's hunted (a mix of rabbit, deer, and moose). They are beyond delicious.

Grills them right in front of you and you can get it with sautéed onions and hot sauce. I dream about these all year long.

Buffalo burgers. EVERYONE MUST EAT THESE.

Indian tacos are frybread topped with chili and regular taco toppings, and corn soup is, well, just that. Both staples of Mohawk cuisine. I'm lucky enough to have a couple of friends that make these year round and are willing to feed me so I focus on those once-a-year treats. Thing to note: strawberry juice is a huge thing culturally wise, they even have a whole festival dedicated to strawberries! Now how's that for celebrating Nature's juiciest and sweetest candy?

 Here's a few shots of the dancers and drummers for your viewing pleasure:

Families were braiding each other's hair, helping each other with their regalia. It was awesome to see.

Little bear clan warrior.

 

 

Notice the children hanging around the drums. They have an open policy where children are always invited and encouraged to sit around their drumming circle, they're very superstitious about that drum. Special treatment, the way they talk about it, people cannot under any circumstance touch that drum or the beating sticks. But children are the exception. Its actually considered good energy for an innocent child to touch a drum in wonderment.


Tried out these muffin egg things. Onion red pepper for Jeff, zucchini, carrot, red pepper, and some other stuff I cant quite recall in mine. Result, we hated them. Theyre good on the spot, but cold and/or reheated egg? Yuck.

 

 

 Plus they left an awful mess to clean, even though I very carefully greased every individual cup. Unpleasant.

 

 

This also happened. -_-


 

 

So that about sums up the last couple of months. Soon, oh so very soon (September soon), it will be canning time! I'm actually excited about this, which makes me... I don't know what it makes me. I specifically scheduled my vacation at work during harvest so I would have time to can and freeze all this delicious produce. So excited!

fermentaholic!

Mojito wine (mint and citrus) working in the yeast in a 1-gallon pickle jar - still in the rapid integration phase, the yeast is the light bubbly stuff at the top.

GF toast and eggs for brekky.

We love crackers, and GF crackers are absurdly expensive, so I'm working again on a better cracker recipe. I first soaked this bean & lentil mix over night with water and a little rejuvelac, then cooked them, then used a hand blender to turn them into mush...

Like so! I also added some buckwheat flour, spices, and more rejuvelac. I'll let it hang out awhile, then once I've baked them I'll be sure to share how they turned out.

I am reading Orlean Puckett: Life of a Mountain Midwife, and having reached the part about how all the passers-by enjoyed sitting down to a bowl of her sauerkraut for a snack, I thought, hot damn, I need to make me some sauerkraut! Thank God for my food processor, which relatively quickly sliced & shredded 2 sweet potatoes, 2 onions, 3 carrots, 1 huge daikon, 1/2 head cabbage, 1 bunch kale, about 1/2 head garlic, and 3 apples. You can see the brine is coming along nicely. (More about sauerkraut here, from the master.)

The left is the wine - you can't see the airlock here but it's on and is bubbling away, at a rate of about one to three per minute (there's a second one also out of sight), the right is the sauerkraut of course, and in the forefront is my favourite fermentation book.

Glorious rainbow compost fodder!

I used a few Tattler lids to create a barrier to push the veggies below the brine. And while I have your attention, a reflection: I offered some free kraut on facebook, and while I was working on the shredding, I was thinking about how to pitch it, and I was thinking about the notion of something being an 'acquired taste'. Because in reality... all tastes are acquired tastes. Anybody who grows up with sour fermented foods, but not sugar cane, would perceive Western cake as 'an acquired taste'. It's not a real category written in stone.

There's something about summer...! I just want to ferment things like crazy. I also bought some Rise kombucha to grow a new SCOBY with, so it's hanging out in a wide-mouth jar on my island as well. It's supposed to be raw, so hopefully that will work. Failing that, a few of the members of the WAPF Montreal group on facebook, which I've recently joined and am enjoying daily (as opposed to several other groups I'm in, which I largely ignore), have offered to share SCOBYs with me. Hurrah!

super simple cookies

I follow a wonderful fitness blogger named Casey Ho Her main thing is short workout youtube videos, along with having a fitness apparel and bag line, but she also blogs a lot about what she eats. She's all about eating "clean" (her word not mine) which usually means no sugar. But she loves to eat, and always shares things that look delicious. Here is my version of her healthiest cookie in the world recipe.

1 banana
1 cup oats

--> mush together

add:
a handful raisins
a handful of coconut shavings
top with a pecan!

bake 350 degrees for 15 minutes

These cookies dont even require raisins. They're good just oats and banana, kinda like a baby cookie. They filled my sweet craving for the afternoon. My current tea love is Creme Brule Rooibos a David's Tea blend. Looooove it hot and cold with honey or without.

over-ambitious, fun anyway!

It seemed like a good idea at the time... but maybe a little over-complicated. The idea was for a ravioli dish that would replicate an amazing Jamie O salad Tony made on my birthday, featuring mixed greens, proscuitto, peaches, cheese, and excellent oil and vinegar. We made a mix with a heavenly aroma - proscuitto, diced apples, spring onions, thyme, egg, parmesan, and black pepper. Sounds delicious, yeah? Trouble is, I was still doing a gluten-free trial, so the noodles were not all that happy about being made into parcels (would have made nice cut noodles though - corn flour, rice flour, psyllium husk powder, egg, water, oil, and beet purree for colour) - they tear rather than stretch (you can see the filling sadly escaping in the picture of the pasta cooking, above). The sauce was made from roasted red peppers, sour cream, and a roasted garlic sauce I have otherwise used with great satisfaction. Somehow it was all sort of pasty and bland and disappointing. Ah well, our pride was put in place! Anyway, Sam brought filled chocolates that made for a very balanced meal (I kept taking half bites and making Tony finish them, haha!) But where true deliciousness was lacking, wine, candlelight, and friendship made up the balance. Le'hayim!

As another weekending note, I made and was very satisfied with these crackers. I just soaked them a couple of hours. Super simple. I made them with wheat flour - it's been over a week since I made anything with wheat and it was so silky and dreamy to work with, wow. They need more salt though, maybe like 1 tbsp. I also used some ground flax. I made half plain, for peanut butter enjoyment, and half with spring onions & pepper, for cheese enjoyment. Delicious. They are so rich from the butter and yogurt that you don't have the same danger and worry of burning as you often do with crackers - so many cracker recipes have a very fine line between underbaked soft minibreads and overdone kinda-burnt crackers  - not so here. While all crackers have to be watched closely, I found these had a good 5+ minute period during which they were happy to hang out in the oven and stay pretty much the same, just browning a bit more. Practical.