Worms, Storms, and The Best Muesli In The World.

It’s been forever!
Why haven’t I written in one month and two days? Because it has been a lovely summer and it has been really hot and I, admittedly, have been having too much fun to write. Decent excuse I think...


A few weeks ago I went to worm class with my good friend Kimmi at the CityFarm (Maple and 6th in Kits – go check it out!). I have watched people compost with worms for ages, but I just never got around to finding my own worms. Lucky for me, Kimmi was super keen and did her research ages ago. Back in February she got her name on a waiting list for worm class back – for a class in July. They are that in demand apparently. Me being the ultimate last-minute-kinda-girl, I called up the CityFarmer (unsure of what to call them exactly..) on the Thursday before the Saturday class and learned there was one cancellation. Perfect!

First off, I learned that for $25 I was receiving: a pound of red wiggler worms, a great box made just for worms (complete with air holes!), a bag of straw and newspaper, a book called Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof, and one full hour of instruction. Apparently this would normally go for over a hundred bucks but the City of Vancouver was being kind enough to subsidize the majority of it for us because it is one of the cheapest ways for them to reduce the amount of garbage coming out of the city, our very nice instructor told us.

Two things amazed me in this class: the wide array of people, and their reactions to the worms. The people: all sorts...there was a little old Asian lady, a bald gay guy with great posture, a girl with really fancy sunglasses and long fingernails, a lady who laughed at all of my and Kimmi’s jokes (that’s normal..) and that was only four out of about thirty. And then there were their reactions: one guy (shocking how many straight guys were there!) wouldn’t stop asking if he could use the worms for fishing, one woman was afraid to touch the worms, people who were pissed that the worms wouldn’t be able to eat every scrap of their organic garbage, people who hung on the instructors every word and took notes the entire hour... Now I’m being hard on them.

This is my fresh worm box, before I fed them anything:



I left mine out on the patio for about twenty minutes after I got them home. It was about 35 degrees out there, but I figured they would be fine if they were in the shade... Wrong. They will die. I got them out just in time and they are now flourishing in a closet.


I also learned that if you tell someone "I got worms today" they will be a tad weirded out. I was just really excited about it!

So with the worms, you feed them your vegetable scraps (one big yoghurt container full) once a week and they eat it to make a compost you can feed your plants. Awesome, but I am still paranoid about killing them. Or their possible escape...

Want to try it now?

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A few photos of that awesome rain/thunder/lightning storm a few weeks back. We just happened to be at the Virgin Music Festival where we had been happily watching the lightning - which was still a few kilometres away - when the rain hit and things were swiftly cancelled seconds before The Roots came onto the stage. Devastating. However, it did make for a beautiful sky.

I have never seen the Vancouver sky like that.

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Lastly, I want to share a muesli recipe that I find to be one of my most favourite things in the entire world. It was perfected by the one and only Jane Goodrum and I have waited about a year and a half only for it to make it to the other side of the world into my hands, yes, a few weeks ago. She makes a batch of it once a week, distributes it to her kids and their families and they all eat it every single morning for breakfast. My first attempt wasn’t exactly like Jane’s so it’s going to take me some time to get it just right, but I am happy to keep trying and definitely ready to get back in the habit of eating it every day.

JANE'S MUESLI (exactly as I received it)
4 cup rolled oats

1 cup all bran

1/2 cup low fat powdered milk (just powder)

2 tbsp wheat germ

2 tbsp linseed

1 cup of raw nuts (whatever you have in the kitchen, all good)

1 cup shredded coconut

~All these ingredients can be combined in a baking dish, and mixed.

1/4 cup of oil

1/4 cup of honey

~Melt together and pour over the dry mixture.

~Then bake in a moderate oven for 30 mins (pulling out and stirring roughly every 10mins)
~When cooked, allow it to cool then add a cup of dried fruit and stir through (anything you have: apples, apricots, sultanas, cranberries, etc).

~ You are then ready to get involved and chef it up. Yum yum!

*Linseed is just flaxseed, sultanas are raisins, a moderate oven would be around 350F and “chef it up” would involve serving it with whatever you feel like – come summer go wild with any berry you can get your hands on, a bit later move onto apples, then into the winter it’s perfect with yoghurt and canned fruit.

*Try and do it in a big baking dish as opposed to a baking sheet as it won’t turn as dark brown (Jane’s is a super light color; the ingredients are just toasted).

*Many thanks and love to the Goodrum family for sharing!

Seven simple ingredients.

Whenever I go up north to visit my family we always end up going out to eat at some point, always at the same restaurant. Everyone knows what it is, it has been around forever. They used to have parrots and chocolate mousse and gigantic orders of nachos when I was a kid but now the waitresses just look like they are going to a club right after their lunch shift but the food is [usually] still good. This has nothing to do with the restaurant though; this has to do with how my dad orders his meal there. Always, always, he orders “the lowly chicken”, despite the fact that the chicken special changes regularly and there is always a fancy little title for it.
I love this.
“The chicken, please”. Perhaps this reminds me of my love of the simple?
It makes me think about when we didn’t have cell phones that could also take pictures and an Ipod that could find out the address of the restaurant – we used the yellow pages instead. Even if the menu says ‘Mediterranean chicken with a garlic and thyme white wine reduction’ there is no need to recite that. The waitress knows what you are talking about.
Comparatively, in discussions of your own food at home there is no need to divulge everything in your dish.
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Chicken”.
It leaves a bit of mystery to your meal and the diners will obviously discover upon their first bite that it tastes like white wine and garlic. And perhaps a bit like it came from the Mediterranean? I love a bit of mystery, and I love eating well... And I feel strongly about minimalism with our food.
Way cool, dad!

So feeding off the homage to simple, I’m going to talk about pesto again.
The other day I woke up late to a sunny morning and wandered onto the patio to inspect our plants. It was burning hot outside already and while I had a chat with some flowers, I noticed that the basil was growing like gangbusters*. The only thing I know to do with heap loads of fresh basil is make pesto. So that’s what I did. Right after I called my friend Kim to come over for breakfast.
A quick trip to the grocery store provided eggs, pine nuts and parmesan cheese (as well as a quick chat with the cute guy who lives two floors below us – poor guy was only buying grapefruit for breakfast).
I put the kettle on and went out to pick all the basil.

After I marvelled at its color and how much I had grown, I stuffed it all into the blender. I have given a pesto recipe before, but here's a refresher on how you do it:
Three cloves of garlic, peeled (I usually overdose a tad - I love the buzz)
As much fresh basil you can get your hands on
Around a third of a cup of pine nuts (toasted will bring out their flavour**)
The same amount of freshly grated parmesan cheese
Olive Oil, Salt and Pepper
Start whizzing it all up (with a hand blender, mortar and pestle - whichever you choose) and slowly pour olive oil in until it slowly becomes the consistency of pesto.
Voila.
~A side note – I made some for Kim without cheese as she’s a lactose free kinda gal and it was incredible. The green was that much richer and the flavour of the spicy basil wasn’t mellowed at all by the cheese. It was awesome.

One taste of the bright green pesto made you stop in your tracks and savour the taste. The garlic was softened by the oil and the cheese, the nuttiness was there from the pine nuts, and then the basil was an explosion. I attributed all the flavour to the freshness of the basil. That, and the simplicity of the recipe. Seven ingredients, all stuff that tastes great on its own - no way can you go wrong. Complexity will only muck things up. If you want pesto, this is the pesto you want.

By this time Kim was in the kitchen with me eating it by the spoonful, so I called an end to that and stirred some into the scrambled eggs while they cooked, made some toast, poured the (iced) tea and we ate breakfast on the couch by the fan (it was way too hot to be on the patio!). Best breakfast ever!

*My secret to success? Plant the basil with tomato plants, it truly does the trick. I started some basil seeds way back when and they really took their time taking off. They spent months on my bedroom windowsill, baking in the springtime sun, and once they were outside still dragged their heels a bit. But when a neighbour who was going away for the summer gave me some of her tomatoes to look after, I popped them all into some pots together and it’s been true love ever since.

**How do you toast pine nuts (and all other nuts while you are at it)? Two ways:
1. Put them in a frying pan over low/med heat, give them lots of attention by swirling them and tossing them around almost constantly and slowly let them brown.
2. Put them on a baking sheet on low heat in the oven (200F or so), again, give them lots of attention, and let them brown.
~They burn ridiculously easily!!~
Both ways will bring out the nutty flavour and make anything you use them in taste even better.

The moral of my story? Simplify your ingredients and spend time with those ingredients to make them the best they possibly can be and the taste of your food will be out of this world.

What did Kim and I do after breakfast? We shook up a thermos full of watermelon mojitos (watermelon left over from Canada Day and oodles of fresh mint from the garden!) and headed to Jericho Beach for the rest of the day.

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Lastly, I wrote this while listening to The Lost Fingers . Check them out!

I'll have the house salad, please.

It’s funny. When you love to cook people naturally ask you why you haven’t become a ‘chef’. I almost went to full-on cooking school right out of high school. Even though it never ended up happening for me – I went to UVIC for two semesters instead – my grandmother still asks when I’m going to become a cook. After working in the front of restaurants for years, I have an idea of what it’s like in the kitchen. And it’s not for me. Imagine making massive quantities of the same stuff everyday, and then spending the night grilling a hundred steaks. Or making a hundred salads. I think most restaurant cooks just love the repetition. And maybe the weird hours and parties?

So cooking behind a line isn’t for me. But I do daydream about opening my own restaurant. It would be ridiculously casual with good coffee... I like to entertain ideas of having a place that’s a cross between the Whistle Stop Cafe from Fried Green Tomatoes and The Foundation in Vancouver (Main and 7th – if you’ve never been, go). Just on a smaller scale.

I read in a book written by one of those famous chefs that we all love that he judges the quality of a restaurant by its house salad. He loved some nice greens with a good vinaigrette, while I like something a bit more substantial – not just a green salad but more of a meal. An old boyfriend’s sister-in-law would make incredible salads. Every vegetable from her fridge would go in and then just lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper on it for a dressing. She knew what was up.

The trick with salads is you just have to put stuff you love into it. And have lots of variation – when I was a kid our green salad was lettuce, celery, carrots, toms and cucumbers. And ranch dressing. I have nothing against this, its vegetables and that’s all you need. But why not go a bit above and beyond...

My House Salad
*the usual suspects:
-Lettuces
-Grated Beets and Grated Carrots (shout out to the Naam, in my mind they did it first!)
-Broccoli
-Almonds
-Sultanas/dried cranberries
-HERBS! My fave: dill. But I use whatever’s in the garden – mint, thyme, chives, flat leaf parsley, cilantro.

And thats just me. You could try:
-fennel
-green beans
-zucchini
-mushrooms
-tomatoes
-jicama
-roasted yams
-cheese
-roasted tofu
~absolutely anything else that you feel like!

Dressing:
-try making your own following the basic principle of 2/3 oil (I’m sure you’ve got some good olive oil), 1/3 acid (lemon juice or any sort of vinegar), and a few tablespoons of mustard. Mustard is magic, it creates an emulsion (the oil and vinegar sticks together). Try dijon or grainy mustard just because it tastes better than that bright yellow shit - I don’t really believe that stuff is actually mustard. You can also add some herbs, salt and pepper, maybe some honey or chilli. It goes on and on.

-My current favourite dressing goes against the norm a little bit by skipping the mustard and using tahini. Give it a go. It’s a good dressing for anything really, try a shot of it on top of something steamed like kale.
I got this from Vegan with a Venegance. Great book.

Tahini Dressing
Into a blender goes:
-A good amount of olive oil
-3 cloves of garlic
-2 or 3 good spoon fulls of tahini
-A glug of balsamic
-Pinch of salt
-Juice of 1 lemon
-A squeeze of something spicy like Sriracha or even paprika
Blend all of that up until it’s smooth after which add:
-whatever herbs you can find in your garden/grocery store that are beautiful and fresh.
Again, blend but let a few green bits hang around. Put in the fridge for a half hour or so after which you may have to add some cold water to thin it out (the tahini sometimes like to get pretty thick).
Enjoy!

There you are, that would the basics for the house salad in my very first restaurant, soon to be opened one day.
Soon.
In the far away future.
*I tried taking a picture of a salad but it didn’t look pretty. I need more practice.

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In my last post I talked about my strawberries. They just might be the best producers on the patio right now, while the zucchini is growing lots of blossoms but not fruit (I have been trying to hand pollinate (a hilarious term!) them with no success) and the beans are just going a bit slower.
A few days ago I made strawberry shortcake on some scones from the bakery around the corner.
Sooo sweet!
Sooo yummy and summery!

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On another note... Are you going to a party and need something new to take with you? I recently took these three dips to both a camping trip and a house warming party – great reception at both!
*You need a serious respect for your blending appliances for this to go smoothly. They will work hard for you.

These are my favourite dips to make:
Humous
Chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt and pepper, olive oil, maybe some chillies.
My secret: if it’s too thick and chunky, try adding some hot water to smooth it out. Tahini will also help things be smoooth.

Roasted Yams
Simple: peel and chop some yams, put them in a roasting dish with some olive oil and salt and pepper and roast them. When they are soft, blend them up with cumin and some spice. Done.

Beet Dip
A few more steps in this one:
-Roast your beets by wrapping them individually in tin foil and putting them in a super high oven for quite a while – sometimes over an hour. They need to be soft even in the middle, and it’s virtually impossible to burn them so leave them for a bit.
-Pull them out after a while and let them cool so you don’t burn your finger prints right off (which will probably happen no matter what). Then peel them with a paring knife by slicing the stem end off then you should be able to scrape the skin of like buttah’.
-Cut them into rough chunks then into a bowl they go with a handful of feta cheese and maybe half a cup of plain yoghurt, the good stuff (this is already going to be healthy, no need for fat-free!). Blend it up, add some salt and pepper to taste, and then you have a dip to take anywhere that is pretty much fuschia in color – beautiful!
*If you haven’t roasted your beets until they are fully soft they won’t blend very nicely and it may make your kitchen look like the scene of a bloody crime.

There’s the humous and yam dip on the right making a great showing at dinner with the ladies on Pitt Lake.

Also, breakfast. Girls eat so well when they are camping without the boys!

My first strawberry.

Fancy that - my camera wasn't dead at all, it just needed to be charged! I seem to be finding drama for myself involving this camera...

So after a few weeks of super hot weather in here in Vancouver, my cute little patio pots have decided to really starting pumping. Things are starting to shoot up and turn colors and flower and I couldn't be happier. I took out my newly revived camera this afternoon and took some quick pictures.

The very first strawberry of the summer:
I sliced it in half and shared it with my roommate. Picked (in excitement) a tad too early but wonderful all the same!

The lettuce (remember the picture from a few months ago when it was just tiny!?):

Beans:

The zucchini blossoms:

How's your garden?

Coast to coast delicious-ness.

I just went on another trip. It was the cheapest cross country trip I could manage, via greyhound, cheap flights, and Craigslist rideshares; staying on couches and in hostels. My best good friend from high school, Tiffiny, was getting married in Denver and my sister was graduating from university a few weeks later in Montreal so I figured why go home in between?? I went to some amazing cities and met some wonderful new friends. Being the girl that I am I bypassed most of the fabulous museums that I could have visited and my trip centred mostly around food.

Here's the backbone of it all:
A zippy bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle where we (the other best good friend from highschool) had a short stopover to investigate the Pike Place market and witness the men throwing fish. A few hours later we were on the wrong city bus out to the airport which came very close to making us miss our flight to Denver. We caught it, which got us into the city just in time for the bachelorette party.
After the wedding and a few more days in Denver I went to explore Boulder, just north. In a nutshell: not the quant little hippy town I expected but beautiful none the less. And it has a million little places to get a good meal.
Boulder to Denver one early morning to catch another flight to Newark, New Jersey. Train ride into New York where I met up with my sister, then on to three days with not enough sleep, lots of lemonade and the discovery of the city's great parks and fun restaurants.
Next, we found a ride on craigslist to Montreal with two guys who appeared to be transporting basketball shoes over the border so they could sell them. Legit? I'll never know, but they drove fast and got us home quickly.
Montreal: ate lots of food, proudly watched my sister graduate from architecture, and went to the Cirque du Soleil (!!).
Finally, last night, I boarded a flight back to Vancouver. Phew...

Also - a continuation of my camera saga - it died the day of the wedding (two days into the trip) so I have no photos. Use your imagination.

So with no photos I figured I would give the details of a few of my most favourite meals of the past two and a half weeks. Pretty basic stuff, no five course restaurants or fancy wine, just food. And drinks. Great fun!

-Westside East in the lower east side of New York City. After a big night I told Jeff, the guy my sister and I were staying with, that we needed to eat a big plate of vegetables for breakfast. He sent us a few blocks up from his place on Avenue B to this little place. After a short wait we sat at the bar (which was tended by two extremely cute boys) and were presented with menus that, on top of the usual brunch items, had a special sheet that was all vegetables. Great choice, Jeff! Four choices cost $15 and we got tomato and basil salad, asparagus with lemon and almonds, soy glazed green beans, and sweet potato fries. The choices change daily and the staff handwrite the menu with big, slightly unreadable cursive. With a big glass of lemonade (which became my new infatuation in New York), I felt re-energized enough to wander over to Union Square to take a nap.

-The best sandwich of my life. Somewhere in Chelsea (again, New York), I was lead there by my sister. It doesn’t have a sign and I don’t know it’s name so it‘s kind of like a myth. Or a fable. Olive bread, fresh mozzarella, spinach and home cured prosciutto. And ginger-mint-lemonade. Eaten in a park. I’ll let you dream…

- Picnic in a park across Parc from Mount Royal, Montreal, Quebec. Myself, my parents and my sister lying on the grass in the first sunshine after five days of rain. We bought a Portuguese chicken (lots of spices and when you buy it, they put it in a bag and pour what looks like half a cup of butter over it. Mmm…) from a shop on St. Laurent and the ingredients for potato salad. Also, a bottle of wine, some cheese, bread, grapes and Peak Frean cookies (which are a necessity on my family picnics). We laid on the grass for hours, basking in the sunset. The week I was in Montreal we went to a lot of wonderful meals in some great restaurants, but this was by far my favourite.

-The Rio Grande in Denver, Colorado. To start with, a direct quote: “credit cards, speed limits, and Rio Grande’s margaritas: all things that should have limits”. One margarita at this mexican place has something like three shots of tequila and they will only allow you to drink three. However, if your thing is breaking rules, you can push the limit and move from the patio to upstairs and maybe the new waitress will bring you three more. There is a reason they have a limit, because too many might make you decide it’s a great idea to drive to Tiajuana to see if the margaritas are just as good there…
Our dinner was homemade tortilla chips and salsa. Tasty, complimentary, and just enough to keep us from doing things we weren’t proud of.

Other places I went that I loved:
-Illegal Pete’s, Denver, Colorado. Awesome, cheap mexican food with cute boys.
-Sunflower Grill, Boulder, Colorado. You will want everything on the menu and it’s all organic, some vegan, and mostly local.
-Golden City Brewery, Golden, Colorado. Some guy decided to brew some beer in his garage and let people drink it in his backyard at picnic tables.
-The Library, Avenue A, New York City. Excellent place to celebrate a random guy’s 30th birthday party. The books and the bathroom are covered in graffiti and the drinks are cheap. Perfect.
-Wilensky’s, Montreal, Quebec. You go and order “the special with cheese” and you get a toasted boloney sandwich with heaps of mustard and a dill pickle. Cherry coke - optional.
-Aux Vivres, Montreal, Quebec. A vegan’s paradise filled with healthy looking people and the best breakfasts.
-The Khyber Pass, Montreal, Quebec. Afghani food in a below street level cave on Duluth Street. Biryani and rose water pudding were my highlights.


My Potato Salad - best eaten outside.
7-8 red potatoes, cubed and boiled until they are just tender
3-4 hard boiled eggs
3-4 celery stalks, sliced
Handful of radishes, sliced
A pickle, finely chopped
Red onion, finely chopped

Dressing:
Mayonnaise, lets say ¾ cup
Grainy Dijon mustard, about 2 or 3 tablespoons
Apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon
Salt and pepper
A little dash of pickle juice

Mix up the dressing in the bowl you will be using, then stir in all the other ingredients. I am not against a warm potato salad in the least, although if you let it sit in the fridge for a few hours or even overnight the vinegars will soak into the potatoes and make your salad taste that much better. Cooling is just a side effect…

*The trick to perfect hard boiled eggs: put your eggs in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover them, then onto the stove, uncovered. Turn on the heat and leave it for around twelve minutes. Use a timer! The water should be softly boiling within the first five minutes and then just let it go. At the end of twelve minutes, I put the pan into the sink and let cold water run over it. Peel them and the yolk should be just cooked, not fully solid but not runny either. The perfect hard boiled egg!

My sister the genius.

My sister is funny about some stuff: she can get a bit fanatical about the things she likes. For instance, she loves butternut squash soup and makes it all the time. She roasts it up with maple syrup and then blends it with the usual onions and garlic and probably adds some more maple syrup (obviously - she lives in Quebec). It’s delicious and slightly out of season right now - try and make it in the next six months - but it’s fully worth getting fanatical about. So she loves squash? Good on her. What else does she love? Living foods.

She introduced me to living foods last year during one of my visits. She made me miso soup topped with homemade sprouts, we drank kombucha* and she had a big jar of sauerkraut in her closet (of all places. But it was there) (I think she likes the idea of sauerkraut better than the taste but that’s just a personal opinion). Living food is simple – it’s still alive when you eat it. I believe fermented foods are alive as well because – and I`ll keep it simple because I`m no scientist - there is bacteria and mould present, and they eat carbohydrates, proteins and fats even while you eat it (eating means living!). In a nutshell. Some raw foodists try to argue it`s a dying food because it is kind of eating itself, but that’s beside the point.
Since living foods can entail all fruits and vegetables, they are good for you in all the normal ways. But the things I mentioned above are good for you because, and I`m keeping it simple, they contain living enzymes which are going to help with digestion. If you have any problems with any stage of your *ahem* digestive tract, these things could quite possibly sort you right out.

Miso and sauerkraut are two things I recommend buying in the grocery store. Sure you could try making them at home but sauerkraut is going to seriously stink up your home and miso is best left to the Japanese. But sprouts – these are pretty awesome to make at home. Doesn`t take very long, it`s ridiculously easy, and when you eat them they taste so good that you can kind of feel yourself getting healthier with every bite.

Here`s how you do it:
1. Choose what you want to sprout and put it in a bowl to soak overnight. Options:
-Mung beans
-Chick peas
-Lentils
-Quinoa
-Sunflower seeds
-almost any beans or seeds that are dry and raw.
2. Find a jar (I use mason jars of different sizes) with a lid.
3. Make some air holes in the top. Either bang some nails though the top of the lid, use some pantyhose, an old mesh shirt (?) or my sister likes to use bug catching nets she gets from the dollar store. Cut it up and secure it over the top of your jar.
4. The following morning put the stuff you want to sprout into the jar and give it a rinse with cold water, let most of it drip out, then let it rest at a 45 degree angle to fully drain during the day.
5. Rinse with cold water and let it drain every day until the sprouts have grown to a size that makes you happy.

This is some lentils I did a few days ago. They were so crunchy and tasty and full of life that I ate them by the handful with my cousin Celia. Now she`s a fanatic.

*What's Kombucha? It’s strong, sweet tea that is fermented using a big mushroom (solid mass of microorganisms?). It’s supposed to help with digestion and mostly just keep you super healthy. A friend gave me a “kombucha baby” while telling me it should never be sold, you have to pass it along. It doubles every time you make a batch, and then you can give one to one of your fellow crunchy hippies who enjoy drinking things that taste vaguely vinegar-y and they don’t know what exactly is in it. No, no alcohol. And don’t even try fermenting beer with it.

The Great Taco Search.

I just got back from a week in Mexico with my mom.

Always being the popular option, we almost went the all-inclusive route. I’m the first one to acknowledge how awesome it would be to roll out of bed into the pool and start feeding yourself a long succession of blender drinks and cheap tequila, lying in the sunshine, swinging in a hammock...being 100% surrounded by a hotel’s worth of white North Americans like yourself...not eating anything exciting?? It was a spur of the moment trip but early on in the planning stage we kyboshed the all-inclusive vacation and found Sayulita, a little old fishing village where we could stay in a little local hotel. I also learned Sayulita was considered to have the best street tacos in Mexico. This became the goal of my trip: find the best taco of my life. That and get a tan.

Day one taught me that tacos only cost a dollar and beer is a dollar twenty and you can drink it in the street. These first tacos were awesome, although we had no comparison yet. We spent the rest of our night in our hotel, one of the greatest ones I’ve ever been in, the Petit Hotel Hafa. It had a rooftop patio that looked onto the local bar which had a great band going that night and on this rooftop patio was a bunch of tequila that we could help ourselves to. We drank quite a bit of it and, beautifully, they simply refilled it for us in the morning!

A few days into our beach and mango filled trip, this woman was kind enough to make me the best fish taco and ceviche I've ever had:

She was just on the side of the street under a blue tarp with her kids, a little deep fryer behind her and a big tub of ceviche in front. Just so you all know what ceviche is, it’s essentially raw fish (in this case it was prawns) that is cooked with citrus juice instead of heat. Then maybe some garlic and onions are added, some red or green peppers, cilantro, lots of lime and some chillies. Let it sit for a few hours and there you go. And when the prawns are straight out of the ocean and all the other ingredients are picked from some Mexican family’s garden it turns into the best ceviche of your life!! In this case it was in a taco and then I covered it with some salsa. It burned my face off and it was awesome. Not stopping there, I had to get a fish taco as well. Battered fish (no idea what kind but it was fresh), a spicy mayonnaise, and then I added some salsa and some salad of carrots and purple cabbage. It blew my mind.

At 12 pesos each ($1.20), it was my very favourite.

Next award would be best overall taco. I think this place was called Tacos Ivan and they put grilled pineapple in their tacos! They had a big rotisserie of mystery meat I believed to be chicken, and then a pineapple stuck right on top that they would swipe a piece off of and catch it in the taco. It’s all in the presentation, right?

We went here a couple times, but on our last night in town I must have had about six – and these ones were only 10 pesos! There was a huge line up of people and we were all sitting on the curb eating and drinking and meeting.
*Why can’t Vancouver dump the hot dog stands and dollar pizza and invest in some street food that actually tastes good?*
Anyways, there was a big choice of salsas and salads and vegetables to put on your taco, and if you didn’t want mystery meat you could have chorizo or fish... There were probably a million other options but I can’t speak Spanish all that well so I had no clue. I was happy.

This was my second round. Notice the red onions, which let me tell you they are ridiculously hot but then you can eat cucumbers and radishes to counter it. Also notice the street dog in the background who asked me to share my tacos with it. I didn’t.

Tacos, seven full days of sunbaking and free tequila... Such a simple vacation and it was all I needed to get incredibly excited about summer time!

And yes, I’m feeling fine. No flu whatsoever. However if I were sick, all of my colleagues are infected as well because I was double dipping in the sangria the other night...

Springtime.

I am so, so happy that it is springtime! I have been taking walks down the streets admiring everything that is coming out of the grounds and secretly stealing little buds from all kinds of trees and flowers to put in water all over my apartment. Cherry blossoms, magnolias, daffodils… I feel as though I will enjoy it just as much as the random passer-bys that would be seeing them on the street!
This time of year just doesn’t come around often enough.

I went to a friend’s birthday party a few weekends ago. She is part of a group of friends who are pretty darn passionate about food and sustainability and she is basically studying gardening in university (a masters I believe). I made cupcakes for her, the best kind in the world. They are vegan, but kind of in an accidental way because they actually taste like they are jam packed with all kinds of butter and…stuff.

Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemony Frosting
from “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World”

Ingredients
1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp salt
½ cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup light molasses
½ cup maple syrup
¼ cup soy milk
2 tbsp soy yogurt
1 ½ tsp finely grated lemon zest
¼ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

-Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tin with muffin papers (this will make exactly 12).
-Sift all the dry ingredients into a bowl.
-Whisk all the wet ingredients into a large bowl then add the flour mixture and mix it until it’s smooth.
-Fold in the crystallized ginger.
-Fill cupcake liners two-thirds full and bake for 19 to 22 minutes, until a toothpick or the tines of a fork come out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely before icing (or else eat them warm!).

Hints:
*Feel free to add lots of spices to give a bit of a zing.
*I rarely follow the wet ingredients very closely. Use the full amount of oil, but I regularly skip the maple syrup, add lots of molasses, honey, water… Depends on what I have. Just try to have the same amount of wet ingredients as the recipe calls for.
*Not very many people use (or like!) soy yogurt. Regular works just fine.
*Promise to never skip the crystallized ginger. It’s the best part.

Lemony Frosting
¼ cup shortening
¼ cup margarine, softened
2 cups confectioners sugar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract

-Cream the shortening and margarine (Earth Balance makes both of these things and they are more or less healthy - a million times better than the ‘vegetable shortening’ that is sold in the baking aisle and isn’t even refrigerated!) and then add the sugar in half cup additions. After each addition, add a splash of juice and then beat well. Last, add the vanilla and beat until it’s smooth, creamy and fluffy. Cover and put it in the fridge until you’re ready to ice.
-Don’t be afraid to skip the icing, they are perfect without.

So at this birthday party I got to talk gardens. Being a first timer, I’m pretty excited about any tips I can get. One guy who was there actually lives on the UBC Farm, the only farm in ‘downtown’ Vancouver. It’s huge, 24 hectares, and grows vegetables, fruits, chickens, bees... Everything. Unfortunately, the city seems to think it’s a great idea to close it down and build a bunch of high rises in it’s place - apparently there aren’t enough already. Go and visit, it’s open 9 to 5 Tuesday through Saturday, and starting June they have a market on Saturdays. And if you want to take things to another level, go to the petition site and add your name in support of the farm! This should be important to Vancouverites because getting rid of the last farm in our city would make us that much more reliant on imported fruits and vegetables. We should be supporting all local food producers wholeheartedly, not chain grocery stores! Fighting for this farm is just another step for sustainable food. Read all about it and tell your friends!

Anyways, I was getting gardening (farming?) tips. Apparently you aren’t supposed to plant beans until early May, while I put mine in at least three weeks ago. I’m told they will get ‘spindly’ but if you have something for them to hold onto they’ll be fine. I’ll have something for them to hold onto! Also if you’re starting a garden for the first time as well or you just need some super-pointers, get your hands on a West Coast Seeds catalogue. They give you all the answers as well as a little chart telling you exactly when to put what in the ground.

Here’s a picture of my mini garden just minutes before being replanted in it’s new summer home:

That’s zucchini in the back, lettuce on the left and the beans on the right.


These are the beans, after being prematurely into their pot. Cross your fingers for them!

So this weekend was Easter and my family came to visit. That would be my mom and dad, and then also my aunt and uncle and two cousins. My one cousin who lives in Toronto was having an art show here, so we all had to get together to see it. It turned into a great food weekend, although it was missing the usual big Easter dinner. Instead, we went to a French restaurant in Gastown called Jules. I know nothing about French food (as I believe I have previously admitted) but I now vow to eat it more often.

I cooked for us one evening and went down to Granville Island for ideas and groceries. It had been a rainy afternoon and we spent it having the perfect lunch of soup and stew (and, of course, pear crumble and chocolate pudding) at Burgoo on Main Street so I needed something light. Dinner turned into fresh snapper with lemon and garlic and new potato salad.

New Potato Salad
First off, make some pesto. Use a bunch of fresh basil leaves, freshly grated parmesean, pine nuts, olive oil and salt and pepper. Grind it up using whatever you’ve got (I used my hand blender) until it looks like pesto. Taste it, and make sure it tastes like pesto!
Now give your potatoes a scrub. New potatoes are the little ones, bite sized. They are actually baby potatoes, fresh from the ground after only being in there a little while, and they’ve got thin little skins that you don’t have to take off. When you’ve got them clean, put them in a big pot of water to boil.
Next get a big bunch of green beans. Put another pot of water on to boil and while you’re waiting trim the ends off the beans (I once got in shit at cooking school for not taking both ends off. I didn’t learn - I still only take the stringy end off. I think the other end is pretty!). When the water is boiling, put the beans in only until they turn bright green, this is called blanching, and then take them out and give them a good, serious rinse with cold water which will stop them from cooking any further.
Lastly, in a big bowl put in half a red onion sliced really thinly, your green beans, the new potatoes that have been cooked until just tender, and the pesto you just whipped up with your own hands. Give it a stir and eat it.

I love springtime…

Alice Inspired.

I just finished reading a wonderful, inspiring book.

“Alice Waters and Chez Panisse - The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution” by Thomas McNamee

In August of 1971, Alice Waters opened a restaurant called Chez Panisse in Berkley. Throughout the 70’s it was all the rage for restaurants to import everything they possibly could onto their menu. While the trend continued on for almost another twenty years, Alice attempted to turn it on it’s nose by insisting on using only the most local and fresh ingredients she could find. In the meantime, Chez Panisse was declared the most influential restaurant in America and Alice Waters, among the best chefs.

“Food shouldn’t be fast and it definitely shouldn’t be cheap.” -Alice Waters
My favourite quote of the book. Here’s how I see it: A lot of people love tomatoes, but in British Columbia they only grow in the summer months. However, there are plenty of tomatoes year round coming from Mexico to our grocery stores. Since they ripened on the truck, or plane, or however they got to Vancouver instead of on their vine, they are pink. And the shocker is that they don‘t cost very much. Cheap pink tomatoes. And then when summer rolls around and the farmers markets are packed with big huge amazing tomatoes grown within 30 kilometres of your home, and they cost a dollar or two more than Mexico’s, some still choose the cheaper alternative. I get that we are all getting a bit more frugal these days, but food should not be something we cheap out on. No question. It’s what keeps us healthy and alive! Hold up a Mexican tomato next to a vine ripened one - the differences are almost embarassing.

Also, I bet you would love tomatoes even more if you didn’t eat crap Mexican ones all winter and saved yourself for the best ones in the summer. But that’s another rant…

The book is lovely, giving not only the history of Chez Panisse but a few conversational recipes for things like “Tom Guernsey’s Omelette aux Fine Herbs” and “Lulu Peyraud’s Tapenade, Sea Urchin Toasts and Sardines” as well. If anything is going to convince me to eat something wild like sea urchin or cow tongue (it’s in there!), it would be this book.

Reading about Chez Panisse made me excited about local food again: about searching out the freshest ingredients and spending the time to prepare delicious food for my friends. I searched out the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook at the library and brought it home with me with that very intention.

A group of good friends from work came for dinner last night. First off, my partner in crime Kimmie and her fiancé brought a bunch of oysters and taught us all how to shuck them. We set up our own oyster bar in the kitchen and took away more than one person’s raw oyster virginity.

They also brought mussels - serious seafood lovers here - and we steamed them with some white wine and had lots of crusty bread to dip in it. We also had fennel salad (fennel, red onion, parm, olive oil, lemon juice and lots of pepper), kale, and roasted zucchini , and then topped it all off with spaghetti and meatballs. Pretty classic stuff. It was quite the spread, although I only owned six forks so there were a few people using chopsticks for their pasta. For dessert I had the best intentions on making a tart but chickened out and stuck with my new standby, apple cake. Shout out to Alice Waters who inspired it all!

Garlicky Kale
-Kale is something that grows almost year round in Vancouver, and it’s full of healthy stuff like iron and fibre and vitamins. For a while there I used to not like it’s bitter taste, but it gets a bit sweeter in the spring time and if you finish cooking it with something acidic it gets even better.

Clean your kale and give it a good shake to dry it off, and then chop it up roughly. Not too big but not too small either.
Heat some olive oil in a big pan and add enough kale to cover the bottom of it. When that starts to wilt, add some more. Do that until it all fits into the pan and then cover it with a lid or another pan to seal it off and let things start steaming. If there isn’t enough liquid in there it will start to scorch the greens so add a bit of water.
When it is cooked (it will be a really rich green) uncover it to let the excess water cook off, then push the kale to the side. Add a bit more oil and then add about four or five thinly sliced garlic cloves. Let them sizzle a bit and as soon as you can smell them pour in some red wine vinegar. Toss it around a bit, add some salt and pepper, and then serve it warm.

Spaghetti and Meatballs from the Chez Panisse Cafe
Mark Kelly, who was raised Italian just like me (Kelly - just as Italian as McDonald), approved of what went into the meatballs. Thank god…
Now, I’m not usually a red meat eater but this time I went way down the street to a butcher that only sells local, organic, free-range meat. The nice man there told me that his cows are coming from a farm in Pemberton these days so that’s something I can buy into.

MEATBALLS:
¼ cup soft bread crumbs
1 small onion, finely chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
1 pound freshly ground beef
1 egg, beaten
Freshly grated parmesan reggiano cheese
Italian parsley, chopped
Fresh thyme, chopped
Black Pepper

Sauté the onion in a little oil without letting it color. Season it with some salt and then set it aside to cool.
Next, gently mix everything up with your hands in a big bowl until it’s all an even consistency. With wet hands, shape it into walnut sized spheres (I’m trying to limit the number of times I write ’balls’) and put them on a baking sheet. This can be done a few hours before dinner, just let them sit well covered in the fridge.

TOMATO SAUCE:
Olive Oil
1 onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 pounds ripe tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped*
Salt
Fresh parsley, thyme, and basil

Warm the oil in a big heavy bottomed saucepan and cook the onion until it’s soft and a little bit brown. Add the garlic and let it sizzle for a while, then add the tomatoes and herbs (just add big sprigs, you are going to take them out later). Bring it to a boil, then let it simmer away for about 45 minutes, uncovered so that it thickens up a bit. Whenever you figure it’s done, pull out the herbs, add some salt and pepper and you’re done!
You can use this sauce for anything you feel like, not just spaghetti. Also try jazzing it up with some olives or peppers or vegetables…
*if you can’t get your hands on ripe tomatoes, canned work equally as well - they were canned when they were ripe. Use a can or two of any variation, just not seasoned or stewed ones.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER:
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
Olive oil
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Hot pepper flakes
Oregano, fresh or dried
Salt
1 pound of spaghetti

Put a big pot of water on to boil, and chop up your onion and garlic.
After the pasta is in to cook, heat a skillet large enough to hold all of the meaty orbs in one un-crowded layer. Add the onion and enough oil to just cover it, and when that begins to sizzle add the meat. Shake the pan a bit to keep it from sticking and then just let them start to brown on all sides. Add the garlic and let it cook for a few seconds and as soon as you can really start to smell it add your tomato sauce, hot pepper flakes, oregano and a bit more of the flat leaf parsley. Season it with salt and pepper and let it all cook until the pasta is done. Cut one of the globes in half to see if it’s done and if it is, put the pasta in a big bowl and pour the sauce over top. Serve with a lot of parmesan cheese.

Meatball replacement count: four

Unfortunately for this meal, it became much more important to maintain the red wine levels than take photos of the food and the camera fell by the wayside. Even though it looked just like a usual bowl of pasta, the taste was something else! You will just have to make it for yourself.

Apple Cake.

The other day I took this new cookbook out from the library:

It has the most beautiful photos, and it's all tart recipes. Obviously. It's food porn - you know the stuff I'm talking about. Anyone who owns a Jamie Oliver cookbook knows it exactly: the styled pictures, conversational writing and crazy incredibly specific, restaurant-like recipes. I haven’t made very many things from his books, but I was pretty impressed that he put in pictures of dead rabbits. Personally, I'm happy to look at photos and get ideas. Is this just me??

I have never made a tart in my life, but I figured it was time I started. I checked the book out and on the way home went into a fancy cookware store to buy a tart pan (only $4!), as well as making a final stop for a lot of butter. And apples - I was going to make my first apple tart.

To start with, there are eight apple tart recipes in The Art of Tarts, all equally different and indulgent. There was one with cheese, one that was crumbly, three with French names... I figured I could start with ‘A Plain Apple Tart’, just to begin with. Before making any tart, Tamasin instructs you to read her ‘mastering pastry’ section which claims the two secrets to be location and cold butter. Fair enough, but she also wanted me to chill and bake blindly. The instructions also end with ‘beware, but don’t be frightened’. My impatient self kicked in and all of a sudden, I no longer wanted to make the perfect tart (but I wasn’t afraid). I wanted something to eat in an hour! Luckily I'm a recipe-whore (self proclaimed) and I knew I had an apple cake recipe somewhere in my book from way back when, compliments of another food blog. I sorted through my "little red book" and found it - and I didn't need to chill. Or blind bake. So I made it. And it tasted so damn good… How could it not - all it really takes is sugar, butter and eggs. And apples! But, in the words of my friend who drives me to work once in a while and (now) his gas money comes in the form of baking, ‘the first bite tastes pretty good, the apples are good, the second bit is even better, and then by the time you hit the crust your mind is blown out your ass’. Those weren't his exact words, but he wont mind that I made him say that.

Seriously. It's that good. It could cure depression, if eaten with lots of red wine and good company (the words of another good friend).

Here is how you do it:

I didn’t use a food processor, just cold butter and my fingers. Don’t worry what the batter looks like, because it's going to look all wrong, but it’s going to work out whatever the consistency. Just don’t over mix it. Also, I’ve made it one more time since and used whole wheat flour and left the peels on the apples. Fibre is important!

And I promise, I will make a real tart. Very very soon.

On another note, I had the most remarkable sandwich of my entire life the other day. I was killing time downtown before going to work so I went to Finch's for something quick. I have only been there once before, on Remembrance Day and it was rainy so the windows were all steamy on the inside. The menu is all over the wall in beautiful cursive on tiny blackboards and it's lovely and simple, hardboiled eggs for breakfast and sandwiches and cheese plates for lunch. For my sandwich a cute boy with a white collared shirt and skinny little black tie put slices of pear and brie on a crunchy baguette along with prosciutto, walnuts, lots of pepper and some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I saved it for as long as I could but only made it a few blocks to where I sat on a bench in the rain and ate. I very seriously blissed out eating that thing - it was perfect. I could taste every single ingredient in it - the pepper and the oil and vinegar with the saltiness of the prosciutto, the creamy cheese on pear, and crunchy walnuts right at the centre of it all. Every ingredient was important. I sat on the corner and was completely engrossed in the eating of this sandwich. I could go on and on. If you live in Vancouver, please go to Finch's. Eat anything. They will make it worth your while.

And one final note: I have begun preparations for my balcony garden by sprouting seeds! I put seeds into egg cartons with potting soil and wrapped them in plastic bags, then left them in the sun. Imagine my delight when I found they had sprouted in only a few days!!! Since that fine day, I have taken the plastic bags off and watered them a bit. They are living off that and sunshine (and love?) and they have grown at least an inch!!! The zucchini seeds are amazing me the most, followed closely by the beans. They come right out of that seed and shoot straight up.

The spinach and lettuce are doing well, they are the tall skinny ones growing in abundance. This would be the lettuce worshiping the sun:

Basil is taking his time, and I recently started some dill and nasturtiums which are almost ready to lose their plastic bags. Watching things grow is mind boggling! Right now I am letting them sit by the open patio door, in the wind, to get big and strong and ready to go outside. I am trying to get used to talking to them, because it seems like the right thing to do, but it just isn’t coming naturally yet.

Simple things.

Yesterday I was in the line at the grocery store behind an old man who kind of reminded me of my grandpa. I have been thinking a lot about my grandpa lately - he’s getting old pretty quickly and it’s really hard for my mom and her sisters - and in this old man I saw him. This guy was buying breakfast for himself: he had a box of wholegrain toaster waffles, two mangoes, a tub of the best yoghurt in the world (Liberté) and a croissant. He had the makings of a pretty fantastic breakfast and I told him so (not like he didn’t know - he seemed quite pleased with himself already). It was delightful and made me happy. I was over the moon that this guy had taken the time to head to the shop and choose such wonderful food. It was obvious that he was going to seriously enjoy his Sunday breakfast (that yoghurt tastes like dessert and mangoes are heaven on a rainy day), and it was healthy too! I know my grandpa really changed his eating habits about ten years ago, getting onto a health kick that involves bran buds for breakfast everyday. Terrific - it got him healthy real quick - but maybe we should all take a page out of the other guys book: make healthy choices and be sure that you enjoy them! There’s no fun in eating food that resembles something that belongs in a rabbit hutch for even one meal.

Another cousin came to visit me this weekend, this one coming from way overseas (Victoria..)!
She was coming to the city for a friend’s birthday, which happened to end before it even started with some backcombed hair and a pitcher of margaritas - a silly story if I felt like telling you. Anyways… Back in the day when the two of us used to live in the same city we used to go out for breakfast at least once a week. I wanted to make her something just as good as the breakfasts we used to have, something delicious. I made breakfast polenta (which is way better than it sounds). And blueberry smoothies!

I say screw waiting in line at the trendy breakfast place around the corner next weekend, make this instead for your ‘special someone’.

-Put a cup and a half of water in a sauce pan and bring it to a boil.
-Meanwhile, stir up one cup of cornmeal, half a teaspoon of both cinnamon and sea salt and one and a half cups of non-citrus juice (I used pear!) in a bowl - the cinnamon doesn’t mix in all that well but don‘t worry about it.
-Once your water is boiling, add the cornmeal mixture and start stirring it. You are going to let this cook uncovered, stirring it all the time, until it’s thick and smooth - when it’s done you should be able to stick your wooden spoon in it and have it stand on it’s own.
-Take it off the heat and fold in about a cup of blueberries (frozen or fresh, not thawed). And FOLD! Gently! If you don’t, the blueberries will break apart, turning everything purple. Which is perfectly acceptable, I love purple, but I want whole berries in there. Up to you.
-Pour the entire mixture into a baking dish that has been lightly oiled with something like olive oil. Smooth out the top so it’s going to be pretty, and then let it sit in the fridge for a while until it sets - I left mine in there overnight. It’s just easier that way.
-When you are ready to eat, cut the polenta however you like (maybe try triangles, but if you need heart shapes use a cookie cutter!) and heat it up - try frying it in some oil to get crispy outsides, toasting it if it isn’t too thick, or broiling it in the oven.

Eat your polenta with this, or maybe some of that damn good Liberté yogurt.

We made one more meal together, nothing groundbreaking, but I made her use a mortar and pestle (I had to instruct her to put some muscle into it).

Cumin seeds - which stick to the bottom of your feet in a serious way when spilled on the floor- and chilli peppers. Everyone should have a mortar and pestle simply because they are fun and great stress relievers. You can bash anything up.

Yumm… Salsa, guacamole and refried beans. So easy and so damn good! Someone asked me how to keep your guac from going brown - lots of lemon juice. Put a bunch of garlic, cumin, lemon juice, salt and pepper in there with your avocado and whiz it up (I have recently started using a hand blender and LOVE it! I used it on the beans too, for which we cooked up a bunch of onions and garlic, added the black beans, then some cumin, coriander and chilli flakes, stirred it about, then dumped in a bit of water. Cook it for a while and then whiz that up too!) (and don’t fret - if you don’t have a hand mixer you can always use a fork or something instead). Easy peasy.

Here is one last quick, unrelated-to-food story.
I lost my camera a while ago. I was housesitting and then moving and all my stuff was all over the city and my sister came to visit and we were all over the place, and I am generally all over the place…in all the kerfuffle my camera disappeared. Devastating… I couldn’t find it anywhere and I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. I guess the camera had a very satisfying and long life (3 years - good in this technologically driven day and age), it had come around the world with me and seen some beautiful things. But the separation really got to me - at least once a day I would catch myself saying “Man, I wish I had a camera”. I missed a heap load of amazing sunrises and sunsets at work and I didn’t document anything for three months! Finally, on Saturday I said “I wish I had a camera” for the one hundredth time so I took myself to Future Shop and bought a new one - on clearance. Sweet. Then I went out on Saturday night, and it was a bit chilly so I wore a coat I hadn’t worn since the end of December (when Vancouver was covered with a few feet of snow). I put my hand in the pocket and there was my old camera. Hooray! Isn’t life great???
Now I get to take pictures of everything I eat.

The First Lunch.

I suppose the best way to cure first-timer’s writers block is to start with a picture, and there you go.

I saw a sign at a preferably unnamed coffee shop the other day stating that a house isn’t a home without tea. Corny? Yes sir, especially coming from a place that encourages people to not drink coffee and tea at their own home but instead spend all their time at the nearest coffee shop (there is one on every block). But still, nothing makes me feel more at home and comfy than lying on my couch in the living room, basking in the sunshine, with a cup of tea. I get home and put the kettle on. You come to my house for a cup of tea. Coming over in the evening for a drink will, with a few special exceptions, end with a pot of lemon tea with honey. I have a fabulous roommate who loves tea more than I do, and she’s got no less than six tea pots (and a coffee bodum). I get in trouble if I make the wrong tea in the wrong tea pot. Needless to say, I caught on quickly. Chai in the brown betty?? Shit hits the fan!

Welcome to my blog. I’ve never done this before and it’s all very exciting… Here’s what I propose to do: I will make all kinds of food, mostly healthy stuff, and tell you how I do it. I want to encourage everyone to cook awesome food for themselves and their friends and family, from scratch. No more frozen lasagne. Sound good?? My food philosophy is simple - I eat mostly plants, and while I rarely eat animals, I don’t follow any sort of vegan or vegetarian diet in any way. And I eat pretty damn well, if I do say so myself.

So Wednesday morning was as good as any morning to get things going. My cousin Celia was going to come for breakfast. However, there was an incident involving four Italian 40-something brothers with big necklaces and dyed hair whom she was buying some cardboard boxes from that ran a bit late so it turned into lunch. No worries…

I have been travelling a bit and moving around a lot over the past few years. Only recently have I moved into a place that I love, with a kitchen that I’m not afraid to cook in (meaning no cockroaches and a clean stove). Where I’m going here is that I am SO excited to have a full kitchen, that I don’t have to run to the shop any time I want to cook a meal. I have spices and a freezer and some dry staples… Heaven on earth! I always love visiting my parents house because for the week I am there, I can cook every evening, using up everything in the fridge, pantry, and probably some stuff from the freezer left over from the last time I was home. My mom will call home asking what she can pick up and the answer is ‘Nothing! Just wine! Or maybe a bottle of gin..’ My mom likes to drink when I come home and we make things like champagne cocktails, or drink a lot of my dad’s homemade wine.. But that’s another story.

Anyways, here I was planning on serving breakfast and I need to switch it up to lunch! No sweat - no need to head out because all I have is some eggs and hot sauce. Not in this kitchen!! I find lentils, spinach, and a LOT of zucchini. (How green of me…) I also had some tempeh marinating, as it was preparing to pretend to be bacon. Tempeh: it’s fermented soybeans and plain it tastes pretty terrible. I’ve heard you are supposed to steam it before even marinating it, but this particular morning I just didn’t feel like it. I chopped it into bacon-like slices and put it in a bowl with some soy sauce, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, some garlic, and some of the sauce from a jar of chipotle peppers I had opened up on a previous occasion - which would deliver that smoky flavour that we all love about bacon - (I just have to say it once again, I LOVE that I had all these things in my cupboard!) and let it sit until Celia showed up. I made something that resembled dahl, and broiled the zucchini (just the way my sister would make it for me). As soon as Celia arrived I fried the tempeh (of course, this along with the zucchini in the oven set off the smoke alarm, which likes goes off at any chance it gets) and then we feasted.



*Notice the tea pot - this is NOT for Earl Grey. Usually only rooibos or lemon makes it into the shell pot.

Do you want recipes?

Since we just met each other, I feel the need to explain my recipe habits. And to do that, I’ll give you a tiny little background story. A while ago I had a job helping develop and test recipes. This means making a dish EXACTLY according to the recipe. Now, when I cook I do not use ½ teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon black pepper, ½ cup of chopped spinach.. You get the idea? Being precise with my spices was so hard, and putting chopped tomatoes into a measuring cup seemed crazy to me! I believe cooking is an art. Baking is a whole other story - taking butter and eggs and flour and sugar and mixing them all together, then putting them in an oven and getting a cake an hour later, that is sheer science. If you miss something, it’s just not going to work out, no questions asked. Imagine doing to grade seven volcano science experiment using water instead of vinegar. Pretty obvious stuff.

But back to cooking, it’s an art. Put whatever the hell you want in there. Any recipe is a guideline. I use them as ideas, and then I switch it up based on what I like or, more often, on what I have in the house. Be adventurous! Go with what you like! Love garlic? Then put the entire head in there! Know what things taste like, how salt helps things taste good and lemon juice brightens anything up when you add it at the end. You will get results when you follow recipes to the letter, but it’s when you get a bit wild and crazy with making dinner that you start to truly learn how to cook.

So the moral of that rant is please don’t follow the amounts I give you - I don’t. They are all approximations! It will make you a more independent and brave cook. Trial and error truly does work!


DAHL
1 cup dry lentils (I use green)
Half an onion
1” fresh ginger
2-4 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon coriander
1 dry chilli, or ½ teaspoon chilli flakes

-Put the lentils into a bowl with enough water to cover them all and let them sit, as you want to begin rehydrating them.
-Chop up your onion, ginger and garlic and dump them in a big wok with some oil (I used extra virgin, to be exact) to start cooking. Leave them in there on medium heat until they start to turn translucent - it’s going to smell awesome. This should take at least 5 to 10 minutes.
-Now you can pop in the lentils, water and all. Let it all simmer for a while and let all the water cook out. -When it is relatively dry, it’s time to add the spices. Please be heavy handed when it comes to all of these! They are the base of all Indian cooking and, if you have looked at the recipe, where ALL the flavour comes from. Don’t be stingy! There should be enough to cover everything in your pan. Stir it all up so that everything is coated, and then let that cook for a while. It’s going to dry out a bit, which is good. This is toasting all your spices a little bit, which is going to make your dahl taste that much better.
-Next add water. Start with a cup. Just pour it in, and then let it cook off (it should be at a simmer, meaning bubbles should be forming. But not boiling!) - this will take about 10 minutes. This is going to further cook your lentils, and get the spicy flavours right into them. If after adding a cup of water your lentils aren’t fully cooked, add another cup. Let them get to a consistency that you like.*

*If you feel like letting things get a bit creamy, add a can of coconut milk after that first cup of water. Let that cook down a bit (as in, the liquid will reduce because you are cooking it all uncovered) and then, if you feel like getting really rowdy, puree it all a bit.



How does my sister always do her zucchini? Simple. Cut them in quarters, pop them in a pan, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic and some salt and pepper and broil them until they get some nice char marks on them. Finish them with some lemon juice as soon as they come out of the oven (and right after you get the smoke alarm to stop beeping), and eat them for any meal you feel like.


And yes, this entire meal goes very well with a nice cup of tea.