mini vampire day

Two mini vampires in kindergarten class. The kids these days have such dapper costumes. In one school yard I saw a tiny boy in a silk top hat and cape. I saw a delightful girl ghoul with a silvery costume just flying down the street with glee. I saw a woman with what I thought was a horrible pitted skin condition, but then I realize she'd drawn whiskers with an eyeliner in a not-so-successful attempt at a pirate's five o'clock shadow. The leaves are brilliant today and are flinging themselves to the ground with flamboyant style. Tomorrow is All Soul's at the Mountainview Cemetery so we are putting on the final touches to our shrine. It feels like a significant milestone.

Obsessed with Popped Amaranth

Okay it's officially an obsession. What I am trying to do is mix Mexican tradition with Saskatchewan home cooking. I am basically making a form of alegria, which is a candy or cake made with honey, sunflower seeds and popped amaranth. I'm using my mom's recipe for puffed wheat cake to bind the amaranth together in hopes to make tiny skulls for The Day of the Dead.

I tried to pop some of the amaranth seeds from my garden and failed. It's very tricky. I tried an air popper. Big fail and seeds everywhere. So my neighbor told me to look at videos online. I used my Creuset and the stirring method. The trick is to get the heat right to the sweet spot and just know that some of the grains just ain't gonna pop. But hey, I just discovered a cool blog with the microwave method which I must try. I've made one trial run so far, with chia seeds and some puffed millet in the mix as well. Too much butter, so I must try again. The boys were not impressed but I actually love it. Amaranth has a real earthy taste which grounds the sweetness of the chocolate caramel.

Check out these posts: http://theholyenchilada.blogspot.com/2010/05/alegria-past-and-future-of-eternal.html

http://theholyenchilada.blogspot.com/2010/05/abstract-expressionist-amaranth-candy.html

Here is the traditional way of popping amaranth with a recipe for traditional alegria:
http://www.delange.org/Amaranth/Amaranth.htm

When Will it Freeze?

It's so funny how women I know are watching for the first frost. Both said women have greenhouses. I too, watch for it for the bees as we have lost our queen again and they need one to survive the winter, so our window to help them is very narrow right now. We are treating them for mites with Apistan, which is what you use in the colder temps. I counted 3 mites in the trap yesterday. We consolidated the hive boxes and since the larvae were all hatched out, we took out our full-sized box and now we're down to dadants, which is a relief. I scraped out the bits of honey and pollen in two large frames and put it in shallow bowls in a feeder box on top of the hive so today when it warms up they will "rob" it.

After the frost I can harvest my amaranth seed. I checked on how to do this on Dan Jason's web site. I have some wacky nematodal marigolds that are just about to bloom. Will they do so before the frost? Of course they've had frost in Saskatchewan a good month ago. We are so lucky. On Friday the rain is supposed to come again. I suppose I should try to head up to UBC Farm today to save a few seeds.

Culture Security

We talk a lot about food security these days and it struck me that we could apply the same kind of concept to culture. When cuts threaten the cultural infrastructure, basically it can create a loss, a disconnect, an erosion of our quality of life. What can we do to preserve culture the way we preserve food? Support local artists. Form collectives. We need to strategize. Again.

Good Food Day

I finally made it out to UBC Farm again today for their last market. I bought some greens and some honey crisp apples from a farm in Summerland. I took lots of photos of the pumpkins and squash and was wishing I had a car to haul some home.

Later, I was talking to a staff person at Trafalgars and was impressed that they have a staff CSA with Cherry Lane Farm in Richmond who is supplying some of their produce. That is way cool. It just makes so much sense.

Today J gave us a canning workshop with her new pressure cooker and she made some amazing baked beans. There was lots left over so we get to eat some for dinner. Yay! She served us rooibus chai and salmon she had canned herself with her own dill pickles. She is the canning queen. I am so impressed. Photos to follow. I also liked the way she made notes about the process, breaking down the cost of ingredients and the capacity of the canner.

Ules has been watching Good Eats DVDs with Alton Brown. He's actually great for this age group because of his wacky presentation and obsession with the science and history of food. He's also good for the students to watch so they can get some ideas for producing their own cooking show.

I wish all of you a good food day.

Pumpkin Overload

My body is achin' today from carting around a giant pumpkin yesterday as a teaching aid. We went to the school garden, cleaned it out and harvested the basil. Then we made pumpkin seed pesto and roasted pumpkin seeds for a snack. It was a BLAST. Then I carted that damned pumpkin home again, roasted it and froze the pulp to do a cooking lesson with them at another date.

Meanwhile I have made pumpkin pies, pumpkin kofta and a South Indian pumpkin dessert. It's a veritable pumpkin orgy around here. So Hawker's again for dinner. Cheap and cheerful go to meal when I am overtired. A good day of productive meetings with elegant solutions proposed by co-conspirators. I can't find the cable to connect my laptop to the date projector for tomorrow's lesson so I am putting that out there into the universe so that either Peter or I dream about where it is in this house, post renovations.

I did a big clean up this past weekend and chucked a good number of my diaries into the recycling. They were full of boring observations and lists of errands. Hah! It's all a part of the process. I wish I would have made more notes about the weather. My grandma's diaries are full of observations about the weather--so important on the prairies where farmers live or die by it. Here it's more a matter of "Which Lululemon outfit will I wear today?"

CBC 1 has a very good podcast of an interview with Steig Larsson's wife. I think she's amazing. http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/10/oct-1310-pt-1-eva-gabrielsson.html

Oliver's Twist

Spent the day bonding with Ules over vintage Jamie Oliver videos. I roasted a pumpkin to make a pie for Sunday and ate the roasted seeds while watching Inspector Frost DVD's. Heaven.

Day is Done

Grant is done.
Meeting is done.
Homework is done.

I was at the library today and I don't know what it is about that building, but if I spend more than half an hour there I get hit with a tsunami of exhaustion and suddenly I just want to be at home in bed. Somehow I managed to get home and crash before picking myself up and finishing the day.

Dishes are not done.
Renovations will never be done.
Good night.

Pruning Hops

Since I'm worried the weather might get rainy again I spent a couple of hours pruning our hops and climbing hydrangea. You are supposed to prune hops after the first frost, but ours is so vigorous, it could use a bit of taming down. I have to figure out how to reach the vines that climbed up and onto the power line. We are going to use these prunings for our All Soul's Shrine. Today we had a meeting to work on the design and I am very excited about it. I've put the hops fruit in the back porch to dry out, along with my lemon verbena clippings and fennel seed heads. The porch smells great!

The weather has turned cool again and I am craving the comfort food of Thanksgiving. I really want turkey!!!!!!

Happy Little Kids

It was a good mood kind of day today. I noticed lots of toddlers having fun in the sun with their mothers or caregivers. There's nothing more cheerful than a giggling toddler or two and I am glad to see them getting along with their nannies because I have seen so many children who seem miserable with their caregivers. Sometimes the feeling seems to be mutual.

Also, a day of seeing really ugly little snarky dogs and beautiful pups and puppies. Why people choose to cling to those yappy little pissers with runny eyes is beyond me. Chacun a leur chien.