Cranberry Recipes

 Okay folks, here's some recipes I'm working on. Let me know what you think!

1 12 oz bag of cranberries

1 large navel orange, peeled, seeded and chopped

1/4 cup raw organic or biodynamic honey

1 tbsp freshly grated ginger

1 tsp freshly grated turmeric

pinch of salt

Pulse in a food processor to desired texture and eat with your favourite curry. No need to pulse it too long--I like to just make sure there's no whole cranberries left. Oranges and honey vary in sweetness, so be sure to adjust the honey to your taste. You can leave out the ginger and turmeric if you want. It's best if you have some raita and green salsa to serve with your curry as well.

If you have leftover sauce, just puree it until it's very fine and then make popsicles for the cold and flu season. You also can freeze some in ice cube trays and then make Shirley Temple smoothies with orange juice and/or hibiscus tea. You could add vodka to make a "Dirty Shirley."

Shirley Temple Smoothie:

1 cranberry chutney ice cube

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup hibiscus tea

1/4 cup coconut water

1/2 cup sparkling mineral water

Put it in a blender and blitz it, or experiment with layering the ingredients.

Dirty Shirley:

1 cranberry chutney ice cube--make it into crushed ice

1/4 cup orange juice

1 shot vodka

1/4 cup hibiscus tea

1/4 cup coconut water

1/4 cup sparkling water

I'm thinking we should make crushed ice out of the cube and then experiment with layering the ingredients.

Buckwheat Noodle Salad with Peanut Tamarind Dressing

The Guardian posted recipes for 10 winter salads and tonight I made the buckwheat noodle salad. I cut the water in the sauce in half so it would take less time to thicken and I would cut back or omit the maple syrup next time. I also added some ground turkey for protein. This is a good Monday night clean-out-the-fridge one dish meal. Thumbs up!

Craving Nutmeg

Orangette has started a doughnut muffin (or baked doughnut) trend with this lovely recipe and blog post. For those of us who love butter, sugar, and nutmeg, these little babies rock. I made them today in a mini muffin pan, using fine white sugar rather than icing sugar to dredge them. I also just used solely buttermilk and made the proportions more even than the ones in her recipe, just to make it less fussy. They are best warm out of the oven. Are they healthy? No. Healthier than doughnuts? I doubt it. Are they easier to make? Yes. Will they make you break your New Year's Resolutions? Yes.

You will find many tweaked versions of this recipe around the blogosphere and in a coffee shop near you.

Today I had a lovely seasonal salad at the Nat Bailey market at the Le Tigre Food Truck with cauliflower, brussel sprouts, capers and parmesan. The sunshine made the market all sparkly and lovely and it was PACKED which is very good news for the vendors.

Retro Potato

I gave our son a cookbook from The Sugar Cube, a "badass dessert food cart" in Portland run by pastry chef Kir Jensen. I love this woman's attitude! We are having a simple casual dinner party tonight, so I made the salty caramel sauce this afternoon for pouring on ice cream. Her directions were easy to follow and spot on. We're having salmon, salad, and a retro potato casserole with a recipe from dear MIL. It involves a can of cream corn, minced onions, and thinly sliced potatoes. I looked at the ingredients in cream corn and balked at the idea you would actually add sugar to corn, so I could not bring myself to buy it. Beloved is making the dish, so I will turn a blind eye to the travesty. I would have used frozen corn and "creamed" it myself.

The sun has left us again, which makes me feel somewhat bereft. I have started the new year on a melancholy note, immersing myself in episodes of the British Wallander. This makes me miss the Swedish production which is SO MUCH BETTER. Instead of one actor hogging all the close-ups, and practically every scene, I miss the complexity and warmth of the supporting actors in the original series and I am so sick of Mr. Drama King Branagh. Wallander was written for a different sort of actor. Anyway, same lovely haunting theme song, although not enough of it.

Back in My Kitchen

Peter wanted to open a dessert wine we bought in Austria, so I was ordered to make a dessert. I baked a fresh ginger cake, using David Lebowitz's recipe and made a caramel sauce to pour over it. (Don't tell anyone the cream I used was a month past its due date!)

I also used this recipe to make Bulgogi tacos which uses grated pears. (I cut back the soya sauce and sugar a bit.) I also added chopped roasted peanuts because I was jonesing for those awesome tofu tacos at La Tacqueria.

We had sliced pears over the cake and the dessert wine was as dark as molasses. The pairing was excellent, if I do say so.

Weekend Journal 2

One of my Friday rituals is listening to the BBC Comedy Friday podcast with Sandi Toksvig. Those dude and dudettes are really funny.

I baked some chocolate fleur de sel sables from this recipe, which is awesome.

Saturday I edited my new video with Peter and got my costumes a bit more sorted out. Today I washed one of my costumes--all these details to look after before I go.

I watched an episode of Remington Steele on DVD which was absolutely awful, so consoled myself watching episodes of Silent Witness and Inspector Lewis on Youtube. Much better.

Rehearsed, did research on eating in Montreal and found a couple of interesting places, including this one.

Brunch at Trafalgar's, which was lovely. See Beespeaker.

It stopped raining for a bit today so I walked to the library and of course it poured all the way home, so I stopped at Trilussa for a piece of pizza and bought a loaf of bread. We'll see how the boys like it. We are very fussy about bread at our house!

The Last Fruits of Summer

I find it alarming that you can't find blackberries in grocery stores--does that mean summer is over? I made a lovely blackberry tonic by letting berries sit in water that's just been boiled for 1 day. I add a bit of agave syrup to sweeten, and have experimented with adding anise hyssop blossoms and leaves. I've been doing the same with the crab apples of Cactus Lake. I love the soft gentle heat of September. It feels good on my shoulders. Warms ones bones.

Tonight I made an homage to my dad's cousin who sent us some seeds for German beans called Nekkar Konige. I grew some of those in our garden and used them mixed with Catherine's beans and some Mayan beans from UBC Farm to make a diasporic dish with garlic, jalapeno, and olive oil. I steamed the beans first and then fried them in the garlic and pepper adding purslane at the last minute. Cousin Otto grew sunflowers from seeds mom send him and sent photos of his Canadian Sonnenblumen. Sadly, Otto passed away this spring. He must have died shortly after sending us those "King of the Nekkar" beans.  We ate them with spaetzel and roast chicken.

For dessert: ricotta, peaches, and anise hyssop florets.

I am creating a hummingbird project proposal and saving seeds. It's that time of the year when you can see me with my paper bags surreptitiously shaking or snapping seed pods in gardens around the city. Let me know if you see any worth swiping.

More Crumble!

It is so good to finally be cooking things from the garden! Tonight I whipped up some turkey meat balls with garlic and Vietnamese coriander growing in a pot in the back yard. I made quinoa for moi-meme and rice for the boys. (Luckily we had a surprise guest who helped me eat the quinoa.) Then I braised some peas, kale and mustard greens with garlic. We also had a bowl of avocado with a squeeze of lime. Condiments on the table: soya sauce and Korean sweet and spicy sauce. I also made a crumble with oats, hemp, flax, and coconut oil with our strawberries and Catherine's rhubarb. I got the sweetness bang on with a bit of brown  sugar and some Sweet Cicely leaves. Now it really feels like summer.

I am going to go on a crumble bender and make some nice custard to go on top.

Dreaming of Italy

I have been indisposed with back pains and so I stayed inside yesterday and read two mystery novels based in Italy in the summer. It's fantastic to read about oppressive heat when you are huddling under a pile of wool blankets in June. I nestled down with Aurelio Zen in Michael Dibdin's Medusa and Commissario Guido Brunetti in Donna Leon's Question of Belief. Both were highly satisfying novels full of good coffee, pastries, and fantastic little restaurants in out of the way places. Good summer reading, especially since it doesn't feel like summer.

I also struggled though Martha Grimes'  Rainbow's End, aka The Novel that Drove a Woman Crazy. So many loose ends, annoying extraneous characters, and a very tenuous plot. By the end I wanted to toss the book out the window.

My new favorite salad: papaya on greens with fresh snow peas, pumpkin seeds and Little Creek Dressing.

My new smoothie: papaya, ginger, lime, coconut water and kale.

We had a fun time at Car Free Days on Sunday. Tacos every two blocks! Fantastic made-to-order funnel cakes at Mobius. Mergues on a bun at the French Table.

There's a new restaurant opening on the corner of Main and 24. I am so glad they are painting over the green trim with brick red paint. Yay! Rumor is it will be vegetarian. I hope it's good, but my gut feeling it's just going to be a clone of another existing vegetarian restaurant aiming to cash in on this part of Main Street.

Cheesecake report: The last time I looked Mobius had Blueberry, Strawberry White Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cheesecakes.

Diamond Jubilee Coronation Salad

I am not a monarchist. I think too much time and money is wasted on the royals,  but I do have a soft spot for coronation salad, so today I mixed a tbsp each of sour cream and yogurt with two teaspoons of mayo, some Dandy Pack Madras curry powder, salt and turmeric and added raw peas, spinach, green grapes, mango, fresh curry plant leaves, cucumber and radishes and garnished it with cashews, lox and avocado slices. This is one of my favorite lunches.

Oh Transit of Venus, will you bring the sunlight back into our lives?

Tuesday's Salad

Tuesday's salad was purple cabbage and cucumber garnished with cashews and pumpkin seeds, drizzled with peanut dressing. This morning I made oatmeal cookies with spelt flour, hemp seeds and flax for Ules.

I spent the morning drying oregano we dug out of Catherine's garden to make room for more bee plants. It will do nicely in bathtub teas with rosemary and eucalyptus oil for flu and cold season.

Ullie and are are giving our seal of approval for the cheesecakes at Mobius. My intel says the next flavour will include bananas. Peter is cheesed off he can't eat them because he is lactose intolerant.

A Week of Salads

In an attempt to get back on the healthy eating wagon I am going to make a special salad every day this week. Monday's salad was mango (I picked a really good sweet/tart one from East/West), cubed cucumber, peanuts and mint leaves with a squeeze of fresh lime juice. Easy peasy pumpkin squeezy.

I tried another recipe for puffed grain cake: 1/3 cup butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup raw agave, 1/3 cup hemp, 1/3 cup chia, 3 tbs cocoa, 3 cups puffed millet. These proportions make it easy to remember, but I am going to keep cutting back the sugar and see how low I can go and still make it stick together.

Offical Puttering Day

I love days when you can just putter around the house--potting up plants, ironing fabric for a workshop, and making puffed amaranth squares in your panties. I think I have the proportions right: 1/3 cup butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup corn syrup, 3 tbsp cocoa, 1/4 cup chia seeds,  1/4 cup hemp seeds, 1 cup puffed amaranth and about 2.5 cups puffed millet. Moreish.

Mango Days

We are really missing Peter. It's been so long since he went away on a trip it feels really empty here without him. I am busy working on my installation piece. It was warm enough to work outside this morning so I ripped apart two curtains I am going to rework. I was listening to Mr Gomeshi talk to Susie Bright on CBC while picking part stitches under the lilac tree. Ms. Bright was genuine, humble, and brilliant. More interviews like this please and less hyper-pop air heads.

I just baked a mango coconut bread because the Ataulfo mangoes are good right now. I got the recipe from Ceci n'est Pas un food Blog. I baked it for an hour, which is half an hour less than the original recipe.

Atonement

"It's funny to see the difference in what people buy before and after Christmas, " the cashier at Choices remarks. "Right now I'm seeing tons of vegetables, diet foods, vitamins, and protein drinks--lots of protein drinks." She should know. It's time for atonement. Time for wild rice cooked up with dried oyster mushrooms. Tofu cubes rolled in toasted sesame seeds, baked and served with orange bell peppers, carrots, over brown jasmine rice with tamari. Time to meditate over a bowl of rice and lentils. Time to oust the pasta and refined flours and sugars. It's a SHIFT, people. I feel better already!

Last night I made chunky apple sauce with some galas that were past their prime. The secret ingredient? Lots of cardamom. Just apples, cinnamon, and cardamom. Last night we had some fresh, warm applesauce for dessert. The perfect atonement.

I also tried to figure out a recipe for those power snowballs. I came up with this:

1 cup cashew butter (or any nut or seed butter)
1/2 cup toasted flaked unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup chia seeds
2/3 c oatmeal flakes whirled in the food processor
1/8 cup agave nectar

I think you need to adjust the amount of oatmeal according to how much oil is in the nut or seed butter.

I melted 2/3 cup white chocolate chips for the outer coating and rolled them in about 1/2 c coconut flakes.

NRG Snowballs

Boxing day and the artists are already back to work. Well, fun work. Yesterday I finished up some craft projects and Mr. Zuke or Pere Zuke worked a bit in the studio which he warned me he is "taking apart" today. As in, "Honey, do you mind if I take apart the studio?"
"Oh sure, just add to the chaos, and I'll go whimper in the corner."

Good thing I thrive in chaos. I decided to make the local walnuts into energy balls to put some healthy snacks on the holiday table. I used local dried fruit, our own honey, maple syrup, chia seeds and black sesame seeds. I toasted some coconut (I warn you, it toasts very quickly) and whirred it in the food processor with the walnuts and the sweeteners and dried fruit to taste. Then I added the seeds and some brown rice crisps for crunch. In order to make them more appealing to kinder, I rolled them in melted white chocolate chips and more coconut.

I'll need energy today as I barely slept a wink from too much chocolate and tea yesterday. I'll never learn. Also, weird house noises kept me up. It sounded like a sabertooth tiger was gnawing on our roof. Or must be one of those rare sabertoothed squirrels.

Just Fritter It

Don't fritter your time away. I mean yes, if life gives you zucchini or corn, or any other vegetable matter, fritter it! I have been using the batter below and chucking in corn and grated zucchini and now I do fritter my day away, making fritters for all. Put tuna in too! Dip it in soya sauce or make a zucchini raita! Just fritter it.

In the meantime, a song for today from The Mamas and Papas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN3GbF9Bx6E&feature=more_related

Fried Zucchini Blossoms and Sympathy

I've had a rough couple of days. I'm trying to balance recalcitrant budgets. Yesterday I woke up with a headache that turned into a raging migraine. I should not have left the house, but ended up getting off a bus, stumbling to White Spot and trying to hold back nausea as I tried to eat something to fight the nausea. I had to get some papers copied so I went up to the Mail Boxes Etc. where I have gone for fourteen years and found it's been sold to new owners. I almost cried. Phil and Bob and I have been through so much. They were always good for a laugh. I will miss them.

Then I went shopping as I was carrying my bags around the corner at Starbucks an old man in a tank top and shorts woofed at me. I guess because he thought I was a dog? I don't know what the hell he was thinking. I gave him a dirty look and he smiled at me like a naughty school boy. What a wanker. I don't know if he meant to insult me, but he did leave me puzzled and angry.

Then I managed to make it home to crash and the door to my bedroom was blocked by a mattress. My son came home and bawled his eyes out because P had destroyed the box spring on his bed and put it out for trash. Meanwhile my migraine raged on, even after taking my pills. I somehow managed to fall asleep, only to wake up, peck away at budgets and then fall asleep again.

This morning I fought one more wave of the migraine cluster and by late afternoon I had just about wrapped up my budgets so I went over to Catherine's place where she gave me a hug and taught me how to make deep fried zucchini blossoms. We picked the blossoms from her garden and with permission, from her neighbor's raised bed.

The recipe is a kind of tempura:

2/3 cup flour (we used whole wheat)
1 tsp. baking powder
3 leaves basil, chopped
2 T grated Parmesan
2 T cold water
3 eggs, beaten
about 3 cups of oil for frying

The batter ends up quite thick and Catherine gently tosses the blossoms in to coat them. Then she heats up the oil in a cast iron pan and fries one side of the blossom and then the other. Drain and eat. And we did, dipped in tamari. They are so delicious. The blossoms are tender and mildly flavored, and the batter is light and crisp. My host graciously lends me a mystery to read and them I am off to balance those gdamned budgets!