We Resume Eating Healthy

And now after Easter chocolate season, we resume to healthy eating:

Kiwi Kale smoothie: yogurt, kale, kiwi, and coconut water.

Shitake miso soup: Homemade chicken stock, garlic, nettles, miso, and leeks from the garden.

I've got some wild rice cooking up in stock right now and I will buy some gojiberries to soak so that I can add these to the next iteration of the soup.

The ramps are getting ready to bloom!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Burdock Kimpira

Oh how I love the woody, earthy nuttiness of burdock. I made kimpira today, grating the burdock, rinsing it twice and then sauteing it in olive oil with a touch of sesame oil. I added fresh oyster mushrooms and about 2 tbsp soya sauce mixed with honey (in another saucepan). Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and wow, it is delicious. I think I'm going to try putting burdock in the next batch of kimchi as well. The kimchi turned out really well and I've been putting it in borscht, on tofu and on my red cabbage cole slaw. I think next time I'd make one batch without ginger so that it's a bit more versatile. Ginger tastes weird in borscht to my taste. That's taking fusion a step too far!

I'm really looking forward to a 4 hour workshop today with the Push fest. Fun!

Amarillo was a lively piece of physical and visual theatre. I enjoyed the layered imagery and the physical rigor of the work.

Kimchi

I'm gearing up to make kimchi this weekend, so headed to Granville Island to pick up Korean chili flakes. Also picked up some fresh lime leaves for Thai soup and they are on sale for two for one right now at Seven Seas. I bought some awesome chocolate sables at PICA. They are so chewy and chocolately, and have a nice hit of salt so they win the cookie of the month prize. Yee Haw!

If you are near GI, check out the show at Gallery Jones. They have a couple of brilliant Leonara Carrington pieces.

Christmas is Over

No more relaxing.

No more wining.

No more grinning.

No more futzing.

No more crackering.

It's cracked.

Put away the fancy glasses.

No more carving. No more glutony! No more port, pudding and hard sauce. Well, maybe just one more weekend . . .

Yes, it is now Christmas past. We had a peaceful celebration and then I made a quick trip to Victoria to visit a sleep expert (my dear friend Donna, who was in disguise).

Ukulele Mama

It don't usually go shopping on Sunday, so taking the trip downtown on Grey Cup day to purchase a uke was seriously surreal. Folks in neon green and orange mohawks, all kinds of football jerseys with padded shoulders, everyone with some kind of design painted under their eyes and four mysterious men dressed as polar bears. Much of the crowd was older--aged 50 plus. There were even some diehard Sask. Roughrider fans looking serious in their green and white togs.

First, I entered the HMV flagship store for the third time in my life. They are going out of business and I was lured by fantasies of bins of bargain CDs. What a waste of time. DO NOT GO. They are shipping the good stuff to their other stores and selling absolute crap at the price Chapters sells it across the street. Bah Humbug. I bought a Pupini Sisters Christmas CD and I don't even like that. I neglected to notice that it contains two of my LEAST favorite Christmas songs. Ick treacle slobber ick.

So I went to Tom Lee's and talked to a man about a uke. They were on sale 'cause it was Black Friday weekend. I took it home and Peter commandeered it straight away and untuned it and then tuned it. It has a nice big sound for such a little guy. I look forward to twanging with it over the holidays.

We have been sampling Christmas fruitcakes and stolen. Butter's fruitcake is too crumbly. Choices dark fruit cake is good and moist, but lacks booze. We like the light mini stolen loaves at Sweet Obsession. Just perfect for sharing. We had the stolen with Elephant Island Framboise, which also went well with the tiger butter bark we made--kind of like the ultimate peanut butter and jam. Must buy port. I make a note.

Did ya see Ullie's poem below? I iz so proud.

Fresh Scones

This morning I made my yogurt scones and we opened a jar of spicy pear jam that was a Christmas gift. I like those wee pots of jam that you basically eat in one sitting. The winds and rain are upon us and it's migraine weather with quick switches in temperature and air pressure.

I am in the print phase of the archive project which is very satisfying. Just sorting out the permission to reproduce an Edith Adams cookbook from the Vancouver Sun.

I've been reading Graham Hurley: One Under, which has a dry, slow start, but turns into a solid read. Now I'm onto his novel called Borrowed Light which has a much better beginning and is unfolding nicely. However, I do tire of big gangster characters. They rarely move beyond clichés and it always ends in tears and gore. Ho hum. His books tend to be very centred around males and his female characters are less complex, sometimes two-dimensional. I also read Deception by Denise Mina--well, skimmed more like. The main character is so weak and whiny, you really want to race through the book to get it over with. The ending is not believable. It's a concept book that doesn't really work.

Nice to have crisp, fresh apples again. I bought some this weekend at UBC Farm that rocked.
Trouble at Trafalgar's. They have a new chef who has taken my favorite items off the lunch menu and so far I am not impressed with his cooking. It seems he's just not that into lunch. That makes me sad, as I have been a regular there for years. Well, I hope the French Table will be open soon for lunch.

Perfectly Summer

A cool breeze and sunny skies. It's my perfect day.

Watched: Shroud for a Nightingale by PD James with Roy Marsden. It's got a solid cast, but was shot on cheap video stock with the annoying glare factor. Marsden's Dalgliesh is very dry and clipped in this effort. It feels like it must be one of the earlier ones they shot of the novels.

Read: A Mortal Curiosity by Ann Granger. The two narrators are slightly annoying, but I love the image of the two Victorian maiden aunts who dress in matching gowns.

In the dye pot: Green tea was a bust, but at least it will have helped mordant the fabric. I boiled up some elecampane heads, but the color was brackish yellow/brown so what the heck, I added oregon grape berry juice and the color on cotton came out a lovely lavender grey. I've put some silk in a jar with this dye. One of the bundles was wrapped around a burdock root which definitely gave off a yellow hue.

Craving: Ever since the tequila shots at the Blim opening on Friday I am craving margueritas. So today I brewed some lemon verbena tea and squeezed in lime juice sweetened with a bit of agave nectar and poured over sparkling water. Very refreshing. The food on Friday was incredible. I'll have to post the menu. I'm also craving salad with a Vietnamese dressing and that Hawaiian raw fish salad Michael made on Friday. Awesome.

Cloudy with a Chance of Sunshine

Another overcast July morning, but I'm okay with that. As long as the sun makes an appearance for an hour or two to prevent that mouldy thing from happening on my leaves. Ack, I've aphasia-ed on the name of that condition.

Summer reading: All the Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson who is perhaps my favourite Canadian mystery writer.

Mangia: Panna Cotta from Commissaire with fresh Hungarian sour cherries.

In the dye pot: cotton simmered in green tea powder--no, not matcha, but that's the colour I want to achieve. I had some old green tea powder in my kitchen and the colour is a muddy green, but it will work as an underdye, j'espere.

Muggy with Sunshine

Reading: Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourne: A historical romance mystery. I'm just in it for the tea.

Just finished a book by Norwegian mystery author Karin Fossum: Bad Intentions. This is a good summer read with deftly drawn characters. It always irks me when authors don't tell us what the characters look like and Fossum paints a picture.

I also just got out copious books on dyes and Catherine lent me a couple of lovely books, one on Russian fabrics and on by Wade Davis, an ethnobotanist.

Watching: Dalziel and Pascoe, Season 1

Dye Pot: Madder (from Maiwa) with cotton mordanted with tannin and alum

Dye jars: mordanted cotton with viola ice dye.

Craving: Sour cherries

Making: A chocolate mango ice cream cake for Ules' b-day.

Rainy Summer Days

Read this week: The Seance by John Harwood, a good novel if you are in the mood for a Victorian tale within a tale. I love the paper cut illustration on the cover by Niroot Puttapipat. Here's a link to an image of the paper cut used for the cover. Here's a link to the image on the cover.

Watching: Monk: Season Five--Tony Shaloub is one of the great comedians of our age. He's so much fun to watch.

In the dye jar: cotton in black currant juice--some cloth mordanted with alum, some with tannin.

In the oven: Sour cherry rustic tart made with Hungarian sour cherries purchased at UBC Farm from an orchard near Oyama. I wish I'd bought more as they are the most delicious cherries I have ever tasted.

Salad Days

Let the floral salads begin! Viola and nasturtiums grown from seed are now blooming so we can pop them into our daily salads. The more you pick them, the more they bloom, so it's a win-win situation.

I am sewing all weekend. Not my favorite activity, but it's raining, so it's a cozy indoor day at the Singer.