Moments in the kitchen

I'm back in Victoria, back in the land of moderate temperatures and occasionally remembering I live by the ocean. I'm wearing long pants but no socks, and actually wore a light jacket this morning.  Classic late summer in Victoria.

It's so good being home after being away for seven weeks.  The fact that I'm in my own home and that I'm away from the high temperatures means that I feel like cooking and baking all the time.  It's not that I didn't have access to a kitchen while I was away: on the contrary, I even made this on my last week staying with the in-laws:

(The little-sister-in-law's wedding also played a major role in my being a little too busy to blog for the last part of our SK trip.)

But I didn't realise how much I had been homesick for my own kitchen until I made my porridge here on Sunday morning, and was all "Hello, My Own Measuring Cups! I missed you so much!"  And so, between the cooling weather, the overwhelming joy about being reunited with my own utensils and appliances, and my need to work through some challenges with my current chapter, I've been finding myself retreating to the kitchen.

I've also been thinking about what I love so much about preparing food.  I got reflecting on it again this afternoon, as I started making some polenta for our supper.  And I started making an incomplete list of my favourite moments in cooking and baking (in no particular order):
1. That instant, when making polenta, when the cornmeal I'm whisking in the boiling water suddenly thickens, and instead of having a loose mixture of cornmeal and water, I have this gloopy cornmealy mush that's sputtering everywhere.  (This is also one of the more exciting parts of my cooking process.)
2. The moment when sugar becomes caramel, and I have to pay close attention to the colour of it, so that it gets to be a satisfying dark colour but doesn't get burnt.
2a) The satisfying way in which caramel bubbles up and hisses when you add butter and cream to it, when making caramel sauce. 
3. (2b?) Turning a crème caramel out on a platter, and discovering that the caramel really did turn to liquid while the egg mixture hardened into a custard.  Simultaneously! In the same pan! Science!
4. Lifting off the lid of the heavy dutch oven and finding that a once-tough piece of meat has turned into something tender and wonderful, like pulled pork.

Those sorts of moments (along with that one when you open the oven and and see the golden tops of baked bread or pies) are what drive me to the kitchen, they're what get me finding excuses to make caramel sauce (admittedly more than my love of consuming caramel sauce): these physical and chemical transformations that, even when I understand the science behind them, seem like magic. I really still haven't lost my sense of wonder in the kitchen.  (Okay, one more moment like that: when I first try something that I have made, and discover that it actually tastes like food!  I still can't believe that's possible.)

I need a little more of a sense of wonder in my day.  Because there's not a lot of wonder or magic in the process of trying to get the words in my head to cooperate with the words on the computer screen, or in trying to make some sense of this current chapter.

You know, I used to have a sense of wonder about history and about writing.  Maybe it's time to reconnect with that.

(And now I'll stop rambling and eat one of those cookies that I made today.  Chris sure isn't complaining about the time I spent in the kitchen today.)

Negligent Me

 Or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Dijon Mustard."

I'm terrified by how quickly February's disappearing.  This past month of non-blogging has been surprisingly busy with three things: 1.) writing my dissertation (and then realising that I need to look up something, and then realising that it's been too long since I last checked the journals for anything new, and discovering that my field has shifted...); 2.) preparing to teach my first course that's all my own (and oh my goodness, I'm supposed to finalise my textbook choice tomorrow); 3.) cooking a lot.

And so I'm going to talk about cooking, because it's been a really pleasant distraction between my angst about whether I need to assign a sourcebook (and whether the textbook I love is too expensive to allow for assigning as sourcebook), and angst about the fact that a historian recently referred to the study of the Neue Frau as "overdone," just as I'm making major findings about the Neue Frau. 

But but but!  In the midst of that, I've been reveling in French cookery.  It started with a fascination with Laura Calder's Food Network show French Food at Home.  And then I read Julia Child's My Life in France.  And then I started to DVR FFaH.  And then I bought Laura Calder's recent cookbook French Style.  Since then, I've gone a little crazy in the kitchen.  Like, buying-lots-of-fennel crazy.  And making-crème-caramel-twice-in-one-week crazy.  Basing-entire-meals-around-dijon-mustard crazy. (And I didn't even like mustard before.)

Speaking of crème caramel: it has seriously become an obsession of mine.  I used to be a little intimidated by it, because I'm a little scared of anything that needs to keep its shape when you unmould it.  But it involves two of my most favourite things to make: caramel and custard.  Anything that involves a water bath?  I'm there.  Also, being encouraged to push caramel to be as dark as possible, but without burning it?  Bring it on.  In a consequence-free world, I would make caramel sauce every day for the next year.

I made my first crème caramels for Valentine's Day, and because I adapted the recipe a little too much, I ended up overcooking them a little, but they were still pretty:

I made a big cake-sized one on Friday for a potluck, and even though the whole thing broke apart because it jiggled too much in the car, it was amazing!  And it worked!  I keep raving to people about how the whole process seems like magic to me: you let caramel harden in the bottom of the pan, and then you pour custard over top of it.  Then, as the custard cooks and sets, the custard melts the caramel!  And then you flip it upside down on a plate, and the caramel sauce runs all over this jiggly yellow cake, and you feel like you just performed a magic trick using just eggs, milk and sugar (well, along with vanilla and sometimes orange zest).  (And by "you" I mean "I.")  Also, if you put a pan of caramel in a water bath without the custard, it doesn't melt, because it's actually the custard itself that liquifies the caramel and not just the heat.  Science!

So, yeah.  I've been seriously geeking out in the kitchen lately.  Now, I just need to bring this sense of nerdy wonder back into my academic self.  Because the angst thing is quickly growing old.

The Verdict (aka More Meat-Blogging)

I tried the Simply Recipes method for roast beef, using the eye of round cut, and it was ridiculously good.  It was so tender and the gravy was so good that I keep going back and sneaking extra little pieces out of the fridge.  Seriously: wow wow wow. 

Also, it was really fun making little wedges of garlic and putting them in incisions all over the roast. 

In other words: Stamp of Approval!  (In other other words: Mom, try this recipe.)

****

In other news, what is it with Friday evenings and my dissertation?  For the second Friday evening in a row, I've suddenly had better writing ideas than I've had all week, sat down and made a bunch of progress.  I'm not complaining; I just wish I could get this kind of work done during the daytime. 

Pictureless Food-Blogging: Pork Breast

This week Chris brought home a bunch of different-from-usual meat from the Wholesale Club, because they had some good sales going on and he was feeling adventurous.  One cut of meat that he brought home, because he had no idea what it was and it was about $1/package, was a cut of pork called "pork breast."  I did a lot of scratching my head and blinking when he handed it to me.

"So...would it be from near the udders?" I asked.

Google yielded some helpful information, including the news that this is actually a new cut of meat, and that the meat comes from near the shoulder and the ribs (more like "breast bone").  They look like ribs, since the cuts we got were still on the bone.  I didn't find many recipes that called for this cut of pork, and so I took the "moist cooking" suggestion from the pork website, and treated it like a cross between pork shoulder and side ribs.  I put a dry rub on it (the Southern Barbecue Dry Rub from the Joy of Cooking, which contains brown sugar, paprika, chili powder, crushed red pepper, cumin, mace, salt and pepper.)  Then I browned all the pieces in my dutch oven, clamped the lid on the pot and put it in the oven at 350F for between an hour and a half and two hours.  If I'd had more time, I would have cooked it for longer at a lower temperature, because I think that would have made the meat even more tender.

But I turned out nicely.  (Much more nicely than the first attempt, when I just tried to cook them on the skillet.  That was a little too tough, but still tasted wonderful.)  The texture and flavour reminded me of dry ribs, and it went nicely with roasted parsnips and baked potatoes. 

Next time, I'll try outright braising them, and then I'll try marinating and grilling them.  (We have several packages left.)  Maybe I'll braise them with orange juice and soy sauce. 

(Tonight I'm trying the Simply Recipes method for roast beef, using the giant Eye of Round that Chris also found at the Wholesale Club.)

I brought you flowers and chocolate

The weather's finally cleared up around here, and on Sunday I was itching to spend the day outside. Chris and I decided to walk around my university's flower garden, because I figured that its World-Famous Rhododendrons (seriously: we get tour buses) would be in bloom. We brought along the camera, and I was happy with the results:

Okay, I also brought you Christopher's eyebrows for Valentine's Day, but that didn't fit in the title.

I uploaded the whole photo set to Flickr, which you can check out here. Which you might enjoy, if your house is currently buried in snow. Or that might make you decidedly not enjoy a bunch of pictures of flowers.

***

In other (but related) news, I also used Valentine's Day as an excuse for my annual Try Out Some Kind Of New Recipe Or Cooking Technique. Last year was risotto, and this year it was little molten cakes! I took the flourless individual molten chocolate cake recipe from the Joy of Cooking and added the spices from Garrett McCord's Chipotle Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe on Simply Recipes.

And wow: individual molten chipotle chocolate cakes? I highly recommend. I'm going to try other variations on the molten chocolate cake on a regular basis now.

Emerging from the haze

I'm finally coming out of the haze from Sunday's Worst Migraine of My Life, which continued into Monday's Pounding Headache and Maybe Do I Have An Ear Infection? (Conclusion: no. It was just a headache. Apparently triggered by the weather, my allergies and a need to go to the chiropractor. All of those have now been remedied, thankfully). A few happy things have been helping make it all better:

• Bronwyn is in town and came over to visit us last night! Chris even got to show off his robot.
• I made pulled pork for supper, and the recipe I tried this time worked fantastically.* (Cooking successes always cheer me up.) And it was cheap, because pork's a reasonable price (thanks to people mistakenly thinking that eating pork causes Swine Flu). I'm still dreaming about those sandwiches. I'm going to do that again soon.
  
• I got a phone call this morning from my friend's hilarious four year old. Celeste particularly wanted to talk with me about her wish to have macaroni for lunch (and informed me that it is "tasty" with ham and peas). We also discussed how I am, in fact, not trapped inside the phone, but am at my house that is far away from her. Preschoolers are crazy.
  
• I'm well enough to go to my yoga class this afternoon, which also means that I'll be leaving the house soon.
  

* I promised a few people that I'd share the pulled pork recipe. I took it from The Joy of Cooking, but it's in my own words and with the adaptations that I did:
Take a pork shoulder/butt roast and cover it with a dry rub (mine used 1/4 c each of brown sugar and chili powder, a whole bunch of paprika, a few tablespoons of cumin, about a tablespoon each of chipotle pepper and red pepper flakes, and then a bunch of salt and pepper) and wrap it all up in a couple of sheets of foil. Refrigerate it for anywhere between one and 24 hours (I did it for an hour and a half).

Take a dutch oven (or other pot that can go from stove to oven and can be covered by either a lid or heavy foil) and brown the roast in a tablespoon of oil. Cover with the lid or foil and put it in the oven at 325F for 3-3 1/2 hours. (This is for a 4lb roast. Mine was only 2lb, and I pulled it a little before 3 hours.) Shred the pork with forks, mixing it with the pan juices, and add barbecue sauce. (I made my own barbecue sauce starting from long strips of sauteed onions, and using a decent amount of vinegar, but I don't even know if I could accurately recount everything I put in the sauce.)

Serve on kaiser buns.

Food Network Fixation

Confession: I can't get enough of the Canadian Food Network shows.

Don't get me wrong: I could watch pretty nearly anything on that network, although I change the channel to avoid hearing Rachael Ray's voice, and I'm both happy and sad that the Canadian network refuses to air the trainwreck that Sandra Lee. I do watch a lot of the American shows (Good Eats; Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and Iron Chef America are on constant rotation in this house), and I don't watch all the Canadian shows (I've given up on Restaurant Makeover). But those "Oh hi there, I'm a professional chef who happens to be cooking something in my home kitchen" shows with their bright, over-processed colours? I can't get enough of them. I'm particularly crazy about Michael Smith's Chef at Home, Anna Olson's Fresh, and especially Laura Calder's French Food at Home. They're the source of a lot of my meal ideas and techniques, and they get me off the couch on those cloudy days (right after they're over).

But they're also pure, relaxing escapism. For a few minutes, you can pretend to have a giant house on the seaside in PEI with the best pantry I've seen in my entire life. And French Food at Home is all about the escapism: on today's episode, Laura's having a swing installed on her porch, because she always wanted one when she was a kid. While gliding about the kitchen in an adorable dress, she makes a lemon syrup so that she can have lemonade every day. Roasted artichoke hearts, boiled new potatoes, and everything gets a little bit of fleur de sel. One minute you're sitting on the couch in sweatpants, and the next you're thinking about what you can braise for supper (and resisting the notion of cooking while wearing dress clothes). And they all speak in these calm, relaxing tones.

It's all like hanging out with my friend Terra. We drink tea (even over the phone) and talk in dreamy tones about Italian cooking and cake decorating.

Mmm. Maybe I should make risotto for supper. Just after I write a few hundred more words.

Five small reflections on my week

These could have five small blog posts, but I kept procrastinating. And so you get them all at once.

One

We took the KitchenAid mixer to the repair guy today. We pulled up to a 1950s-or-earlier house, and went up to the little door under the carport. And I mean "little": it was probably only about five feet tall and we had to crouch to get into the shop; the door had a laminated sign, stuck on with thumbtacks. We were greeted by a grey-haired man and ushered into a low-ceilinged shop full of tools and little boxes with hand-written labels that said things like "ball bearings". The repair man (who calls himself "Tom," but is called "Tommy" by everyone I've met) was straightforward and helpful, and said that he'd phone first if it turned out to be an expensive part that needed replacing.

As we walked to the car, Chris said, "He was the friendliest of the hobbits." And then said that he would love to have a shop like that (albeit with higher ceilings).

Two

I went to a Christian-graduate-student small group this week, and there I met a fellow PhD student from my department, whom I'd never met before. And he's in his second year. Everyone was all, "Oh well of course you both probably know each other, considering the fact that you share an office..." I've heard his name before, and he knows a few of my friends, but I've somehow gone for a year and a half without meeting one of our PhDs. I should probably show up on campus a little more often.

(It was really funny, because we were all talking about how easy it is to become completely isolated on campus, and how most of us have only met people in our own department since we've moved here. But apparently I haven't even met everyone who shares my office!)

Three

I find myself fascinated by the Microsoft OneNote website, and all the information about the newest version of Office being released this year. I seriously love that program; I spend more time using it than I do Word, because it works as if I had a stack of notebooks for my research and my comps reading notes, but also all my recipes and notes-to-self, but searchable and not a complete mess (as my life was when I was relying on physical notebooks).

I find it strange that I am rhapsodizing about a Microsoft product, while all my friends and family seem to be going full-out Apple. (I was amused when I found a Lifehacker review saying the same thing, but in more detail.)

Four

I went a little overboard on the "but if we buy four it's cheaper!" school of grocery shopping today. Does anyone have a good recipe that calls for chickpeas? (Other than hummus? I already have a good one of those.) I find myself with five cans of chickpeas. And so very many cans of whole tomatoes.

Five

I went to a talk given by a huge name in my field (seriously: he changed everything). It's nice to find out that someone who is your hero is also a nice person. (I also found out from a friend that another Big Name has a "prickly" personality, and this I find funny.)

It was also good to take off the "Writing My Dissertation" cardigan and put on my "Going to a Conference" blazer, and think of myself as a little bit ambitious for a while. (And stop mentally putting the word "just" in front of my description of my research.)

Small cooking update

There is a pork shoulder marinating in my refrigerator, and I am unreasonably excited about tomorrow's pulled pork sandwiches. Somewhere in Alberta, Lynnie is jealous.

Also, I watch a little too much of the Food Network: I find myself narrating while I'm cooking.

Also also, I'm going to have to phone KitchenAid, because our mixer is making strange clicking noises, and we're scared that metal parts are grinding against each other. This saddens me. (The thought of how much it will cost to ship it to them to be fixed also saddens me. I wish I could find a small appliance repair shop in town.)

My culinary week

This has been a good week, at least in terms of cooking. I guess it all started (oddly enough) with our determination to keep within a bit tighter of a food budget (or at least to stop spending money on food like drunken sailors, as I have a bad habit of calling Chris after school and asking him to pick up food on his way home whenever I suddenly feel like cooking something). Then, the sunny weather we had inspired me a bit. Finally, Chris was going through that busy last week before final exams, and I thought I'd make his week a little easier by making sure that he didn't have to worry about cooking at all. (He does that for me whenever I'm busy and stressed out, and so I thought I'd return the favour.)

Here was my challenge: to last until today without getting more groceries, and therefore cook using only what we already had in the house. Also, I wanted to cook using as many fresh ingredients as possible, and make as many special meals as possible (or at least meals that I don't make every week) without wasting too many ingredients or making things really unhealthy. All without taking time away from my work schedule. (And I was trying to work a few meatless meals into the week. We pretty nearly managed it on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, but then we decided on Friday that Monday's leftover roast beef needed to be eaten before it went bad.)

And so, here's what I ended up making:

Sunday: Tuscan beans and roasted beets. (Didn't turn out so well, because I misread the recipe and cooked it in so much water that none of the seasonings really added any flavour to the beans. However, this was the cheapest meal I made all week, and the leftover beans were great in the chili I made later this week.)
Monday: oven-roasted beef, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, and the best gravy I've made in my entire life. (A bit of balsamic vinegar made it fantastic.)
Tuesday: buttermilk-marinated oven-fried chicken (from The Joy of Cooking) with fresh corn muffins and salad.
Wednesday: stuffed and baked plum tomatoes (I added toasted hazelnuts to the stuffing) and rice pilaf.
Thursday: chili using the pinto beans I'd made for Sunday's supper. (Less original, and more Second-Cheapest Meal of the Week, especially because it used the leftover beans from the Cheapest Meal of the Week, and we ate the chili with buns that Chris got for free at work.)
Friday: Baba ghanoush with toast points, raw carrots and broccoli. (Okay, and we also finished up the leftover roast beef and gravy. Meatless Friday fail.)

And then we get to today's supper: broccoli and cheddar souffle! Remind me to make souffle more often. I always forget about how much we like it.

I'm really excited about tomorrow's supper, because I will be attempting pulled pork sandwiches for the first time; I'll be trying out this recipe from Simply Recipes, which looks amazing. We're having Ariann and Derek over to share it with us. I think I'm going to make the sauce tonight and marinate the pork overnight. Dear goodness, am I ever excited about this.

So, by Sunday I'll have used four new recipes, and have managed to come in under budget with our food. I've now test-driven a whole bunch of recipes that I'll be using again soon (souffle for the parents, pulled pork for Chris's brother's visit, and baba ghanoush for Chris's next staff potluck, because he always tries to take a vegetarian dish). Even better, Chris loved every meal so much this week that he's been ever more cheerful than usual.

(All this, and I managed to send off some written work to my supervisor this week, and I've already heard back from him with positive feedback. This has been a good week.)

Culinary Firsts

This new food processor has been proving to be the official Best Thing Ever in the House of Procrastination. First, on Saturday I made my own pecan butter, and it was so easy that the only thing that's holding me back from becoming That Woman Who Makes Her Own Peanut Butter is that I haven't yet priced out bulk roasted peanuts (if it's more expensive than buying peanut butter, I'm not going to bother). Seriously: with pecan butter, all I had to do was toast the pecans in the oven for a few minutes, and then throw them into the food processor and let it run until it was smooth. That's it? I added a bit of brown sugar and some maple flavouring, and it's insanely delicious. I ended up also making some almond butter, because we had a gigantic bowl of mixed nuts left over from Christmas and I wanted to show Chris how easy it was.

I really really am in danger of becoming That Woman Who Makes Her Own Peanut Butter.

So, then on Sunday I had to quickly come up with a diabetic-friendly snack for some visitors, and when Chris went to the store I told him to pick up some avocados for guacamole. (This is my go-to diabetic snack, thanks to an old lady at church who loves the stuff.) On a whim, I told him that if there weren't any ripe avocados at Safeway, he should instead pick up a can of chickpeas and some tahini paste and I'd figure out how to make hummus.

I had no idea how to make hummus, other than that you used the food processor and that it contained tahini. And I was making it for house guests, one of whom has published her own line of cookbooks. And I had no idea whether the recipe I found (not from her cookbook) was any good. As I was pressing the button on the food processor, it occurred to me, "Why do I always try making new things when I'm trying to impress others? Remember the time I tried to make a banana cream pie from scratch?" Oh, and I also changed the recipe a bunch, because the one I found called for dried chickpeas and I had a big can of them.

You have no idea how relieved I felt when I tasted it and found that it tasted like hummus. I was even more relieved when our Cookbook Author houseguest told me to keep that recipe, because it was a good one. (They also consumed most of the pecan butter.)

That's making me feel pretty triumphant this week. (Future visitors to my home should be forewarned: you're going to be forced to consume a lot of hummus and pecan butter.)

Now for something completely different...

(I'm pretty sure this is only exciting for myself, I warn you.)

My birthday/Christmas present from my in-laws arrived this week: a food processor, to replace the broken-down third-hand Cuisinart that's older than I am. (I now have an at-least-thirty-years-newer version of the processor that I already had, which is nice because the old blades and base fit the new stuff, and so if anything breaks after the warranty's up, I can just mix and match.)

So, we decided to give this new food processor a try on Monday night, to see how it works compared to our old one. (My hope: "Hooray! It works the same, except that we don't need to use popsicle sticks to hold the work bowl together.") We made my borscht, because I always use the food processor to chop up all the beets, carrots and onions before I start cooking them. I let the thing run until it was all chopped evenly, expecting that it would do the same as the old one, and give me a whole bunch of small pieces of vegetables.

The thing pureed it all. It pureed raw beets and carrots. Without any liquid added. Turned it all into a thick purple paste. What the what?! How is that even possible?

I feel mad with power now. I have the ability to puree raw carrots: the world had better watch out.

Today

Making me feel sluggish today: fourth straight day of clouds and rain.

Making me feel exhausted today: yoga class + my utter lack of leg muscles.

Making me feel like a cliché today: I had quiche with arugula for supper last night. And will do so again for lunch.

Making me feel accomplished this week: I had a very successful weekend of cooking and baking. The chocolate zucchini cake was perfect, and I will definitely use that recipe again. Christina's suggestion of using bacon fat on the turkey = delicious.

Keeping me entertained this week: comedic mysteries. Jasper Fforde, Castle (a newish show that has strong Remington Steele overtones? Yes please), and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Making me feel frightened and outraged today: Russian historian arrested in clampdown on Stalin era (from the Guardian). (Seriously: read this article.)

Thanksgiving Weekend Food-Blogging

In between the cleaning, Chris's marking, and all the general long-weekend craziness, I've made time this weekend for my annual Thanksgiving Cooking Extravaganza!

The first recipe I tried this weekend was Butternut Squash Apple Soup from Simply Recipes. It nearly didn't happen: Chris told me that he brought me home a butternut squash, and I found this recipe and started gathering together the ingredients. Then I saw what he bought and it was a spaghetti squash. Not so much for the soup. Then he mentioned that he'd also picked up a pumpkin at the grocery store, and I thought "spiced pumpkin soup!" Again, I should have looked at the squash before I started making preparations, because it turned out to be the World's Largest Jack o'Lantern,* which is lovely for carving, but would be a big pain to roast and cook (and not so delicious).

So, we ran to the store and bought a butternut squash, a green apple, and a couple of cartons of chicken stock. (Supper was a little late that day.) It was thoroughly fabulous. It was like a bowl full of autumn. And so easy to make. The hardest part was cutting and peeling the squash, which was pretty easy because Elise from Simply Recipes also did an article on how to do exactly that. The only thing you should remember, when you make this recipe yourself (and you really should) is to use enough stock to cover the vegetables, or else it will cook slower, and also will be way too thick.

So, a big thumbs up to the first recipe I tried this weekend! We ate it with a baby arugula salad with sliced strawberries (getting 4-5 servings of fruits and vegetables in one meal!), and this afternoon we had leftovers of the same soup and salad, with some bacon crumbled on top of the soup, and with a slice of bread. I was so pleased with the soup that we made our church's token teenager come home for lunch with us.

After this, I'm baking a chocolate zucchini cake for Ky, experimenting with adding sunflower seeds to whole wheat bread, and then brining and roasting a turkey.**

I hope all my Canadian readers are having a great Thanksgiving Weekend! (And that my American readers...enjoy doing whatever it is they do on Columbus Day?)


* Chris really bought it for Halloween, and wasn't intending for it to be cooked. "Look at the nice flat side for the face!" he said.
** My variations on the recipe: I stuff the turkey with chopped lemons (instead of the apples, onions and celery), and I roast the bird upside-down.

Adventures with tofu

Chris bought a bunch of dessert tofu for the purpose of adding to our breakfast smoothies this week, except we ended up with one package of almond-flavoured tofu which neither of us thought would work as well with the fruit in our smoothies. And so I started looking up recipes for what I could do with dessert tofu, and ended up finding this recipe for vegan chocolate mousse. I tried out the recipe this week with Meg and Karl, and we all loved it. It was so easy to make, and turned out beautifully. It was actually really cool making it: when I pureed the tofu, it liquified, but then when I added the melted chocolate to the blender, everything thickened right up and turned to pudding. And after it sat in the fridge, it was all thick but frothy, and you would have sworn the dessert contained whipping cream and gelatin.* (And oh goodness, chocolate and almond together. So good.)

So, go out and try it!

And I'm going to sit here with my feet up, having spent the evening babysitting a squirmy, doesn't-want-to-have-a-bath-and-is-overtired toddler. He's asleep and I've earned the right to sit here and play on the internet for a while.


* Not that we have a problem cooking with whipping cream or gelatin. It's just that, considering my dairy allergy, it's nice having a nice non-dairy dessert option. And I can justify eating more by claiming that it's healthy.

Apricots and Cherries

The upside to a cloudy day

When we were getting ready to come back to Victoria, the West Coast was going through a crazy heat wave. As we weren't getting any summer weather in Regina, I was starting to dream of everything I'd do in the Real Summer Weather when I got back here: most of it involved going to the beach.

It turned out that we brought the cold and rain back with us (which is good, because the BC interior needed that rain). But we also brought a cooler full of fresh fruit, which we picked up in Salmon Arm.

My original intention was to spend this weekend in my bathing suit. Instead, I'm experimenting with making apricot-cherry pie. And that's just fine by me. (I'll take pictures when it's all done.)

Christina more than earned herself a thesis defense cake yesterday

(And wow, am I ever pleased with how it turned out! We still have a whole bunch of it left, and are planning on having some for breakfast.)

For Uncle Al

He asked for my Carrot and Roasted Red Pepper Soup recipe, and so here it is:

(You can see my original Dilled Carrot Soup recipe here, although I haven't been adding potatoes lately.)

1. Peel and chop about a pound of carrots. Boil them in enough water to cover them, until the carrots are soft.
2. While the carrots are boiling, cut up two red bell peppers and put them in a foil-covered broiler pan. Drizzle oil on them and broil them, turning them over periodically, for a few minutes (until the skin is blistering).
3. When the carrots are done boiling, shut off the stove but leave them in the water. Add the peppers and (if there isn't enough liquid) maybe add a cup or two of chicken stock. Blend them until smooth (I prefer an immersion blender for this part.)
4. Let that puree simmer and make a thick white sauce: 2 tbsp margarine or butter, 2 tbsp flour and 1c milk. Melt the butter in a saucepan and mix in the flour until they become a smooth paste. Over low heat, add a bit of milk at a time, mixing until smooth again. After all the milk's added, bring it to a boil until it's thickened. You can use cream, or possibly plain yogurt (some use condensed milk, but I'm kind of iffy on how that tastes), instead of this white sauce.
5. Stir the white sauce/cream into the vegetable puree. Add several dashes of salt and pepper, a teaspoon of garlic, a dash of cayenne pepper and several dashes of chipotle pepper. I also like a bit of curry powder in there. Cover the soup and let it simmer for at least half an hour, so that the flavours can blend.

Huzzah! Bright orange soup!

Leftover Turkey Pot Pie

Uh, this is the best usage of leftover turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy ever. I used the butter crust recipe from Simply Recipes (this made it so much better than it could have been), and then in a skillet sautéed some onions and celery with the leftover turkey in a bit of butter. (Yeah, I know this was just the healthiest lunch ever.) I added the leftover gravy and simmered it all. (I added salt and pepper, and I think when I do this again I'll add some parsley.) Then, after I put in the bottom pie shell, I put in a layer of leftover mashed potatoes, and then scooped the turkey mixture over top. I think I baked it for like half an hour at 400. Oh, and the egg wash made it worth it.

We're going to have more for supper. I highly recommend.