Archive for January, 2009
A particularly harrowing day today, one that should have ended with a glass (or bottle) of wine. Or Scotch. Or both. At the same time. Out of a paper bag through a straw. But these days I am loath to drink my calories, unless it’s in the form of a Peter’s milkshake I would have to nurse all day long in lieu of meals, considering its 900(ish) calorie price tag.
W ate a bowl of granola at around 5 and then asked for eggs and toast. I obliged, cooked three and put our poached eggs over spring greens and roasted asparagus, with the last of the Oka cheese (the rest went with those Raincoast Crisps, which I feel I’ve eaten my body weight in) and a roasted orange pepper cut into strips. All drizzled with maple-balsamic vinaigrette, which I’d eat on anything. (One New Year’s Eve when I was pregnant I drank a wineglass of balsamic straight-up and it didn’t seem weird at all. Luckily I drank the last of the bottle on my first go, or I’d have no teeth left.)
Still plodding along on this weight loss regime. It has, as it always does, gotten easier. It’s less of a concerted effort and becoming more habit now. I have had to consciously ignore that inner voice that tends to get louder at around 10 pounds in and play the ‘you’re in control of this’ card – hey, you deserve to go get yourself a milkshake! You’ve lost what, fifteen pounds? Sixteen? You deserve this! You’re totally in control now – you can go ahead and order that pizza. You’re so on the ball.
I’m sitting at about 203 now, not much of a change in the past week, but the scale hasn’t been going up again either. I am feeling much better for it. More streamlined and better able to move through my life. Or I was, until I had to spend the past two days trying on clothes in front of two (very nice) stylists charged with picking my wardrobe for the show. (Or more accurately, one: charged with, other: friend along for the trip.) Bright colours, no stripes, no short sleeves on account of my flabby, scarred, stretch-marked and fishbelly-white upper arms. The hours-long parade of three-way full-length mirrors under fluorescent lights and scrutiny deflated me a little. Or maybe a lot.
But. I didn’t drown my sorrows in anything edible. (Nor, unfortunately, drinkable.) The half jar of Nutella is still sitting untouched on my shelf. I did not say f*ck this, I’m still wearing size 18s here and have three tiers of back rolls which Spanx really only even out into rolling waves, and the camera adds ten pounds and there are three cameras on me, and I’m going to be immortalized on film and broadcast to the world like this, not wanting to turn sideways lest people notice my barrel chest or aforementioned back fat, nor my protruding right thigh that’s a full two inches (I measured) bigger around than my left thigh, and maybe I should just go ahead and be the fat chef, because it’s a lot tastier that way. And easier. (But is it, really? Probably not.)
My brain actually knew better this time than to move in on me while my defenses were down. I’m finally starting to get that it won’t make me feel better to dive headfirst into a box of Chicken on the Way (who makes the very best fries, by the way, dipped in mayo, and corn fritters dunked in honey). I mean it would make me feel bloody fantastic for about 20 minutes, but immediately plunge me into a place I had no desire to go.
So I had my Big Salad (because I needed some greens and I love big salads with lots of stuff in it, not because I’ll just have a salad) and one square of dark chocolate and dug in my heels as strongly as I ever have before. I went and made a pot of tea even though I didn’t really want tea, and had good snotty cry because it does wash away some of the worry, and reminded myself that this really is a hard thing to do. It doesn’t help to live in a world in which Kate Winslet is considered big. Honestly.
Can I, before I get on to the business of Free Stuff, suggest an analogy? One I could only introduce in such a sapped-out state? There is a valuable lesson in the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy learns after monumental efforts to find her way to see the wizard, whom she believes to have All Answers, seeking direction from whomever she comes across, that she must look inside herself to find the way home and that the ability to do so has been with her all along. Of course it was. But it wasn’t until she knew this that she was able to access what she needed to get where she wanted to go. So what if Glinda came along and told you the same – that you can put your faith in people and promises and things, and spend your life searching for the right answer, which might always be changing, but ultimately it’s all up to you and you already have the answer? And although you might not know it you do already possess exactly what you need to bring you home?
If you knew you could do it, would that make a difference?
No, I didn’t dig into that Scotch. Maybe I should.
January 30 2009 | leftovers | 54 Comments »
I just realized I missed my Daring Bakers Challenge again, but only by one day, so maybe I can slide it in without anyone noticing my tardiness.
This month’s challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.
Tuiles are thin cookies that are simple to mix and bake and come off a hot cookie sheet pliable, so that you can drape them over a rolling pin or shape them into a bowl before they cool. That’s what I opted to do, rather than get creative and make butterflies, which I would have totally attempted if I had an iota of gumption left in my body.
Tuiles
From The Chocolate Book, written by female Dutch Master chef Angélique Schmeinck.
65 grams / ¼ cup / 2.3 ounces softened butter (not melted but soft)
60 grams / ½ cup / 2.1 ounces sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar (7 grams or substitute with a dash of vanilla extract)
2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)
65 grams / 1/2 cup / 2.3 ounces sifted all purpose flour
1 table spoon cocoa powder/or food coloring of choice
Butter/spray to grease baking sheet
Oven: 180C / 350F
Using a hand whisk or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle (low speed) and cream butter, sugar and vanilla to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week, take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it).
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as a butterfly. Press the stencil on the baking sheet and use an off sided spatula to spread batter. Leave some room in between your shapes. Mix a small part of the batter with the cocoa and a few drops of warm water until evenly colored. Use this colored batter in a paper piping bag and proceed to pipe decorations on the wings and body of the butterfly.
Bake butterflies in a preheated oven (180C/350F) for about 5-10 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. Immediately release from bakingsheet and proceed to shape/bend the cookies in the desired shape. These cookies have to be shaped when still warm, you might want to bake a small amount at a time or maybe put them in the oven to warm them up again. (Haven’t tried that). Or: place a bakingsheet toward the front of the warm oven, leaving the door half open. The warmth will keep the cookies malleable.
If you don’t want to do stencil shapes, you might want to transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip. Pipe the desired shapes and bake. Shape immediately after baking using for instance a rolling pin, a broom handle, cups, cones….
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January 30 2009 | leftovers | 4 Comments »
It occurs to me now that I haven’t been keeping you up to date on our dining habits. They haven’t been that thrilling of late, really.
I’m not much of a Shepherd’s Pie person. I have nothing against it, but it always reminds me of the $1 frozen ones a co-worker used to bring for lunch to heat up in the microwave every day when I was about 20. And yet a few days ago when I cleaned out my freezer (so that I could fill it again, in preparation for a brutal 2 week shooting schedule starting on Sunday) I thought the package of lean ground beef would be best used in a Shepherd’s Pie, along with several of the potatoes that are growing eyes in the backs of their heads in my root vegetable cubbyhole.
But a serendipitous coming together of recipes resulted in a bit of a twist on something not so new and exciting: I needed a photo of caramelized onion dip for the spring re-release of Grazing, and so thinly sliced and caramelized some onions, finishing them with crushed garlic and a drizzle of balsamic, cooled it, stirred in some low fat sour cream, took a photo, scooped up a few bites and set it aside.
Caramelized Onion Dip
1 Tbsp. canola or olive oil
3 large sweet onions (such as Vidalia or Walla Walla), or yellow onions, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 cup low fat or light sour cream
salt and pepper to taste
In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat; add the onions and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes or until golden and caramelized. Add the garlic and balsamic vinegar and cook for another 2 minutes, until deep golden. Set aside to cool slightly.
Transfer to a medium bowl and stir in the sour cream, salt and pepper. If you want it more finely chopped or smooth, pulse it in the food processor. Cover and chill for at least an hour before serving. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
Per 1/4 cup: 81 calories, 4.1 g total fat (1.4 g saturated fat, 1.9 g monounsaturated fat, 0.8 g polyunsaturated fat), 2.6 g protein, 8 g carbohydrate, 6.7 mg cholesterol, 0.6 g fiber. 47% calories from fat
Then on to dinner. I boiled some potatoes to mash and spread over my mixture of cooked ground beef, onions, peas and carrots, merged with a half baggie of frozen poutine gravy, some weird red tomato sauce made with pureed roasted beets (also a freezer rescue) and a squirt of ketchup.
I had pondered caramelizing some onions for the mash as well, to add along with buttermilk (which is how I like to make mashed potatoes – far less fat than with butter and cream – did you know that most buttermilk is 1%? Although you can buy 3.25% buttermilk too) – when it occurred to me that I could mash the caramelized onion dip – essentially caramelized onions and light sour cream – right into the potatoes. Methinks it saved the Shepherd’s Pie. I didn’t have any anyway, instead opting for a big bowl of Ichiban salad to use up the rest of the noodles and almonds I toasted the other day, and the dressing you make with sesame oil, vinegar and the little seasoning packet. I have been hooked on Ichiban salad this week. (I’m not anymore.)
W stood on his chair and yelled, “I HATE PEAS!!!” My little boy is growing up. Snif.
Lou the Wonderdog, whom some of you seem to be missing, ate cel phone straight up for dinner.
But it could be worse. Thanks to Shelley for alerting me to some poor sod’s dinner experience on a recent Virgin Airlines flight. Hilarious.
Got my hair cut today in preparation for shooting season 3 of It’s Just Food (starting on Sunday). When I got home W was playing with the camera, and took some shots of me. Most were of my knees/midriff, but this one caught the new ‘do. Let me also introduce you to my giant Roots sweater I acquired at VV (in the Village) about 7 years ago for about as many dollars, which they are attempting to pry me out of in order to make me as presentable as possible on TV.
Also, I bought some really cool red rubber boots. Which were size 11s (!!) and on sale. And which of course you won’t be able to see on the show behind the counter anyway. (Please take note of the giant ball of dust and dog hair on my top stair – such is my life. I need knee-high red rubber wellies to wade through it all.)
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January 28 2009 | leftovers | 26 Comments »
OK you guys, I can’t believe I’ve been holding out on you with these for over a year. For that matter I can’t believe I’ve been holding out on myself – I haven’t made a batch of these since I’m sure before W was born, out of sheer laziness. Not that they’re all that challenging. I forgot how totally dead-easy they are. Do you recognize them? Raincoast Crisps.
I love them. Like hysterical Bridget Jones love. (“I’m not sleeping with them both at once – I accidentally slept with each of them separately.” – Bridget to Shaz on Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy) For awhile I was so voraciously addicted that I bought a box more than a few times a week – like picking up a pack of cigarettes, only pricier. So I set about figuring out how to make them myself. The ingredient list looked an awfully lot like Boston brown bread, so I gave it a go.
Easier than pie: you stir up the dry ingredients, pour in some buttermilk, brown sugar, honey and the all-important rosemary, raisins and pecans, and bake the batter in two loaf tins until golden and firm. Freeze them – this makes it easy to slice them really thin, and then bake them again, like you would biscotti. The result is astonishingly similar, and keeping the loaves in the freezer allows you to slice and bake a batch at a time (about a half a loaf works for me) and keep the rest for another time. This recipe equals about four boxes.
None of the subsequent varieties have been able to replace the original rosemary-raisin-pecan ones for me, but I’m sure you could adapt the stir-ins to make these fig-olive or cranberry-hazelnut. My favourite accoutrements are Sylvan Star old Gouda, soft, spreadable goat cheese or mild, nutty Oka, which I have in my fridge but was actually afraid to unwrap, lest I polish the whole thing off myself. Don’t think it won’t happen. So today I’ve been practicing safe snacks and eating them straight-up.
Rosemary Raisin Pecan Crisps
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (optional)
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup flax seed, ground
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
Preheat oven to 350° F.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add the buttermilk, brown sugar and honey and stir a few strokes. Add the raisins, pecans, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, flax seed and rosemary and stir just until blended.
Pour the batter into two 8”x4” loaf pans that have been sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for about 35 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch. Remove from the pans and cool on a wire rack.
The cooler the bread, the easier it is to slice really thin. You can leave it until the next day or pop it in the freezer. Slice the loaves as thin as you can and place the slices in a single layer on an ungreased cookie sheet. (I like to slice and bake one loaf and pop the other in the freezer for another day.) Reduce the oven heat to 300° F and bake them for about 15 minutes, then flip them over and bake for another 10 minutes, until crisp and deep golden. Try not to eat them all at once.
Makes about 8 dozen crackers.
Per cracker: 30 calories, 0.8 g total fat (0.1 g saturated fat, 0.4 g monounsaturated fat, 0.3 g polyunsaturated fat), 0.7 g protein, 5.3 g carbohydrate, 0.2 mg cholesterol, 0.3 g fiber. 23% calories from fat.
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January 27 2009 | appetizers and snacks | 67 Comments »
I go and skip one night and look at the backlog of edibles to tell you about.
It has been a birthday party sort of weekend. Not the stylish dinners out as in days of yore, but small child birthdays – a different kind of fun, and a completely different kind of menu.
I have to say – I am starting to love having an actual appetite (it makes food taste so much better – thus of course the reason the French wish us a bon appetit) but it does not help my cause to be in the proximity of so much cake. Particularly pickable cake scraps – the moist chocolate trimmings from Ben’s volcano cake in particular. (My sister has always allowed her kids to choose any kind of birthday cake, and she has always made them herself, entirely from scratch. And she is not a professional Cakeworks sort of person either. She may try to gently steer them toward, say, a soccer ball cake, but inevitably gets stuck the night before creating Tyrannosaurus Rexes and active volcanoes complete with palm tree landscaping and a pink magma core, spewing string licorice.)
Me: “How does one make a volcano cake?”
A: “Bake three 9″x13″ cakes. Set outside in -23 weather. Stack cakes, sandwiched with magma (icing). Carve away everything that isn’t the volcano.”
Everything that wasn’t the volcano – that was what was out on a rimmed cookie sheet for me to pick at before dinner. Honestly, nothing is better with a Tim Horton’s coffee than dense chocolate cake. Especially when you are at the point where your stomach is grateful for anything it can get.
The monkey cake was a winner too. I can’t take credit for anything but the innards – J and P finished it up, with absolute non-confidence that they would be able to pull it off, and look at it! How cute is that? They made the banana all on their own, with mashed bananas and quinoa flour, for the kids.
Backtracking to my sister, we have both lost 14 pounds in the same length of time. Huh. She is a few inches shorter than me and has more weight to lose (I’m not sure if she’d be comfortable with me divulging the number, so I won’t) but we both entered into it with the same mindset. As she put it: I’ve never been so lax and so not hardcore about it before. And I really think I can do it this time!
One thing I’ve learned the hard way: when it comes to losing weight it’s not all or nothing – to drastically cut calories, eliminate foods (or entire food groups) from your diet and start a rigid exercise program all at once can push anyone into the comforting arms of Ben & Jerry. Slow and steady wins the race, right?
So dinner tonight was do-it-yourself pita pizzas with mushrooms, red peppers and thin shavings of pepperoni, veg with Green Goddess Dip that looked like Shrek’s swamp but had the same sort of tangy, salty appeal as Caesar dressing (probably due to the small squirt of anchovy paste that’s totally optional but good for you) with the very fresh green flavour of Italian parsley.
Green Goddess Dip
This classic dip is made green by pureed parsley, onions and chives – add more or less to suit your taste. The anchovies are optional, but add a flavour reminiscent of Caesar dressing.
1/4 cup white wine or white balsamic vinegar
1/2-1 cup chopped fresh parsley (stems removed)
3 green onions, chopped
small bunch of fresh chives, chopped
1 tsp. – 1 Tbsp. anchovy paste (optional)
1-2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. lemon juice (or to taste)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 cup low fat mayonnaise
Puree everything in the blender until smooth and refrigerate until ready to serve. Makes about 2 cups.
Per tablespoon: 23 calories, 1.9 g total fat (0.1 g saturated fat, 1.1 g monounsaturated fat, 0.5 g polyunsaturated fat), 0.1 g protein, 1.7 g carbohydrate, 0 mg cholesterol, 0.1 g fiber. 70% calories from fat
Green Goddess Guacamole: add a mashed ripe avocado; stir it in after pureeing.
Oh right – the grainy salad. That was actually yesterday’s lunch. But I had to tell you about it – it’s so much better than the sum of its parts – I actually pawned the rest off on my folks, a tactic generally reserved for freshly baked cookies and chocolate cake. Although this salad is very nutrient-dense and good for you, it isn’t exactly low in calories. And I was shoveling it in, thinking about how great it would be if I worked in an office and could bring this in for lunch. Although we all know it would be gone by 10:30.
Brown & Wild Rice Salad
Try adding any sort of chopped dried fruit or toasted nuts to this basic grainy salad – or additions like finely chopped peppers, halved grape tomatoes, chick peas or shelled edamame (soybeans). Whatever you put in it, it’s fantastic with a slab of salmon.
3/4 cup (about) wild rice
3/4 cup (about) brown rice
1/2 cup sliced or slivered almonds or chopped pecans, toasted
1-2 green onions, chopped
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup raisins or chopped dried apricots
almost a whole bunch of fresh curly or flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Dressing:
2 Tbsp. canola or olive oil
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
1-2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1-2 tsp sesame oil
1 garlic clove, finely crushed
Cook both rices in a lot of boiling water for about 45 minutes; just until the rice is tender. Drain it well in a colander, running cold water over it to stop it from cooking. Once the rice has cooled, stir in the nuts, green onions, dried fruit and parsley.
To make the dressing, shake all the ingredients up in a jar. Pour over the salad and toss to coat.
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January 25 2009 | leftovers | 16 Comments »
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