That’s right, we had popcorn for dinner. Generally when I get home after a long trip I want to settle right into the kitchen and cook something; tonight I did not. We got home just after 1am and were locked out; after much pounding on doors and windows and ringing of the doorbell and checking all access points (I’m amazed Lou didn’t just drop dead from excitement and frustration at not being able to open the door himself) we headed over to my parents’ house to sleep, at which point Mike called to say he was just next door at a particularly fun party (and I missed the steaks topped with grilled Portobello mushrooms and skewers of shrimp, to say nothing of the birthday cake). So we drove back, and W woke up with all the excitement, and it was closing in on 3 before we actually made it to bed.
So does that let me off the hook? We fancied the popcorn up a bit – I’ll tell you about it. But first, let me bring you up to speed on my weekend in Kelowna.
After our 11am checkout on Saturday, I had 5+ hours to pass with W while my Mom and Dad golfed. Cherylsuggested taking a short jaunt over to Peachland and pay a visit to Bliss Bakery, then walk across the street to throw rocks into the lake, which seemed like pretty great advice. W fell asleep en route, so when I got to Peachland (about 15 minutes from downtown Kelowna – I had no idea one was practically a suburb of the other) I pulled over under a willow tree beside the lake and sunk myself into Molly’s book (A Homemade Life, which is garnering many well-deserved oohs and aahs throughout the foodblogosphere) and ate a leftover half of a grilled chicken and avocado club sandwich which had spent the night in the mini bar. I had carried this book around Tofino for a week but barely cracked it open… now Molly made me hungry for banana bread with chunked chocolate and crystallized ginger, intriguing salads, slow roasted tomatoes, and little tuna frittatas baked in muffin tins. Oh and a trip to Paris, please.
Soon enough W woke up, and we went to the playground, and checked out enormous spider webs on the docks, and threw many, many rocks into the lake. Then we went to Bliss, where it became evident that W has fallen heir to my whipped cream radar.
He zeroed in on a mountainous cream puff filled with strawberries and cream, doused in snowy sugar. This would have been my pick too as a kid – easily the biggest thing in the display case, but disappointingly devoid of chocolate – Long John was my first love, and still I’m immediately drawn to anything of that ilk by default, even if when I stop to think about it, I’d really rather have a scone or lemon bar. To be truthful, I did really want the chocolate-caramel bread pudding, which I had seen out on the patio topped with an equally impressive quantity of whipped cream (always a selling point for me, in case you couldn’t tell), but they were assembled in actual bowls, and I promised W we’d bring our booty straight back to the park.
So the giant strawberry cream puff came with us. It was, like a few men I’ve known, very, very beautiful, and a bad idea. For one, it was about as messy as it could have been; we came at it with forks to no avail, and had to tear it into chunks to eat it, as it was clearly too large to attempt to get your mouth around. It had an odd saltiness and low berry-to-cream ratio. W didn’t like it, but was unfazed; I ate more than half before throwing the rest out to stop myself from finishing it. The cream puff itself was quite splendid, but afterward I wanted to jump up and a) throw up, or b) run a few laps around the lake, neither of which were practical at the time.
Of course, since I was there, I picked up a few things for our drive home Saturday night: a pecan sticky bun, cakey and heavy on the cinnamon but not so much the sticky (we fought over the pecans in the car driving through Sicamous),
a granola-y cookie (I believe these are a prerequisite if you own a bakery or coffee shop in BC),
a wedge of bison-yam quiche and a braided rosemary loaf topped with coarse sea salt, which we used as a vehicle for poached eggs this morning, and later toasted to spread with plum jam. All was scrumptious. Bliss will definitely stay on our summer driving trip itineraries.
So today, when dinnertime snuck up, none of us felt much like eating. W was deliriously, manically tired, and asked only for popcorn in his favourite red and white striped popcorn bowl and to watch the Grinch. (The Chuck Jones one, not the Jim Carrey one.) I made him a bowl, and then tossed another with some olive oil, grated Parmesan and lots of ground black pepper. To be honest, it’s tricky to get seasonings to stick by drizzling oil without using too much, so I did the spray canola thing – if you have a pump you fill yourself, or a spray variety that’s just canola or olive oil, you can kind of spray it, and sprinkle, and toss it about, and the cheese will more evenly stick. Instead of the pepper, chili powder, curry powder or Italian seasoning would be tasty with the Parm.
Thanks, by the way, for not calling me on skipping right through Free Stuff Friday. I did remember during the day as we drove from Vancouver to Kelowna (I got panicky as the shadows began to get long that I had not touched a computer yet that day), just not at the appropriate moment, when late on Friday night was frantically trying to post something on my Mom’s laptop (did I tell you mine came crashing out of the back of the car upon our arrival in Tofino? It did) before the defunct battery died, with a wavering connection, W wrapped around my side, my Dad trying to sleep in the next bed, my Mom in the tub and the power cord buried somewhere in the depths of the car out in the parking lot.
I’ll come up with an especially fun toy this Friday, and I won’t forget, promise.
One Year Ago: Spinach Meatballs
May 03 2009 | snacks | 12 Comments »
This morning W woke up smiling, sat up and gave me a hug and asked for eggs on toast and to go to the beach. And I had to say actually no, we’re packing up and leaving now, like right now, because Grandad wants to make the noon ferry. And we’re out of eggs.
So the plan was to leave Tofino this morning (which we did) and take the ferry over to Vancouver (check) and drive to Kelowna, where my Dad has a conference, and where my Mom and Dad were going to stay and golf for the weekend while W and I went to visit my very excellent friend Sue, who lives on the top of Silver Star Mountain, above Vernon. There we were going to drink wine, and she would have unoubtedly fed me (very well), and we would have gone down the moutain on Saturday morning to the Vernon farmers’ market, where after Americanos and non-crap scones (hard to find, but available) we would have strolled back and forth, selecting enough interesting things to head back up hill and keep us occupied in her lovely open kitchen while W placated himself with Disney/Pixar movies and peanut butter spoons and a yellow lab named Lola. And we would have discussed important culinary issues like what to do with twenty pounds of cherries, home-dried to the point of being concentrated and chewy, but not yet raisiny. Sue is one of the very best cooks I know (and I am aquainted with a few professionals) and a brilliant writer - although she doesn’t do it for a living, she should. I was going to ask if she might do a guest post here. She should totally have a food blog.
But. Our plans were kyboshed by the swine flu, namely that her daughter goes to the school in Vernon where one of the students contracted the virus and the entire school was shut down for a week. So perhaps not the very best idea.
Instead, W and I are tagging along to Kelowna, crashing my parents’ hotel room for the weekend. Not the worst way to spend a weekend, but it will involve me killing 6 or so hours with W tomorrow afternoon after checking out of the hotel and before my folks finish their golf game. There is a lake outside – perhaps he won’t notice that it’s not actually an ocean, considering he kept calling the ocean “the pond” (as in, “I’ll throw the shell in that pond!”). When my Dad told him, with that educational slant that Grandads tend to take, that the body of water we were visiting was actually called the Pacific ocean, W started calling it “the Specific Really Big Pond“. When my Mom explained that their new house was overlooking Clayoquot Sound (pronounced Cla-kwhat Sound) he repeated “quack quack.. what’s that sound?” which of course received an awww, how adorable laugh, which he has been receiving in spades this week. When we get home, he’s going to go into serious Grandma withdrawl.
As for how we nourished ourselves on the road today, there wasn’t much junk, as far as days spent eating in the car go. (We left Tofino at 8am and arrived in Kelowna just after 7; it was a day-long drive-ferry-drive. Amazing that you can travel all day and still be in the same province.) I packed up the last of the broccoli-slaw my Mom bought but we never got around to eating (note to self: make Asian sesame-orange vinaigrette for next bag) and ate it in the car at the ferry terminal instead of going in for pizza. We had some surprisingly delicious curried chick pea soup on the ferry. And last night I made muffins with the overripe bananas and pears that had been bashed around in our beach bag but not eaten. I made a couple batches this week, actually, enjoying the novelty of working in a sparse kitchen with limited ingredients – a Kinder-size bag of all-purpose flour, baking soda, sugar, eggs, vanilla and oil, mashed together with a wooden spoon and baked in the only baking tin up there – a jumbo-sized 6 cup muffin tin. When I went into town for espresso I would grab a packet of coarse turbinado sugar (hey, I wasn’t putting any in my coffee; at $4 I figured I was entitled to a packet of sugar) to sprinkle over their tops before they baked.
We ate lots of muffins out of small paper bags this week; hard to resist when you stop for coffee, and it’s something W has taken comfort in. Just so you know, Jupiter has by far the best muffins in Tofino. It’s in the bottom half of a house sort of behind the ice cream shop. They also sell them out at Beaches grocery on your way into town.
Tofino Banana-Pear Muffins
These simple muffins are a perfect canvas for any type of fruit – berries, chunked apples or peaches – everything goes with banana. Or go for chunkily chopped walnuts or a handful of chocolate chips. Plain, they are briliant split while still warm and smeared with peanut butter. If you use pears, don’t bother peeling them – not only is it extra work, you lose a lot of the fiber and nutrients.
2-3 large very ripe bananas
1/2-3/4 cup sugar, white or brown
2 large eggs
2-4 Tbsp. canola or olive oil
1 tsp. vanilla (if you have it)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, or half all-purpose and half whole wheat
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt
1 ripe pear, roughly chopped (don’t bother peeling it)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 375F.
In a medium bowl, mash together the bananas, sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla with a potato masher or spatula until blended and the bananas are well mashed – don’t worry about getting all the lumps out. Add the flour, baking soda and salt, and stir just until the batter starts coming together; add the pear and walnuts, or whatever additions you are using, and stir just until combined. Don’t overmix, or your muffins could be tough.
Spoon the batter into muffin tins that are lined with paper liners or sprayed with nonstick spray, filling them about 3/4 full. If you like, sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar. Bake for20-30 minutes, depending on the size of your muffins, until golden and the tops are springy to the touch.
Makes 6 jumbo or 10-12 regular muffins.
One Year Ago: Chick Peas with Lemon and Parmesan and Sauteed Spinach with Garlic
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May 01 2009 | bread and breakfast | 18 Comments »
