Archive for July, 2009
“Mom, I pooped in my wetsuit.”
Quote of the day, that. (Fortunately it came from Ben, who just ate some questionable poutine on the windy road between Ucluelet and Long Beach – ha! NOT MINE!) It spurred a top ten list of things you don’t want to hear your kids say, such as:
“Mom, Willem is pointing a hose in the house.”
“How do you get a pussywillow out of your nose anyway?”
“Those red berries by the porch – are they edible?”
We’re still working on it, but I’ll bet you guys have some to contribute. The rule is: it has to be something you actually heard your kid say.
Food has been plentiful. Have not yet made it to SoBo - an opportunity presented itself this evening, but a) I was wind-whipped and sandy and exhausted, and b) it was 7:30 on a Friday night during the height of July lets-visit-BC season. Am going to try to sneak in at some weird late-afternoon hour tomorrow for a late lunch/early dinner, and try my best to not eat up until then.
My sister has been buying peaches from the wee produce section of Beaches grocery all week. Each time she brought a bag home, they were consumed by the kids in under twenty minutes. Neither of us ever got any, save for a few precious juicy slivers snuck off the plates when we sliced them up. They were so divine that she went back this morning and bought an entire ($40) case, considering that between the ten of us we could easily plow through them at the rate we were going. We drove to Ucluelet to visit the tiny aquarium (if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it – it’s a one-room building packed with tanks full of marine life that gets plucked from the adjacent sea, and then returned every few months. Half the tanks are open so that you can pick up starfish and sea cucumbers – it’s like an ocean petting zoo).
Then we went to Long Beach and opened up the peaches we had wrapped in towels for the trip. Woody and tasteless. And from California – the BC peaches come in next week.
And we had a two-layer case of them. We turned about a dozen into a monstrous peach crisp, which we topped with whipped cream, sweetened with brown sugar. To do a crisp is easy, even when you have little more than a bowl and spoon, and even without access to measuring spoons. Thickly slice as many peaches as you want into a baking dish – without peeling them and without bothering to toss them with sugar, unless they are particularly sour. Keep in mind that fruit shrinks as it cooks, so it will seem like a lot of fruit, but cook down to almost half the quantity. For the topping, rub together about equal parts of butter (we used half butter, half canola oil), packed brown sugar, flour and oats – you can get away with using less butter or oil, particularly if it’s oil, which as a liquid will go a bit further. Whole wheat flour works great in crisps – its slightly nutty flavour and heartier texture is a perfect fit, and anyone who turns up their nose at whole wheat won’t even notice. I like a handful of sliced almonds too, particularly with peaches, but in a house of 10 that’s a matter of strong opinion.
Bake at 350F for about an hour, until bubbly and golden. We served ours with liberal amounts of whipped cream, sweetened with brown sugar.
One Year Ago: I ate at SoBo!
July 18 2009 | leftovers | 20 Comments »
If I’m to be perfectly honest here, yesterday was a bit of a dud. (Excepting, of course, the fact that we are in Tofino.) We spent the morning trying to rally the troops to vacate the house so that I could tape a segment for Good Bite, silly me, thinking I could evacuate ten people and hope for a half hour of silence and a dry towel to shower with beforehand. And when I finally managed to get it done at around noon, I had a phone meeting and spent an hour searching for lost car keys, thus missing out on a trip to the beach, and then spent until dinnertime trying to download and then upload my enormous video files using my Mom’s laptop and an internet connection that would time out or crash anytime I opened something else, or if I didn’t and the computer went to sleep, or if I blinked. By 7pm I had hardly seen the light of day, a cold had moved in and unpacked its phlegm into my head and lungs, and I was ready to row both laptops out into the ocean and hurl them overboard.
Thankfully, the day was salvaged by a trip to Wildside Grill for dinner – an open take-out or eat-on-driftwood-benches spot in the little cluster of shops by Beaches grocery on the way into town. (Or as locals call it, Tofino Mall.) They have a cod club that is made with a slab of crisp, panko-crusted cod, thick, salty bacon, tiny rock shrimp, avocado, mayo, lettuce and tomato that I could eat very happily every day this week. There are some fantastic places to eat out here, but I do love those spots that have tables made out of giant wooden spools painted red and dented dog bowls set between the trees, where Lou can lie at our sandy flip-flopped feet while we eat.
We also tried the spicy fish tacos, a trio wrapped in corn tortillas and stuffed with spicy chunks of salmon with rice and Monterey Jack, covered with a fresh tomato and purple onion salsa, guacamole and cilantro. But the club trumped everything, and totally made my day.
Today was much better. We went down to Schooner beach, which is accessible by a kilometer-long boardwalked trail through rain forest. (No, rain forests aren’t necessarily rainy.)
The sun came out, no one was cranky, and to ice the cake we saw whales. Finally, after I don’t know how many trips out to the west coast and only ever having witnessed little splashes in the distance that could have been any number of things, we watched minke whales and what we guessed where grey or humpback whales smoothly arching out of the water and even sort of half breaching out beyond the inlet. Mike and Lou trekked out to the furthest rocky point they could find, winding up about a hundred feet from the action for at least two hours; my sister and I waded out into the warm water on the sandy slip and watched in the waist-deep ocean. Having set off down the beach to get some exercise and figure out where Mike disappeared to, I of course didn’t bring my camera.
For lunch, we brought black bean salsa, corn chips and ripe avocados, fresh baguettes, peaches and plums to eat on the beach.
And when we arrived home at dinnertime my 18 year old nephew and his friend had gone out and caught crab in Clayoquot sound, having paddled out in the kayaks early in the morning to drop their trap. Mike set up a killing rock down by the water, from which I’m certain anyone within a hundred mile radius could have heard the kids squealing “eeeeeeeewwwwwwww! that’s disgusting! EEWWWWWWW!” as he karate-chopped them in the solar plexus, hacked them in half with a hatched and flicked out the icky bits, leaving an ice cream bucket full of half-racks of legs. We steamed them in our largest pot (a couple inches of water for 7-8 minutes) and ate them with loads of butter and new potatoes, which we boiled, smashed with a fork and fried up in a little canola oil and butter to give them crispy bits.
One Year Ago: Roast Halibut, Corn on the Cob and Lemon Meringue Pie
July 16 2009 | eating out | 15 Comments »
Turning over rocks to find baby crabs.
Playing with the baby Holsteins at D Dutchman Dairy (after vanilla and English toffee in a waffle cone).
Checking out the barnacles, starfish and sea anemones at Chesterman beach.
Grilled extra-old white cheddar on teeny baguette rounds, topped with melting slivers of perfectly ripe avocado.
Hummus, baguettes and those grainy cookies from Beaches Grocery.
July 14 2009 | leftovers | 20 Comments »
I planned to let you all know yesterday that I was pregnant. I found out the morning of Canada Day, thinking it would be smart to pee on that stick before the onslaught of parties and Stampede, and having just brought home 23 cases of beer (from the CBC beer pool). Instead, the pregnancy ended. It was early – between 6 and 7 weeks, and it was only for 10 days that we believed a new baby would be arriving in March, but I can’t seem to sit down in front of the keyboard and spin tales of what we ate as if it was just another day. I’m glad it was so early – my first pregnancy ended the last day of my first trimester – and I know it’s common. It still sucks.
(For those keeping tabs: that’s a new roof, $3000 worth of dental work, a tax audit, a he-nearly-died medical emergency (not mine) a pregnancy and a miscarriage in a little over two weeks. Plus Stampede, during which I couldn’t have a drink. I could cry with joy that we’re heading to Tofino in T minus 7 hours.)
Yesterday started at 4:30, when (after getting up at midnight when W wet the bed and again at 2 to let Lou out for a pee) I got up to finish prepping breakfast in the barns for 20 CBC listeners who came down to eat with us and the driver of the Food Bank chuckwagon – David Bensmiller – and his crew. A fun time, if rainy, cold and wet.
We invented the Bensmiller Griller specifically for the occasion, having only an enormous grill available to us in the barns to cook with. A Bensmiller Griller is essentially a breakfast burrito, assembled the night before, which gives the soft flour tortilla packets of scrambled egg, black beans, sauteed peppers, onions and cheese time to sort of set so that they hold their shape when tossed on the grill to crisp on the outside and heat through the next morning. It worked brilliantly (fortunately); it’s great to have an easy make-ahead brunch (or dinner, really) dish that will feed a large crowd (I made 50, assembly-line style) with a minimum of morning fuss. And perfect for the cowboy on the go.
In the afternoon, I cleaned, packed and made ice cream. What else can you do? Roasted plum, remembering how fantastic that roasted peach and brown sugar ice cream was last year, and then mascarpone. I had a tub of it in the fridge that needed using up, and since I have in the past stirred it into panna cotta, it seemed to be a fine candidate for ice cream. Topped with some strawberry-rhubarb compote, the result is ultra creamy and cheesecakelike; to make strawberry-rhubarb ice cream, add it through the feed tube toward the end of the freezing process. Yes, they are every iota as good as they sound.
Mascarpone Ice Cream I
3 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)
1 1/2 cups half & half
1 cup mascarpone
a capful of good vanilla extract
In a medium pot, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar; whisk in the cream. Put the pot over medium low heat and cook, whisking often, until the mixture bubbles and thickens; whisk in the mascarpone until it melts and the mixture is smooth. Whisk in the vanilla. Remove from heat and cool completely, then refrigerate until cold. Freeze according to the directions of your ice cream maker. Makes about 1 pint.
Mascarpone Ice Cream II
heavy cream
mascarpone
sugar or honey to taste
a few drops of vanilla
Use as much cream as you have mascarpone; heat it up on the stovetop until it’s hot but not boiling; stir in the mascarpone until melted, and add sugar or honey to taste (I use a couple tablespoons per cup of cream-mascarpone) and stir in the vanilla. Chill in the fridge until cold, and then freeze in your ice cream maker.
Roasted Plum Ice Cream
Instead of using this formula, you could add the roasted and semi-pureed plums to any basic vanilla ice cream recipe.
4 large plums (or 6-8 small Damson plums), halved and pitted
sugar, for sprinkling
1 cup good-quality plain or vanilla yogurt
1 cup heavy (whipping) cream
1/3 cup sugar or honey, or to taste (depending on whether you used plain or vanilla yogurt)
Preheat the oven to 400F. Place the halved plums skin-side down on a rimmed baking sheet and sprinkle the cut sides with sugar. Roast for about 20 minutes, until the fruit softens, releases some juice and turns golden and sticky. Set aside to cool.
In a bowl, whisk together the yogurt, cream and sugar or honey. Freeze in your ice cream machine (or using the can method) until it’s almost solid. Meanwhile, scrape the plums (along with any juices or stickiness left on the bottom of the pan) into a food processor and pulse until mulched; alternatively chop them roughly with a knife on a chopping board that will catch all the juices. Make sure the fruit is completely cool – if it’s still warm, it could melt the ice cream.
When the ice cream is frozen but still soft, add the plums through the feed tube, or stir it in. Serve immediately or transfer to a container and put it in the freezer until solid.
A note about Free Stuff Fridays: I need to take a little break from it for the summer – at the end of August I will resume gathering stuff to give away, but for now I need to jettison some of my workload. Congrats to Donna, who won the box of Epicure Selections swag!
One Year Ago: Jerk pork, new potatoes, roasted beets, sugar snap peas, and Strawberry Shortcakes
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July 11 2009 | dessert | 84 Comments »
I know better than to separate a whack of eggs at once without using a little dish as a buffer, in case I should nick one of the yolks and taint a half dozen whites. But I always get a little smug when I need to separate a lot of eggs into whites – it’s like my own private version of bungee jumping – and as if it’s a big deal to add one teeny more dish to the overflowing sinkful, I always just go ahead and live on the edge. And so the other day as I was making a hundred teeny pavlovas for my little cooking show at Stampede, I broke a yolk five eggs in. I tried to scoop out the offending yellow with a piece of cracked shell and thought I got it all, but those whites refused to reach their full potential and I was left with a bowl of flaccid meringue and nothing to do with it.
So I stirred in a capful of coconut extract, a cup or two of toasted shredded coconut, and spread it on two foil-lined baking sheets, then baked them in a 250 degree oven for an hour, as I would have had they turned out the way I intended. Once cool the slabs of meringue were easily broken into shards, which we have been nibbling on all week. I think I might be hooked. I’m dying to dunk some into melted chocolate.
Coconut Macaroon Bark
3 large egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. coconut extract
1-2 cups sweetened shredded coconut, toasted
Preheat oven to 250° F and line two large baking sheets with foil or parchment. Stir the cornstarch into the sugar. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, beating until the mixture holds stiff, glossy peaks, like shaving cream. (If it doesn’t get completely stiff, that’s OK too.) Beat in the coconut extract, and fold in the coconut. Spread the mixture onto the sheets, about 1/2″ thick.
Bake for an hour, then remove from the oven and cool completely. Peel off the foil and break the bark into shards. Makes lots.
(Dinner this week has more often than not been chili, scooped out of a big pot in the fridge and reheated as necessary in between events and trips down to the grounds. I made some for the Stampede party last weekend, and my chef neighbour brought over another vat as he cleaned out his fridge to leave town, and I mixed the two together. Unfortunately this means we can’t figure out what makes it so damn yummy. It has tons of beans, chick peas, chipotle peppers and beef – ground and in chunks. Of course it gets better by the day – deeper and more concentrated. Speaking of mac & cheese – have you ever had chili served over a bed of it? If not, please do.)
One Year Ago: Bison Back Ribs and Blueberry Bison Burgers
July 09 2009 | snacks and sweet stuff | 12 Comments »
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