Archive for November, 2010
It’s getting chilly again here at the computer in our spare bedroom, the apple tree loaded with snow, the sky grey, the furnace raging. I’m wearing a fleece and my thickest woolly socks, the ones that I believe helped facilitate my trip down the stairs the day before Christmas. I just can’t get into a bowl of spring greens. It turns out I also can’t live on toast and coffee, icing and cheese.
I bought a couple cookbooks that I totally didn’t need. One is called Casa Moro, and in it is this warm butternut salad with chickpeas and tahini dressing. (You’d think after all that cookbook testing I’d be done with beans – actually I’ve been craving them more and more.) I’m a fan of all things roasted – the tahini dressing is just a bonus. (Remember the potato salad with kale? And the stir fried brown rice with chickpeas and asparagus?) Who woulda thought tahini dressing would wind up being my thing? Here I grew up thinking it was Twinkies.
And, it turns out, Molly and Deb already knew about this stuff. They are so on the ball, those two.
I’ve never been that creative when it comes to salads. Which is weird, because really anything goes when you make a salad – it’s like the ultimate opportunity to play with your food, with minimal risk of screwing up (unlike baking). But it’s exactly the sort of thing I like – that jumble of stuff in a bowl, with sauce, if at all possible. It’s exactly the sort of thing W spending his time hoping is not for dinner. He had a bowl of pasta with olive oil.
Warm Butternut and Chickpea Salad with Tahini
Adapted from Casa Moro
For salad:
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 garlic clove, finely crushed or grated (I use my rasp)
1/2 tsp. ground allspice (I skipped this, but it might add a nice warmth)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/4 of a medium red onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro or parsley
For tahini dressing:
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 Tbsp. well-stirred tahini
2 Tbsp. water
2 Tbsp. olive oil (I used nice cold-pressed canola from Highwood Crossing)
1 garlic clove, finely grated (I use my rasp)
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Spread the squash out on a large rimmed baking sheet, stir the garlic (and allspice, if you like) into the oil, drizzle it over the squash, toss it around to coat and roast for 30 minutes, or until soft and starting to turn golden. Set aside to cool.
To make the tahini dressing, whisk everything together and taste; add water to thin it if you like, or more lemon if you like it more lemony.
To assemble the salad, combine the squash, chickpeas, onion, and cilantro or parsley in a large bowl. Drizzle with dressing and toss to coat; serve immediately. Serves 2-4.
November 21 2010 | beans and vegetarian | 19 Comments »
Or the lazy. Or those who aren’t at all lazy but would much prefer a nap.
In case you haven’t noticed, cake pops are the sweet of the moment, made popular by Bakerella, blogger extraordinaire, who has now published an entire book of them.
They are baked cakes, crumbled and mixed with icing, then rolled into balls, frozen, impaled on a stick and dipped in chocolate. I say this as a lover of frosting and one known to finish the leftover frosting on other peoples’ plates: the thought doesn’t appeal. (No offense Bakerella – I really think you’re great and the pops are adorable. They just make my teeth ache.)
It occurred to me that one could forgo the baking, crumbling, mixing, shaping and freezing (not that, as you know, I’m against spending time in the kitchen) and move straight to the aesthetic part of the cake pop by cheating with cake pop implants: Timbits.
1) Buy cake-doughnut Timbits.
2) Impale on sticks (lollipop sticks from Michael’s or another craft store, or wooden coffee stirrers).
3) Melt chocolate – any kind – and dip them in.
4) Let them sit on a plate or piece of waxed paper or foil until set. If you like, sprinkle with coconut, coarse sugar or sprinkles.
Admittedly, they are about as sweet as anything I’ve eaten. But the Timbits shave some time off the process – and aren’t cake pops mostly about cuteness?
If you do want to take the scenic route, there’s a full-on cake pop recipe over here.
Hey! I have a new plan for Free Stuff Fridays.
Since I’m not always on the ball on Fridays (surprising, I know), often not making the connection that it’s Friday or when I do, not having the gumption to come up with the free stuff I may have tucked away earlier in the week, I thought I’d remove the Fridays from the free stuff.
That’s right! It’s open season! I added a little tab up top – see it? free stuff? – and what I’ll do is put stuff there once in awhile – not necessarily on a Friday, just to throw y’all off. And because I even more often forget that it’s Tuesday and I’m supposed to be drawing a winner, I’ll put stuff up there and then take it down when I draw a winner, and that way there will be no missing of boats. If there’s something up there it will be up for grabs, and if not, you’ll know. Sound foolproof?
Let’s give it a try!
November 19 2010 | cake | 19 Comments »
It will make a Brussels sprout lover out of you. Oh yes.
November 19 2010 | Family Kitchen | 10 Comments »
There seems to be an awful lot of interest surrounding the topic of hot cocoa. Specifically, how to make it. This is not surprising considering the recent enormous dump of snow that has blanketed Calgary, slowing it down considerably and sending it scrambling to find its mittens and snow shovels. (Confession: I love it. Even the driving part. I love walking the boys to school and shoveling the sidewalk and coming in with the bottom inches of my jeans cold and wet. I’m sure the novelty will wear off sometime around January 2nd.)
So to make real, for-true-life hot cocoa this is what you do (or what I do): stir together a tablespoonful each of cocoa and sugar (or honey) in a small pot, and add about a cup of milk (soy or almond milk is fine, although it’s sweeter so you may want to cut down the sugar). Heat. (You’ll have to heat the water anyway-you may as well heat milk, right?)
Or, if you’d like to make yourself a nice stash of mix for the kids to dip into, you can get yourself a charming old glass jar (Value Village: $1) and spoon into it equal amounts of cocoa powder and sugar. Shake it up. This will take approximately twelve seconds, and take you from:
Ingredients: SUGAR, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (MAY CONTAIN COCONUT, PALM KERNEL AND/OR SOYBEAN OIL), MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENTS, COCOA, CELLULOSE GUM, SALT, DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, SILICON DIOXIDE, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOUR, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, GUAR GUM, SODIUM ALUMINUM SILICATE.
to:
Ingredients: COCOA, SUGAR.
The boys today declared their hot cocoa the best they’ve ever had, and this was it. Made with 1% milk. It was no different than usual, but made me think maybe we all might need a steaming cup.
November 17 2010 | beverages | 31 Comments »
New York! Wanna hear? Sorry to have missed the boat on live updates, but I wanted to spend as little of our precious 3 days as possible on the computer. No offense to you guys. Also? I didn’t bring my camera.
I know. Sorry.
I left it at home on purpose. I did bring the new teeny secret agent spy camera Mike bought me for my birthday, and I had the one on my phone, but neither worked as well. I didn’t bring my camera because I didn’t want to be a slave to it, stopping every few feet to get a good shot – I wanted to just be in New York, experiencing it. Also, I knew we’d be walking a great deal (10+ hours a day, it turned out) and didn’t want to be loaded down with stuff from the get go. Besides all that’s required by a 5 year old, of course.
Of course I missed my camera. The photo opps! The heaving city! I fell in love instantly and wanted to capture every square inch. I spent most of our time there and all of our plane ride home plotting ways to get back. Between New York and our ultra fab hotel in Toronto (which is like New York Lite) I’m seriously questioning my decision to marry for love, not money.
The funny thing is, New York wasn’t on my list of must-see places until recently, and now three days seemed like a tiny sip. I never made it to Dean & Deluca! Or Di Fara! Or Kitchen Arts & Letters! It turned out the New York City marathon was on Sunday, which explained all the buff people on our plane and the fact that when we finally did locate a hotel that could accomodate us, $380 per night seemed like a steal. (Homemade Christmas gifts this year?) It also meant much of Manhattan and some of the bridges were blocked off to accommodate the 40,000+ runners and 2.5 million spectators. Not that I’m complaining-I was on a pizza marathon, myself.
The trip out was not much fun. As I may have mentioned, Mike is a nervous flyer, to put it as mildly as baby shampoo. He has been psyching himself up for this since we booked it over a month ago. The day before, when we did the online check-in, we discovered the flight had been overbooked and although M and W had seat assignments, I’d have to arrive early and hope for the best. Until about 10 minutes before our flight left we didn’t know if I’d make it on the plane. I did. Phew.
But then. We taxied out, W excited and Mike anxious but cheerily talking W through the process. We’re going out to the runway! We’re turning around! We’re getting ready to take off!
We’re sitting here! And sitting. Still sitting.
Computer problems. We went back to the terminal and crews came on board to attempt to fix whatever it was the computer was refusing to do. They turned all the power off and back on again. It was fixed. We were good to go.
Taxi! Turn around! About to take off! Nope. More problems. Going back to the terminal again and they’re going to try to find us another plane. Which, it must be said, I was pretty happy about from the vantage point of a not-working-properly aircraft. I thought Mike might throw up and cry at the same time.
As we came back to the terminal a second time, W excitedly asked, are we in New York now? Nope, we haven’t left Calgary yet. Airport bars – I understand them now.
So we were sufficiently exhausted upon our arrival in Newark at close to midnight, trying to figure out New Jersey transit to get ourselves into Manhattan. But once we made it – wow.
Ohwowohwow.
All those I heart NY Tshirts? I understand them too.
The first day I spent all verklempt – choked up over the awesomeness of it all. We stayed at the Affinia that it turned out was directly across the street from Penn Station(!) and Madison Square Garden(!). (Aside: I got no deal whatsoever, and I totally recommend it. Besides the location -although I’m sure there are as many in Manhattan- the building was sufficiently old and ever so slightly New York grunge (white subway tiles in the bathroom, brass fixtures) but perfectly clean, with a mini kitchen and not a bedbug in sight. The sheets and shower and pillows and people were great. I’d totally go back. Next weekend, if at all possible.)
It was a block from Macy’s. We walked to Times Square, and Central Park, and the American Museum of Natural History. (Wow! Wow! Wow!) That night I cleaned myself up and hopped on the subway (in the wrong direction – so much for my freshly acquired NYC savvy) to meet my cyber-co-workers from Babble.com at Aria Wine Bar in Chelsea for drinks and nibbles. Everywhere you go in New York is like walking through a movie set – I sighed at the piles of garbage bags and steam rising from pipes underground. Mike got all excited over seeing a fight between two New Yorkers with thick accents, leather jackets and golf caps, out walking their dogs on a Saturday morning. (Aside: it was one of three fist fights we happened across on the street, yet there was no general air of danger or aggression in the city. I felt safe everywhere qw went, even walking through tunnels in Central Park after dark and taking the subway alone. Everyone was fantastically nice. In New Jersey, three people saw us looking at our map and offered to help. Ditto Manhattan.)
On Saturday – how hip are we? – we went to Magnolia bakery, which was a little overrated. It was a madhouse (Saturday morning, natch) and the serve-yourself cupcakes were down to two flavours. The chocolate with purple (vanilla?) icing was far too solidly sweet and none of us wanted to eat it. The chocolate on chocolate was delicious, though. We took them across the street to the Chelsea playground, where (ditto the Union Square playground) W was the only kid not hiply dressed in colourful thin wool layers and Uggs, looking every bit like a Gap Kids ad.
Because there’s just so much to do and see we enlisted the help of nycgo.com, which was amazingly helpful through the planning process – besides info about hotels and transportation, the website lists events, has new restaurant listings (as if we needed any new options!), good deals and free stuff in NYC, info about shopping and the theatre and even has suggested itineraries – everything you ever wanted to know about going to New York but didn’t know who to ask.
Traveling with a five year old was great. Who needs fancy restaurants and live shows? But exploring a city with a kindergartner who’s hard-wired to jump on every shadow and painted line on the street, check out every pipe and manhole, walk along every ledge and rail and run his hands across every surface, newspaper box, garbage/recycling bin and phone booth in Manhattan (and across the entire Brooklyn bridge) can slow you down a bit. As can the intermittent heart attacks each time we discovered we were both looking up while he darted after a pigeon. I realize now that 5 year olds have two walking speeds – COME ON! and can’t keep up.
I’ve had a few requests for a NYC Top Ten. I’ll work on that next.
November 16 2010 | leftovers | 14 Comments »
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