Archive for March, 2011
I never told you about my amazing meal at Taste, the teeny restaurant on 1st Street that it seems not enough people know about yet. Which is a shame, because it’s really great. I was invited to try out their new menu last week, and as we sat in the small, bright, cozy space and looked out the window at tired commuters leaning into the freezing rain and snow, the food was fantastic -
- sharing food like duck fat popcorn (with little bitty scraps of duck), a tomato salad with basil mascarpone and balsamic
seared scallops with crispy pancetta on a bed of braised cabbage (yum)
lamb popsicles with a pistachio crust and balsamic/truffle reduction (bliss)
beef tacos on crispy wontons with carrot slaw (ditto)
mini espresso cupcakes, and some really great guys in the kitchen making it all.
Can’t wait to go again.
March 25 2011 | eating out | 11 Comments »
We’ve been in getting-outta-Dodge mode for the past few days. Sadly, the car hasn’t – it’s in the shop with a pooched clutch. And so while we pine by the phone for the (completely awesome) mechanics to call and let us know we’re free to go get the H. out of this snow, I’ve been diligently plowing through the perishables in the fridge. There were lots of bits of cheese, and this not eating wheat thing combined with neverending snow has been causing me to Jones for starchy things big time. Like a big ol’ pot of baked mac & cheese.
Also – Pat from Winnipeg was kind enough to email me with some wheat-free pasta advice, suggesting Mrs. Leeper’s corn pasta (she has no affiliation), which I promptly went out and bought a bag of.
A lot of you have been emailing and tweeting wheat-free advice – thanks! – and some have been asking why the h. I would want to do such a thing. I tend to agree. I’ll spare you the details of my symptoms, besides the brain fog, which my dad is convinced has more to do with lack of sleep than my morning bagel, but it’s just to see if I react when I do eat some. And to wean myself off, because whether it’s bread and baked goods or sugar or fat, the more I eat the more I want. The less you feed your cravings the weaker they get. And cravings, I think, are more difficult to resist than hunger.
Yes, it’s harder than I thought. It has made me more conscious of what I eat, and the fog has cleared somewhat, although I didn’t get the boost of energy I thought I would. (On days when I’ve been subsisting on bread I tend to feel like I’m tied to a piano.) And the foggy brain part can’t be all gone, because the other day I tried to put W’s jacket on while he insisted that HE DIDN’T HAVE A SHIRT ON YET. I’m not doing it in an attempt to lose weight, although I admit I did allow myself to get my hopes up a teeny bit, having heard from a bazillion or so people over the years that when you give up wheat, you drop pounds like crazy! Like that! (Finger snap!) And I figured that just by default of having NOT PICKED AT ANY (any!) of the delicious crumbs on our blueberry big crumb cake we made at class last Wednesday, nor any of the three (THREE!) batches of warm scones with cheese, olives, berries (not all together) – nor anything (freshly baked Raincoast Crisps topped with shaved Asiago! Freshly made samosas, using Naheed’s mom’s recipe!) at my Saturday class, or waffles Sunday morning, or pulled pork on soft brioche rolls for dinner, that it might count for something.
And so the other day I went to the gym after work, and hopped on the right and proper medical scale, and wow, check it out!! I GAINED SIX POUNDS. Awesome.
My plan is to stick it out a little longer for scientific purposes, make sure my gut is no longer used to massive influxes of it and then have a crispy cod club whenever we manage to make it to Tofino, and see how strongly it protests. Mwaa haa haa. I’m really hoping nothing happens and I can just go back to having a bagel already.
But back to the pasta. I’ve been eating my share of rice and oats and granola, but still craving something to fill that void that bread left when I sent it packing. While it is a pretty shade of corn yellow, I might not have been able to detect that it wasn’t wheat had I not bought it myself. It’s a little lighter (really! I assumed corn pasta might be a bit heavier, like corn bread) and softer than wheat macaroni, without being mushy. It’s like it was made for mac & cheese.
As I’ve been channeling my inner gluten-free girl, I deferred to her mac & cheese expertise. I’ve always made it the same way – with pasta and a cheese sauce started with a roux – rice flour is a perfectly effective thickener, but she had a version made with cottage cheese, and I had ricotta in the fridge. So I added the container to the drained pasta in the pot, along with shredded bits of Parmesan, cheddars and gruyere, mixed it up, then topped it with two slices of grainy bread blitzed with a bit more Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil.
(Yes – it was regular wheat bread – you could use gluten-free bread of course. Instead, after baking (at 350F until bubbly) I opted to carefully dissect mine, scooping gingerly from the bottom of the pot and avoiding the crumbs. Yum.)
It’s well after dinnertime now. Sounds like they didn’t finish the car again. Boo. Maybe tomorrow.
March 23 2011 | pasta | 28 Comments »
How to win friends and influence people, under 10.
Why is it that sprinkles make kids so happy? Freshly cooked doughnuts make me happy. Doughnuts are the new cupcake, ya know. Try bringing a tray of these out to a livingroomfull of kids. I may do just that at Easter.
(Although no, I haven’t eaten one in weeks! Yay me.)
I posted the recipe over at the Family Kitchen.
Scrambling to get ready to head out to Tofino. We were supposed to leave today, but the clutch went on the car. (Lucky it happened here, and not on the highway!) I also have something cool brewing. Yes, still. I’ll post it tonight!
March 23 2011 | Family Kitchen | 4 Comments »
Sorry this took me so long – I had plenty of requests for a dairy-free Nutella recipe, and realized that the formula I used in a story in City Palate a year or so ago was just that. Since I had requests both here and at the Family Kitchen, I posted the recipe over there.
March 23 2011 | leftovers | 1 Comment »
It’s been hard to post recipes this week – I haven’t been able to get into it. I keep coming here and not knowing what to say. What is there to say about soup when there’s so much going on? I’ve found comfort in cooking during the after-school hours – our dinnertimes have been spent with the news on, the end of the day an opportunity for a more in-depth update on the threat of nuclear disaster, relief efforts hampered by snow and freezing weather and aftershocks, and near hourly re-estimates of the number of people missing and displaced. Every morning the alarm clicks on to the CBC and a grim update on a crippled nuclear plant, the dozen souls left to try to bring it under control, and the looming threat of nuclear disaster, followed (or led by, depending on the urgency of the situation that hour) by reports of violence in Libya. It seems impossible that the world is still humming along. But deadlines must still be met, appointments kept, laundry done. The house is still a mess and everyone’s gotta eat.
I know we’ve all been struggling to wrap our heads around the scope of the devastation, the suddenness of it all, and what can possibly be done to help. I’ve had plenty of calls and emails and tweets asking if I’m planning round 2 of Blog Aid. Excellent question. But it seems different now than it was a little over a year ago. The original book was for Haiti; I enlisted the financial support of Blurb and West Canadian Graphics, and the Canadian government stepped in to match donations. I don’t have all that backup this time. And though I could get moving and try to do it all again, I think there’s a perception that money isn’t going to make as much of an impact this time. People aren’t jumping for their wallets as eagerly as they were last year. (Not that I’m discouraging donations! I’m certainly not. It just seems to be the way it’s going.) Anyway. I’ve been involved in a similar project that is now getting underway, which you’ll surely hear about soon, and so there’s that. And I keep having ideas, but often they’re silly. I had one on Monday morning that made perfect sense to me, so long as it was bouncing around inside my head. When I talked about it it seemed silly, and so I haven’t done much to get it off the ground.
Also, it’s been a busy week. There was a bout of what may or may not have been food poisoning, but was miserable nonetheless. There have been deadlines and tests and grown-up stuff, and frustration that I still don’t know anywhere near as much about this world-wide-internet as I should by now. (Never have I been so annoyed at myself for not paying full attention in elementary school when they taught us basic programming in the computer lab full of Commodore 64s. I could have been a pioneer in all this!) I should at least know basic coding-if I did, my plan would have gone live by now. I was going to launch it Thursday. It’s Friday. And then part of me wonders if it really is silly or if anyone will even get it. And then I distract myself with emails and passed deadlines. It has all fallen out of focus.
All I know is this: it’s not helping any of us to be walking around feeling helpless, hopeless, and heavy-hearted. As someone somewhere once said: we can’t help everyone, but we can help someone. I think besides donating what we can to the cause, we need to channel our efforts into helping ourselves and those around us. Doing little things to make life happier wherever we can can have an astonishing ripple effect. Just like plate tectonics, and the way subtle, often undetectable shifts in the earth can have tremendous effects on its surface.
OK, so now you know the direction I’m going here. I’m going to get to the part with the soup, and continue explaining my perhaps-not-so-brilliant-but-then-again-maybe idea tomorrow.
So I went to help Dan at one of his Kick the KD classes last night. He has a great bunch of UofC students he’s teaching how to cook. For free. What a guy. The class was great, even if they did make me feel ancient. (Not intentionally, of course. The fact that I made a Cliff Clavin joke and no one had a clue who I was talking about – Dan included – didn’t help.)
So H, one of the students in the class, told me about a roasted pepper and butternut squash soup she made – an adaptation of a recipe she found in a yoga magazine (always wondered who read those) – and it sounded too good not to make. Of all the butternut squash soups of my life, I don’t think I’ve made one yet with roasted red pepper. Bonus: it’s not only vegetarian (if you use vegetable stock, of course), but vegan, even. Look at me! Eating vegan! And not in the form of a sticky cinnamon bun! (Which I suppose aren’t really vegan anyway with all that butter.)
Creamy Red Pepper & Butternut Squash Soup
adapted from H, who adapted it from a yoga magazine.
a drizzle of canola oil
1 onion, chopped
2 lbs butternut squash peeled and but into half-inch chunks
1 roasted red pepper
1 L chicken or vegetable stock
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
pinch grated nutmeg
salted green pumpkin seeds, to sprinkle on top
Heat oil in pot for a few minutes, then add the onion and cook until softened (5-7 minutes). Add the squash and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently until softened and getting mushy around the edges. Once it’s mushy-ish (H’s words), add the broth, cover and simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes. About 15 minutes in, add your chopped roasted red pepper. Add spices and sugar before putting into the blender to blend up. Use a hand towel or J cloth and hold the lid down, and be wary of ‘liquefy’ setting. (Alternatively, use a hand-held immersion blender right in the pot.)
Serve topped with pumpkin seeds.
March 19 2011 | freezable and soup and vegetarian | 10 Comments »
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