Archive for May, 2011
So yeah, the Rocky Mountaineer is totally all that and a bag of Doritos.
Better than I imagined, even. I’ll tell you more about it, but I have far too many photos, it’s getting late and I’m trying to do laundry and repack for Banff tomorrow. The trip wrapped up last night when we pulled through the rail yards and into Vancouver, and were delivered by motorcoach to the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.
And so we stuck around for much of the day – I couldn’t bring myself to get to Vancouver and then hop on a plane back home, what with all the dogwoods and cherry trees in full bloom. So we walked down to Gastown for a phenomenal dinner at L’Abbatoir (Dungeness crab and chickpea toast – toasted brioche, light crab custard, carrot pickles; Confit of albacore tuna – smoked pork fat, egg, crispy bits; Scallops and oxtail dumplings – beech mushroom, asian pear, spiced jus; Pork shoulder cooked in milk – baby turnips, salsa verde, green onions and fava beans; and for dessert, espresso pot de crème topped with crumbled lemon shortbread and whipped milk – like a perfect latte, dessertified, The entire experience was brilliant. If you’re ever in Gastown, I can’t recommend it highly enough.)
This morning we grabbed lattes and blackberry-bran muffins and walked down Georgia Street to Stanley Park (did you know it’s bigger than Central Park?) and around as much of the sea wall as we had time for before we had to be back to check-out. Then we found some street food – pulled pork at Re-Up Barbecue in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, and The Roaming Dragon over on Robson.
By the time we got home, collected W and Lou, brought in our luggage and checked messages it was 8pm. We were hungry by that time (the food carts were just after noon) and our fridge was still stocked – we had left quickly, without going through the perishables first. Nothing was rank. But there was a sullen bundle of asparagus and far more depressed kale and spinach. I snapped into action, like a produce paramedic who arrived just in time to find these spring greens clinging to life. I’m happy to report we saved them. They made a mighty fine pot of soup, which I sipped from a mug while reading W the new book we brought home from Vancouver. And yes, the (homemade!) crème fraîche got a chance to fulfill its purpose in life, too.
How do you make it? So easy. You’ll need a starter – buttermilk or good quality plain yogurt. Stir a heaping tablespoonful of it into 2 cups of heavy (whipping) cream, stir well, pour into a glass jar, cover with a lid and let it sit in a warm spot on the countertop overnight. That’s it. After 12-24 hours, it will have thickened into this wonderful, slightly tangy crème fraiche. Store it in the fridge after that.
Spring Greens Soup
This is soup, and as such, the measurements are totally flexible. You can add whatever greens you want to resurrect, in whatever proportions. Try adding pesto, or basil, or tarragon, or any other ingredients you think would taste swell.
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
a blob of butter (a bit smaller than a tablespoon)
1 onion, peeled and chopped (a leek would do well, too)
a few garlic cloves, crushed
1 bunch asparagus, woody ends trimmed and chopped into pieces
1 big handful fresh spinach, torn into pieces
a few leaves of kale, ribs removed and torn into pieces
1 L chicken or veggie stock
a splash of milk or half & half (optional)
salt and pepper to taaste
In a large pot, heat the oil and butter over medium-high heat until the butter melts. Add the onion and cook for a few minutes, until soft. Add the garlic and cook another minute.
Add the vegetables and cook for a few minutes, until the greens wilt. Add the stock and bring to a simmer; cook for 15 minutes, or until everything is very tender. Remove from the heat, add a splash of milk or cream and puree with a hand-held immersion blender until smooth or as chunky as you like. Serve warm or chilled. Serves 6.
May 13 2011 | soup | 10 Comments »
I didn’t cook today. And that’s what we had for lunch.
We spent a long, fantastic day on board the Rocky Mountaineer from Calgary to Kamloops, and tomorrow to Vancouver. Although we’ve made this drive through the mountains a few times yearly for almost as long as we can remember, it’s great to get a new perspective of the Rockies, away from the highway, without the distractions of driving. It’s also pretty rad to be able to drive directly through a mountain, in a tunnel just slightly larger than the train itself, out on the vestibule (everybody said that word a lot today) – the little platform you can go stand on between cars.
We hopped on board in Calgary at the base of the tower – early – check in time was 5:30-6. By 7:30 we were in the dining car, eating warm croissants, fruit plates and eggs Benedict with Montreal smoked meat and tarragon Hollandaise.
The dining car was exactly what I expected it to be – quaint booths with pressed white tablecloths and napkins and silverware. We should all have been in black and white, impeccably dressed, with fancy hats with hat pins and white gloves.
I had expected to ride in a regular sort of train car, but we were up top, under wraparound windows that encased us all as if we were in a greenhouse. They were tinted on top to prevent glare, but the view was spectacular, with barely a cloud in the sky.
It was a relaxed ride to Banff, where we picked up another 400 passengers and had a toast – with orange juice and sparkling peach juice – en masse to cheers the beginning of our trip.
Adam, our handlebarmoustached tour guide of sorts (who was so knowledgable about everything from trains to glacial ice that I started calling him Google) gave play by plays of the interesting peaks we passed, and about rivers and wildlife and answered technical questions from train buffs, and passengers were encouraged to call out if they witnessed wildlife out the window.
We wandered through the spiral tunnels into Yoho (translation: “awesome”) and Kicking Horse Canyon – spectacular from outside and in our seets. (Outside, between the cars, was a great vantage point for the spiral tunnels.) It’s a sightseeing train, not a high-speed train, so we went 30-80 k – for much of the way – it seemed you could jump off and run alongside, almost. (Well not me, personally.)
We passed the old original wood train station in Lake Louise! Where they filmed part of Dr. Zhivago!
I was always under the impression you slept on the train, but when you think about it, you’d miss so much of the scenery if it got dark and you had to sleep. Besides, after almost 14 hours on board (even though there was plenty of leg and stretching room), it was nice to get off at around 7 pm and find our luggage waiting for us in a hotel room in Kamloops. (Interesting fact: the luggage doesn’t go on the train, but is sent ahead on a truck, so arrives far ahead of us.) They instructed us to leave our luggage in our rooms tomorrow morning, and they would be picked up and magically reappear at our hotel in Vancouver.
Hopping on board now. Will report back again soon!
May 12 2011 | leftovers | 25 Comments »
First off: I may have been a little cranky when I wrote my last post. Sorry. If driving under the influence of sleep deprivation is akin to being intoxicated, blogging under the influence must apply, too. I hope I didn’t make Mike sound like a bad person, which I hope you know he’s not, just because I had to get up early on Mothers’ Day. I was just feeling a little humphy about it all.
I have some cool stuff for you, but I’m scrambling today to get some photos done and uploaded and stories in to my bosses at Parents Canada, who are laying out the summer issue to go to print imminently and waiting on me to get my stuff in. And we leave early tomorrow (as in, 5:30 am) to take our trip on the Rocky Mountaineer! Which I’m very excited about. I’d be more excited if the first proofs of the bean book hadn’t just arrived, and wasn’t due to be edited and returned by Friday. Guess what I’ll be doing on the train?
And so when the folks at Gourmet Live (yes, that Gourmet – I miss it so – only live) offered up a guest post, I figured all the cool kids are doing it. Besides, the links are from Gourmet’s special edition Italian Kitchen, which coincidentally I bought to bring to Tofino in March, and mostly read in the tub.
So this is by Maddie Donnelly of Gourmet Live. The photos are by Chris Gentile. It’s pizza and kids – right up my alley. And the pizza looks pretty fab for grown-ups, too.
For parents who end up throwing a frozen pizza in the oven at least one night a week to feed the fam, we have some exciting news.
We put five of the pizza recipes from the new Gourmet Italian Kitchen magazine to the test. But rather than asking food critics or chefs for their ratings, we checked in with the tiny people whose opinions often matter most when it comes to home cooking: Kids. And the results astounded us.
The winning pizza, handily beating out even a classic mozzarella and tomato version–and given loads of “Awesome!” votes for taste—was Gourmet Italian’s Pizza with Fontina, Prosciutto, and Arugula.
The crispy, crunchy crust, soft, gooey fontina cheese, and thinly sliced prosciutto topping won our young audience over. Turns out, if you don’t tell the kids it’s fancy prosciutto, they assume it’s regular old lunch meat and go to town.
We went light on the greens but didn’t hear any complaints there either. As 7-year-old Franklin told us, “It’s awesome! And I didn’t even have to take anything off of it!“
“He’s only in his life ever had plain pizza,” one of the moms said, referring to her 6-year-old son, whom she has dubbed “Picky Eater Iain.” “We had a talk about trying new things last night, but I never thought he would. This is a big breakthrough.”
For a breakthrough of your own, and a nice Friday night activity with the kids, opt for Gourmet’s Italian Kitchen’s fast, healthy, hit pizza recipe. Best of all, it only takes 30 minutes to make from start to finish. That’s even less time than a deliveryman can guarantee.
May 10 2011 | leftovers | 8 Comments »
Nothing special to report for Mother’s Day, I’m afraid. I woke up early, with that morning-after dread triggered by the realization I went a little overboard on party nibbles (spring rolls! ginger pork! curried chicken toasts!) and birthday cake (the kind with the cheap shortening icing that coats your mouth and would make swell undereye cream!) last night. I had a bit of a food hangover. Mike had another kind, which is why he didn’t stir until after I had long since woken up with W, and had already made him breakfast to eat while watching Dora (the Mothers’ Day special). Humph.
I had to work today, anyway. So I got the kitchen clean enough to work on recipes and photos for a couple magazine assignments, and I went shopping for a long list of ingredients for my class at Red Deer College tonight. I was feeling a little sorry for myself, and so made a grainy salad to bring on the drive, and to eat before class, lest I talk myself thru a drive thru or ravenously devour half the finished products at our baking class. This has been on my mind for a few days:
Melissa W on 06 May 2011 at 12:59 pm: I make a similar incarnation of this salad using quinoa, sautéed leeks, celery, lemon/olive oil, feta and cranberries. Oh, and toasted pine nuts or toasted almonds. Glorious! It is magical. We call it Magic Salad, in fact.
I could not not try this. It is indeed magical. I hope I did it justice. I tried not to eat all the crispy fried leeks straight out of the pan. Note to self: think of other things to do with crispy leeks.
You won’t need a recipe, really. Just cook up some quinoa (see below), and cut the white and pale green part off the bottom of a leek, cut it in half lengthwise and rinse it well, getting in between all the layers. Thinly slice it and saute in a drizzle of oil and blob of butter until golden and crispy. Cool and add it to the cooled quinoa along with a finely chopped celery stalk, half cup crumbled feta, quarter cup (ish) dried cranberries and toasted pine nuts or almonds (walnuts would do well too, I think); dress with olive oil (I thought extra-virgin was a bit overwhelming, but that’s just me), lemon juice and freshly ground pepper. Yum. Thanks Melissa!
(To cook quinoa, rinse it well under cool water in a fine sieve, then cook in a pot of boiling salted water over medium heat until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Just like you’d cook pasta. Drain well, return to the pot, put the lid back on and let it steam – this will produce fluffy quinoa – until cooled.)
May 08 2011 | grains and salads and vegetarian | 18 Comments »
I thought by now I might have come back to the ground, having read every single one of your incredibly kind and thoughtful comments (and emails, and tweets), many of them more than once, and known exactly what to say. But I can’t seem to come up with more than one-syllable words, like wow. And thanks! And sniff. And then I go back to read some more. What an amazing gift, all this. I didn’t think it was possible to get choked up when I’m not even talking. You’ve gone and blown my mind.
Honestly, you have all relieved me of an enormous weight I didn’t even realize I had been carrying. The weight of my weight, I suppose. Collectively lifted it up and carried it away. I just wish I could pull up a chair and continue each and every conversation that has started here. I might try to take a stab at it, I think. I have a plan. I want to have a potluck, just for us, and I want as many of you as are able to come. Would you be up for that? Life’s too short not to.
Meanwhile, guess what? I made dinner. It’s funny how easily I forget that there is plenty of good, healthy food out there that I love as much as the not so good for me stuff. It has become ingrained somewhere deep that junk food will make me happy. It did as a kid, when we weren’t really allowed to have it, and I became somewhat obsessed. I yearned for the Hostess Fruit Pies and Ding Dongs I saw advertised on the backs of Archie comics, and when I finally made it to the states and got my hands on some, my brain refused to believe they weren’t as spectacular as I had built them up to be.
When I was pregnant with W, I lost my appetite all but entirely. For real. It was weird. I didn’t recognize myself. I finally understood those people who get caught up in stuff and forget to eat. How do you forget to eat? Do you forget to breathe, too? The concept has always been inconceivable.
And when W was born, everyone told me my appetite would come back. It didn’t. During those first few weeks even with the lack of sleep and breastfeeding I wasn’t that hungry. I panicked. One day there was a bowl of peanut M&Ms on the kitchen counter, and I didn’t want any. I told myself to just give them a try, that once I was eating them I’d remember that I really do like chocolate, and they would be delicious, and everything would be OK.
That must have been the sleep deprivation talking.
The interesting part of all this is that my connection with food runs so deep, I don’t recognize myself without an appetite. If I was given the option to flip some switch that dulled my hunger, made me uninterested in food, I wouldn’t do it, no question. Not even if it simultaneously eliminated all my weight issues. I would not give it up, not ever. No question. I choose this appetite.
Knowing that makes me feel better.
Which is all to say I have to consciously remind myself that I do actually like healthy food. I’m not 10 anymore, I do not gag at the sight of pan-fried fish. I DO NOT BEG FOR WONDER BREAD ANYMORE. I’m particularly hip on grainy salads, and so I’ve decided to make a habit of having one or two in the fridge at all times so that there’s always something proper for lunch or dinner or a quick nibble. Being prepared is a very Good Thing; hungry Julie is very convincing and can easily talk the rest of me into eating too much and starting tomorrow. The habit of starting tomorrow (and thus eating as much as I can tonight, in order to get it out of my system) is a big reason why I weighed over 300 pounds in the first place. Some days, just not falling into the “I’ll start tomorrow” trap is considered a triumph.
Oh! I also went to Pilates today! I did. Oy.
I sure can ramble over a rice salad. Especially when feeling speechless.
You won’t need a recipe for this salad, but more a general formula. My mom and I came up with it years ago, for a baby shower, I think. Sometimes we make it with orzo (small rice-shaped pasta) and sometimes with rice. It would be fine with brown rice, although this time I used white Jasmine rice.
Cook a cup or two of it as you normally would, and cool it completely. Toss it in a bowl with lots of sliced or torn fresh spinach (more than it looks like there is in the photo above), and a small chunk of slivered purple onion, some crumbled feta and the grated zest of a lemon. Add a drizzle of olive oil and the juice of the lemon, and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Adjust quantities of each as you see fit. Enjoy, and keep in the fridge if you need something to dip into.
May 06 2011 | salads and vegetarian | 39 Comments »
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