Archive for the 'leftovers' Category
And carrots.
And as I sat here writing about how we picked up our first CSA box this afternoon (having been away for the first few – they really weren’t this late to start) and how ecstatic the boys were over the bunches of carrots they got to choose (they begged to be allowed to eat their entire bunches for dinner – well hmm, OK) the doorbell rang and Mike came upstairs with a warm slice of thin-crust pizza spread with ricotta, topped with peaches and drizzled with honey. Does one’s property value increase when said property is right next door to that of a chef?
This afternoon it poured rain, but I had promised the boys we’d go to the wading pool. We went anyway, and had the entire place to ourselves. The boys could not believe there was not one other person in the pool – after all, they reasoned, you’re going to be wet anyway – who cares if you’re in the shower and bath at the same time?
Then we dried off (somewhat), grabbed our CSA boxes – just-picked lettuce, chard, carrots, cucumbers, garlic scapes, radishes, peas, pattypan squash and yellow zucchini, broccoli, thin-skinned white and purple potatoes, sweet and green onions (who says nothing grows in Alberta?) and when I got home and fired up a cast iron skillet with oil and garlic and a drained can of chickpeas to sizzle up with the chard, my mom brought home a couple of Croque Monsieurs from L’Epicerie – you can take them home in little paper bags unbaked, then slide them into the oven for 15 minutes yourself while tossing a salad or wilting chard into your chickpeas. It has all the warm and gooey cheesy appeal of a pizza, with far more class. Not that I’ve ever been much concerned about that, but you never know, it could be a selling point.
August 12 2010 | leftovers | 14 Comments »
Sorry – I have more sweets for you. This time it’s cake, because today we managed to pull off our first chocolate dragon. W had a small birthday party – just cousins, aunts, grandmas and grandad and a few friends. He wanted hot dogs and Cheezies. We added mini burgers, peaches, blueberries and a tray of veg (tiny local carrots, radishes and pea pods) with garlic & basil Swiss dressing from Mary and Ernie – all easy stuff and not much in the way of cooking, so there isn’t much to pass on.
As he is currently obsessed with the movie How to Train Your Dragon he requested a dragon cake. Mike baked the layers, and having reviewed a few photos of other homemade dragon cakes for guidance, we went at it with a knife first thing this morning. One cake was cut in half and then put side by side for the body (a tip I took from here), and the tail, head, neck, arms and legs came from the second layer. It was actually much easier than I thought it would be.
One tip: icing does not like to be spread over the sides of cut cakes – we put ours into a large ziploc bag and squeezed it on, then spread it gently, coaxing it into the nooks and crannies. You could do a crumb coat – frost it without worrying about crumbs, then chill or freeze, then add a second layer of icing. (The crumbs being happily trapped in the first coat.) We didn’t have room in our freezer for a tray of ice cubes, let alone an entire dragon.
The spikes on its back are those square chocolate mints (you could use After Eights) cut in half diagonally; its teeth and claws are Mike & Ike’s, and the eyes are mini marshmallows Mike constructed with some sort of little candy wedged inside with the aid of a bamboo skewer. (He too has an Inner Martha.) The little wings were a cheat-yanked from one of his toys. We had to draw the line somewhere.
Chocolate Cake
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp. vanilla
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray two 8 or 9- inch round cake pans or one 9×13- inch pan with non-stick spray.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. In a larger bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer for about half a minute, until it’s pale and creamy. Pour in the sugar and continue to beat for 3-4 minutes, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after you add each one. Scrape down the sides of the bowl whenever it needs it.
Stir the vanilla into the milk. Add about a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir it in by hand or with the electric mixer on low speed, just until it’s combined. Add about half the milk in the same manner, then another third of the flour, the rest of the milk and the rest of the flour, mixing just until the batter is blended.
Divide the batter between the greased cake pans and tap the bottoms a few times on the countertop to remove any air bubbles. To prevent a domed top, spread the top of the batter with a spatula, creating a slight dent in the middle and a raised edge. This compensates for the way a cake tends to rise higher in the middle.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the cakes are golden, the edges are pulling away from the sides of the pan and the tops are springy to the touch. Let them cool for about 10 minutes before running a knife around the edge of the pans and inverting them onto a wire rack. Cool completely before you frost them.
Makes two 8 or 9 inch layers.
August 07 2010 | leftovers | 27 Comments »
Help, I’ve fallen (behind) and I can’t catch up.
I’ve slid a little further than usual this time-I feel like a large dog (perhaps an abnormally huge shar pei?) going at breakneck speed across a linoleum floor, attempting to turn the corner on a dime and instead sliding sideways, jowls flapping, legs scrambling futilely to get a grip and go the other direction but instead being completely ineffective (but nonetheless exhausting) and letting me slam into the wall. It has been fun – mostly – but yikes, I’m tired.
We arrived home from Vancouver late last night, went straight across to say happy birthday to my 20 year old (!) nephew and eat cake, then came home to prep for a taped show I had to do today and set my alarm for 4:30 (!!) to get up and go cover traffic on the morning show. Since leaving work this afternoon it has been all party planning all the time because tomorrow – in approximately 16 hours – is W’s fifth birthday party. We have a chocolate cake baked downstairs with elaborate plans (and specific instructions) to turn it into a dragon that breathes lava balls using only icing and candies. No pressure.
Yes-W turned five on Wednesday. He’s all mature now, and has decided to graduate from chocolate ice cream to far more sophisticated strawberry. Here’s where I’ll pick up where I left off writing in Vancouver… If you get disoriented, lose all sense of time and aren’t sure what I’m talking about, we’ll be right on the same page.
Ready to jump into the DeLorean? Let’s go.
I’ll preface the news of our ultra-fab digs at the Met in downtown Vancouver with a report of our five-hour wait at the ferry terminal yesterday, having consciously planned to beat the long-weekend rush by waiting to leave Tofino until Tuesday (HA) and having, as usual, rushed to get everything packed/cleaned/remade to get out the door in order to make the ferry (did I mention HA?), having almost run out of gas on the windy, shoulderless road to Port Alberni (where there is a Tim’s!) and having arrived in Nanaimo just after noon. Not only did we miss the 12:15, the 12:50 was full and we didn’t make it onto the 3:10 by THREE CARS (was it the Tim’s? The roadside pee in the bushes?) and had to wait on the hot tarmac for the 4:40, which was delayed due to “extreme heavy traffic”. We left Tofino at 9:20 and didn’t get off the ferry until after 7pm. (Actual distance between Tofino and Vancouver: 201 km or 125 miles.)
We amused ourselves in the (HOT) car by playing with PhotoBooth on my laptop. It started innocently enough with the photo up top. Then it deteriorated to this:
By the time we missed the third ferry, we looked something like this:
First world problems, I know. I just wanted to provide ballast to the fact that the pendulum swung over and we are now in a schwanky hotel room – no, suite – at the Met in downtown Vancouver, wearing thick white robes, sleeping in the most divine king-sized bed (aren’t sheets and pillows the true marker of a great hotel? They don’t get any better than this) and this morning we ate eggs Benedict on cornbread with roasted plum tomatoes for breakfast, after an amuse-bouche of teeny pancakes with plum compote and a teeny BELCH – bacon, egg, lettuce and cheese – sandwich.
W ate Fruit Loops naked. He turned five today. We suspected we’d be on the road at some point this week, and so thought we’d do something special, since in recent months he has taken to asking at random if we can just stay in a hotel tonight mom? One with a swimming pool? No – one with two swimming pools – one big one and one small hot one? If he asks this in public I tell him to finish his Perrier and we’ll discuss it in the Jag (which, by the way, this hotel has for anyone who needs a ride to their morning meeting – anyone need to meet for coffee in downtown Vancouver tomorrow?). He discovered he loves hotels last year when we stayed a night in Banff – the same night he discovered he actually isn’t terrified of swimming pools. I thought maybe we’d stay in Vancouver a couple nights and take him to the aquarium and sleep in a hotel with a swimming pool. What better way to ring out the fifth year of your life, and welcome the sixth?
I can feel myself falling asleep at the keyboard again, so to be continued…
August 06 2010 | leftovers | 14 Comments »
If I were to select the contents of a perfect day, the lineup might look like this: an early morning visit to the coffee shop, then Jupiter for a still-warm grainy blueberry and white chocolate muffin almost the size of a small cantaloupe to nibble on as we stroll down the beach. The bulk of the afternoon spent on the beach at Tonquin park running in the waves, digging channels to the ocean in the sand, building castles and dragons, watching bald eagles and finding starfish. (W has a sunburnt plumbers’ butt from bending over to dig and examine things in the sand, exposing a wedge of pale 4 year old flesh between his shirt and swimmers.) I didn’t bring my camera. I attempted a Julie: unplugged sort of afternoon, and tried not to cringe at every missed photo op.
After, a famished late lunch of crispy cod clubs (thick slabs of fresh fish coated in Panko, with crispy bacon, rock shrimp, guacamole, tomato, onion and lettuce, served with fries cut and cooked as we wait at tables fashioned from old ship spools and driftwood) at Wildside Grill. Later, an evening around a beach fire, roasting marshmallows and making real s’mores. Idyllic, no?
My mom has invented a new drink to help wean her off Diet Coke (which she used to wean herself off real Coke): iced green tea with a key lime squeezed in. Unsweetened, because she’s diabetic, but I’d add a drizzle of honey. Because we came back from the Saturday morning Tofino market with a fresh basil plant and a bag of basil, she tossed a couple leaves in the glass too. Here’s how she makes it: brews green tea using 2 teabags, then chills it in the fridge. Pours herself a glass over ice, and adds an entire key lime – those are the little ones, the shape and size of ping pong balls – and she says it’s not the same with different types of tea, nor with plain old green Persian limes. I like the fact that it’s real green tea, not one of those bottled green tea beverages with tea coming in last on the ingredient list after the artificial flavours and preservatives.
At the end of the afternoon when everyone curled up with their books (and Mike with his iPod) I pulled out the laptop and popped in to check on a few of my favourite blogs. A Russian Gratin with Raspberries reeled me in instantly, and seemed the perfect thing to do with the disappointing (pulpy and flavourless but nevertheless brutally expensive) peaches we bought at the Tofino Co-op. I made it with wedged peaches, roasted for ten minutes first to get them softened a little, but they released too much juice and it wound up a beautiful but ultimately soupy, curdled-looking mess.
We picked at it anyway while playing Scrabble, but decided we needed a dessert do-over. I may attempt to follow instructions and use raspberries next time, but I have Big Plans for tomorrow. Hint: it will include plums.
July 25 2010 | leftovers | 9 Comments »
For any of you who may be sick of all the gushing over Tofino already, I apologize in advance. I’ll try to ballast my swooning with some recipes here and there. I’m already dreaming some up.
Yesterday afternoon we rolled into Tofino just in time for fresh crab to come in. We steamed it along with some corn, and ate the rest of a curried brown and wild rice and barley salad with chickpeas I brought along as well. I’m sorry I’m a day behind, but we been on the road for two days and having just arrived and unpacked, I opted to head to the beach rather than sit down at the computer.
We have our drive-to-Tofino itinerary down just as pat as anything – leave early (this time we were ready by 5:30, but had a flat tire before we even left our block), coffee in Golden, a quick break to throw rocks in the river under the bridge in Revelstoke (this time we ate salami and cheese sandwiches and leftover quinoa, black bean and mango salad that I tossed in with a half container of baby spinach, just to use it up).
Then ice cream and a visit with the baby holsteins at D Dutchmen Dairy in Sicamous. In order to satisfy my seemingly insatiable ice cream addiction, you know. (I had butter maple.)
This time, we decided to stop overnight in Chilliwack. (Of all the times I’ve driven through and from Vancouver, and even lived there for a few years, I don’t think I’ve ever actually been into Chilliwack. The boys thought the name was hilarious.) First, we stopped at Bridal Falls:
Then found a hotel that would welcome Lou and needed to find some dinner. Mr Mikes was across the street. For years we joked about Mr Mikes as we drove past billboards advertising it. They have a Mikeburger on the menu. This month, for their 50th anniversary, $1 from every burger goes to charity (the Chilliwack location chose their local childrens’ hospital). We saw it as a sign and went for Mikeburgers. During dinner, as the boys happily coloured their special placemats and drank Shirley Temples (I didn’t think they did such things anymore, but was happy they did, and felt very much like a Real Mom in that booth) the owner came over and proudly told us that their location was in the lead for funds raised, and that the winning location would have their donation matched.
They were delicious burgers, served quickly on chunks of crusty French bread instead of buns, with the option of yam fries. The servers were wonderfully friendly, in the way that makes you notice how just nice – but not in an over-the-top way – they are. It was reasonably priced, good food, great service, and we all left full and happy.
July 24 2010 | leftovers | 9 Comments »
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