upping the ante

There’s some wonderful stuff going on in the blogosphere right now in the context of making a career of one’s creativity. decor8 Holly, Creative Thursday Marisa & Design for Mankind Erin have undertaken the rather daunting task of mentoring the masses in laying out their thoughts, experiences, methods & processes for finding their respective niches in this crazy, virtual world – an endeavor near and dear to my heart (for reasons beyond the scope of this post) and well worth paying attention to by anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit. I’ve just listened to Marisa’s inspired podcast on the topic and think the woman may be as fickle and nuts as I am when it comes to taking the road less traveled, but more than that I admire her bravery (and that of the others as well) in laying her story out with honesty and conviction for the rest of us to learn from. Brilliant.

bloody ‘ell

Can you see it? I can see it. It’s like a big zit on the end of a nose just itching to be popped – except it’s actually miscounted stitches on what will eventually be a smocked top. More than that it’s 3 rows of stitching which need to be ripped out. On top of that my bra is chafing and the cute, blonde-haired, leather-clad boy who walks by every day has cut his gorgeous long locks. I think I need a glass of wine.

serious comfort foods

Ace Bakery’s white baguette, double creme brie & ginger marmalade = heaven.

they grow up so fast

So the sprogs have decided to try their hand at some of the cooking responsibilities around here. It works out well as far as scheduling goes; every Wednesday one of them visits their father & the other stays home & vice versa. Reigning them in as far as scope goes is another story – they want to create meals off the cuff like the adults do. Which is fair, but not necessarily conducive to the sense of accomplishment I feel they should have in taking on such responsibilities. It’s taken a little negotiation but I’ve talked them into simpler meals that they know go over well for their first few attempts.

Last night was the daughter’s night home & this is what she decided to create:

A basic sandwich with a little oomph. I often make this with leftover roast beef but this week we had leftover turkey. The focaccia is homemade by the daughter (I did proof the yeast before she got home in the interest of timing but she did everything else,) the veggies she roasted on her own & she also put together the horseradish mayo. The only times I intervened were to prompt her to get some of her prep work done at certain junctures (like while the dough was rising) rather than scrambling to time everything in the last few minutes before serving & to give little lessons on tools usage (such as providing one’s self the most stable surfaces whilst cutting the vegetables & the bread) & effective clean-up-while-you-work strategies.

It’s been an interesting exercise for all of us. I get to see just how much they’ve picked up through observing us in the kitchen (& was very impressed that the daughter remembered to brush the bread with a little olive oil halfway through cooking & asked questions when she found herself doing things automatically without knowing why she was doing them – not bad for a 10 year old, eh?) & relinquish the kitchen control stick to their capable hands. They get to feel like they’ve got some say in the way we eat, get out of table setting duty & get their creations posted on the internet.

So far we’re onto a winner with this, me thinks.

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ick

So I burnt a pot of yams tonight. We won’t get into how it happened but suffice it to say that it did and here are the results:

Looks like a lot of hard work, doesn’t it? Well…I happen to know a secret; I just toss the contents of a can like this:

…into the afflicted pot. Simmer for about 30 minutes and end up with this:

…and a much lower elbow-grease quotient.

Non-burnt recipes to come.

On kids and food (a.k.a: a largely anecdotal and rather long-winded missive)

I’m often asked how I avoided the usual kid-pickiness when it comes to food that other parents face and the fact of the matter is that I didn’t My kids have been through picky phase after picky phase for as long as I’ve known them. One day they like tuna on crackers and the next they don’t. I guess I’ve always seen it as a fact of life and part of being a kid…but something of a challenge nonetheless.

I remember vehemently refusing tomato sauce on my pasta for over 10 years unless it was Zia Louisa’s (who preserved a very basic Napolitano containing very little beyond tomatoes and garlic every after harvest.) It was my first political protest (for reasons beyond the scope of this blog) and I did it simply to irritate my step-father who was more than happy to impart his sauce-making secrets in a subversive attempt to bring me to the saucy side. Despite that, I was more than happy to try just about everything under the sun except frog’s legs (having lived across the road from a river through my formative years helped me develop a certain appreciation for amphibians and reptiles though having beef-farming grandparents didn’t sway me from eating cows, though it did make me more discerning in terms of what cow tastes like – having grown up on pasture-raised beef and wild game my dad brought home had me realising quickly that the stuff sold at grocery stores rather drastically lacked in flavour and substance) and brussel sprouts (I just don’t like those nasty little cabbages, ‘kay?)

So yes, at the tender age of 32 I too am a picky eater to a certain extent and really expect no less from my loin fruits and I still have no easy answer to the question with which I began this post. That said, I strive to maintain realistic expectations when it comes to foodstuffs. When I was about 14 my mum came home one day and announced that we were going to eat a strictly vegetarian (‘strictly’ in the loosest sense of the word as fish, eggs, chicken and dairy were permitted) diet from there on out. I embraced that at first (save every other weekend whilst visiting my hunter of a father) but quickly became disenchanted with the whole affair when meals became unimaginative and uninspired. Within 2 weeks I was reading Diet for a Small Planet and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and learning about ingredients beyond leafy greens and tofu…and meat and potatoes.

I believe that experience, more than any other, introduced me to the concept of varied eating and made me aware of how it would benefit myself and how it impacts the rest of the world. Plus I had parents willing to openly discuss their politics on such matters with myself…generally in contrast with each other, but without judgement. Yeah, that’s pretty effin’ cool.

But I digress.

Point being, I had a pretty wonderfully set stage for my own parenthood when it came to food and politics. Then came my in-laws, who (bless ’em) would openly argue such things but were also completely committed to a certain level of self-sufficiency through maintaining a massive vegetable garden every year and who, despite our differences, imparted a wealth of knowledge to myself in assisting me in doing the same and, in so doing, shaped my children’s appetites.

What all of that boils down to, really, is involvement, variety and discussion. About a month ago the daughter came home and demanded we eat one vegetarian meal a week in order to make a healthier impact on the environment. Pointing out to her that we already did that (breakfasts and lunches are almost always vegetarian and vegetarian suppers in our house happen at least 4 out of 7 nights a week) lead to a discussion on how we could do it better. The sprogs assist in creating meals (they know the secret to fluffy yorkshire pudding) and contribute to grocery lists and are good for half a clue toward the cost of keeping food in our collective bellies. They know the rule is, no matter what the context, they have to try at least two bites of everything on their plate. That said, they’re absolutely allowed to dislike anything and everything (hey, I still don’t cook Brussels sprouts) but it’s their responsibility to come up with a comparably healthy alternative to whatever they’re rejecting. They’ve been responsible for creating their own (healthy) lunches since kindergarten (I’m so mean) and to do it according to the Canada Food Guide. They have free reign over fruits and vegetables as snacks but must ask first for anything else.

I don’t believe any of this is too much different than what’s happening in most Canadian households but if tossing around ideas helps then I’m happy to put my thoughts and methodologies out there.

Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen are pretty much a staple this time of the year but seem to come in so many different forms and fashions, I even have two different favourite recipes for them – one very much like gingerbread and another which is more of a cake. What they have in common is an abundance of spices and chocolate. It’s the only other chocolatey treat I make this time of the year and I can handle eating about two then get overwhelmed with the richness.

What you need:

1 cup soft (room temperature) butter

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp each ground cinnamon, mace, nutmeg and cardamom

1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 tbsp butter or margarine

Cream the butter, sugar eggs and vanilla together. A handmixer is good for that part but becomes redundant on the next step, which is adding the flour. At this point the dough tends to get too sticky and thick for a hand blender, so if you’ve dough hooks and a stand mixer then this is a good time for that, if not you’re relegated to wooden spoon land and over-developed dominant arm triceps like the rest of us. After the flour has been thoroughly blended in add the rest of the ingredients and blend until it all becomes a mad blended thing. Chill for two hours.

On a very well-floured surface roll the dough out to ¼ inch and cut into whatever shapes your little hearts desire. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for about 8 minutes at 350 degrees.

After the cookies have cooled they can be ‘iced’. In our house this doesn’t look like icing as much as it looks like Jackson Pollock took over the kitchen. Cookies get dunked, drizzled over, tossed and even smeared. In order to do this the chips and the butter or margarine need to be melted together in a double boiler and kept warm over high heat through the process. Once the chocolate has reached a liquid state all of the above verbs may be acted out upon our spicy little bundles of joy.

It’s a blizzard!

And that is a bowlful of what will be whiskey balls in the not-too distant future.

What else should one do on a blizzardy day?

I don’t bake

I really don’t. Betty Crocker I am not. I don’t do cookies. I’m a complete failure with pastries. I cooked one chocolate cake from scratch ever and since then everyone has had store-bought cakes (albeit, really good ones like the lovely caramel pecan ones from the lovely little bakery in East City) or …well…Betty Crocker boxed things for their birthdays. I do not bake. Yet yesterday I found myself pilfering all of the filberts, almonds, dried cranberries and cardamom pods I could from the closest bulk food store. Why? Because the holidays are coming up and nothing gets me in the holiday spirit (because the onslaught of Christmas tunes certainly doesn’t do it…no no, I go out safely armed with my iPod and some Aimee Mann) more than the scents imbued through cookies and cakes emanating from my oven…and then giving all of those goodies away to people who obviously need to pack on a few pounds.

I daresay my next few posts will be an inundation of baked goods. But it won’t happen again. Because I don’t bake.