Oops, I made cassoulet!

Last Sunday I decided it was time to roast the pork hocks that my dad gave me. He cures them himself, and includes not only the hocks, but also the feet. There's not a lot of meat on these things, but I am content to chew on the slow cooked tendons, and my kids are delighted to have unlimited access to 'skin'.

I suspected I'd have leftovers, and thought about making some sort of a dish with beans and whatever pig parts I had to work with. It turned out to be two feet and virtually no meat, but I decided it would still add some flavour.

I began thinking that I could make a riff on some sort of Cajun dish, like Red Beans and Rice de Guise. I had the recipe in front of me and started assembling similar but not exact ingredients. I didn't have sausage, but I had a wedge of my dad's smoked bacon, basically a hunk of pork belly, salted and smoked. I didn't have fresh herbs like tarragon, but I had salted herbs. I didn't have porcini mushrooms, but I did have dried mixed mushrooms. I found some homemade beef stock in the freezer as well.

For vegetables, I had half a fennel bulb, a tired orange sweet pepper, onions and celery. I snipped some rosemary off one of the plant that lives under a grow light all winter, and grabbed a fresh bay leaf from its neighbour. The beans I had on hand were Romano, sort of in between red and white beans. My initial plan was to chop the bacon, fry it, throw the vegetables into the fat, and then build the bean dish from there.

Looking at my collection of ingredients, I had a flash of inspiration. I realized that I had all the makings for a cassoulet, especially if I added a small container of duck meat that was in the freezer since the last time I cooked a duck, waiting for an opportunity just like this.

Cassoulet, in the recipes I've read, tends to take days to prepare, starting with confit duck legs and linking your own sausage. When I saw my own collection of ingredients, however, I began to wonder if this isn't where the dish began: in a French farmhouse kitchen on a day when the femme had various scraps of cooked and raw meat, not enough for a meal on their own, but combined and mixed with some dried beans, enough for a satisfying dinner.

I pulled out my birthday gift from my husband, the last porcelain enamelled cast iron pan he'll ever buy me, or so he promises. The drawers where I keep my pots can't handle any more weight! The pot is a shallow Dutch oven, perfect for braising, and while my first thought was that I didn't really need it, since I have a good number of cast iron frying pans and a Dutch oven already, I have put it to use several times since he gave it to me.

Instead of cutting up the bacon, I threw it in and simmered it as a pork belly. Between it, the duck and the pigs feet, I'd have a rich sauce for the beans. I sautéed the vegetables, and then added the meats, chopped mushrooms and their soaking broth, and the beef stock. I topped it up with water, and set it to simmer.

It bubbled all afternoon. Since I needed to run out to a meeting at one point, I experimented with putting it in the oven. I realized the beans weren't going to cook that way, since I hadn't even soaked them before throwing them in the broth. I put it back on the stove and left it on low. The results, a few hours later, were a sticky, savoury stew, studded with the occasional bone from the pig feet and duck pieces. I instructed my husband to pick up some French bread on the way home.

To add a bit of green to the meal, I sautéed some kale in garlic, and topped my stew with it. When I ladled it into bowls for my family, I had no expectations that my kids would enjoy it. They're lukewarm on stews most of the time.

Little did I know that the way to their hearts was through their French roots. D started scooping his stew onto his bread, like the ultimate beans on toast. G took a bite and said, "I want more of this." I reminded him that his bowl still had quite a bit of stew in it. He followed his brother's lead, and topped his bread with the mixture as well. He ate it all, and asked for a second helping.

My husband bubbled over with gratitude. "You used the pot I gave you to make cassoulet?? On a weekday?? Where did you even get this duck?!?" I sat across the table, with smug satisfaction, and watched him savour every bite.

The entire experience was completely gratifying. I loved having such beautiful ingredients to work with. I loved having enough experience to look at what I had to work with and see what it could become. I loved that my family enjoyed their dinner so much.

I know that not all of my readers will have access to pigs feet or smoked pork belly, or left over roast duck, and even fewer would have access to them all on the same day. This post isn't about sharing a recipe that you can recreate. It's more about the long term benefits of making scratch cooking and good quality ingredients a priority, because with time and experience, you too will be able to transform a few scraps of meat and leftovers and some tired vegetable into something both comforting and transcendent. Look into your fridge with an attitude of inquiry—you'll be amazed at what you can create.

Yoga Challenge and Cleanse: A New Amazon Adventure

What happens when an obsessive foodie decides to embark on a 30-day yoga challenge and corresponding cleansing diet? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm in the process of finding out.

I have been quiet on the blog front as I got my head around the prospect of 30 days of no dairy, no alcohol, no white flour/rice/sugar, no juice, no grilled/fried things, no red meat, and no coffee (caffeine isn't on the banned list, but with no dairy and no sugar, it may as well be, in my books). Ironically, two days before I was scheduled to start (and timing is tight because I had to sandwich the 30 days between a conference my husband was attending and a conference that I'm attending in May), my parents delivered half a lamb and half a pork, cut and wrapped. Lamb is not technically red meat according to this diet (thank God), so I have managed to sample it in a healthy stew, thanks once again to Mark Bittman's Food Matters. Tahini and Spinach Stew with Lamb was reposted here, thanks to "The Accidental Brainwashed Foodie."

Nine days in, I can honestly say so far so good. The smoothie recipes are all made up of real food, so I get to feed my recipe addiction by making them as well as some other healthy recipes. I can still enjoy some variety in my food, which might get a bit harder when I have to drop down to only vegetables, fruits, quinoa and millet in Week 3. But by then, it will be half over, and I'll be able to tell myself I'm on  the home stretch.

This weekend was a bit surreal, visiting my parents while my brother and sister and our families were all home. This is a time for celebration, since we're not all together very often. We didn't actually get to eat many meals together, since there was a family function on Saturday, which I ended up unable to attend due to sick kids. So I holed up at home, doing yoga and meditating while my kids napped, while everyone else enjoyed their roast beef dinner and celebratory cake.

My dad, however, thanks to the arrival of the aforementioned pork, was in full bacon production. He was curing, frying up slices to test every day, and then spent Sunday morning smoking bacon and pork chops. I confess I wasn't able to avoid tasting it completely. I HAD to sample it, as he relies on our opinions of whether he's got the seasoning quite right.

So Sunday at breakfast, everyone (but me) got to gorge themselves on salt pork, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and toast. I got to enjoy an egg and some tomatoes alongside my smoothie. I didn't find this painful, however. I love food so much that I even enjoy the smells of the food, as well as watching other people enjoy it. G made up for lost time after being ill the day before by finishing off half a plate of the bacon.

The dichotomy of being on a diet while watching my family enjoy one of their favourite pasttimes (eating) got me thinking about the lessons in the diet book I'm supposed to be following, which warn against eating beef or pork, or white bread, or pickles. Dashama (the instructor) also speaks about the energy of food, and the environmental impact of eating meat. She also encourages us to do what's right for our own unique situations.

Let's use our lunch (following shortly on the heels of the bacon feast) as an example. I helped mix up hamburgers from scratch while my mom made buns. My dad grilled the burgers in between checking the progress of his smoker. Lunch consisted of homemade cole slaw, freshly made burgers on fresh homemade (white) buns, store-bought potato salad, and homemade pickles, old white cheddar, sliced on the vine tomatoes, mustard and ketchup as toppings. The beef came from a cow raised on the farm my parents live on, and was shaped and cooked with love, as were the buns and the pickles.

How much does that love count in the 'healthiness' of the food we eat? I don't know if anyone has measured it, but I have long argued to anyone feeling guilty over an indulgence that truly good food, made with love, has its own nourishing qualities that counteract the fats and free radicals. I don't have any science to back that up—call it a 'gut feeling.' Granted, maybe the hamburger feast needn't follow two hours after the bacon feast, but the two meals in themselves were truly nourishing to everyone involved.

So along with my box of hemp protein powder, greens powder, aloe juice, kombucha and kale that made the round trip with me to the farm, I brought back three hunks of freshly smoked side bacon and a dozen or so smoked pork chops. They'll go into the freezer next to my pasture-raised goose from Cool Springs Ranch, half a lamb, half a pig, and a few whole frozen fish, and when I'm done my 30 day challenge, I'll resume my daughterly duty of making room in the freezer for a large portion of the beef currently hanging at the butchershop, waiting to be cut and wrapped. And I won't just be cooking it for my family—you can bet that I'll be eating it.

I know my habits are changing already. Somewhere in the midst of this challenge, I have jumped headlong into the world of fermentation—not the liquor kind, but the probiotic kind. I now have a jar of water kefir on my counter, a kombucha scoby in my broom closet, and buttermilk and sourdough cultures ready to start. My sister-in-law has milk kefir for me when I'm ready. I'm pretty sure fermenting vegetables and more fun adventures are in my future. But so is goose fat, wine (I took great pleasure on Saturday night, post meditation, reviewing the latest catalogue for the wine club I belong to) and coffee with thick farm cream.

I'm really not sure how the outcome of this exercise will look. I know I'll be incorporating some of these practices—maybe all—because they feel really good, and they fit with my philosophy of enjoying wholesome, healthy foods, and my yoga practice will definitely be more entrenched. But I strongly doubt that my definition of 'wholesome' will cease to include cream, butter, beef and pork at the end of these 30 days.

It may not be the healthiest choice by some standards, but I LOVE the taste of fresh-brewed coffee in the morning, with a dash of cinnamon, raw sugar and raw cream. Maybe I won't have it every morning, or maybe I'll make a commitment to taking a month off from it every year, but I really doubt it will go completely. And our focus on food is one of my favourite things about my family. It fills me with joy, and it will continue to fill my belly, too. Although perhaps with a bit more moderation.

Nine days in, my current perspective is that it's ALL good. Maybe I'll learn a little bit more about eating for nutrition rather than for taste, and maybe that will help me lose that extra bit of post-baby weight that's been hanging on for the last couple years. Maybe I'll balance out a rich dinner with wine to match by having a smoothie for lunch the next day. Maybe this new kefir discovery will help me curb my cravings for a San Pellegrino Limonata while watching a movie. Not sure it will do anything for my popcorn cravings, though.

We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

Foodie Confessions; Planning Father's Day Brunch

It must be my status of "lapsed Catholic" that requires me to confess my "sins" (usually only considered sins in my own warped view of reality) to everyone whenever I commit some sort of transgression. Because food is a primary focus, any time I break one of my own self-imposed "rules", I feel the need to shout it to the world.

So yesterday I was planning Father's Day brunch, which I will be hosting for my in-laws. When I asked my husband what he would like me to make, he had two requests: a classic version of the wife-saver, "French Peach Brunch" and, "Meat would be good."

I am also notorious for asking for my husband's input and then ignoring him. I didn't quite ignore him this time, but I did request that instead of using canned peaches in the French Peach Brunch, that I adapt it to use fresh rhubarb. He was okay with that.

I have entirely given in to his meat request. So here's the menu, then the confession:

Homemade Elk Sausage (ground elk meat mixed with an equal amount of ground pork, seasoned with brown sugar and salt and pepper, and formed into patties)
Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps (I have made this a few times before, and it's lovely. It uses fresh tarragon, which is abundant in my herb bed, and I have a plethora of small fresh farm eggs that will work perfectly in twos, and not take too long to set)
Toasted Brioche from Christie's Bakery
Rhubarb Baked French Toast (I'll post the recipe after I work on adapting it)
Fruit Salad
Tea, coffee, juice

I was looking this over, and while it is already pretty full, I felt like it was missing something—something that involves potatoes. I went on line and searched through Epicurious's hash brown recipes, and stumbled upon on of my guiltiest pleasures: hash brown casserole (please note, though, that my family recipe is not the one on Epicurious, but rather this one).

And here is my confession. I am making it for Father's Day brunch. Why? Because I a) I love it, even though I know it is a fat-filled mess of mostly processed food, and I virtually NEVER buy canned soups; b) my guests will be universally appreciative; c) it is a good excuse to feed my occasional trashy food cravings, so that they stay in check.

I know there's nothing really wrong with cooking the occasional hash brown casserole. I just feel guilty, as a fairly militant food snob, giving in to the urge to make a dish that is SO not whole, fresh food. But hey, you can't deny your roots, and every once in a while, a can of cream of mushroom soup or Cheez Whiz (my other guilty pleasure, which my husband has banned from the house, since D was asking for it on his toast in the mornings, and since I no longer have pregnancy cravings as an excuse for buying and consuming it) has to cross the threshold. Now, I will go do my penance by baking bread, cooking beans from scratch and making my kids fresh fruit popsicles.

As an aside, I gave in while in the grocery store checkout line and picked up Canadian Living's Special Cookbook Edition on Summer Entertaining. My first flip through made me think I'd made a mistake, since most items seemed pretty familiar. But I've spent more time with it now, and it has worked my way into my meal plan this week in several ways. Tonight, to go with our grilled elk steak, I am trying out Dilled Potato and Grilled Corn Salad as well as Asparagus and Mixed Greens Salad. There are several more recipes that I'll be trying over the next few weeks, and I will share as I make them.

Happy Father's Day, to all the dads out there. I hope you have an excellent, meat-filled day (if that is your preference, of course).

Product Placement #6: Rozendal Vinegar

I have a new expensive habit, and strangely this one doesn't contain alcohol. I am completely enamoured with Rozendal vinegar, represented here in Saskatchewan by Doug Reichel, owner of Fine Wines Saskatchewan and importer of Rozendal wine. The wine is also excellent, but the vinegar, at $35/500 ml bottle, is even more expensive than the wine! It is also harder to find; here in Saskatoon it is only available at Cava Secreta.

I know many people are of the philosophy that expensive food items are wasted on kids. I am straying further and further from that philosophy all the time, and am constantly rewarded for it. I personally know many adults on whom expensive food items would be even more wasted than on my own children. My kids DO appreciate good food, and are far more likely to enjoy their meals if the food is real, and not what passes for food on most children's menus in restaurants.

Case in point: a recent meal that I made for a girlfriend and her kids, as well as my own family, involved a simple main course of gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches: slices of a round brioche loaf, and a melted mixture of shredded smoked Gouda, broccoli, mayonnaise and sunflower seeds as the filling. Beside that, I served a salad: spring greens, toasted almonds and craisins, simply dressed with a splash of Rozendal vinegar, a splash of olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.

My kids don't normally go for salad very much, so I usually provide raw vegetables as well. There were raw veggies available that day, too, but all the kids asked for more salad, and eventually scraped the bowl clean. You might think they were going for just the craisins, but they weren't. They inhaled the entire thing. I thought to myself, if that vinegar is what inspires kids to eat salad, then it's worth the price tag. On top of that, the vinegar itself is packed with health benefits. So really, there's no reason NOT to serve it. From now on, there will always be a bottle in my cupboard (currently we're enjoying the Green Tea flavour); I'll consider it an investment in my own and my kids' health, and their palates.

Organic Farmers: Hill Your Potatoes!!

I have a pet peeve. I regularly experience organic potatoes that are severely sunburned. I cannot for the life of me figure out why avoiding chemicals prevents organic potato farmers from hilling their potatoes. So I buy organic potatoes to avoid ingesting chemicals, and instead risk poisoning from eating green potatoes.

I grew up on a farm. I have hilled my fair share of potatoes. My mother never harvested a single sunburned potato, of the 200 hills that she regularly planted every year. Now I understand that organic farmers producing potatoes on a large scale are planting more than 200 hills at a time, and that hilling them all might be a challenge, but I am not paying premium prices to get poor quality and potentially toxic produce! If anyone out there knows an organic potato farmer, please pass on my gripe. I too will start seeking them out and making complaints. Grr.

Yes, one can avoid the sunburned portions by peeling them, but I prefer to leave my peels intact, because they help retain nutrients and are full of fiber. When I have to buy potatoes from a store, I want non-sunburned, organic potatoes. Is that too much to ask?

Catering Post-Mortem

Last weekend, I catered a Christmas party and wine tasting with Doug Reichel Wine Marketing. It was the first time I had catered for people who didn't know me at all. I discovered a few things during this adventure, some related to cooking, and others relating to me. 

Apparently (who knew?) there's a lot of ego attached to my cooking. I claim to love cooking for itself alone, and that people enjoying the food that I make is just an added bonus. This is mostly true, but I found myself faced with clients who didn't know what I was capable of, and having to prove myself, which made me a little grumpy. If I were more of a drama queen, I may have shrieked, "Don't you know who I am?!"

But really, who am I to these people? I'm someone they've hired to perform a service, and a fairly lowly service at that. The wine was the focus; the food was a sideline. Once I wrestled with all of this for a few days, I got over myself and decided to treat the whole thing as a learning experience, and a chance to have a good time with Doug, whose wine I love, and whose company I enjoy.

From a catering perspective, I learned the importance of clear communication of expectations. I had to make some items ahead of time, and needed final numbers early. I didn't quite communicate this as clearly as required, and my client went out of town, then replied, FOUR DAYS before the event, that she was expecting 37 people instead of 50. I had said I would charge her per person, but a 25% reduction in numbers, on such short notice, would have eaten into my profits considerably, since I had already made the most labour-intensive items, and had purchased most of the groceries. She was reasonable about it, though, and so we both ended our experience satisfied, she with the product and what she was charged, and me with a reasonable profit (as long as I don't count the hours of list-making, planning, and lying awake trying to think of everything that might possibly go wrong).

The event went over well, and I also learned an important lesson in the midst of it: the art of letting go and not fretting over results that don't meet my high standards. My Bearnaise sauce didn't thicken, because I was paranoid of curdling it. The oven didn't run as hot as mine, so my pastries didn't brown as I would have liked. Those two dishes were the ones that got me the highest praise from the party goers. They could have been better. But I was the only person who knew that.

Here's the menu, for those who are curious, with links to the wines and recipes that I used:

• Destinéa Sauvignon Blanc with Citrus-marinated Seafood Salad (sans black olives)
• Mount Difficulty Chardonnay with Mini Prosciutto-wrapped Chicken Skewers and Béarnaise Sauce (used the recipe for the sauce from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food)
• Melipal Malbec and Traditional Argentinian Empanadas (with this pastry and this filling)
• Diesel Pinotage with Artisan Breads (from Christie's bakery), dipped in olive oil and Rozendal vinegar, served with vintage gouda and South African dryworst and biltong (traditional South African sausage and jerky)
• Torreon de Paredes Reserve Late Harvest dessert wine with blue cheese shortbread topped with fig spread and Late Harvest wine poached pears

My days feel empty, now that I don't have to think about the planning of this event anymore. And that is a relief. Now on to wrapping up Christmas baking (one more item on my scaled-down list!) and then wrapping up Christmas baking (as gifts)!

On Lemon Curd (and how 'complicated' does not always equal 'better')

In 20 minutes, start to finish (at 11:30PM instead of sleeping) I just made a lovely lemon curd. As I was making it, I spent some time reflecting on previous lemon curd efforts, and thought, I'm glad I've now made enough lemon curd in my life to know that simple is best.

There are lemon curd recipes that require double boilers, eggs to be separated, and fancy lemons. In my ongoing "quest for the best," I did once turn a rare discovery of Meyer lemons in Saskatoon into Alice Waters' Meyer Lemon Curd. Alice Waters is a hero of mine, and if she recommends a lemon curd recipe, I'm going to assume it's going to be the best lemon curd I've ever tasted. While this has been the case with other recipes I've made from her Chez Panisse collection, it wasn't so with the lemon curd.

The Meyer lemon curd was very very good, but it wasn't good enough to justify the extra effort of separating eggs, finding uses for the egg whites, and so on. And basically, the recipe calls for milk as well, which seems to only be required to thin the mixture because the egg yolks thicken it too much. The dead-easy, no egg separating version from The Canadian Living Cookbook was just as smooth (in fact, smoother, because it seems to be more forgiving if you let it get too close to boiling, which I often do) and just as delicious, had a pleasing luminous yellow colour, and was perhaps more satisfying because it took less effort.


Sometimes it is worth the effort to undertake a fussy recipe. I often do so and will again. But there are so many culinary challenges out there that are truly difficult; so why make things any harder than they need to be? This, I confess, is one of the reasons I often run out of patience with Martha Stewart recipes. I usually cut out half of the steps and the results are still just as good as if I'd spent the extra hour and followed the directions exactly.


So here is my favourite Lemon Curd recipe. Rest assured I have done the research for you. No need to look elsewhere, or get any more fussy than this:


(from The Canadian Living Cookbook)
3 eggs, beaten
1 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. lemon juice
1 T. grated lemon rind
1/4 c. butter

In a small, very heavy saucepan, combine all ingredients. Cook at just below a boil, stirring almost constantly, until thick enough to thickly coat a spoon (I find the thickening process to happen almost instantly), about 15 minutes. The mixture will thicken as it cools. Store in covered jar in refrigerator.

Spread this on toast or scones, mix half and half with whipped cream to fill tart shells, scoop out of the jar with your finger, or use in any recipe that calls for lemon curd. Mine is an ingredient in my husband's birthday cake. More on that tomorrow.

It's All About Balance (Right?)

This week's events are a good example of how even the best-laid plans often can't hold up to life with small children.

Here's how things unfolded:

My husband has been out of town. My original plan was to plan a simple meal the first night he was away, and then live on leftovers the second night. First, he didn't leave until after dinner the first night, so my leftover quantities were diminished (I was glad to have him there otherwise, don't get me wrong). He has also started packing a lunch, so my leftovers weren't quite as plentiful as I'd hoped.

This meant I needed to actually cook something on the second night I was on my own. That's fine, I just pulled out a fillet of lake trout, since the boys both love fish. Fish and oven fries would fit the bill nicely.

However. Right when I was supposed to be starting dinner, D decided to check out my new Pampered Chef apple wedger, and promptly sliced his thumb open to the point where he needed stitches. I called my mother-in-law for back-up, so I didn't have to deal with both baby G and D in the waiting room and while D needed to be held down for his needle. We waited about an hour, from 5:30-6:30, and after the stitches (two), we were out of there at 7:15. I had warded off hunger with a few snacks, but we still needed to eat. I decided to do the quickest option, and picked up Vern's pizza by the slice. Truly not my favourite pizza, but it filled a void.

Fish is still in the fridge, ready to be cooked tonight.

Because of this series of fortunate events, I was also low on lunch items for my sitter and the kids. Due to my weakened emotional and mental state after yesterday's challenges, I caved and pulled out a package of hot dogs.

Now, this may not be a big deal for many people. But let me provide some context. When I left home and moved out on my own, when I was 17, I promised myself I would never buy hot dogs. Smokies and Kraft Dinner were okay, but I drew the line at wieners. I wanted to make sure I cooked and ate well and never gave in to the easy fix. This has truly served me well, gave me a great start on my life as a foodie, and I honestly never did buy hot dogs for a quick, easy meal.

In the past 20 years since I left home, I can count on one hand the number of times I purchased a package of hot dogs. And then, only because we were having a wiener roast. Even for wiener roasts, I usually opt for something more recognizable as meat, like sausage.

Case in point, the hot dogs in my freezer were left over from G's birthday cook-out, and they didn't get used because everyone chose the smokies I brought instead.

But there they were, along with a can of beans, and because they were there, I gave in to it. Gave Grandpa the lunch plan instructions.

And promptly headed out the door to work at Caffe Sola, where I enjoyed delicious tomato soup and a fig chevre tart for lunch. I'm a hypocrite, I know. But only today. And I feel compelled to confess. That's something, isn't it?

I'm not sure it makes up for today's transgressions, but I did feed my boys hot 12-grain cereal for breakfast, and then turned the leftovers into cookies. I always feel guilty when I have leftover porridge, because it's so good for you, and I hate waste in general. I made oatmeal bread with leftover oatmeal recently, and it was wonderful. So why not cookies?

I haven't perfected the recipe yet, but here's what I did:

2 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 c. baking soda
1 t. salt
1 c. sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
2/3 c. butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. leftover multigrain porridge
1/2 c. raisins

Mix together dry ingredients, mix in butter and eggs until creamy (2 minutes or so) and the stir in porridge and raisins.

These turned out to be kind of cakey, sort of a cross between hermits and toothy snickerdoodles. I will make them again, and when I do, I will use brown sugar instead of white, use half whole wheat and half white flour, and a 1/2 t. vanilla. They were good enough for me to eat three of them while still warm...as well as the leftover hot dog. With mustard. It's not like I get that chance every day.

Don't Mess with the Amazon's Morning Ritual

I've never really thought of myself as a creature of habit. There once was a time when my husband, then my boyfriend, would mourn the meal we just ate, because he thought it was delicious, but he knew he would never have it again. I was known for making a recipe only once, and then moving on to the next exciting possibility. I was always looking for the 'best' recipe. The best oatmeal cookies, the best way to cook salmon, the best steak marinade, the best cake.... I was also on the lookout for the 'best' ingredients: the best butter, the best coffee, and so on.

The challenge with constantly searching for the 'best' (and of course 'best' is subjective according to my own tastes, and may not be everyone's favourite or anyone else's definition of 'best') is that eventually you find it, and then everything beyond that pales in comparison. And while I love finding the pinnacle of whatever I am searching for at the time, the fact remains that from then on, unless I keep using/eating/cooking that pinnacle, I will always be disappointed.

This was brought home to me in a painful way this morning when I discovered we were out of sugar for my coffee. Over the past several years I have narrowed my requirements for coffee. After a couple of years as a graduate student where I was so addicted to coffee that I would drink a pot and then fall asleep on the couch at 10am rather than do my required reading, I entered the office environment. After a couple of years in an office with typically awful coffee, I weaned myself off it completely in favour of tea, because I couldn't bring myself to drink bad coffee. At that point, I only drank coffee I enjoyed, mostly on weekends, or purchased espresso drinks from local coffee shops.

More recently, I have honed my requirements even more. We drink a couple of blends, depending on where we can get to when we're out of coffee. I'm quite pleased with Kicking Horse coffee, and prefer the Kootenay Crossing blend. It is bold and full bodied, but not at all bitter or acidic. We also pick up a specific half and half blend of fair trade organic Sumatran/Guatemalan blend from McQuarrie's Tea and Coffee Merchants, whenever we're on Broadway. And I brew it strong. Then I add Sucanat, organic raw sugar cane, which, with the molasses still intact, offers a nice full, round, mellow sweetness that makes normal white sugar taste flat in comparison. I follow that with a large teaspoonful of the uber-rich farm cream that we have sourced and a sprinkling of cinnamon.

When we realized we were out of Sucanat, the coffee had already been poured. My husband looked at me with something akin to fear behind his eyes, and he asked, speaking rather quickly, "We'reoutofSucanatwhatareyougoingtouseinstead,honey?" (the 'honey' was referring to sweetener, not a pet name). I opted for brown sugar, and didn't freak out as much as hubbie had feared, thinking that the brown sugar would be too similar to Sucanat for me to notice the difference. Well, I was wrong. The coffee was sub-par because the sweetness was different, and I was left not only disappointed in my morning cuppa, but also wondering how/when I had become so set in my ways.

The Cons of Whole Food Eating

There are very few drawbacks to eating whole, fresh food. Daily, I am grateful for having access to fresh food and for making the time to prepare it. Last night, however, I suffered (a little) by my lifestyle choice.

We were away on the weekend, and came back home with a box full of fresh garden produce from my parents' place. Between that and our already full fridge, garden and freezer, there was no need to go shopping for groceries.

Or so I thought.

In an effort to stop spending money on lunches out, my hubby has started making sandwiches. This has put a sudden strain on our dwindling bread supplies (I usually buy about five loaves of Christies' multigrain bread at a time and freeze it). I came home at 10PM, starving, after a night of juggling a birthday party, volleyball practice and my preschool AGM to discover that after hubby finished making his lunch for the next day, we had one slice of bread remaining and virtually no milk in the fridge.

I had to find something to eat without taxing our limited options for breakfast food—not enough milk for cereal, not enough bread for toast, and so on.

"What can I eat?" I said, half to myself.
"Chips?" offered hubby.

While that may tempt me at times, I really needed something with substance, and there was nothing to eat that didn't require bread to put it on (salami, tomatoes, cheese...would have all made a great sandwich...but no bread). I didn't want to make soup at 10PM, and I wanted more than fruit. I needed protein!

My 10PM snack ended up being a can of sardines in tomato sauce on soda crackers, followed by a nectarine and a bit of yogurt. Probably a healthier snack than my usual toast and peanut butter or a bowl of cereal, after all, but for a short while, I was cursing my whole food lifestyle and wishing I had...I don't even know...something salty and satisfying that I could throw in the microwave.

Except we don't even own a microwave.

Breakfast solutions ended up being pretty satisfying after all—I whipped up our favourite batch of banana pancakes, although that didn't happen quite fast enough to ward off crazy behaviour in my two boys. Hungry kids in the morning are hard to manoeuvre around when they're fighting, screaming, and crying.

But that's all behind me now. We're now restocked with bread and milk, as well as all the fixings I need to make a sweet dinner party tomorrow night for my good friend the interior designer who consulted with us on our kitchen finishes. She hasn't seen the final results, which as of yesterday are now 100% complete. Photos to come, after I pick up the mess of toys, shoes and volleyball gear that are currently scattered everywhere.

The Onion Tell

We're STILL not back in our house. The renovation is dragging on. I am back in the city though, back in the land of wi-fi, well-stocked groceries and within driving distance of my cookbooks! We're staying with my brother-in-law for the next few nights. Sorting through his bachelorific kitchen to see what I have to work with, I remembered my Onion Theory, which has been percolating in the back of my mind for some time.

The lowly onion is a good baseline indicator of foodiness in a household. I find I am shocked by people who don't keep onions on hand at all times. Virtually any dish I make begins with an onion. I panic if I get down to two or fewer in my pantry. If you can't find an onion at someone's house, there's a very good chance they cook from a package most of of the time. 

Unless of course you are my unfortunate cousin who is deathly allergic to onions. They cook from fresh, but have had to adapt all of their recipes to be onion-free. I can't imagine that, any more than I can imagine the plight of the woman I once met who developed a deathly allergy to garlic during her pregnancy. The horror!

I'm curious, readers—are there indicators, like the onion, that you have noticed? What can you not live without that other non-foodies can?

P.S. What is complete in our kitchen looks absolutely amazing. Can't wait to get in and get to work!

Gratifood (or would that be Fooditude?)

Making supper tonight turned out to be an exercise in gratitude. It seemed that every step of the process made me aware of something else to be grateful for:

I am grateful to the foodie friend who introduced me to the cookbook (Whitewater Cooks at Home) that contained the recipe.
I am grateful that I splurged on the Kitchenaid food processor that made short work of grating 2 lbs. of yams, and then chopped ginger, garlic, chickpeas and nuts, in seconds.
I am grateful for sticking with my concept of 'make extra and freeze', since without that practice, I would have been without chickpeas. I thought I had tons of cans of them, but apparently not. My saving grace was a frozen container of chickpeas that I had set aside the last time I cooked them from scratch.
I am grateful for a recipe that lets me use up all the little tiny bags of remnant nuts that plague the bottom of my freezer.
I am grateful to the guy from my yoga class who offered to shovel my driveway last week; mostly because he shoveled my driveway, but also because his good deed gave me an excuse to give food to someone, and giving food to people is one of my very favourite things.
I am grateful to the friend who gifted me with green tomato pickles, because they were the perfect condiment for my yummy yam burger.

And of course this is on top of all the usual things to be grateful for, like a healthy family, a roof over my head, work that I love, living where I want to live, and so on. It was just a good day to be thankful.

Meal Retrospective

This last week started off hectically thanks to our late arrival home on Sunday night. It's hard to organize a meal plan with no time before the work week to plan or shop. The good news is, on the road trip home, we planned our next year of major holidays. So all was not lost.

I managed to keep some tasty meals on the table with a quick stop at Dad's Organic Market on Wednesday and keeping in mind my standard meal checklist, namely:
• include vegetarian meals
• make at least one meal include beans

I have a new checklist item now as well, since Baby G just celebrated his six-month birthday:
• include ingredients that the baby can eat.

This week, that special ingredient was sweet potatoes.

Tuesday's veggie meal was also the bean meal: Black Beans with Roasted Peppers from The Occasional Vegetarian (a lovely cookbook that I haven't used in a while, but with this meal, may experience a bit of a renaissance in my kitchen), brown rice, and a side dish of cabbage, carrots and sauerkraut, from the same book. I was reminded again by this meal that black beans and rice, no matter how they are prepared, create an amazingly satisfying dinner.

Wednesday, I was aiming for that sweet potato hit, so I made for the second or third time Pork Chops with Spiced Sweet Potatoes and Apples. Simple and delicious, and matched nicely with our leftover cabbage side dish.

Thursday, I was heading out for a meeting around dinner time, so I gathered up some ingredients that needed using (beef stock, mushrooms and sour cream), added ground beef, and made a very simple slow-cooker version of meatballs stroganoff. 'The boys' enjoyed it with perogies and steamed beans and corn.

Friday night, while D was spending time with his uncle, we took advantage of having only one kid with us and went out for a casual dinner at Mogul Divaan, which was absolutely fantastic. In fact, my hubbie compared it to Taj Mahal, which is high praise. Especially for a fraction of the price. More on that when I return to Planet S's dining column...

Saturday, we discovered a new easy, cheap, satisfying dinner, loved by D: Bulk Cheese Warehouse fresh pasta and housemade sauce. We picked up a generous portion of linguini, more than enough for the three of us, plus a container of creamy clam sauce (although that was just one of several options). The deal is that you get the weight of the sauce in free pasta. So the entire meal (well, not including the bread, Leslie Stowe crackers, and several kinds of cheese that I stocked up on at the same time) cost around $6. And D inhaled it. Noodles, you know. They're the way to that kid's heart.

This morning, we hosted my brother and sister-in-law for brunch, and I served a long-standing favourite, Ham and Sweet Potato Hash with Fried Eggs, sliced tomatoes, and a new favourite, cherry chocolate scones from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking cookbook. I found an adaptation of the recipe here, the only change I made was choosing 2 c. barley flour instead of the whole wheat pastry flour, which was an option in the original recipe. The scones were D's somewhat questionable choice for an on-going snack all day long. I don't know how many he ate all together, but it was more than a couple. Do the whole grains and dried fruit make up for the shots of chocolate? I tell myself, yes.

The week turned out pretty well, food-wise, but I plan to plan more for the coming week. Weekday dinner party, coming up!

Kids and Road Trips

We have been trying to work out survival techniques for road trips with two kids. So far, we have only traveled for three hours at a time, mostly because we haven't needed to travel farther, but also because Baby G HATES the car seat. He's getting better, though, so there's hope.

This last trip, the timing worked out that we were traveling over the supper hour. We haggled over potential stops in Humboldt, the half-way point. We agreed on the way there to stop at Johnny's Bistro, one of the nicer restaurants in town. They were really busy, which resulted in slow service (a disaster with two small kids), so I entertained Baby G while my husband ran around after D. That stop cost us one sippy cup (left behind) and an extra two hours of total travel time, which meant we arrived at our destination at 10:30 pm, with two exhausted kids. The meal, hamburgers which included overly-charred pre-formed burger patties, wasn't really worth it.

On the way back, we were looking at arriving in Humboldt at the supper hour again. With some degree of self-loathing, I complained that I didn't really want to have to waste time on a sit-down meal (before kids, these words NEVER used to come out of my mouth), since we were already going to be getting home late. I suggested, again, with that same level of self-loathing that we opt for a buffet meal, so that there was no wait-time for service. Unfortunately, the only buffet that we knew of in Humboldt was at the KFC/Pizza Hut Express.

This story has a somewhat happy ending. We agreed that if D didn't wake up, we would just keep on driving and rely on the currant cookies we had with us to keep him happy for the extra hour it would take to get back to Saskatoon. D stayed asleep through a quick nursing pit stop with Baby G, so we didn't have to subject ourselves to the buffet (which I'm sure I would have guiltily enjoyed, and paid the digestive price later). D wasn't even really hungry when he woke up 20 minutes later, and was distracted by Baby G's screams of protest that he had been in his carseat long enough, even though we still had 40 minutes of driving to go.

To solve the supper dilemma, we called ahead to the Mandarin Restaurant (our favourite dinner saviour, and one of the few good restaurants open on Sunday) to order pickup. Their phone number is programmed into our cell phone for just such an event. That plan didn't quite work out smoothly, since we arrived to discover that restaurant was also busy, and our order wasn't ready. We decided to take the kids home and get them settled in, and my husband would go back for the food. We didn't eat until 8:30, but at least the food was healthier than it would have been at the KFC buffet. And we have leftovers for lunches. Hopefully today, we will get our schedule back to normal.

Zen and the Art of Following a Recipe

Last night I made Epicurious' version of chop suey, as per my meal plan. It seems a bit finicky, as it calls for a long list of vegetables, and instructs you to cook each one separately, one at a time, in your wok. I have made the recipe before when I was feeling more pressed for time and made an executive decision to combine the veggies into three groups--the ones that take a little longer to cook, like celery, onions and the bok choy ribs, and the ones that cook faster, i.e., green peppers, bok choy leaves and snow peas, and then the instant cook ones at the last minute—bean sprouts, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots.

Made that way, it was good enough to make again, I certainly wouldn't advise against going that route if you're feeling rushed. But this time I had more physical space and the time available, thanks to the boys both having a long nap at the same time. I decided to follow the recipe exactly, to see if it made a difference.

What I discovered is that the real difference between the two preparation methods lay in the cooking experience, rather than the eating experience. Standing over a hot wok and cooking one vegetable at a time felt somewhat meditative. Each vegetable has its own way of cooking (becoming translucent for onions, for example, or turning bright green in the case of the snow peas and green peppers), and spending time on each one gave me an opportunity to observe and think about the properties of each—the colour, the shape, how it cooked, and how it smelled. Each vegetable released its own particular aroma as it cooked.  I finished the dish feeling more reflective about my meal—and the art of cooking it—than when I'd started.

Did it make a difference to the flavour of the dish? Probably not a noticeable one. My family enjoyed it as much this time as they did the last time. But having undergone the cooking process, it felt more meaningful to me when I sat down to it. A luxurious experience to have in an otherwise hectic and distracting life.

The Winter Shopping Dilemma

I always dread shopping for food in the winter. Winter in Canada is when the fruits and vegetables start coming from farther and farther away, and I feel acutely the food miles that I am accumulating. And then there are the tough decisions about how much fresh food to buy for my family in spite of the distance it may have traveled. And then there's the local vs. organic dilemma.

After struggling with all of this for several years, I have come up with the following list of rules that help me make those decisions:
• Local AND organic if possible
• If local is available (meaning, during the winter, grown somewhere in Canada), choose over organics grown in the U.S. or farther afield
• Opt for frozen foods if necessary (a good way to keep Canadian grown peas, beans, and berries in your diet)
• Say adios to certain foods til spring--I don't buy non-organic grapes for example. Too many pesticides on a soft-skinned and therefore absorbant fruit. Not to mention that during the winter months they come from super-far-off places like Chile and South Africa.

It's a good thing I like root vegetables. In the meantime, I'll grit my teeth at the grocery store and take solace in seed catalogues. Next summer I'll make up for it by growing my own veggies.

Good luck with your own shopping adventures! I'd love to hear other readers' own strategies for keeping up variety while keeping down food miles during winter months.