Super greeky shower

Photo courtesy of Cris

I'm going to be an aunt! A real one, not the kind where your friends start to have kids and they have to call you "auntie." My sister, Kandice, is having a baby boy within the next week.

Last month, we (two of my sister's friends and I) threw her a big baby shower -- and I mean big. I've never seen a baby shower of this size, but apparently it's a common occurrence amongst her friends in Ottawa.

She wanted a toga-themed tea party. We thought: togas? Let's do Greek food!

Among other great foods, some of my favourite concoctions were mini pork souvlaki skewers, one-bite Greek salad and (my personal favourite) Greek cupcakes.

The mini pork skewers were marinated in some Greek spices (mine comes from Victorian Epicure) and then grilled on my parents luxury grill. A great way to present skewers (of any kind) is to cut a big head of cabbage in half, cover in tin foil, and then stab the skewers in whatever arrangement you so desire.

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One-bite Greek salad is a slice of cucumber topped with a slice of cherry tomato, topped with a cube of feta cheese. Genius! I have my moments.

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And now the cupcakes. What's that, Marigold? "There's no such thing as a Greek cupcake!" Yes, that is correct. But I wanted to bake cupcakes, and wanted to incorporate the Greek theme, so my genius husband (we make quite the pair) suggested icing them with Greek letters. Out came my memories of math class and I iced all the cupcakes with Greek letters that had once crossed my path in my four years of Engineering lectures. See them? Lambda, omega, phi, mu, gamma, rho, alpha, pi... As expected, I used one of Ina's recipes. Perfect Greek cupcakes!!! Happy greeky shower, Kandice!

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Quiche Lorraine

Does anyone know someone named Lorraine? I don't. So let's just call it quiche-Kelly.

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Our CSA box came with a dozen fresh, organic chicken eggs. A week after we used them for our quiche-kelly we realized we could have made eggnog. Darn it. Don't tell quiche-kelly, it might hurt her feelings.

I made my usual pie crust from Ina. Look at all those butter bits!

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Then I decided to blind bake it. I just learned that term. I'm not sure why it's called blind baking, but it's just a confusing way of saying to prebake the crust. My friend Jenn asked me if she should prebake her crust. I said no. I had only made quiche once before and I made mini quiches. I did not prebake and they were perfectly crispy. I should have done more research before giving my friend advice. I decided to blind bake this crust. Not sure if it made a difference. I guess I'll have to try again sometime without blind baking. But if I get another dozen eggs in our CSA box, I'm making eggnog. So who knows if I'll ever find out.

Boy that was a ramble. I digress. (Wait, one more thing: did you know that putting the fork holes in the pie crust is called "docking"? Okay. *Now* I digress.)

I did not follow any recipe. I do that sometimes.

I scrambled up 4 eggs. Added some salt and pepper. Started pouring in heavy cream. Stopped when my love handles jiggled at me. I think I put about half the 250mL carton in. Chopped up some cilantro. (Cilantro?! Why cilantro? That's what came in the CSA box.) Added some thai seasoning since there was cilantro in it. (My premixed Thai seasoning comes from Victorian Epicure.) Then I felt like I could squeeze in another egg, so I added a 5th. And then maybe a dash more cream.

I cooked up some sliced bacon, added some red peppers for colour (since it came in the CSA box) and then sprinkled it in the prebaked pie crust. Sprinkled some grated Toscana cheese (also from the CSA box) and then poured the egg mixture in. Said to myself "darn it. i could have squeezed in another egg. oh well" and then baked it for ... i dunno... 35 mins in a 375 degree oven?

Who needs a recipe? [cue Micheal Smith's cheesy music ".... you can do it, too..."]

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Flight of the Concord (Jam)

I went to pick up our second CSA box today. Not as exciting (no alien shaped things) but still full of delicious local foods. It made me realize how far behind I was in my blogging about the last CSA box. Without further adieu:

From Food

Concord grapes are my least favourite grapes. They are my friend Paula's favourite. That happens a lot. She likes the outside crust of bread, I like the inside. She likes the tips of the asparagus, I like the bottoms. She likes the melty outside icecream of the breyer's container, I like the cold, firm inside. She likes smushy concord grapes, I like grapes that are crunchy and not squidgy in the least.

So it was an absolute relief when Dustin suggested making a jam out of the grapes.

I googled and googled for a recipe, but I kept reading about this ridiculous "jelly cloth" that I needed to use to drain the liquid. I assume it was like a cheese cloth. Which I did not have. And didn't they always tell you that the nutrients were packed in the skin?

So I finally found this recipe from epicurious.com. No jelly cloth. But it calls for a food mill. Which I owned (thanks mom) but after I used it, I decided that it didn't really do anything.

I also didn't really skim the surface. Lazy, I know. But I needed every short cut I could get, because the first step was squishing every single grape between our fingers and separating the grape guts from the skins. Dustin helped. We bonded. And squished.

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Here are my revised instructions:

1. Squish 2lbs of concord grapes with your fingers and separate the skins and the guts. (Yes, only 2lbs. Who has more than 2lbs of grapes?! Okay, if you do, then multiply the recipe.)

2. Food process the skins with 1/2 cup of sugar.

3. Add the guts and the skins to a heavy pot. Add another cup or cup and a half of sugar and the juice of a lemon. Or a half lemon. Or grapefruit. Whatever you have lying around. (I may have added some orange liqueur as well. Ina does in her strawberry jam recipe. I want to be like Ina.)

4. Boil it for a really long time. Maybe an hour? Stir it every so often. When it looks kinda thick, it's done! You can test it by dropping a blob onto a plate, letting it cool and seeing if it's thick enough for your liking.

Although concord grapes (juice, jam, or eau de toilette) always reminds me of church communion, the end product was still delicious. We made two small jars of jam with that basket of grapes. Those grapes were toast! Er, that toast is jammed... It all tastes grape to me!

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I am the very model of a modern major general...

I'm in love with a new collection of fabric that the workroom has recently ordered. In LOVE. It's called Rouenneries by French General (for Moda.)

Photo courtesy of the workroom

I want them all. A dress, a shirt, a skirt, a pillow, a duvet cover... the options are endless!

One thing I know for sure, I'm going use the jelly roll to make a lamp shade using this tutorial by rachel of p.s. i quilt.

"In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,I am the very model of a modern Major-General!"

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Kale Fan

We will be finishing up our first CSA box tonight with a roasted chicken dinner and roasted local, fresh, baby carrots. No pictures: it's still in the oven. But let's go back to our first meal: kale.

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I've never eaten kale before, and Dustin isn't a big fan of soup (it makes him uncomfortably hot; for the same reason, he doesn't drink tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and does not enjoy seat warmers in the car.) To make Dustin a Kale fan, I knew I had to pull out my trump card: stir fry beef. I regularly buy a large cut of beef and slice it up into small stir fry pieces before freezing one-meal-portions in ziplock bags. Stir fry it with *anything* and Dustin will like it.

The most recent cut of beef happened to be prime rib -- a luxury in our household. Marinated with lots of fresh garlic, soy sauce, lots of black pepper and added to the lightly braised kale and the kale was sure to win Dustin over.

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From Food

Look at the size of that one fresh head of garlic! Since it was the first day of the food box, we also had a whole array of salad foods: Boston lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and Toscana cheese. Next task: the crazy alien broccoli.

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Life is Like a Box of Local Produce

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Dustin recently read In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan where he was introduced to the idea of Food Box programs -- also known as CSA (community shared agriculture) programs. We signed up with Culinarium, who puts together these food boxes from a variety of local farmers. Biweekly, for twenty weeks, we receive a food box filled with local produce, a protein, a cheese, and a pantry item: we never know what we're going to get until two days before pick up date.

So exciting! We get to try new foods and support local farmers. For our first box, we got all sorts of goodies: most of which you can recognize in the picture above, whereas some are a bit of a mystery.

In first place for weirdest produce ever is the Romanesco Broccoli. Dustin calls it the broccochinilini. A strange looking vegetable that is supposed be a cross between a cauliflower, a broccoli and an alien. Our plan? Oven roasted with olive oil and a backup bechemel cheese sauce in case it ends up in the "yucky" section of this blog.

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Some other exciting goodies: Toscana cheese (I took a little nibble,) organic, local tomato paste, and look at those farm fresh chicken eggs! I'm thinking maybe a quiche? Maybe save the tomato paste for a pasta somewhere down the road?

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Who's in a jam? My concord grapes will be! That's the plan for these beauties.

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So many raw ingredients! 9 more food boxes. So many blog post possibilities. If only I could quit my daytime job...

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Bored of no Board

Dustin and I have lived in our home for a year and a half now, and we still have no headboard. Our bedroom is a boring land of "super giant bed and nothing on the walls." It's quite depressing.

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We had gone shopping for a headboard but with no luck; we never found something we loved enough for the price they were asking. I had decided that I would just have to be creative and figure something else out.

A few months ago, I saw that the workroom sold embroidery hoops. I'm such a pack rat and hate throwing away pieces of scrap fabric bigger than the size of a cookie, so these embroidery hoops were going to be great for displaying favourite scrap fabric and decorating the boring wall behind my bed all at the same time! Two birds! One stone!

Except that it wasn't going to be one stone -- er -- hoop. So far I only have a few hoops. And I can't nail them to the wall until I have all of the hoops. How do I know how much room to leave? What if I want to move them around?! My dad used to hate when I nailed holes into the wall: "Ai Ya!"

The first hoop is from leftover fabric from my sister's baby bag. It's a gorgeous Echino fabric -- and when Cheryl (from Pink Panda Fabrics) sent me my fabric order, she included a sample of Moda fabric that was a perfect match. I love that it draws out the blue hue in the Echino fabric.

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The next hoop is fabric from my "Carrie Bradshaw / Christian Dior" dress. I added some shirring to echo my dress. Simple. But even that took me hours of humming and hawing.

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The final hoop (for now) is a tribute to "the birdie sling that got away." It will always have a special place in my heart.

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I'm thinking maybe another 3 or 4 more hoops of various sizes. Perhaps I should set a deadline otherwise I'll never get these done. I work best under pressure. "I promise to finish these hoops by November 19th." And those of you who know me know that when I commit, I never back out!

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Figgin' Delicous!

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Chinese moms make Chinese soups. Chinese kids have to drink said soups. Chinese kids get really good at avoiding drinking Chinese soups that are yucky.

As a child, I used to try and hide any sort of ailment from my mother for as long as I could. She would make a soup for everything: sore throats, tired eyes, bad tempers. Most of them were yucky.

Since moving away from home, I've actually missed some of the soups my mom would make. (Not the papaya-pork-pancreas one!) I got sick earlier this month and although the fever, headache, and sinus pains are finally gone, I've still been feeling blah. This calls for a soup. Over the phone, I promised my mom I would make a soup and drink it.

"Go buy some dried figs from that Chinese store around the corner; boil it with whatever meat bones you have, add some potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and whatever vegetables you want and drink it."

"Yes, mom."

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I had no idea my mom put figs in this "vegetable soup" she used to make. It's one of the soups I actually love to drink. I think my mom usually makes it with ox tail, but I wasn't really sure where to find ox tail. Fortunately I found two hunks of beef in my freezer: I'm vaguely remembering the last time my mom visited and told me to use it to make soup...

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From Food

After something like two hours of low simmering, the soup tasted delicious. The figs added a unique sweet flavour that wasn't too overpowering. I'm happy to report to my mom that I'm already feeling better. It's probably all in my head, but who doesn't feel better when they successfully make a delicious Chinese soup?

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Sir Sam's Inn

For our second anniversary, Dustin and I spent the Thanksgiving weekend at Sir Sam's Inn near Haliburton. What a delightful place! (Yes, I used the word delightful.) The drive up was beautiful: Autumn is, hands down, my favourite season. There was a large tree just outside our window that was just starting to turn a nice shade of burnt orange.

From vacation

From vacation

Unlike a resort hotel, the inn was relatively small and we never felt like it was overcrowded. There is a gazebo on the property that looks out into the water: not quite big enough to reenact the scene with Rolph and Leisel from The Sound of Music, much to Dustin's disappointment.

From vacation

The weather that weekend was mostly spectacular, but a small storm hit just when we were out in the canoe. We managed to stay dry, and Dustin even let me take a few pictures of the storm before running back inside. Why don't pictures of blowing snow ever turn out? My only photo evidence of the stormy winds comes from a (lucky) shot of a leaf blowing by our bedroom window.

From vacation

The absolute greatest thing about Sir Sam's, is the water spa. Instead of a standard hotel swimming pool, they have a fabulous water spa with a circuit of relaxing jets, waterfalls, and bubbles that soothe and massage all parts of your body. Dustin and I could not believe how much time we were able to spend at the water spa, mostly with the facility all to ourselves.

From vacation

From vacation

Our nights always ended with a blazing fire in our room. Being the forever boyscout at heart, Dustin was always able to get a great fire roaring despite the minuscule fireplace.

From vacation

I'm not sure who Sir Sam is, but it sure was nice of him to have us at his inn to celebrate two years of marriage to the boyscout of my dreams.

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