Composure

Once in a while, I achieve it.

Cookie Jam, Toronto?

Remember this? CupcakeCamp in Ottawa, two years ago, was phenomenally successful and raised boatloads of money for charities. Since then, one of the winners – Karen Foster – has planned a similar concept with equal success. Cookie Jam in Dartmouth is happening on April 20.

This is a placeholder post, because I miss baking, I miss community organizing, and gosh-darn-it… I want to plan something like this in Toronto. So, who’s with me?

The Black Screen of Death

When I was growing up, everyone knew about the “Blue Screen of Death”. The form that it took progressed over time, as the computer’s capacity of graphics grew. The shade of blue changed over time, as did the words that were used to tell you that you were about to lose everything that you had worked on since you last saved. (And of course, this began in a time before auto-save). Those of us with MacBooks have never experienced the blue screen of death. I’ve owned three MacBooks, while my husband has owned one, and we’ve never had to concern ourselves with the system crashing, with us receiving errors that obliterate our work. When I wrote my Master’s, I never once quivered in fear at the prospect of losing my work because of the blue screen of death. My first two MacBooks died from overuse and abuse, both at a young age. I upgraded before I started my Masters to a MacBook Pro, with its titanium shell and higher-speed processor. It was an absolute beauty. Little did I know that it was also a ticking time bomb.

Apparently, the generation of MacBook Pro that I own was installed with a faulty graphics card, which-beginning in 2011- would give users what became known as “the Black Screen of Death“. Essentially, the graphics card stops working, rendering a total absence of video output. Apple issued a notice saying that they would provide users a fix, if they experienced this in the first four years after the original purchase. Naturally, four years and three months after I bought my computer, I started to notice this problem (which at the time, I didn’t actually realize was a systemic issue). It was usually solvable by putting the computer to sleep by closing its lid and then opening it. Today, it was not. I tried resetting everything that I know how to reset on my computer, then Googling the things that I didn’t know how to reset, then Googling “Black Screen of Death” half-jokingly, only to realize that this was not a joke.

With luck, I will be able to use a FireWire cable to extract all the data that I’ve built up over the years on that machine (and, actually, on past machines). There are Honours Research Papers, a Masters Thesis, photos from weddings and vacations, resumes and cover letters. I live in a digital age, and therefore have carry a very digital past. Luckily, the nature of digital footprints is that you can duplicate, or in some cases triplicate, them. The important photos live on Flickr, on CDs, and in emails. My thesis sits on a shelf. There is a recent copy of my resume on my computer at work. But, the medium through which I created those things is gone, and that’s something worth mourning. When I told Andrew, he rightly pointed out that I could probably survive with my iPad, if I were to install a Word Processor and he’s probably right. It is, though, the end of an era for me. To say that I was privileged with access to technology is an understatement. I’ve had my own computer since I was seven and my own laptop since I was 18. There’s no logical reason, though, for me to own my own laptop (unless I were go back to school), so this is the stage that I begin to learn how to share technology. I’m sorry if this sounds self-involved–it probably is–but, because technology and the internet are such a huge part of our everyday life, having to share that medium (when you’ve never had to before) seems really, really strange.

/rant

Unrelatedly, I strongly recommend that you make these badass cinnamon buns. The black screen of death was far less worth after a second third one of these.

Spicy Carrot Salad

Do you remember how I swooned over this recipe? How I swore up and down, side to side, and round and round that I would never get tired of it? That’ll learn me. It took me a week of eating it for lunches, plus two days as a soup (with veggie stock and coconut milk added in) for my body to shout “ENOUGH!” Unfortunately, that point came last night, in a fit of exhaustion, while I was beginning to pack my lunch. Doubly unfortunate was the fact that I only bought for this week the groceries that we needed for meals. I had everything I needed in the house to make smoothies for breakfast, and breakfast for dinner, and nothing to make lunch. Go figure.

So, I grabbed a couple (4) carrots and sliced them into chunks. I grabbed an apple (Pink Lady, if you must know) that would have otherwise found its way into my lunch whole, and sliced it. I tossed both generously with cardamom, salt and black pepper and dobbed them with leftover bacon fat (the merit of a huge brunch is leftover bacon fat to cook vegetables in) and roasted them at 450F for 25 minutes. It’s all the energy that I had in me.

This morning, I topped them with leftover sunflower seeds (which aren’t that good in smoothies anyhow), dried cranberries from my baking stash, and an ounce of leftover goat cheese that a lovely friend brought for brunch to have with bagels.

I really don’t understand why my husband suggests that I take a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.

Doughnuts

When we lived in Ottawa, in Lowertown, Andrew would visit Rideau Bakery regularly for their apple fritter doughnuts. Doughnuts became the hot new thing after cupcakes, or at least tried to. I can think of a half dozen spots in Ottawa (more in Toronto) that have doughnuts on their menu, and all of them have one thing in common: They’re best when fresh.

In Montreal, there’s a delightful Greek bakery on St Laurent, north of Schwartz’s. I won’t lie to you: Our gluttonous selves often visited Schwartz’s for smoked meat sandwiches, pickles, and cherry soda before heading north for a fresh, creme filled dessert.

As good as any of these is Joanne Chang’s recipe: The dough can be done up the night before or first thing in the morning and left to set until a few hours before rolling, cutting and leaving to rise. Then, they have quick dip in a bath of hot oil and are tossed with sugar. You can fill them or not, as you please. You could also slice them in half and fill to make giant cream puffs. Brunch demands so many other things, so here we simply left them as they were, sinful enough to be sure.

Doughnuts
1 package (2 1/2 teaspoons) active dry yeast, or 2/3 ounce fresh cake yeast
2/3 cup milk, room temperature
3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for baking sheet
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons coarse salt
3 large eggs
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 6 to 8 pieces
Canola oil, for frying

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, stir together yeast and milk; let stand until yeast is dissolved, about 1 minute. Add flour, 1/3 cup sugar, salt, and eggs; mix on low speed until dough comes together, about 1 minute. Continue mixing on low 2 to 3 minutes more. Add butter, a few pieces at a time, mixing after each addition and until butter is fully incorporated and dough is soft, 5 to 6 minutes.

Remove dough from bowl and wrap tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 6 hours and up to 15 hours.

Lightly flour a baking sheet; set aside. On a well-floured work surface, roll out dough into 12-inch square about 1/2 inch thick. Using a 3 1/2-to-4-inch round biscuit cutter, cut out 9 doughnuts. Transfer to prepared baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap; let stand in a warm spot until they’ve doubled in height and feel poufy and pillowy, 2 to 3 hours.

Fill a large heavy-bottomed saucepan with oil to a depth of 3 inches; heat over medium-high heat until it reaches 350 degrees on a deep-fry thermometer. Working in batches, place doughnuts in the hot oil, taking care not to crowd them. Fry until golden brown on one side, 2 to 3 minutes; turn and continue frying on remaining side until golden, 2 to 3 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, transfer doughnuts to a paper towel-lined baking sheet until cool enough to handle.

Place remaining cup of sugar in a small bowl. Toss doughnuts in sugar, one at a time, to evenly coat. Serve immediately, or allow to cool for 30 minutes before filling each with about 1/3 cup filling.

A New Year’s State of Mind.

The second of January. In which I prepare a whole lot of food, most healthy; go running; and consider and reconsider and reconsider (again) all the things that I want to do. Always. Talk to me in March, when I’ve forgotten most of the things that I want to do this year and am struggling with the other half.

Twenty-seven things seems like a good number, if ambitious. It’s a start.

Trying to Resolve

Ani Difranco has a very catchy song called “Evolve”, from her 2003 album of the same name. The chorus of it is “she’s trying to evolve.” Consider this title a riff on that.

I’ve kinda always been big on resolutions, on New Year’s Day and otherwise. New school year, new city, what have you. It’s an opportunity to start over, start fresh, and make the most of whatever. It’s a blank slate. I fancy myself a success-oriented person. I cannot stop. It’s not a good thing, often times. When I have downtime, I get bored, I get anxious. The past two weeks, we were travelling to our families, first in London and then in Ottawa. There was simply not enough for me to do. I went stark mad. Resolutions are a special sort of hell when you are the type of person who overextends themselves a lot and finds themselves planning trips three and a half years in advance.*

So, I’m trying to resolve. I can’t seem to come up with remarkable resolutions that I’ll actually LOVE, though. Maybe to knit more? Goals? Goals, I can handle.

Get healthy: Lose 25 pounds. Run two half-marathons (Toronto – May 5; Detroit/Windsor – October 20). Stretch daily.

Fiscal cliffs: Be austere this year. (That part about planning a trip three years ahead of time? If it’s anything like I’m envisioning it, it’s going to need some savings.)

Forge my career path: Do more amazing things in my field of expertise with my knowledge and skills, both for pay and for experience. And for the sheer joy of it.

Relatedly, this seems like an opportune time to let you know (all three of you that are still hangin’ in there!) that I’m planning on blogging more often, but far less about food. I think I’ve been letting you know this for the past seven months, so I should probably act on this. That middle part about the crazy trip will probably come up at some point, among other things.

*This is apparently what I do on vacation, when left to my own devices and when none of those devices are particularly helpful in the research work that I should be doing.

And then, I had made lunch.

Not having time to yourself can kinda destroy a person. I love what I do, but there’s a bit of a transition that happens when you go from working 2 or 3 days a week, in a city that’s familiar, with a huge apartment and spacious kitchen (with a dishwasher and full-sized oven) to working full-time, in an unfamiliar space, with cramped quarters. Our dining room table, which in Ottawa would fit ten people with ease, now fits only five or six, seven at most, squeezed into the tightest of nooks and crannies and with worries that one might fall backwards and go down the stairs. Oof.

Yesterday, I had a sort of meltdown about this. I’ll spare you all the details, but to say that it was solved in part by going for a run, and in part by my darling husband taking our dear dog for her afternoon walk alone. I stayed it. And chopped. And washed. And toasted. And smacked. And tasted. And then, I had made lunch.

Pomegranate/Walnut/Olive Salad
Makes enough for 4 lunches

The seeds of 2 pomegranates (See this life-changing blog post about how to get said seeds out of said fruit)
1 cup walnuts (or pistachios), toasted and chopped
1 cup pitted green olives, chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 cup bulgar wheat, cooked

Juice of 1 lemon
2-4 tbsp olive oil (to taste)
1 tsp. oregano or zaatar
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the things together. Cover. Eat.

Being where you’re at

Ages ago, I stumbled across the phrase “being where you’re at”. It’s good way of roughly summarizing where I’ve been over the last five months. I’ve been where I was at and where I am at, which has mostly been working in Toronto and making do. I’ve been cooking. I’ve been discovering the city. I’ve been, as they say, keeping well. And I’ve been mindful of this space, which has been mine for nearly three years. So, it seems a bit sad to just abandon it completely. Plus, I’ve been in the process of transferring content to my employer’s new website for the past month and it’s reminding me that WordPress is a friendly machine, as these things go.

I have a lot of things that I want to share with you, edible and non-edible. This salad and this project that I’m going to endeavour to undertake as a Christmas gift. And my trip to New York City during Hurricane Sandy.

But, for now, there are dishes in the sink. I’ve been running but haven’t showered. Dinner needs to be started and the carpet should be vacuumed. But, I do feel just a little bit like I’ve come home again.

Pancakes.

I had planned to write about Chocolate Olive Oil Zucchini Loaf, the best of summer breakfast treats, easy to take with you, full of chocolate, and yet not unhealthy. And, I’ll probably write about it one day, because every time I make it, I’m reminded that zucchini isn’t limited to morning glory muffins in baked goods.* But, this week we have guests. We have Saturday-Sunday guests and then we have guests Wednesday-Monday. We are a small apartment, so it’ll be squishy, but I don’t mind. It just means that I have cause to cook inordinate amounts of food and don’t have to worry about scaling recipes that feed 4-6 down to 2 (or eating the leftovers of them for days on end). The week after, we are going to a friend’s cottage, which is not unlike camping, and which always involves an inordinate amount of bacon, eggs, and pancakes.

Our Saturday-Sunday guests this week, one of them, doesn’t eat eggs. So, breakfast is always pancakes and bacon, and maybe some fruit if we have it. Despite having lived down the street from these guests for four years, and feeding them regularly on Saturday or Sunday mornings, I never found a consistent pancake recipe to fall back on. I never gave much thought to pancakes, because I didn’t think to give much thought to them. I would usually google a recipe while the bacon cooked and go with whatever seemed easiest. Yet, whenever my husband orders pancakes in Ottawa, at Stonefaced Dolly’s, I steal a bit and wonder why I didn’t order them myself. Their fluffiness is something to be sought after in pancake making, and it seems that this take on Martha Stewart’s fluffy pancakes is the start of a beautiful relationship with the fluffiest of them.

(Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you’re serving them with wild blueberries, local raspberries, and freshly whipped cream.)

Fluffiest Pancakes
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s The New Classics

Martha notes that you can prep the dry mix in advance and add the wet ingredients whenever you’re ready to make the batter, storing them in a plastic ziplock until ready to use. I might take it a step further and use said plastic bag to produce evenly sized pancakes. If you use water and oil (instead of milk and eggs), they won’t be as rich tasting, but you can take them camping!

2 cups all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons skim milk powder
1/4 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/4 cups milk (or water, if camping)
2 large eggs (or 1/4 cup vegetable oil, if camping)

Mix the dry ingredients (the first six) in a medium bowl and set aside, or shake them together in a tightly sealed ziplock.
Heat a cast-iron skillet over medium heat.
Mix the dry ingredients with 4 tablespoons butter.
Mix in the eggs and the milk and stir until just combined. Don’t be afraid of a few clumps
Add the remaining tablespoon butter to the cast-iron skillet and swirl to coat evenly.
Pour about a 1/4 cup of batter on to the hot pan and cook until the surface bubbles and the edges are slightly crisp, about 2 minutes. Flip and cook until the underside is brown. Repeat as needed.
Serve with berries, syrup, whipped cream, and whatever else you like to have with fluffy pancakes.

*Not that there’s anything wrong with morning glory muffins, but I’m pretty sure they were the only kind my mother baked as a child. Some adults won’t touch peanut butter sandwiches for having had too many as a child. That’s how I am with morning glory. (Though, I might consider a fantastic recipe for one.)