I’ve been… distracted. I apologize. Lot’s of things in the works, lot’s of things in the air - is it Christmas soon or something?
WHAT?
Less than a month? WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?
Oh, right, the leaves turned, fell, then it snowed, then they started playing carols in the malls, and today is American thanksgiving, and next it’s Christmas. Right. Well, all I’m saying is nobody told me, and - dude… presents! I don’t have ANYTHING yet. Sigh. I don’t think this is the year I get all creative and make everything ahead of time… *sigh*
Oh well. On the upside, this week has been good.
On Friday we went to the ballet. I dragged Liam along (he went surprisingly willingly - probably because he’s supposed to take me to the opera sometime and has yet to actually do so - and because he was seeing a Raptors game on the weekend). It was alright. Not as good as the nutcracker. The dancing was kinda meh, and the sets were boring, although there were some cute costumes (bohemian, Imperialist Russia - good era for outfits). The ending was definitely anti-climactic, although I didn’t really expect anything less from ballet based on a Russian Drama.
On Sunday I had my sister over while Liam and my little brother went to the basketball game (his birthday was last week).
We gorged on wine and Qubecois cheese while they were gone…..mmmmmmmmmm cheese….
Anyways, when they came back I made pulled pork burritos and for desert we had banana gelato with home-made mars bar sauce. Yeah, I’m a pretty awesome sister.
Then, this week, a friend called inquiring about a burger place we had told him about called the Yellow Griffin so we decided to pay a visit. They have over THIRTY FIVE themed burger toppings to choose from, on EIGHT different kinds of meat burgers (beef, chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, vegetable, bison and salmon). AMAZING, right?
I decided to go for something really different this time, so I had the “New Mexican.” It involved some of my very favourite things - salsa, avocado, sweet potatoes, peanut butter - all smothering a nummy hand formed patty. I know what you’re saying - you’re saying “Peanut butter! On a burger! Sacrilege!” And you would be right. It was sacridelicious. In fact, I’ve decided peanut butter with a hint of cilantro is my new favourite hamburger topping.
Don’t get that look on your face.
Don’t pretend to yak.
That’s what you did the first time you heard about poutine*, and then you tried it, and it was heaven, so don’t knock beef smothered in peanuty goodness til you try it, ok?
I’m finding myself completely obsessed with blogs from Portland, and as such, going hiking. The state seems absolutely awash in gorgeous natural wonders, and delightful parks around every corner.
So this weekend, I decided, enough wishing and dreaming I lived halfway across the world, we were going to find the nearest, most picturesque place to go hiking, and then do so. There had to be someplace to go hiking that wasn’t a hundred miles away, right?
I remembered, growing up in Rexdale (yes really) that we often made field trips to the Humber Arboretum, and that it was gorgeous. Plus, who doesn’t love an Arboretum? It’s a museum of trees. An awesome word really, old-timey in the best possible way.
So we packed up a little picnic containing some seasonal treats (the last of my heirloom tomatoes chopped up in a cous-cous salad, some pesto-mayo made from my basil plant before the frost hit it in a yummy sandwich, and of course some of my pumpkin pie squares) and drove up. The arboretum isn’t exactly in our neighborhood, but it’s easy to get to, right off the highway.
It’s a pretty awesome place, especially considering it’s absolutely surrounded by urban sprawl - you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere. We even got a little lost at one point - and Liam sort of lost his footing in a swampy area (thankfully we were a few hours in at that point, so we were about ready to go home anyways).
It was a wonderful choice, and totally fulfilled my need to partake in the autumnal splendor. I’m kinda considering investing in hiking boots. I might want to keep doing this.
We’ve been celebrating fall pretty hard-core around here. We even tried to go apple picking this weekend, but it turned out the harvest is over, so we went hiking instead. We also attended a squash sampling party (I liked the turban squash, and the butternut pie the best - yum!). For the party, we brought a little squash-based creation of my own - pumpkin pie squares.
The recipe came about from trying to perfect a recipe for pumpkin bread. The first recipe I tried was dry and flavourless. So I played around until I came up with this recipe - more of a dense, moist square then a bread really.
I also felt the dark chocolate most pumpkin based recipes (which seem to be very trendy these days) call for would be so overwhelming and heavy for the delicate, spicy pumpkin flavour. So I switched dark chocolate chips for white chocolate ones - which was really a genius move, if I do say so myself. The little gooey bits of creamy white chocolate tasted just like tiny bites of whipped cream, mixed into pumpkin pie.
It’s all the flavours of pumpkin pie, in a much more portable square form!
So portable, you could take these squares on a picnic (like we did on our hike), or pack them with your lunch. Just try doing that with a slice of pie!
It was our anniversary on the weekend, and we had a splendid day.
Rather than unnecessarily blow a wad of cash on fancy dinners and shows and things (as we sometimes do) we decided to have the nicest day around the neighborhood for under 100 dollars, and save up for a vacation later on instead. And as a result, I think we had one of the nicest days we’ve ever had.
We bought a coronation chicken sandwich and a tarragon chicken pot pie from the Brick Street Bakery. Both were astoundingly (astoundingly!) good. I am quickly becoming very fond of the rather retro combo of apricots, curry, cream and poultry that is Coronation Chicken. My royalty loving grandmother would no doubt approve, heartily. The pie was stuffed with juicy, spicy meat, and surrounded by pretty much the best crust I’ve ever had on a savoury pie. I am not a huge crust fan, but this crust made the pie. Perfectly flaky and crumbly and moist.
After some gallery browsing, we made our way to Soma where we had some gelato (a scoop each of: sour cream and lemon; raspberry, lemon and black pepper; and pistachio - all were dreamy) and some mayan hot chocolate. Soma has the best gelato and chocolate in town. It just does.
Then for dinner we went to a little restaurant down the street called Batifole. I had heard nothing but good things about it, namely that it is the best approximation of French bistro cooking in the whole city, and that it was astoundingly reasonably priced. Both were true. It was some of the best food I’ve ever had.
When we sat down we got bread accompanied by a little pat of butter sprinkled with grey salt - and it was some of the best bread I’ve ever had. I asked if they baked it themselves, and they said they had it made for them by the Brick Bakery. Of course they did. It’s the best bakery in town, it seems.
We started off with a brule of pate. Yep, that’s right, like a creme brule, in a little pot topped with a layer of crunchy caramel - but inside was chicken livers. For a creme brule addict like me it was a revelation.
For our mains, Liam had a blanchette de veau - a little rare veal steak covered in a calvados, apples and cream sauce. It was as wonderful as it sounds. I had a cassoulet. It was 3 kinds of meat (duck confit, sausage and gorgeous thick hunks of bacon) swimming in gorgeous melted pools of fat. I have never willingly ingested so much cholesterol in my life, but it was wonderful.
With our mains we got a little basket of frites with tarragon mayonnaise. They were perfection - I can not emphasize this enough - the best fries I’ve ever had, hands down. A rough crispiness on the outside, perfectly salted, meltingly soft on the inside. Perfection.
We didn’t get to desert. We would have liked to, but I was much too full of wonderful fats.
So yeah. Pretty much the best food day ever.
Best part is, since none of it was prohibitively expensive we can do it all again sometime.
In case you were wondering, Mr. Liam’s birthday at the cottage went well.
We swam, and ate delicious meaty pasta that had been simmering all day, and attempted to play Catan (although we ended up too carbohydrate drunk/tired to get the rules right).
This is his present. It’s a t-shirt. With a little drawing on it by me. It’s a squirrel. Wearing a sweater vest and a bowtie. Holding an acorn. With a Wodehousian name (Mr. S. Q. Nutterson Esq. to be precise).
This has been a damn fine summer. Not too hectic, not too slow, not too hot, certainly not dry (which I don’t mind one bit - me and my garden like the rain).
I think one of the only bad things to have happened is the raccoons who eat my plants and poo on my deck. Annoying and unsanitary, but they’re pretty cute - especially when they shimmy down the drainpipes of the house next door.
By the way, you might have heard of the saga of Igor the bicycle stealer. He’s made his way to the front (web) page of the New York Times. He was a fixture in the old neighborhood but I - like pretty much every one else who’s ever visited Trinity Bellwoods - ain’t surprised.
His arrest makes me more excited to get a bike someday soon - hopefully by next summer. Now it might not get stolen!
Now, I’ve got to go - I’ve got to get ready to celebrate Liam’s birthday up at my cottage.
As per his request I’m cooking up a big pot of simmer-it-all-day, old-fashioned, Italian gravy (tomato sauce, for those without a Soprano’s Family Cookbook).
I can’t wait for him to open his present, go for a swim and play a game or two of Catan (he’s buying it with his birthday bonus).
One of those spur of the moment collections of days that just comes together perfectly.
What made it so good?
Seeing Wall-E. So good. Soooooo good! I am actually going to go ahead and say: best Pixar film ever. Ever!
Why so good? The characterizations, I think, mainly. The gifted animators managed to squeeze emotions out of very limited creatures (simplistic robots with incredibly small vocabularies).
And what emotions! These simple little characters with big personalities made it easy to tell a very small, simple story - with an epic, intergalactic, post-apocalyptic scale - and that gave the movie a huge emotional impact. Don’t be fooled by the cutesy robots in the kiddie cartoon: the movie is intense.
Shopping! Yes, I’m a girl… But this has more to do with some rather male-like efficiency in procuring what I needed (an outfit for an upcoming summer wedding) in a minimum amount of time, for a minimum amount of money.
It’s sale time, pretty much everywhere, which meant after only an hour or two that mission was accomplished, which is especially impressive given that I needed a new bra to go under a new dress. Bra shopping is probably the single most depressing regularly occurring event in a girls life (with the possible exception of swimsuit shopping), so getting it over and done with in record time was pretty satisfying.
Impromptu dinner party! We threw one at the last minute (we gave people like, 18 hours facebook notice) and: People! Actually! Showed! Up!
Liam made vast quantities of sushi, we all drank plum wine and sake, hundreds of edamame were popped out of their pods, I got to make new friends and catch up with some old ones I hadn’t seen in too, too long, and a good time was had by all.
We finally met our neighbors. Meeting new people is always hard, especially for us (me and Liam are both kinda shy - Liam especially).
We were the only childless couple, which was a little odd, and meeting and befriending all those hip, young Torontonian parents I’ve read so much about in Toronto Life was a little surreal, but cute toddlers and frisky dogs are the best icebreakers, as is a good cheeseburger, and friendly people. Plus, I’ve learned that a love of good food is universal, so my knowledge of the 100 mile diet, organic food boxes, and my own little organic vegetable patch came in handy.
Really, I think we came to the realization that we had more in common with these new people (minus the many, many, babes-in-arms) than we do with many of our friends right now. We love our friends, but we’re kinda on a different life path than many of them are right now.
We are building a home, and a life together, where most people we know are still focusing on the next concert, the next party, the next new toy. It’s kinda nice to be around people who don’t think it’s crazy to be looking inward, instead of out; to throwing dinner parties at home, instead of getting drunk at a club. It’s no judgment call on the people who like that sort of thing, but I know that I get so much more enjoyment out of sitting at home in front of a good movie, piled next to loving kitties and boy, tummy filled with a home cooked meal. I can’t imagine wanting anything else.
If your family’s been in Ontario for at least a couple generations, then chances are somebody has a cottage.
“A cottage?” you say.
Yes, a cottage.
Ok, so it’s really just a little log cabin by a lake in the woods - and some of you may know these as camps, or maybe the more pretentious term “summer home” - and some cottages really are “summer homes” - complete with satellite TV, multiple bathrooms and gourmet kitchens. Not that ours is anything more than a little log cabin with no phone line and an ancient and quirky oven.
Point is, little lakes are actually so ubiquitous here that pretty much everyone has a cottage on one. And that is a wonderful thing, because here in central Canada it gets as hot in summer as it gets cold in the winter. So if you drive a couple hours out of town into the bush, it gets colder, and there is much in the way of swimming, naturing, beering and merriment.
So at the cottage is where we spent our Canada Day long weekend. Much swimming, naturing, beering and merriment was had, indeed.
I am pretty thankful that Liam is now a real grown-up with a normal nine to five job that allows for the kinds of extravagances like extra - long weekends at the cottage.
Well, it’s the first long hot weekend of a long hot summer, so we are going to take advantage of it.
Our weekend is going to be positively packed with farmers markets, and golfing, and shopping, and eating, and probably a little bit of gardening (although, other than a little watering, things are looking pretty self-sustaining at the moment).
To celebrate, you should watch this clip of a pretty good old movie (with a script by Billy Wilder, and opening credits by Saul Bass - how can you go wrong?) about the beginning of another long hot summer in the city (just ignore the slightly racially offensive bit in the middle - kinda hard to find an old movie that doesn’t have a couple moments like those, unfortunately).
And then Marilyn Monroe shows up. You should really hunt this down and watch the rest of it though. It’s one of those classics that’s a classic for a reason.
The week of Mother’s day, I was pretty busy. I threw two dinner parties - one for some vegan friends, the other a Mother’s day bash for my mother of course! So as you could imagine, I spent a lot of time baking, and cleaning, and cooking, and doing dishes… and then I did it all over again!
I was so busy, I didn’t get the chance to post the recipes and pictures of the food from my Mother’s day party - and I came up with a big themed menu from scratch.
I wanted to have a tea party as a bit of a tribute to my mom for bringing us along to England for a family wedding last year. While there, we had tea in a little, ridiculously-named tea-house tucked into the beautiful, cobblestone lane-ways of Canterbury. I thought it’d be nice to recreate something similar.
But, of course, I live in Little India, not England. And there is (of course) a cultural connection between the two. So why not, I thought, do a little bit of fusion? So we had an Indian inspired, afternoon tea.
The menu consisted of the following
Sandwiches:
Tandoori pork tenderloin with mango chutney
Curried egg salad with corriander and crasins
Cucumber with green chutney
Iced chocolate chai tea
Desert:
Coconut-banana scones w/ double cream and preseves
Chai spiced shortbread
Fruit salad (with mangos, dragon-fruit, pineapple and watermelon)
Lady Grey tea
The big star of the evening was, I think, the cucumber sandwiches. People always underestimate a good cucumber sandwich. It seems so simple - cucumber, butter, white bread. But there’s something about it that’s heavenly.
These cucumber sandwiches in particular were made even more heavenly by the addition of a Indian condiment - green chutney: a tart, verdant, cilantro-based, fresh sauce (apparently the traditional topping for a cucumber sandwich at Indian cricket matches). It definitely added a kick to the classic canape - and to everything else we ate that week - rice, noodles, other less cucumbery sandwiches. It’s become something I love to have around. It makes a large quantity, but since there’s salt, sugar and acid in it, it’s stay fresh for a while (and it’s a great way to use up the rest of those huuuuuuuge bunches of cilantro they sell in the markets).
Green Chutney
2 cups cilantro (chopped)
1 onion (chopped)
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup flaked coconut
1 lemon (juice and zest)
1 tsp dry ginger
1 tsp siracha (hot sauce)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
Put everything in a blender or food processor and blend.
Store in air-tight container in fridge.
If using for cucumber sandwiches: drop a spoonful of chutney on slices of buttered, white bread; cover with a couple even layers of lightly-salted, thinly-sliced cucumber; top with another slice of buttered bread; cut off crusts, and into four triangles.
