And beets, and tomatoes, and kohlrabi, and…and…and… The garden is really coming into it’s own. The tomatoes have been staked and I’ve already picked two! That’s right, two tomatoes and it’s only July 6th. They’re Stupice, a Czech heirloom variety that I grew last year and are known to be spectacularly early. They’re a smaller…
Category: In the Kitchen
Mid-week holiday
It’s Canada Day today and it’s a Wednesday. I’m not complaining about having a holiday at any time, but it kind of has the same effect that moving our Daylight Savings Time around — it throws my sense of timing right out the window. Last night felt like a Friday, and I have to keep…
Spring eats, part deux
Just the other day I was thinking, “Gee, I probably should have thinned out those radishes a couple weeks ago…” Then my elderly neighbour said, “Just thin them by harvesting them!” Like, duh. I didn’t even realize they were ready yet! All weekend we’ve been munching fresh juicy radishes from the garden, spring onions, as…
Spring eats
Amid the humming of my neighbour’s air conditioners (yes, that’s right, they have their A/C’s running, their doors and windows are open, and it’s all of 23 degrees C outside), I’ve been busily getting the last tasks of planting done around the house this weekend. I mentioned back in early April that I’ve been reading…
Oh sweet baby jebus
Saturday night was the long awaited, usually annual, traditional clothing swap. It’s an excuse for all us girls to get together and be girly, but at the same time, to do some serious spring closet cleaning, and I mean serious. Some of the ladies at Saturday’s gathering hadn’t been to one before, and it was…
Faking it
My sourdough experiments have left me massively frustrated and quite discouraged. Despite having had my starter do the bubbly-foamy dance that one time, it just hasn’t reacted the way recipes indicate it should every time I’ve fed it since. They say it’s supposed to foam up nearly double its size within about an hour of…
Master of flakiness
As the high from achieving sourdough starter success quickly deflates like the airless loaf of dough I’m currently baking in hopes that something miraculous will happen in the oven, I figure I might as well celebrate success of a different kind. I believe I have mastered my fear of pie crusts! I just had to…
Sourdough starter SUCCESS!
It’s alive!!! It’s really alive!!! I’ve finally had some success creating a healthy sourdough starter. It’s only my second attempt, too. I used the recipe and time frame suggested by Eric of Breadtopia, which he credits to Peter Reinhart – someone who I really need to start reading more of, because apparently he is the…
Sourdough FAIL
I’ve been thinking about trying out making sourdough for some time. I learned to bake bread when I was just a kid, as one of a number of 4-H clubs I belonged to in my “tweens”. Other ones I remember participating in included cooking and, for some mega personal embarrassment: pigs! That’s right folks, I…
Hot tamales!
Lately all my cooking has focused on big one-pot meals like soups and stews, chili and casseroles. On the weekends I’ve been making big batches of food to freeze for those insane work night evenings when I’m positively exhausted and if unprepared, I’ll just resort to ordering pizza. We’re trying to save some money, and…