Jammin'

raspberry jam at the beginning of the process

I've got a pot of apricot-chili barbecue sauce bubbling on the stove. But as I don't yet know how it's going to turn out (I messed with the recipe), I'm not going to tell you about that right now. I have been meaning to tell you about jam, though, cunningly illustrated with photos from my last jammin' session (the kind on the stove, not with a guitar).

all of ONE jar of raspberry jam!

The event in question involved raspberries and black currants, both from our garden. Well, the currants are strictly speaking from the neighbour's garden, but they hang over the fence, and the neighbours are glad if we clean off our side of the bushes. The raspberries are genuinely from our garden, planted just three years ago. The bushes grew quite nice and big, but unfortunately, they got shorted on water while they were fruiting this year, so the berries were for the most part too tiny to pick. Ah well. I did get half a pound (200g) of berries off the bushes (ooh, aah!), and turned them into jam. That's right. It made precisely one jar, and I hope it's tasty (I also hope to buy some more raspberries at the farmer's market, if there's any left, and make more of the stuff, as it's popular around here).

Raspberry jam is one of the easiest jams to make. The biggest amount of labour is in picking the berries, actually - once that's done, you just wash them, dump them in the pot with sugar, boil, and you're done. To be specific: I make my jam by weight, European style. Five parts berries, four parts sugar, so 1kg of berries to 800g of sugar, or, in this year's case, 200g berries to 160g sugar. For jam, I never use commercial pectin, it works quite well without, and I like the taste much better that way (jelly is a different matter; I have yet to manage a jelly without pectin. I might try it with the concord grapes this fall.).

a rolling boil

The basic jammin' technique is as follows: put the berries in the pot with the sugar, stir. Start boiling on high heat (jam always runs on high heat, never turn it down), stir a lot. Bring to a rolling boil, which means it boils so hard you can't stir it down (see picture). A rolling boil rises really high in the pot, to about twice the height of the original mix, so leave lots of room in the pot. Boil for a while (it varies according to recipe - for raspberries, just a few minutes; strawberries and peaches, more like fifteen minutes). Skim off the foam and put in a cup; it's really tasty on toast. Take pot off burner. Immediately ladle jam into scrupulously clean containers. With jam, I don't bother either sterilising the jars, or hot-water-bath processing them; jam is preserved by its sugar content, not a vacuum seal like other canned produce. I do use the screw rings with the metal lids (which I boil in hot water) and put them on immediately; the heat from the jam is usually enough to seal the lid to keep dust, bugs and air out (the latter will dry the jam out, which isn't so lovely). But you could even just tie some waxed paper or cellophane over the top; it just wouldn't keep as long as in properly airtight jars because the top of the jam will dry out eventually. (As far as keeping quality goes, this kind of jam in well-closed containers could literally last for several years on a cool dark basement shelf. It's best in the first year, and generally it gets eaten long before then, but, you know, just sayin'.)

jelly test (see the drip?)

One more thing: with many jams and jellies, you know they're boiled enough when you can do the jelly test, i.e. when a drop of jelly running off the spoon sort of hangs together (see picture). With raspberry, that's not the case; it'll be completely runny when you put it in the jars, but as soon as it cools it sets up nice and firm-ish. As I said, it's the easiest jam to make - no pitting, peeling, stemming or other fussing with the fruit, and it pretty much always turns out. Well, so far it did for me.

black currant skimmings

The black currant jam needed a bit of a different technique, and it didn't turn out terribly well this year - too runny. But still very tasty. I use the recipe from Marguerite Patten's book Step by Step Cookery (it's Brits, from 1963, quite amusing). It calls for 1 lb. black currants, 3/4 pint water, and 1 1/4 lb. sugar;  you boil the fruit and water first until the currants are soft, and then proceed as above. As I said, mine turned out a bit too runny this year; it should be really great on pancakes.

Life, the Universe, and This Year's Jammin'. Come on over and try some.

the completed glory

Borscht

In honour of the Russian Olympics, I thought I'd cook me a pot of borscht. Well, actually, no, it's not in honour of the Olympics at all, it's in honour of the fact that I found a borscht recipe I really like and I wanted some. I hadn't really ever made borscht before that one, as the man and most of the offspring wouldn't be into eating it; but I'm on a bit of a food emancipation kick - I want to try new stuff, particularly new vegetable dishes - so I made some. A friend who happened to come by that day ate a bowlful and declared it good borscht, and as she's of Ukrainian extraction, I feel this soup has received the stamp of approval.

The issue with making anything that involves beets is, of course, that it requires some pre-planning. You can't just stick your head in the fridge half an hour before you want to eat, and go "Oh, there's some beets, let's make something with them" - they take far too long to cook for that. However, cooking them is really easy, and they keep cooked in the fridge for quite some time, so you can pre-cook them one day, and do your spontaneous borschting later in the week. To cook, just wash them off, dump them in a big pot, cover with water, put them on to boil, and bubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble for about an hour (depending on how fat they are - I don't think you really can overcook beets, so better longer than shorter. Poke the biggest one with a sharp knife, and if the knife slides in easily, they're done.). Drain them, let them cool (I fill up the pot again with cold water just to cool them off, because I'm too impatient to wait for them to cool on their own), and peel them. Peeling beets is funny - when they're well-cooked, they slip right out of the skin, with sort of a sloosh kind of noise. I'd highly recommend wearing an apron and/or clothes you don't care that much about, as your hands and the sink and everything around it will look like a bloodbath (I suppose it is, too - beet blood. Muahahahah!).

Okay, now you've got your beets cooked. So here's the recipe (I got it from the More-With-Less Cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre, which was the first cookbook I bought myself after I was married. If you can get a hold of that book, I highly recommend it. No, you can't have my copy; it's falling apart, anyway.)

Quick Beet Borsch (they spell it without the t. Apparently you can also spell it borshch, which is closer to the Ukrainian/Russian pronunciation. But it looks weird that way.)

1 c cabbage, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 c water
cook 10 minutes. Add:
2 c stock or broth
2 medium beets, cooked and chopped
1/2 c beet juice (I leave that out)
1/2 t salt
dash pepper
1 T lemon juice.
bring to a boil, serve with sour cream.

Which is exactly what I'm going to do right now - serve it. Even if it's just to myself.

Life, the Universe, and Borscht. Do they have cookoffs in the Olympics?

Understood by a Book

Love in Paris, on Amazon

Today I felt understood by a book. That's right - understood by a book, not "I understood a book" (although that, too, I hope). I got the email from the library yesterday that the ebook copy of Lunch in Paris I had put a hold on was available, so I downloaded it and started reading. I'd already read the first couple of chapters, which were available as a sample - whet-your-appetite-while-you-wait, that sort of thing - and really enjoyed it.

But the further I got into the book, the more I realised that it's not what I thought it was from those first few chapters. The full title is Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes, and that's exactly what the beginning of the book reads like. Romance, and food. It's the story of how the author, Elizabeth Bard, a New Yorker, goes to Europe, falls in love with a Frenchman, moves to Paris, learns to shop at the market and cook French food, and lives happily ever after (well, for a given value of "happily ever after"). I was expecting a regular romance story - I've read enough of those to know how they're supposed to go: Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl overcome obstacles to their being together, boy marries girl. The end.

As I said, the first few chapters start up quite promising in that regard - Elizabeth meets the tall-dark-and-handsome Frenchman Gwendal (yes, that's a guy's name; Breton, apparently); he takes her home from the café where they've eaten amazing food and then, after an amorous interlude, feeds her more amazing food (recipes included in the chapter); she goes back to London, where she is working, comes back to Paris every weekend for more amorous interludes (not described in detail; this is a G-rated book) and more amazing food; and you expect the rest of the book to be about how they eat and love their way to a proposal and a wedding with lots more deliciousness of the amorous and culinary kind.

But actually, there's a lot more to this book than that. Oh, the loving and eating (including recipes) is all there. But the wedding takes place just half-way through the book. The romantic happily-ever-after is not the denouement, it is, in a sense, only the beginning. What this book is really about is an American girl finding a new home in France, with a Frenchman. And quite apart from the language barrier - at the beginning of the story, Elizabeth barely speaks French; Gwendal's parents don't know any English - this is about making a cross-cultural marriage work. About being transplanted into a culture different from your own, and learning to live and function in it. And boy, do I know what she is talking about.

"I had one foot on either side of the ocean," she says, "and my knees were beginning to wobble" (chapter 18). Yes. That's exactly how it is. And with that foot on either side of the ocean comes an awareness which, I believe, you can only get from this in-between position, this neither-fish-nor-fowl existence that is entailed in being a cross-cultural transplant. You see both cultures, your original and your adopted home, through a different lens.

The interesting thing is that even though my situation is, in a sense, the exact reverse from Elizabeth Bard's - I'm German, living in Canada, married to a Canadian, she is American, living in France, married to a Frenchman - the issues are the same. Some of the cultural difference she points out are precisely the ones I've struggled with - still struggle with, in fact, after twenty-five years in this country.

Take the issue of "making friends". Americans (i.e. North Americans - Canadians are included in this) can meet someone, find them sympathetic, invite them over for coffee, and bingo, friendship is established. Europeans, Bard explains, don't do that. "I found that, for whatever reason, people in Europe don't need more friends," she says. "They have their families, the people they grew up with, the people they went to university with, colleagues to talk to on a cigarette break. Their social world is made up of tiny circles, closed but overlapping like those Chinese ring toys you can never untangle from one another. […] An English acquaintance was once drunk enough to explain it to me. We would have to meet at at least three events, he said, before I could even consider suggesting that we see each other outside a group context" (chapter 16). Yes! That's exactly how it is. I need to meet you repeatedly in a group setting before I can be friends with you. I'm still profoundly uncomfortable "going for coffee" with someone I don't already know really well, or "inviting them for coffee", for that matter. And it's very difficult getting out of your cultural skin.

But also, if you've chosen to live somewhere other than your culture of origin, you find yourself in a position of having to translate for those "back home". And believe me, it can get tedious. Bard talks about her mother bringing out the phrase "Why can't you just…" - do the things you would do "back home", the things that are "normal" (chapter 15). Because they're not normal here, that's why. There is an implied criticism in that "Why can't you just…" - a criticism of your home of choice, of the culture you are now a part of, to the tune of "Why do you choose to live in a place where people do these weird things?" And then you find yourself defending your new culture, even if perhaps you don't like whatever it is they're criticising, either.

And then there is the amazingly insightful passage about the flip side of the American dream. "Implicit in the American dream is the idea of self-determination. The result of our just-do-it attitude is that anything you don't do is your fault. This ethic of personal responsibility informs American attitudes on everything from obesity to college admissions to welfare reform" (chapter 19). And with it, Bard says, comes a fear of failure - because the American attitude is "You can do anything you want to do!", if you fail to do it, if you're not a successful person, it's your own fault. The can-do attitude that is so pervasive, and so refreshing, in American culture has its backlash.

My prime personal example of that is homeschooling: what is illegal, or at least uncommon, in Europe, namely educating your kids yourself, is perfectly possible here, which is wonderful. But if your kids are less-than-perfect in their academic performance and social development, guess whose fault that is? Oh yes. Self-determination has massive guilt trips built right into its system. I love the sense of personal freedom inherent in American culture, but I have also absorbed the guilt that comes with not making perfect use of that freedom to become a highly successful person on all fronts. One foot on either side of the ocean, and my knees are wobbling.

I knew most of those things Elizabeth Bard says - knew them in the back of my mind, but to have them articulated in this way struck such a chord. I found myself in her book - I was understood.

However, Lunch in Paris is still first and foremost a love story, with recipes. One novel-length tale of people and good food. And unlike some other books I've read, it is not a homily on the superiority of French eating habits over everyone else's (American ones in particular), but simply a celebration of the pleasure of French food. And of love, of course. I've come away from reading this inspired in so many ways.

And you know, I think I'll have to get me a hardcopy of this book for keeps, even just for the recipes. The local bookstore has a copy in stock, and what do you know, I still haven't spent the gift card I got from my friend for my birthday. I was saving it for something special, and this will fit the bill admirably.

Life, the Universe, and a Book that Understands Me. Love and good food are part of the deal.

Thought for Food

Reading over yesterday's post and some of the comments I got on it in various places makes me realise that this calls for an addendum. Food for Thought, Take 2. Or Thought for Food?

See, what I need to tell you today is that when I was talking about German food culture yesterday, I was telling you what I grew up with, not what is happening in my own house with my own offspring. I wasn't trying to say that that is how I raised my own children, with every dinner a sit-down meal and eating every vegetable that's put on the table. I tried, I really did - but that's one of those instances where, as I said, I found out the hard way that you can't run a culture on your own. (The other major instance is that my kids don't speak German, for all intents and purposes. That's right. I tried teaching them, but in the absence of a German environment, it just didn't happen.)

So, just in case you took yesterday's post as a "Thou Shalt", stop it right now. Guilt trips are not a good place to go; trust me, I'm an experienced traveller on that road. I did not mean to say that the German way of doing things is how kids should be raised, and that if you don't, you're doing it WRONG. That's not it at all.

What is, then? It's exactly that, the getting rid of "Thou Shalt" and replacing it with a "You May". Where food is concerned, North American culture has deeply ingrained in it the old Puritan-inspired idea that Food Is Only There For Sustenance, and taking pleasure in it is somehow sinful and to be regarded with suspicion. If it's tasty, it must be "bad for you", and the root cause for many of the ills in our society are "bad foods". If you are a virtuous person, you will eat virtuous food (no, not virtual. Virtuous. Sheesh.); if you are a bad (self-indulgent, undisciplined, non-virtuous) person, you will eat bad food - or the other way around, eating virtuous food makes you a virtuous person, eating bad (vice-ous, vicious) food makes you a bad person. You don't believe me? Think about it - have you ever heard of a chocolate cake being "sinfully rich"? Or seen that commercial which equated eating cream cheese with being angels or devils? (I can't remember if the point of the commercial was that this brand of cream cheese was so delicious that it even tempted angels to commit the sin of eating it, or if it was so much artificially altered that it didn't count as sinful any longer and even the angels could eat it. I only remember that it was a really obnoxious ad.)

Food is equated with virtue or vice, being good or bad. And being healthy or sick is how we are rewarded or punished for our self-discipline or self-indulgence. Add to that the "every man for himself" ideal on which North America is built, put it in the pot, stir until combined, and you end up with a completely fragmented food culture.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be that way. The Germans, the French, the Italians, for that matter the Greeks and Turks and Japanese and Chinese and Russians and Spanish and - well, you get the idea - they don't think that way of food. They love food. They enjoy food. And they SHARE food. I sometimes regret that I don't drink coffee (I never have, and for a no more virtuous reason than that I don't like the taste). I would love to be able to share in the conversation of this society's all-pervasive coffee culture, to be able to discuss whether a triple-mocha-venti-macchiado made with a Columbian roast is more tasty than an, umm, cinnamon-pumpkin-spice latté sourced from Costa Rican beans, but as you can tell, I don't even get the terminology right. My regret isn't big enough to cultivate a taste for the roasted bean, but you get my drift. There is pleasure in a shared food culture, and it's a good thing.

Life, the Universe, and the Pleasures of Food. Now that is virtue.

Food for Thought

cake, pizza shells, English muffins, bread

I was having an email conversation (yup, I'm that old-fashioned) with some friends about food, and diets, and food culture, and ways to think about food, and this morning, this is what spilled off my keyboard. Seeing as it was pretty much a completed blog post right there, I figured I might as well use it. So, if you'll pardon my dropping you into the middle of a conversation, here goes:

The thing is, you'll find it quite difficult to ditch the "food as a virtue/vice" thinking, because it is all-pervasive in North American society. You've grown up steeped in that mode of thinking; you won't even notice it's there because it's "normal" to you - part of the North American discourse. The fish can't tell the colour of the water it swims in.

I notice it more because I didn't grow up with it, not to the same extent, anyway - none of the women in my environment, mother, grandmother, older sister, aunts etc., ever "dieted", it's not even part of their vocabulary; in fact, there isn't a verb for "to diet" in German, the only word they have is the equivalent of "losing weight" ("abnehmen", lit. "to take off"). "Diät essen" (eating according to a diet) means being on a special medical diet such as a diabetic one, and it's quite rare.

It would be unthinkable to Germans for families to eat separate meals, to have one person cook something different for themselves than for the rest of the family. And that starts right when kids are little. "Was auf den Tisch kommt, wird gegessen!" - "What's put on the table gets eaten!" is the standard stern admonishment to picky eaters; there none of that "I don't like the vegetables!" "Okay, darling, you can have a peanut butter sandwich." You eat what's there, and if you don't, you go hungry, tough luck to you. I've seen that going around the internet as child-rearing advice recently, usually under the heading of "Why French Kids Eat Their Vegetables" or something like that - I grew up with it. Meals are at a set table during set times, with a beginning and an end (in our family, both those involved prayers, "saying grace" - one to start, the other to end), and you show up at the table for the beginning and don't leave until the end. And that was for three meals a day - breakfast, dinner, supper. Breakfast and supper are just bread (with jam or cheese and meat) and tea/coffee/cocoa, but still, the table is set, you have a real meal. It annoyed me as a teen to always have to show up for each meal, even if I was in the middle of something, which is why we don't do it around here except for dinner - but the attitudes that go with it are in my blood.

That's what I mean by "food culture" - it's as much about how you eat as about what, and it's always, by definition, shared (you can't run a culture on your own, as I found out the hard way). Going on a "diet" of whatever description, voluntarily or not, separates you from shared food culture, and as far as I'm concerned, that's not a thing to be undertaken lightly.

If you want to dig into that whole mode of thinking, check out Mireille Guiliano (French Women Don't Get Fat), Will Clower (The French Don't Diet), maybe even Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love - the "Eat" portion of it), and any number of "joyful food" movies or books (Julie and Julia, Ratatouille, Kim Severson's Spoon Fed, Elizabeth Bard's Lunch in Paris etc, and any of the TV chefs, my favourites being Jamie Oliver, Julia Child and The Two Fat Ladies). You might find yourself quite surprised at how they think of food.

Think of it this way: what if our culture declared that sex was only good for reproduction, and enjoying sex was somewhat disreputable? (Umm, puritanism? We've been there before... But never mind that for the moment.) And then we declared that the physical problems we have are because of how we do sex, so this week's sex du jour is the missionary position, all others are declared "unhealthy". If you still have sex other ways, and you've got a backache, well, hey, you've been warned. You've gone down the list, and you've got all the symptoms of wrong-sex-position intolerance; if you still persist in your perverse behaviour, you can hardly blame anyone else for your problems.

Sounds ludicrous, I know, but it's really not all that different. Because even in this, there's a kernel of truth to it: of course some people have back problems because of their conjugal calisthenics; of course some people have sick sex behaviour and need to change it; of course some people can do some things and not others. But it's not because some sex behaviour is inherently bad. For most people, the whole gamut of it is good, and right, and healthy, and a pleasure, and it's meant to be.

And so is food.

And thus endeth today's sermon. LOL.
A.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and Food for Thought. May it be a tasty morsel.

edible art, aka a fruit salad

Autumn

I don't really have anything to say today, so I'll show you instead: pictures of a Canadian October. Autumn. You know, come to think of it, I like the word "autumn" better than "fall" (although I usually use the latter when I'm talking). "Fall" sounds you've just tripped and gone splat, "autumn" sounds so much more poetic.

Zucchini, spaghetti squash, pumpkins, and some kind of crossbreed which makes good pies.

Thanksgiving Turkey. That sucker was so big, the lid didn't fit on the roasting pan.

Those poor petunias, still trying to pretend its summer.

Rain. It's cosy inside on those days.

...but we've had sunny days, too. The brilliance of autumn colours is beyond comparison.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and My Autumn So Far. I do like this season.

Apples

As you probably heard, I'm studying Snow White right now. Yes, her of the apple. But I also live in Apple Country; I drive past apple (and/or peach and/or cherry) orchards every time I leave my house.

Apples are great. I think if I were to move to a tropical climate, apart from dying of heat, I'd really miss apples. For Northern Europeans, they're the quintessential fruit. You know how in the Garden of Eden Eve tempted Adam with an apple? Actually, she didn't. We just think she did, courtesy of all those Northern European artists who heard the story that the Fall of Mankind came about through a piece of fruit, and automatically depicted the first thing that came to mind - an apple. For all we know, the Garden-of-Eden fruit was a banana. But somehow it doesn't quite seem right, you know? Apples are so tempting, so lovely, and round, and shiny (if you buff them on your shirt before eating them) - a banana hasn't quite got the same effect.

That's what got Snow White, too. She fell for all the finery the witch foisted off on her - the lace that was tied too tightly, the poisoned comb in her hair - but the dwarfs figured that out and saved her bacon by unlacing and uncombing her. But when it came to food, they struck out. I'm sure there is some deep symbolism in that, or some sly dig at how important food is to women (well, it is, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's another topic.), and that if you give in to the temptation of food you've had it, lady. Presumably the witch took the bitten apple away with her, or the dwarfs would have seen it lying around and figured out that it was food that did in Snow White, and performed the Heimlich manoeuvre or pumped her stomach or something. Well, it doesn't rightly matter, because once the apple popped back out of her mouth, she was fine.

Apples are very symbolic, of all kinds of things. Martin Luther said that to teach children, one ought to have a switch in one hand, an apple in the other. I believe the emphasis here was on the apple, as in his day it was taken for granted that children needed to be beaten in order to learn anything; he was saying that there needs to be positive reinforcement, not just negative - and the apple was the emblem of sweet treats, a suitable reward for a good child (Mars bars hadn't been invented yet).

You've got to wonder what kind of apple Snow White's was. It says it was red on one side, and white on the other (with only the red side poisoned). I can't think of an apple variety that looks like that. My favourite kind (the one in the picture) is a Mackintosh, which is red and green, not red and white. It's good for everything - fresh eating, pie, juice, drying, apple sauce - plus is keeps well (for months, if it's stored right). And it's rarely poisoned by wicked witches. Now, I wonder what the Mac Apple computer has to do with the fruit. It certainly isn't that they're both the cheapest variety on the market.

Life, the Universe, and Apples. I have a feeling Snow White didn't serve apple pie at her wedding.

Soup

Did I mention that I like food? I guess I did, maybe once or twice (a month). Yes, well. It's one of the greatest pleasures of life, food is. And I enjoy it. Specifically, right now I'm enjoying soup.

I never used to be a big soup eater. I'm still not, really, although they're great fun to cook (you can be very creative with soups). But I have a few kinds of soups I really like, and one of my current favourites is Jamie Oliver's Cauliflower Cheese Soup. I got it from his book Jamie's Food Revolution (called Jamie's Ministry of Food in the original UK edition), a book I'd highly recommend for beginners and seasoned (haha) foodies alike. I'm not sure what it is about the combination of cauliflower and cheese, but it's just to die for (or rather to live for or on. It's really nutritious, as well as addictively delicious.). And just so your taste buds, too, can experience the bliss of cheesy-cauliflowery wonderfulness, here's the recipe - my version, but it's mostly the same as Jamie's.

2 carrots
2 celery stalks
2 medium onions
2 cloves of garlic (I leave those out, I can't eat garlic. But they'd be very tasty, I'm sure.)
8 cups cauliflower florets, or about 1 head of cauliflower
oil
2 quarts (litres) chicken or vegetable broth (I use homemade chicken stock*)
salt and pepper
8 oz (250g) grated cheddar cheese (or whatever other kind you like)
1 tsp mustard
(Jamie also suggests nutmeg, which I don't like, so I don't put it in)

Chop the vegetables. Put a glug of oil into a big soup pot, turn on high, dump in the veg. Sauté the veg for ten minutes or so, until they're softish (the onions at least). Pour in the broth (Jamie says to boil the broth in another pot first, but I don't, I just put it in cold). Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are really soft, about 30 minutes. Purée with an immersion blender. Add the mustard and grated cheese, stir until melted. SERRRRRVE. Makes enough for 6-8 people, or else it freezes and reheats very well. Also good in thermos containers in lunches and such.

*Oh, and just as a PS, here's how I make chicken stock:
take a chicken carcase or two or three (raw with a bit of meat on it still is best, but the bones from a roast chicken, even one of those rotisserie ones from the supermarket, work very well too). Put into a stock pot. Cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, turn down, simmer for a couple of hours or so. Strain out the bones, pick off the last bits of meat (they make great chicken salad), chuck out the bones, DONE. I pour the stock into old litre-sized yogurt containers and freeze it for future reference. It's THE best base for homemade soups of any kind. Note, I don't add any seasonings, not even salt, because I want to be free to play with the seasonings in the final recipe. Also, if you want to simmer the stock down to concentrate some more, the salt or other seasonings would become too strong, so it's better to just not put any in up front. If I wanted to make plain chicken soup from this, I'd simmer some seasonings along with the bones, say, an onion, a couple of carrots, some celery, and a leaf or two of lovage (a garden herb that tastes like Maggi, similar to celery leaves; it's a great soup seasoning).

There you have it: Life, the Universe, and Soup. Guten Appetit!

Rich

There's a word in the English language I particularly like: rich. As in, applied to food. In German, the equivalent "reich" strictly means "having lots of money" (if you capitalise it, Reich, it also means "empire", but as an adjective it just means, well, "wealthy"). But the English "rich" contains so much more. Today I made some chocolate mousse for dessert to go with Sunday dinner (goulash, egg noodles, and salad fresh from the garden, if you must know), and it totally covers every meaning of that word.

The ingredients in this delectable concoction (recipe to follow) are chocolate (actual chocolate, not just cocoa powder), butter, eggs, sugar (regular and icing), and whipping cream. The only way to make it more decadent, more expensive, would be to add some booze. (Ooh, that's a thought - a shot of Grand Marnier, perhaps? Hmm...) Eggs, butter, cream, sugar, chocolate - everything that is costly and rare, or should by rights be so.

And it tastes rich, too. It's the kind of thing you eat in tiny servings, because after a dozen dessertspoonfuls, you just can't eat any more. But oh, those dozen spoonfuls... Bliss.

And as promised, here's the recipe. It comes from Christian Teubner's Kochvergnügen wie noch nie ("Cooking Pleasures As Never Before"), the 1985 edition. One of my aunts gave it to my mother as a Christmas present, about that year or the year after, and as my mum isn't big into trying out recipes, I absconded with the book and its companion volume, Backvergnügen wie noch nie ("Baking Pleasures As Never Before"), when I emigrated to Canada. (The only-English-speaking among you might recognize the word "Vergnügen" in this context from the VW ads promising Fahrvergnügen, "driving pleasures". Personally, I get more Vergnügen out of cooking or baking than driving, but to each their own.) So here you are:

Mousse au chocolat
(serves 4-6)

100g (3oz) semi-sweet chocolate
1 Tbsp butter (unsalted)
2 eggs
1 Tbsp sugar
1 pinch salt
1/4 l (1c) cream
1 Tbsp icing sugar

Melt the butter and chocolate over low heat. Separate the eggs; beat the egg whites with the salt to stiff peaks, the egg yolks with the sugar until creamy. Blend the egg yolk mixture into the chocolate, along with a couple of spoonfuls of the egg whites. Leave to cool slightly. Whip the cream with the icing sugar. Fold together the chocolate mixture, egg white and cream.
Dish into fancy little dishes (I like using those 1970's champagne glasses, the wide, flat ones that are supposed to be originally molded on Marie Antoinette's breast. Which should turn one right off any food or drink that would be served in them, but as it's probably an entirely apocryphal story, I don't let it bother me.). Chill for a couple of hours (you and the dishes). Lick spoon and mixing bowl.
(The original recipe doesn't include that last instruction, and instead says to reserve some of the whipping cream for garnishing the dishes just before serving, sprinkle on chopped pistachios, and put one coffee bean on top of each. But I never do that. I do, however, lick the bowl, so I thought I'd share my own version with you. Don't blame Herr Teubner.)

So there you have it. This is the epitome of rich food. I made a double recipe today; it turned out exceptionally well (it doesn't always, so that's particularly gratifying), and there's not a single lick left.

Life, the Universe, and Rich Food. I feel privileged.

Easter Bells And Other Things That Make Me Happy

I treated myself to a bunch of daffodils for Easter. They were only a couple of bucks - okay, $2.50 maybe - and they're so cheerful. Osterglocken, they're called in German, Easter Bells. I love Easter Bells, both the flowers and the items that toll in church towers. Hearing church bells is one of the things I miss about Europe. Every Sunday morning you hear them, and in many places every day at noon, to pray an "Our Father" and take your lunch break, and again at six or seven for quitting time, Feierabend - "celebration evening". There really is something festive about the sound of bells.

Church bells are impressive items. They're huge, for one, often as tall as an adult human, and they weigh a ton - literally. And up close, they're so loud they can kill you; at least that's what Dorothy L. Sayers says in The Nine Tailors, where Lord Peter barely escapes with his life when he is accidentally caught in a church tower while the bells are tolling. I believe her - I was on top of a church tower once when the bell struck the hour, and even though we were a floor or two above the bell (or below, I can't remember), we all stood there with our hands pressed over our ears, the noise was so painful. But bells have to be that loud, so they can be heard in the whole town. Else how would you know when it's time to go to church or take your lunch break, or when someone is getting married or buried or christened or anything else important happens? Church bells were the Twitter and Google Calendar of pre-technology days.

My lovage doing its spring thing

Over here in the New World, church bells are few and far between; I have never lived within the sound of bells here. But I do get to have the flower kind of Easter Bells, and they make me happy.

And on that note, some other things that make me happy are rhubarb, lovage, and chives - the first food crops that start poking their heads out of the ground. I love snow drops and crocuses, because they say that winter is nearly over and spring is here, but it's those green needles of the chive shoots and the red bump of sprouting rhubarb that put the full stop behind that statement. Winter is done. Now when I make soup I don't have to stint on dried lovage any more in order to avoid running out - the new crop is growing, and within a few months that lovage bush is going to be taller than I am and I'll be hacking back the celery-flavoured greenery to keep it from choking out its neighbours in the vegetable bed.

Rhubarb rhubarbing

Oh, and those of you who are still buried under ice and snow, thumb your nose at winter - he's had it. My rhubarb says so.

Life, the Universe, Easter Bells and Things That Make Me Happy. Have a wonderful spring!

"Food"

I don't usually re-blog other people's postings, but this one, which came to me via Jim from Up-From-the-Mud, is worth sharing. It's an extremely thought-provoking little video about a young man, Jesse Hunter, who gets all his food for free - from garbage bins. Not because he has to (he isn't homeless or anything), but because he can, because there's so much food thrown away all the time.

Now, I know this is going to give some of you the willies, big-time - what about hygiene? This is disgusting, what's he putting into his body? Eeewww! But, think about it - people smoke, they suck tar into their bodies... people get plastic surgery, they have silicone injected into them... and people consume artificially-coloured-flavoured-and-textured substances, they ingest chemicals that were never meant for human consumption... what's a few human germs compared to all that? (And, no, I don't go for smoking or plastic surgery, but the plastic-and-tar foods - well, guilty as charged...)

I particularly like the conclusion to this piece - Jesse doesn't suggest that we all start scavenging in university food courts. (Well, if we did, there wouldn't be anything left for him, would there?) Instead, he turns it all around - start thinking about your food, he says. Don't throw away perfectly good food. Learn about where food comes from, so you get to appreciating it. And finally - grow a carrot.

So here it is: "Food".



Life, the Universe, and Something Controversial For a Change. I hope it is for a change.

Jack-o-Lantern Pies

Let me introduce you to the fine art of Jack-o-Lantern Pie Baking. Despite what Lynn Johnston, she of "For Better or for Worse", says (check the footnote of this particular comic strip), jack-o-lanterns can, and indeed do, make fine pies. You just have to make sure to not include any of the wax drippings from the candle.

So here's this year's jack-o-lanterns (and a couple of jack-o-nothings in their whole uncarved glory):

The one on the left did, alas, end up on the compost; it looked kind of mouldy on the inside. It came that way; not sure what went on there. But the one on the right, one of our homegrown pumplings, became pie fodder.

In order to turn a jack-o-lantern into a pie, you first examine it carefully for wax drips and scorch marks. This one, being of the wide and squat persuasion, was totally blackened on the underside of the lid (there was only a couple of inches between the lid and the flame of the candle). So the lid hit the compost, too. But then, I just hacked up what was left, stuffed it in a large pot, added some water, and cooked it for, umm, until-it-was-done. Maybe forty-five minutes or so? Then drain it, peel off the rind, and Bob's your uncle (or cousin, or kittycat).

Enter the fail-safe and idiot-proof recipe:

1 single unbaked 10" pie crust (I use the recipe from the inside of the lard box. Yes, I make my pie crust with lard. It's makes the flakiest crust.)
2 c cooked, mashed pumpkin
2 eggs
3/4 c brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 c cream (or less, or more, or 1/4 c milk and some butter, or whatever)
(c = cups or 250ml, tsp = teaspoon or 5ml)

Whiz all and sundry in food processor, dump into crust, stick pie into preheated 400°F (200°C) oven, bake for 45-55 minutes or until filling puffs evenly all the way to the center.
Remove from oven, cool on rack, serve with whipped cream.
Observe minute of silence for memory of jack-o-lantern.

And there  you have it. I got two whole pies out of it this year, and yummy they were indeed. See?

Life, the Universe, and Jack-o-Lantern Pies. There's nothing like acquired tastes.

You Can Only Do So Much

Poetry. Magnetic. Yup.

You can only do so much. You know? Several of my friends are gearing up for this year's Christmas art show at the local gallery. I missed the deadline. Well, really, I let it intentionally slip by. I didn't have anything ready to put in, unless I was going to offer them a few pieces from last year, including a couple they had rejected then. But you know what? I just didn't feel like doing the art show this year. I'll go and admire my friends' work, and maybe even find some new artists to admire, and then I'll go home and enjoy the fact that I didn't have to stress about getting artwork ready for it myself.

It feels a bit weird, though, not doing it this year, because last year's show was a resounding success for me. I sold more pieces than I ever have before in my life. You'd think I'd strike the iron while it was hot, wouldn't you? Or, as it were, strike the clay while it was cold, wet and squishy. (When it's hot, you don't want to go near it, let alone strike it - the glaze firing runs to 1200°C, it melts everything up to and including some types of rocks.) But, well, I've got other things on my mind. And the whole thing about last year's show was that I did it purely for fun. The pieces I put in, I'd made for fun; participating in the show, putting things together for submission, that was fun; and when I sold stuff and got a cheque out of the deal - hoo boy, you bet that was fun! But it was bonus fun, not the point of the exercise.

Whereas right now - what do I do for fun? Write weird magnetic poetry. Or rambly blog posts. And watch my favourite movies, reread my favourite English authors, develop crushes on Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Alleyn, Edmund Bertram and the actors who play them, and occasionally cook or bake something good to eat that's not the same-old-same-old thing I make so often it bores me to tears (or causes tears, anyway; the large amount of chopped onions required might exacerbate the boredom-induced lachrymosity).

The thing is that what passes for my work right now, namely my grad school studies, actually requires a fair amount of creative thought and effort. And I have only so much of that creative energy. When I need to write essays for school, or even, as is the case this week, stories and poems (which qualify as fun, or at least creative satisfaction, in their own right), my capacity for "getting things done" is pretty much used up.

It's a little embarrassing at times when people ask me if I have "done any pottery lately" (or painting, or soap-making, or insert-any-of-the-dozens-of-hobbies-I've-had-in-the-past), and I have to answer, quite plainly, "Nope!"

I've composed a lemon cake on Saturday, though, does that count? It's quite delicious. And baked a few poems. And I think I almost figured out whodunnit in "Death and the Dancing Footman"; that takes time, too, you know? I think it should count. You can only do so much.

Life, the Universe, and Good Things To Do. Sometimes you need to get choosy about what you spend your time on.

Flat

Steve and I got to see the prairies on the weekend. Well, I did, anyway; Steve mostly saw the inside of my backpack and the bedside table in our hotel room. But that's okay, as he's a little agoraphobic. And in case you've never been on the prairies, let me tell you that they're a very bad place to be if you have a fear of open spaces.

I had never been on the prairies before - not really. Only on the westernmost part of it, in Alberta; and while I was impressed with them then, they're nothing to the immense, astonishing, enormous vastness that is Saskatchewan. The immense, astonishing, enormous, FLAT vastness. There is, as Connie Kaldor sings, "Sky With Nothing To Get In The Way". And that nothing that doesn't get in the way, it goes on for miles, and miles, and miles -for a whole quarter of a continent, in fact. Steve isn't the only one who felt a little agoraphobic out there.

Really, there is no reason why I should be so astonished at what the prairies are. I heard them talked about for most of my adult life, not least by the friend whose wedding was the reason for our quick weekend trip. But immensity like this, it has to be seen to be imagined. I had no idea that there is a landscape like this, so wide, so flat, so endless, with just a few clumps of trees, sheltering farmhouses from the wind, seemingly randomly dotted across the plains, far, far away from each other across the fields. And then occasionally, equally randomly, the houses cluster together into little towns, by the side of the arrow-straight road which could take you on, and on, across the vast flatness, until it dips over the horizon.

Our friend took us out to see his family's old farm, where his brother, his father and his grandfather tended the land for nearly a hundred years. It's been sold now, and his family's home, heartbreakingly, stands abandoned. But the land around it is still being farmed, still used to grow food. Right next to the house, there are some granaries (our friend nearly snapped our heads off when we called them "silos") which are in use by the people who farm the land now, and spilled on the ground in front of them there were some lentils, just sitting on the dirt like so much gravel. I could have scooped them up and cooked soup out of them right there (after a little help from Cinderella's doves with sorting out the grass and dirt from the lentils themselves). Of course I knew legumes grow on plants, but somehow I had never really pictured where they would come from - those vast acres of plants, translating into food just like that. There were the bronze and ochre fields, and here the lentils lying on the ground.

I have conceived an enormous respect for the source of our food, for the people who dwell on those vast open plains and work this tremendous, beautiful wide land. I have also come to a new appreciation for the mountains, the lakes and the trees that I see every day when I look out my window. Beauty comes in so many forms - some awe-inspiring, some intimate. Here, back at home, in the orchards down the street the peaches are ripening, and the pears and apples won't be far behind. But now, when I dip my measuring cup into the flour bucket to make the pie crust to go on the fruit, I can picture those wide open prairies where the wheat blows in the wind, and I can see the farms and little towns where the people live who plant, tend and harvest.

Life, the Universe, and the Immensity of the Prairies. It has to be seen to be imagined.

Poetry of Various Descriptions

There's magnetic poetry:

...and gustatory poetry (blueberry, if you must know):

... and horticultural-culinary poetry (the large orange-red flowers are nasturtiums, which tastes like watercress, the small red ones scarlet runner bean blossoms, which taste faintly of beans, the blue flowers borage, the leaves of which taste like cucumber with prickles on them, and the yellow petals calendula, which don't taste like much of anything but look pretty. And the green stuff is lettuce. Dress with vinaigrette, consume.).

Life, the Universe, and Poetry. It takes all kinds.

Spam

I've been spammed. I guess that makes this blog important now, doesn't it? It was innocuous enough, just somebody fishing for business by leaving a generic and badly punctuated comment that didn't even make sense but had links to their editing services attached. Yup, like I'd be inclined to engage the "Dissertation Writing Services" of someone who produces a sentence like "This posts shows your efforts that how do you cover any topic research."

On the other hand, it did inspire me to look up "Spam", and it's interesting what one can find out. Apparently the word is a portmanteau of "Spiced" and "Ham", and the ingredients in the classic variety (there's classic Spam? Hmm...) are "chopped pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite as a preservative". That's actually a remarkable quantity of meat product, considering. Well, I guess it depends on just how much modified potato starch is in there, and how it's been modified. Maybe it's been turned into sheets of potato starch paper (like rice paper), and then made into papier-maché, shaped into spam-sized cubes.

There, doesn't this posts show my efforts that how I do cover any topic research? And I didn't even need the friendly spammer's editing services for it.

And I know that any second now, one of you is going to quote Monty Python at me. Go ahead, bring it on! It's definitely one of their better sketches.

Life, the Universe, and Spam. Research brings out interesting trivia.

Etymology

I don't usually post about what's on other people's sites, but today I have to make an exception. That's because in yesterday's xkcd comic, Etymology Man, I have found my new identity. Oh yeah.


Etymology rules. Here's one case where the internet has brought me the fulfilment of a long-harboured wish: an etymology dictionary. Back in the 80's, when I first conceived of that wish, they cost over $100, hardcopies being the only thing available; of course that was utterly out of reach for a perpetually-broke teenager. Now, thanks to the wonders of cyberspace, all I have to do is type in etymonline.com, and I have full access to all the obscure histories of all the obscure words my heart could possibly desire. Go ahead, try it: type "etymology" into the search box on the top of that screen, and see what you get. Ooh, for some reason the third thing on the list is "cockroach"- where does that come in? Ooh, rabbit trails...

And now I'm going to go make a pot full of marmalade (late 15c., from M.Fr. marmelade, from Port. marmelada "quince jelly, marmalade," from marmelo "quince," by dissimilation from L. melimelum "sweet apple," originally "fruit of an apple tree grafted onto quince," from Gk. melimelon, from meli "honey" (see Melissa) + melon "apple." Extended 17c. to "preserve made from citrus fruit."). And after that, go and read Marx (Marxist (n.) 1886, "devotee of the teachings of Marx," from Fr. marxiste, from Karl Marx (1818-1883), Ger. political theorist. The adj. is attested from 1897. The adj. Marxian (1940) sometimes is used (e.g. by Groucho) to distinguish the U.S. comedic team from the Ger. political philosopher).

Life, the Universe, and Etymology. I gotta get me a cape.

Waffles

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That's to say, I don't really have anything to say today. But being an inveterate driveller, I'm still going to say something anyway. That's known as waffling about nothing.

Which reminds me of a story a teacher of mine told once. He was from Franken, Franconia, which is the area around Nuremberg. In their dialect, so he said, "waffle" is a (not very flattering) synonym for "mouth", something like "kisser" in English. So there were these two ladies sitting in a café, eating ices, and they were ladies indeed. One of them was the wife of a government official, a Kommerzienrat (Councillor of Commerce, Alderman, something like that), which meant that her nose was planted firmly in the air. She was also a rather, shall we say, loquacious person. Now, eating ices in a café in Germany means that you get them served in an elegant bowl, with a spoon, and with a waffle stuck in the top, which you can use as the spoon substitute to scoop your ice cream with (stuck-out pinkie optional). Mrs Alderman had done just that, had picked up one scoop of ice cream on her waffle, but the latest gossip she had to impart to her friend was just too pressing for her to take the time to get the ice to her mouth. There she sat, waffle with ice cream poised in her hand, jabbering away, talk talk talk talk... The inevitable happened: the ice cream started to melt. Her companion tried to get in a word of warning, but could not get through the flow of words, until finally, in desperation, she blurted out: "Frau Kommerzienrat, your waffle is dripping!"

So there you have it; that's what happens when you have nothing to say but say it anyway.

I hope you're all having a great fifth day of Christmas, with perhaps the odd gold ring or two in evidence.

Life, the Universe, and Dripping Waffles. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

On Cinnamon and Peacocks

I went shopping the other day at our lovely local bulk foods store. We were running dismally low on such necessities of life as dried beans, rolled oats, and large chunks of chocolate, so the situation had to be remedied. Besides, Christmas is coming up, and it was imperative that I lay in the required supplies. One of the things I love about the bulk food store is the way it smells; they sell spices and other delectables from open bins with just a loose lid on them, so the scent permeates the whole shop. As it did my car, on the half-hour drive home.

This, dear people, is a bag of cinnamon. A one-kilogram bag of cinnamon. For those of you in the US, that's two-point-two pounds. And what I paid for it is $4.97. Four Canadian dollars, and ninety-seven cents. For those of you in Europe, that's about €3.55. For those of you in the US, that's $4.97. And for everyone else, that's just plain ridiculous.

You see, it was snowing that day as I was driving home, inhaling cinnamon scents all the way. Cold, white, soft flakes of snow. Temperatures just around the freezing point. And no, that's not terribly unusual here for this time of year, even though, contrary to what you might think, I do not live in an igloo year-round, and my car moves on tires, not sled runners. (I live in Canada, not next door to Father Christmas and the North Polar Bear. Just sayin'.) But, my point is I'm driving home, through the snow, with a one-kilo bag of cinnamon in the car that I paid five bucks for.

For the last few years around Christmas, the local educational TV station has been broadcasting this very interesting show called "A Tudor Feast at Christmas" (ooh, very cool, you can watch it for free here!). A team of English historians dress up in outfits from the late 16th century, go to an old manor house, and spend three days preparing a meal like the highest rungs of the social ladder in Elizabethan England would expect to be fed at a Christmas celebration. They use only the technology, ingredients and methods that would have been used at the time; and talk to the camera about how much bloomin' work it is to grind almonds for marzipan in a mortar and pestle instead of using a food processor. Now that's my kind of reality television!

So one of the blurbs that really stuck with me is where this food historian talks about cinnamon. He says, if I recall correctly, that cinnamon was nearly as precious as gold in those days - if not more so. Say, an English merchant outfitted three whole sailing ships, vessel, crew, supplies, everything, and sent those three ships off to the Spice Islands. He waits a full year for their return. Two of the ships are lost entirely, sunk off the coast of India in a storm. Just one of the ships makes it back to the cooler climates of Europe, its cargo hold loaded with the little fragrant brown sticks. That merchant, in spite of having lost two-thirds of an enormous investment, has just made his fortune for life.

Countries where it can snow in November are constitutionally incapable of growing cinnamon, so they have to bring it from elsewhere, from the far-away exotic shores of hot climates. Cinnamon, by rights, should be expensive around here. I have a feeling that my one-kilo bag of cinnamon, finely ground and powdery, probably equates to a wealthy person's yearly income by 1597's standards. But in case you were wondering, $4.97 doesn't go very far in today's Canada. In fact, it's only about twice of what I might pay for an equivalent weight in apples, which I could have picked from the trees in the orchard down the street a few months ago.

I wonder if the price on whole roasted peacock with the skin put back on, presented at the table in all its peacocky splendour, is going to go through a similar price drop anytime soon?

Life, the Universe and Cinnamon. Steve says he's looking forward to gingerbread.

Scarborough Fair

I just gave my herb bed its autumn haircut, bringing in the last of the herbs that I was going to preserve. Here's a lovely Scarborough Fair basket, filled with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. The last three are now hanging in bundles above the wood stove to dry; the parsley was chopped and frozen, as it doesn't dry well.

I also couldn't resist picking a few more heads of calendula (English marigolds), which were still blooming, and putting them on an old dehydrator rack in the workshop to dry. Poor Man's Saffron, dontcha know. Not that I ever use saffron, really, or calendula petals, for that matter, but I just like having it. I suppose it's like some women and shoes; I always like having yet another herb plant in the garden, or spice in the cupboard. Some of the herbs I don't even bother preserving, as I'd definitely never will use them; I just like growing them.

Southernwood is one of them; I don't even know what it's good for, really. I read somewhere that you could put it, sparingly, in pork dishes; but otherwise the only uses for it I heard of is as a strewing herb, and as part of a bouquet of aromatic herbs that judges in Ye Olden Days put on their bench in the court room in order to ward off jail fever which the prisoners would bring with them into the dock (the inconsiderate wretches). Neither one of those is any good to me, seeing as I'm neither a Victorian judge (or a judge of Victoriana, for that matter), and don't have my floors covered in rushes (hardwood or carpeting is nicer, I find, but if you want to put straw on your floors, more power to you. I can let you have some southernwood to keep it nice-smelling). Apparently southernwood is related to wormwood (as in, "bitter gall and -"), which used to be the flavour in absinthe (the drink Van Gogh & Co fried their brains with); its toxicity is the reason that you can't get absinthe any more.

Another herb I like to have in my garden, just to have it, is tarragon. I know you can make lovely tarragon vinegar, and there's lovely recipes for tarragon chicken, and it's a lovely part of a lovely bouquet garni, but really, I don't actually like the flavour. Any of those anise-like flavours, I'm not particularly fond of to eat - anise, tarragon, licorice, even basil... And I'd grow them all, if I could. (Hey, can you grow licorice on the 50th latitude? Or is that a tropical? Hmm, she says, with an avaricious gleam in the eye...) But, anyway, tarragon has one quality that makes it rather vital to have in one's garden: tarragon's other name is Dragonsbane. Truly, it wards off dragons! I haven't seen a single one in my garden since I planted it.

Life, the Universe, and Herb Collections. I think I'll go listen to Scarborough Fair now.