Gra-Zo-la

That's granola, Zoe-style.

So as all reasonable people know, raisins are absolutely revolting. However, it appears that no reasonable people make granola on a commercial scale, because every single kind of granola available in my two local grocery stores and indeed every commercially available box of granola I have ever seen is infested with these withered monstrosities. So, short of picking through every box of muesli/granola before consumption to get all the raisins out (which I have done many times before), what is a granola-craving girl to do?

Well considering that it's term paper time, and I am willing to go to any lengths to avoid reading for or writing said term papers (except going to the laundromat), I of course decided to make some reasonable-people granola. Some graZola.

Rule number one of graZola is, of course, no raisins. If you came here looking for some kind of disgusting sultana-fest, you are going to be disappointed. There are plenty of other sites for people like you, but this recipe is reserved for those of us who like our grapes un-shriveled. So other than rule number one, graZola is pretty much a free-for-all. Use whatever you like. Don't use whatever you don't like. Don't bake it in the oven and make muesli (Zuesli?) instead. It's completely up to you. Below is the recipe that I made today, but I am definitely going to mix it up in the future. As long as all forms of dried grapes stay well away.

Recipe: GraZola
2 cups rolled/quick/minute oats (Don't listen to people who tell you that quick oats are no good, they don't have half a bag of quick oats sitting on their kitchen table, staring them down every morning.)
2 cups mixed grain flakes (I bought a bag of such flakes in the organic aisle of my grocery store. You could use all oats or your own variety of grain flakes, as long as you make it up to about 4 cups total.)
1/2 cup seeds (flax, sunflower, sesame, etc. Optional)
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped/sliced nuts (I used sliced almonds.)
1/4 tsp salt (The recipe I used said 1 tsp but it ended up way too salty.)
1/2 cup honey/maple syrup/brown sugar syrup/golden syrup (I used mostly creamed honey with a bit of golden syrup)
2-3 tbsp boiling water
1/4 cup canola oil (or other mildly flavoured oil. Actually a few tablespoons of nut oil would work really well here)
1 tsp vanilla/other extract (I just used vanilla)
~1 cup dried fruit (NOT raisins. I used about 3/4 cup banana chips, broken up, and 1/2 cup chopped dried pineapple. I wanted to have some dried kiwi and dried papaya, but the budget would not allow it.)

• Preheat oven to 300F
• Mix the dry ingredients (not counting the dried fruit) together in a large mixing bowl.
• In a separate, small bowl, mix your preferred syrup with some boiling water until it dissolves (especially important with creamed honey). Once dissolved, add oil and vanilla extract.
• Pour the dressing onto the dry ingredients and mix it all up until it's all slightly darker and shiny. Don't leave any dry patches.
• Spread onto baking tray and bake for about 30-40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. It's done when it's all golden (don't let it burn).
• Let it cool on the baking tray.
• Put it into your storage container and add dried fruit. Shake it all about.
• Store upside down (so you don't use up all the good bits first and end up with just oat dust at the bottom of the container) and in the fridge to keep the oils and nuts from going rancid. This is especially important if you're keeping it around for more than about 10-14 days. You can also freeze it if you make way too much.

If you'd rather have it muesli style, don't do the dressing/baking thing (and you can probably leave out the salt) and just have it uncooked, with milk or yogurt. Also delicious. Elizabeth is super against having chocolate in it and although I haven't tried it (yet) I don't think it would be too disgusting. Especially as a trail-mix-style snack, I really don't think a few chocolate chips or smarties would go amiss. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Kasha Varnishkes

I've been obsessing over different types of porridge lately, namely oatmeal, rye porridge and kasha (buckwheat). I might give an update on that later, but for now I'll just say I had a lot of extra buckwheat hanging around. So I was really excited when I came across this column on the New York Times food blog. Kasha varnishkes: Eastern European Jewish soul food. Simple to put together, and composed entirely of things I already had in my apartment.



My recipe is not traditional, but it's still delicious.

Recipe: Kasha varnishkes
1 cup chopped onion*
1/8 to 1/4 cup olive oil**
1/3 cup buckwheat groats ("kasha")
250g (1/2 pound) pasta***
salt and ground black pepper

• Dry-fry the onions in a pan or skillet for about 10 minutes or until they are sticking to the pan. Add the oil and fry an additional 10 minutes to make the onions a nice deep brown color.
• Boil 2/3 cups water and add the buckwheat. Cook it the same way you would cook rice--let it boil for a minute and then reduce the heat, cover, and let the buckwheat cook by steam. It should be fluffy and tender in about 15 minutes.
• Cook the pasta to al-dente by traditional means.
• Drain the pasta and combine with onions, buckwheat, salt and lots of ground black pepper. Eat immediately! Mark Bittman seemed to think this would serve two, but he's out of his mind. I'm going to say more like four.

* This was about 1/2 an onion. The next time I make this I intend to use A LOT more, like double what I used today (i.e. 2 cups).
** I was supposed to use rendered chicken fat here but olive oil was just fine. Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing.
*** Bow-tie pasta is traditionally used but my pantry only gave me fusilli.

Tahri (rice with potato and peas)

Maybe I've already mentioned this, but I have the best co-workers. They are friendly, entertaining and often bring food in to share with the office. I'm very enthusiastic about this last part, so sometimes they share the recipes as well.

One woman often makes this rice with potatoes and peas. I had expressed a lot of interest in getting the recipe and learning how to cook other types of Indian food. So one day she brought me a gift: a whole bag of Indian spices, basmati rice (the type in the woven bag) and this recipe. She told me she wanted me to be fully prepared. "Now you can make any type of Indian food you want!"

I've made this twice already but forgotten to take a photo both times. I'm just going to post it anyway and maybe the next time I make it I'll update.

Anyway, this recipe goes directly out to Zoe, since it's essentially a combination of her peas recipes. My co-worker also told me she sometimes just cooks the peas and spices without the rice or potatoes (soulmate?)

Recipe: tahari (rice with potato and peas)
2 cups basmati rice
2 tbsp oil
3/4 cup green peas (frozen or fresh)
2 potatoes, chopped into small cubes
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ginger powder (or freshly grated ginger)
1 tsp garlic powder (or freshly grated garlic)
2 tsp coriander powder
salt and chili powder to taste (I use 1/2 to 1 tsp chili)

• Wash the rice and let it soak for 30 minutes. Mix the turmeric, ginger, garlic, coriander, salt and chili in a bowl with a small amount of water. It should have the consistency of a thin paste.
  
• Heat the oil and cook the fenugreek seeds until golden brown. Add the spice-water mixture and cook until all the water is gone and the oil is separated from the spices.
  
• Add the peas and a little bit of water. Cover and let simmer until the peas are "half-tender".
• Add the potatoes and more water if necessary. Cover and let them cook until the potatoes are also half-tender.
  
• There should not be much water left in the pan. Add 3 cups of water (but if you have extra water in the pan, add a bit less than 3 cups) and the rice.
  
• Cook on high heat for a few minutes and then cover and let simmer until all the water is gone and the rice is tender and delicious.
  

This rice is wonderful by itself or alongside daal or some other soupy main dish.

Student living

So. A package from Amazon arrived for me on Thursday, but I wasn't here to collect it and it was too big to fit through my letter box. I knew exactly what it contained (having ordered it my very own self), and was too excited to wait till after the weekend to get it, so I got up extra-early on Friday morning to head to the package depot in deepest Green Lanes to pick it up. I waited patiently (and very Britishly) in the queue, picked up the package and headed for the bus on my way to school. Once seated, I eagerly ripped open the corrugated cardboard packaging and beheld the contents: Schaum's Outline of Probability and Statistics (not what had me excited) and two new cookbooks: The Pauper's Cookbook and, the pièce de résistance, Cooking in a Bedsitter, by Katharine Whitehorn. This was a book written in about 1958 for newly independent young people, out on their own in the world and living in tiny, one-room, sink-less apartments called bedsitters, which are more or less like studio apartments (aka bachelor's apartments, aka 1 1/2s), only they didn't have ovens (coughcough), only had shared sinks and bathrooms between the other people on the floor, and had one gas ring, or two if you were very lucky. Also, these young people survived without fridges!!!

I've been searching for a copy of this book for a long time, being a newly independent young person myself, but unsuccessfully. It has recently come back into print, and then amazon.co.uk lowered the price to around £5, so I felt the time was right. Many of the recipes are pretty dated (it was written 50 years ago!), and they basically all contain meat, but there is some good inspiration in there. In particular, that it is possible to survive (and eat meat!) without a fridge. I may attempt to put this concept into practice next year if I end up living on my own, but I'll let you know about that if and when it happens. In the meantime, Elizabeth and I are going to be briefly reunited here in London in a couple of weeks, and I hope to test out one or two of these recipes when she's here (although maybe we'll leave the tripe for another visit...).

Anyways, in homage to poor students everywhere and with a nod to life's simple pleasures, I present to you a recipe to which I have recently been introduced by a Swedish friend of mine. It has already brightened a couple of days, and I'm sure it will be the light at the end of the tunnel for the next little while, or until my bread runs out. So here it is:

Cheesecake Toast (for one):
Bread (filled with lovely seeds, flax and whole grains if possible)
Cream cheese (I'm a very recent convert, and only in this recipe!)
Lemon curd (if you can't find it in your grocery store [it should be in with jams or pie fillings], it's pretty easy to make)

Cost of loaf of bread: about £1, although you can get ones that are about to go off for as little as 30p!
Cost of tub of Tesco brand cream cheese: 80p
Cost of Tesco brand, el cheapo lemon curd: 58p

• Toast one or two slices of bread, in the toaster or the oven, to your desired toastedness
  
• When toasted, spread with cream cheese, slightly thicker than you think you should
  
• On top of this, spread a very thin layer of lemon curd. The Swede in question likens the lemon curd to the middle note of a major chord: just enough to give it some colour, but not enough to overpower the tonic and dominant.
  
• Enjoy. Go on, have another one. So delicious and yet so cheap!

Corn bread and some failures

So I had this idea (like a lot of other people) to bake through the Bread Baker's Apprentice. I got a copy for Christmas (along with some other excellent cook books). It's probably clear I'm really, really into bread, so of course I am taking this challenge very seriously.



In general I bake a loaf of bread each weekend. Last weekend I began my challenge with Anadama bread, which is a (deceivingly) simple sandwich loaf defined by its inclusion of cornmeal and molasses. Unfortunately mine was a bit of a flop. There were a few issues, ultimately causing it to be too tough and a little bland.

One: Peter Reinhart urges me to use instant yeast rather than active dry yeast. I really dig active dry yeast, but I thought I'd give instant a chance. Instant yeast comes in smaller granules and can be mixed directly into the dry ingredients. You use less of it than you would active dry, and it takes a bit longer to fully activate. The longer activation time, combined with the low temperature of my apartment caused the dough to rise extremely slowly. So slowly (four hours) that I figured it had finished rising. It hadn't!

Two: I paused my cooking to go ice skating and refrigerated the dough after the first rise. When I removed my dough from the fridge, it had formed this dry, crusty shell on the outside. I sprayed it with water and cut a slit in the top, but it was still pretty stiff. This might have prevented the loaf from fully expanding.

SO. This weekend (yesterday), I set out to learn from my mistakes and master Artos bread (Greek celebration bread). The recipe required that I make a starter dough with flour, yeast and water. I was supposed to let it sit for 3-4 hours until foamy and bubbly, then refrigerate overnight. Four hours passed and the mixture looked about the same, so I left it a bit longer. Eventually I forgot about it and went to sleep. This morning I discovered it on my kitchen countertop, gooey and deflated. It had the consistency of glue. Too heartbroken to start again, I decided to skip ahead to the only quick bread in BBA: corn bread.

Here is the recipe on another blog.

This corn bread gains my approval for its inclusion of corn kernels and honey. In the original recipe, Reinhart loads the bread with crispy bacon strips and greases the pan with bacon fat. This sounded a little revolting to me and so I left the bacon out. I also swapped the buttermilk for soy milk and the eggs for ground flax sees and water. I forgot to change the soymilk into butter-soy-milk, so I just added a little lemon juice to the dough in the end. I don't know if it actually had an effect. Reinhart also suggests that I mix the polenta and buttermilk first and leave them overnight to develop the flavors. I wanted some instant gratification after ruining my Artos starter dough, so I skipped this step and made everything together in a few hours.

It turned out GREAT, by the way. Very moist, hearty, a little sweet, and crispy on top. It's not an everyday corn bread, the type I would drizzle honey onto or dip into a bowl of chili. This is more a standalone cornbread, similar to my mom's corn casserole. I see it suited very well for holiday-style potlucks or alongside some veggies for lunch.

More Peas Please

So peas have recently become a staple of my diet. Frozen petit pois, at £1.50 a bag, to be exact. Now I have spent most of my life a pea-hater. The only peas I would eat (other than snow and snap, which don't really count) were fresh off the vine (?) and outta the pod, straight into my mouth. From my very own garden, of course. But then I discovered frozen peas. Now, to be precise, they HAVE to be just peas, none of this mixed vegetable shit. Just pure, unadulterated peas.

So maybe I'm making up for lost time or something (see cheesecake, milk) but I basically have them in everything. Heck, sometimes I even have just a bowlful of peas for dinner. DEEEEEE-LISH. Recently (quelle dommage!) I ran out of my stock and couldn't get to the grocery store for a while, but LUCKILY a frozen vegetable benefactor of mine hooked me up with some of the good stuff today. So more peas!

Now these recipes are a little bit boring, and probably don't really warrant a post of their own, but I just had to share my joy. So here are some ways to make delicious meals out of peas (you may start to see a theme after a while...).

Rice and Peas
Cook some rice. In the last five minutes or so of simmering, add some frozen peas. Alternatively, cook rice and peas separately and mix them together when they're done (this may be better for a rice cooker?). This also works really yummily with frozen corn, but that's not what this post is about.

Peas
Put peas in a bowl. Heat in the microwave (or, if you don't have a microwave *coughElizcough*, steam or boil them according to the directions on the package). Add butter and pepper. You could also add toasted caraway to change things up a bit.

Peas and potatoes
Boil some new potatoes (the little ones with the white or red skins) until cooked. Microwave some peas. Mix peas and potatoes together with a bit of butter (or nut oil? walnut oil would actually be super delicious) and pepper. Add salt, caraway OR raspberry vinaigrette, if you feel so inclined. Add the seasonings when hot and then leave it to soak up the yummy for a little while. This would probably be good hot or cold, so experiment away.

Pasta and peas
Cook some pasta. Also cook some peas. When they're both cooked, mix them together, with a bit of butter and pepper. You could also add some grated cheese (mozzarella, sharp cheddar or blue cheese would all work really well) and/or a little bit of cream. Or, once peas and pasta are cooked, you could saute them with a bit of minced ginger or ginger paste and some lemon juice (and maybe some lemongrass if you had some?). Actually, if you go that route, some pepper flakes or Asian chili sauce wouldn't go amiss, I think.

So there you have it. Peas are a delicious addition to everything and are super-duper versatile. And every day that ends with peas is going to be a good night. (Get it?! the Black-Eyed PEAS!!!)

SPELT CRACKERS

I bought a bag of spelt flour about a month ago, fueling an ongoing obsession with different flours and grains. Today I used the last 1.5 cups on these crackers, which I've made on four different occasions already. That is approximately 100 crackers. And no, I have not shared one. They are that good.



I never thought about making my own crackers until a few months ago, when I paid some exorbitant price for a box of stone-ground whole wheat crackers from Austria. I checked out the side of the box to find the only real ingredients were flour and salt (I mean really? Did we need to go all the way to Austria for that innovation?). After finding this recipe online, I just refused to believe it was actually that simple until I tried it. And of course IT WAS. In 15 minutes I removed my crackers from the oven and they were exactly like the Austrian ones I'd bought except better. And cheaper, hey.

Spelt flour gives the crackers a slightly nutty / more pronounced whole-grain flavor. I haven't tried substituting other types of flour ... YET. But spelt works incredibly well so I might never venture away from it. You can top the crackers with whatever you want--caraway seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, salt, parmesan, herbs, whatever.

Recipe: spelt crackers
1.5 cups spelt flour
0.5 cups water
0.25 tsp salt
toppings (seeds, salt, herbs...) to taste

• Mix the salt and water in a small bowl.
  
• Combine the flour and water and mix until a dough is formed. Turn the dough into a loose ball and place on a well-floured baking sheet. Use the biggest baking sheet you have, and it needs to be absolutely flat. If you don't have a baking sheet without edges, just flip an edged baking sheet over and use the bottom.
• Roll the dough out so that it covers the entire baking sheet. Try to maintain uniform thickness of the dough, otherwise the thinner bits might burn.
  
• Use a fork to poke holes all over the dough. This prevents it from forming air pockets and getting all wonky.
  
• Spray the dough with a water bottle and sprinkle with salt, caraway seeds or alternative toppings. For nicely shaped crackers, use a (flat) knife to score the dough into a grid pattern, or triangles, or whatever.
• Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees F. The crackers should snap apart easily but please don't burn them!
  

The best thing about these crackers is that I know exactly what goes into them. They are entirely free of mysterious chemicals and oils. And I can add as many caraway seeds as I want (FINALLY!)
I've eaten these with hummus, tofu spread, artichoke dip, whatever (recipes later?). They are extremely versatile.

Pecan pralines

On my last day of work before travelling to Texas this winter break, one of my co-workers demanded, "Bring something back for us. Something edible."

I kept this in mind for the duration of the trip, first considering salsa, or maybe pico de gallo, then settling on pralines. My dad was kind enough to pick up a box of praline-like candies, called pecan chewies. And while these treats are delicious and do contain pecans, they are not pralines. So upon arriving in Montreal I decided to make my own.



(Be sure to bookmark this for next year because pralines make an excellent addition to the standard Christmas cookie package.)

Pralines (pronounced PRAY-leens in Texas) are generally found in Mexican food restaurants and dodgy convenience stores, although their origin is French (via Louisiana, where they are pronounced PRAH-leens). I'd say they are comparable to peanut brittle or fudge (in theory). The best pralines have a LOT of pecans and snap apart easily. This recipe worked perfectly, and even though the only change I made was cutting it in half, I will reproduce it here:

Pecan pralines
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk or soymilk
1.5 tsp butter
2 cups pecans

• Combine all the ingredients in a pot. Heat on medium-high until the mixture comes to a boil, then heat and stir for 5 (or so) minutes. Remove from heat and stir until the mixture looks a bit dull (or just less glossy), about 2-3 minutes.
• Spoon the pralines onto a lined baking sheet and cool for at least 20 minutes.

Note: Definitely DO NOT eat them all in one sitting. I don't even recommend eating more than one at a time.

Easiest peanut butter cookies ever; replacing eggs

It's exam period again, and you know what that means: more procrastination baking!

In this round I just wanted something quick and snack-y. Cookies were the obvious choice. A quick survey of my pantry showed slim pickings: I was completely out of eggs and butter, and running low on flour. The best I could find was about 1/3 cup peanut butter, brown sugar, and flax seeds. Immediately I recalled a recipe I'd seen on the back of a peanut butter jar at work: "1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg. Mix and bake."

*

To replace the egg, I ground up some flax seeds using Zoe's pestle and mortar (thanks, gurl). In general, one whole egg can be replaced by 1 tbsp flax seeds + 3 tbsp water. Mix the ground seeds and water in a small bowl, then let them sit for a few minutes. The mixture should become slightly gelatinous, kind of like an egg white. Then you can add it to the cookie batter as you would a normal egg. It worked perfectly... so perfectly that I ground up plenty of extra seeds to use in the future (I store the ground flax seed in my fridge). So I might not ever buy eggs again (flax seeds are significantly cheaper).

The best thing about replacing eggs with ground flax seeds is that you can easily reduce recipes to half-size or one-third-size without worrying about that awkward half- or one-third-egg.

Recipe: five peanut butter cookies
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup sugar (brown sugar works fine)
1/3 tablespoon (= 1 teaspoon) ground flax seed
1 tablespoon water
a few drops of vanilla (optional)

• Mix the ground flax seed and water in a small bowl as described above.
  
• Combine the peanut butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl. Once the flax seed mixture has reached the proper consistency, mix it in, too.
• Spoon the dough (in balls) onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Flatten the dough balls using a fork. You should press the dough twice with the fork, making a criss-cross pattern (see photo).
• Bake at 350 degrees F for about ten minutes, or until the cookies begin to brown on the bottoms. Wait until the cookies are cool before eating or removing from the pan. Otherwise they will be too soft!
  

The recipe made five cookies. Total preparation and cooking time was only 20 minutes!

*These have a darker color due to the brown sugar.

Light wheat bread

I've been making black bread for the past four weeks. It's excellent, let me tell you, but it turns out that not everyone can fully appreciate its wonderful, strong flavor and dense texture. So this week, I sought a more widely accepted bread, and found it: light wheat bread. It is pretty close to the standard brown bread you'd find in a grocery store, except, you know, better.



The recipe I found comes from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. I made a few modifications, mostly stemming from my lack of bread flour and instant yeast. It turned out splendidly--the crust is dry and flaky, almost the texture of a baguette. The bread itself slices perfectly and makes an excellent base for a smoked meat sandwich (!).

Recipe: light wheat bread
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup warm water
2 cups all-purpose flour (or bread flour if you have it)
2 cups whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons powdered milk
1.5 tsp salt
2 tbsp (28g) butter at room temperature
1.5 tsp honey (or sugar)
1 cup water

• As usual, mix the yeast, warm water and 1 tsp sugar in a bowl and let stand until light and frothy.
• Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
  
• Add the butter, honey, yeast mixture and water, then mix everything together to form a cohesive mass. If flour remains at the bottom of the bowl, sprinkle additional water and mix until everything comes together. The dough should be reasonably soft and pliable, but not too sticky.
• Knead the dough for about 10-20 minutes, then place in a greased bowl. Cover with a damp cloth and allow the dough to double in size (this should take about an hour).
• Deflate the dough, form into a loaf, and then place in a greased loaf pan. Cover and allow the dough to rise a second time to twice its size.
  
• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and bake the loaf until its crust is golden brown and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.
• Remove loaf from pan and allow to cool for at least one hour.
  

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Note: During the first 15 minutes of baking, I kept a shallow pan of water on the bottom rack of the oven and occasionally flicked water droplets onto the coils to create steam. This prevents the crust from forming too early, as it often does in my oven.

Re: bean stir-fry

Dear Zo,

I am writing to update you on a successful adaptation of your recipe, the bean-noodle stir-fry. A few weeks ago, or whichever week you posted that, I actually attempted three different variations.



Attempt 1: No noodles.
Sauce: kidney beans, soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey and that spicy Asian hot sauce. I added onions, snow peas, bean sprouts and tofu, and served it over rice.

Attempt 2: Additions of rice noodles and chicken broth.
I realized noodles were necessary. This attempt was good. Really good. But there wasn't enough sauce! I needed more.

Attempt 3: More sauce.
By this time I was out of snow peas, but I still had the other ingredients and an appetite (NOTE: not the same day). The method I ended up with was this:

• Boil rice noodles in chicken broth. Drain the noodles and reserve the broth!
  
• Fry onions in a saucepan until translucent. Add the garlic and fry briefly.
  
• Normally I would add the other veggies and stir-fry them at this step, but since bean sprouts take no time at all, and since my other ingredients (tofu and noodles) were already cooked, I went directly into making the sauce:
• To the onions and garlic, add the beans, then some of the chicken broth (I added about 1/3 cup for one serving). Add soy sauce, honey, and rice vinegar in appropriate portions. Allow the mixture to simmer down so that the flavors are adequately combined (hint: taste). If it's too sticky, add more broth. If the sauce is too liquid-y, add a little bit of corn starch/flour to thicken it. You should have plenty of sauce here.
  
• At this point I added the bean sprouts, tofu and noodles, then cooked them in the sauce just long enough for them to absorb some flavor. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
  

Oh, in the second and third attempts I used black-eyed peas instead of normal beans (which I was out of). In the second attempt I didn't notice it very much, but in the third it definitely was weird. I don't recommend black-eyed peas, in case you are thinking to try it. I'm going to try with black beans as soon as I get a hold of some... I'll keep you updated.

Your friend,
Elizabeth

Granola

I eat a lot of granola. I can eat it for breakfast, as a snack, as dessert, whatever. And it only occurred to me this year that I could make my own.



Honestly though, I CANNOT believe it has taken me so long to share this with you. This post has been sitting around in my drafts for two months. I've actually just been waiting for an opportunity to take a more appetizing photo than the one above, but it didn't happen. You'll just have to trust me on how delicious this is, since the photo is misleading.

The recipe I use has been adapted from several sources, and it's pretty flexible so you are free to add or subtract whatever you'd like from it. The key ingredient is the honey because it makes the granola stick together and creates clumps. Apparently you could also use brown rice syrup.

Recipe: Granola
3 cups oats
1 cup slivered almonds
.5 cup chopped walnuts
.5 cup shredded coconut
2 tbsp flax seeds
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1/3 cup maple syrup or brown sugar
1/3 cup honey or brown rice syrup
1/3 cup applesauce
2 cups dried fruit (I used raisins, dates and figs)

• Mix all the dry ingredients together except the fruit. Add the wet ingredients and stir until everything is nicely coated. Spread the mixture out on a baking sheet lined with foil and bake for 30-40 minutes. Check on it every 10-15 minutes and give it a good mix so you don't burn any bits.
• When the granola looks nice and golden brown on top, remove it from the oven and let it cool. Then mix in the fruit.
• Serve with yogurt, chopped bananas, blueberries, etc.

Other possible additions include: sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, pecans, banana chips, etc. Do not add chocolate chips. That's gross.

Mon petit chou

So when my dad was a kid he had this neighbour and at some point during his adolescence or early adulthood, she gave him her (very old) copy of Mrs. Beeton's. When he came to Canada he brought it with him, and it's followed him through the years. As a kid, I was always fascinated by this book. It was so old, the binding crumbling, the pages yellow. I didn't really know what it was or what mysteries it contained, but I held it in great esteem, as it was always brought out to settle disputes over the correct recipe for Yorkshire puddings, or exactly how to roast a pheasant. (These were common disputes in our house throughout my childhood.) It was the bible of traditional English cooking and Mrs. Beeton's was always the final word. I believe it was even kept on the shelf next to that second most prized book, the Scrabble dictionary. I don't think I've ever actually turned the pages of my dad's copy, although I did use to surreptitiously stroke its spine when no-one was looking. This summer I came into possession of my own, used, copy and while it's not hard-bound and doesn't have quite the same history as my dad's (which I have dibs on, if you're reading this Edward), it does contain the same timeless wisdom about exactly which silks match which complexions, and how to go about getting character references on your servants. And the recipes of course.

Predictably, as it weighs about 6 kilos and I was already over my baggage allowance, I had to leave it in Guelph when I came here (I'm definitely leaving enough room to pick it up at Christmastime though!). But fear not! For it is available in its entirety (maybe minus the plates and engravings) online.

Now what does all this family folklore have to do with today's post? Well I'll tell you. Quite a few weeks ago now, I bought a huge bag of potatoes for only 86p (CAD1.70 ish). I was down to the last three potatoes and they were getting kind of spongey and I was getting low on money (story of my life). So I thought to myself, what do people with no money do with three potatoes to make them stretch? And I answered myself, make potato soup! And I thought, but in order to make potato soup edible, you need to have fancy things like leeks and cream, which I don't have and can't afford. :( . So then I thought, what else do people with no money eat a lot? (I should probably tell you that my idea of what people with no money eat is largely informed by Oliver! and the little I've gleaned about rural 18th century peasants. And the Depression. Which should explain my lack of imagination, because they all seem to be eating gruel and potato water most of the time.) And I answered myself again, cabbage! So there it was: three manky potatoes and a cabbage. Luckily, I had some stock cubes and some garlic, and I went out and bought an onion specially. So, together with my trusty box of spices (which is falling apart and is now more tape than cereal box), I set to making cabbage soup.

Looking back, I guess that last paragraph didn't really make the link between Mrs. Beeton and cabbage soup explicit. Well, my first step was to look at some of Mrs. Beeton's recipes to see what people with no money ate 150 years ago, because Mrs. B is all about frugality. So I looked at the table of contents on that online version and clicked on the first "Recipes" link I saw, which happened to be soup recipes. I read all of them and mixed some of them together in my head and was repulsed by a couple of them and ended up with this Mrs. Beeton-inspired recipe, which I will relate to you below.

Cabbage Soup
Ingredients:
Some butter or oil
1-4 potatoes (I used one medium sized and 2 small. Also mine were the kind with white skin and I have never seen the kind with dirty brown skin here... which kind of weirds me out because I thought British people were all about potatoes), peeled (optionally) and cubed
1/2-1 onion, chopped
3-4 (+) cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp (+) fennel or caraway seeds (caraway would probably be better, but I only had fennel)
1 litre (4 cups? a quart? both?) of stock (chicken, vegetable, whatever. I did 2 cubes' worth of chicken, plus some extra water)
1/2 a small cabbage (I used the curly green kind, which I think would be best, but you could also use the smooth green kind. I don't know how well the purple kind would work as they tend to be tougher), prepared as below
A splash of lemon juice
Salt and pepper

For the cabbage. Take the whole thing and peel off the outer most layer (or 2 layers, or enough layers so that what you've got wasn't in contact with the outside world) of leaves, and lay these aside. Using your biggest, scariest knife (and maybe with a friend to spot you the first couple of times), chop the cabbage in half, then put the flat side of one half down on the cutting board and cut that in half, so you've got one half a cabbage and two quarters. Put the half cabbage away to use for something else. Now take a smaller knife and cut out the tough core. What you've got should look something like this:

(Doesn't it look so pretty and curly?)

 Using the bigger knife again, chop vertical slices (so your knife is about parallel to where the core used to be) so that where you're cutting on the outermost leaves is about 2 cm across. Now chop again, perpendicular to your last cuts, so that you've got rectangles of cabbage. The exact size and shape isn't really important, but they need to be able to fit in your mouth and cook relatively quickly. When you've done that for both quarters, take the leaves you laid aside at the beginning. Wash them and stack them so that all the stems line up. Cut the stems out and cut the leaves into pieces about the same size as the others. (This is really difficult to describe, but pretty easy to do.)

• Toast the fennel/caraway seeds in a dry pan until they start to smell really nice. The instant they start going brown, or even a little before (at the height of their smell), pour them into a little bowl or something and save them for later.
  
• Heat the butter or oil (or both) in the bottom of an appropriately-sized (easier said than done!) pot, enough to cover the bottom.
  
• Fry the onions on med-low heat, until they are all soft and delicious and maybe starting to get a little bit brown around the edges.
• Add the garlic and the seeds and stir them up a bit. You might need to add a little more oil or butter if things are starting to stick. 
• When the garlic is soft, add the stock cubes if using (but not the water). If you're using real stock (fancy!) then just you wait. Mash up the stock cubes into a paste and mix it all together with the onions, garlic and seed.
• Add the water, or the real stock, and the potatoes.
  
• Bring to the boil and simmer for a while until the potatoes are cooked (the time for this will depend on how big your potato cubes are).
• Add all the cabbage at once, stir it up and simmer for 1-2 minutes. Put a lid on the pot and remove from heat, so that the cabbage can steam without going all slimy like it does when you boil it.
• After a couple of minutes, check back and give it another stir. I like the cabbage al dente, but if you want it softer, you can heat it up again until it's your desired tenderness.
• Season with salt and pepper, and a splash of lemon juice. Serve with croutons, cheesy croutons, or the gratings from that cheese that's been in your fridge for a while that needs to be eaten up but is only really edible at this point if melted.

Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Bean there, stir-fried that.

On my way home from class today it started pouring, so I darted in to a Tescos to wait out the worst of it. This was a very bad idea because I was absolutely starving (the sandwich I had packed was moldy, which I failed to notice due to the lack of light bulb in our kitchen :(    ) and my bank balance is rapidly dwindling to nothingness. Of course, once I got in there, I bought a whole bunch of food I didn't really need, but I came home slightly drier than I otherwise would have and with an idea for a recipe in my head.

Now I can't really cook Chinese food. Like at all. I have no idea what kind of flavourings (if that's even a word?) go into my beloved Beijing fried rice, or those lovely beef and broccoli stir-frys, and mostly my stir-fry sauce is just soy sauce. BUT. I have been unable to find satisfactory soy sauce in grocery stores here (and haven't yet been to Chinatown) so I knew I couldn't go that way this time. However, I had a plan. You know those delicious, delicious green beans that Elizabeth told you all about back in May. Well I had honey and sub-par soy sauce in the cupboard, so I decided to attempt a sauce with those ingredients. Well the results weren't as amazing as I had hoped, but it was pretty darn good, and it could be a lot better, with a few changes. So here's what I did, and what I would do differently.

Bean-Noodle Stir-Fry

Ingredients:

Vegetable oil (to cover bottom of pan)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or finely chopped
1 can beans (I used kidney, but would have preferred black. Alas, my local Tescos doesn't stock black beans). Usually I drain and rinse beans from the liquid they come in but today I didn't. I found the sauce a bit too thick and starchy, so it probably would have been better if the beans had been drained and rinsed and drained again. Next time!
1-2 nests of Chinese noodles, cooked and drained
A few (2-3?) tablespoons of soy sauce (I used shitty Tescos stuff, and I really think that better soy sauce would have made this dish A LOT better)
Maybe half a tablespoon of honey
2-3 tablespoons of boiling water
Crushed chili peppers (or Asian chili sauce)
Dried ginger (fresh would be better, about a centimeter cubed)
Lemon juice

Now I didn't use any other vegetables, but that was pretty much because I couldn't afford them. Mushrooms would work really well in this, as would broccoli. You could try cauliflower (one of my faves!), carrots, green beans, or whatever else you feel like. "Whatever you feel like" seems to be becoming quite the theme in my recipes, but I think that just makes them more exciting.

I felt like something was missing in the sauce but couldn't quite put my finger on it. It was probably fish sauce, which I don't usually keep around the house, but do on occasion miss. Or maybe some of that delicious rice wine vinegar!!!! I love that stuff and could drink it straight. In fact, that's how I know I've got a good soy sauce, because I will drink it straight. Mmmmm. If you can think of something else that would improve the sauce, please tell me in the comments below!

• Fry the garlic in the oil in a large frying pan or wok until it looks soft but is not yet brown.  

• Add the beans (and other vegetables, according to their cooking times) and stir while frying (careful, it will probably spit and some of the beans might pop). If you're using the bean liquid, boil off most of it until what you've got left is almost sauce consistency. If not, then once they look like they might start to pop, proceed to step 4.

•  While this is happening (or maybe while the noodles are cooking), make the sauce thusly: put the honey, soy sauce and hot/boiling water in a mug or small bowl and stir to dissolve the honey. Add some lemon juice if you like, or wait till later and add it directly to the stir-fry.

•  Add the noodles and the sauce to the beans. Add lemon juice (if you haven't already done so), hot pepper flakes (or chili sauce), ginger and anything else you feel like adding.  

•  Stir and mix it all up, boiling off the sauce/glaze until it is sauce/glaze consistency. And delicious. Don't forget the delicious. Taste and adjust everything as you see fit. Or don't and leave it up to chance!

So there you go. Mine made two meals and was better the second time, when I was able to adjust things more. I don't usually go in for the noodles, especially when rice is on offer (I love rice with an intense passion), but I was pretty glad I did this time. Please experiment with this and let me know what you would do differently!

Bread, in general

Wow, so I love bread. I'm talking about homemade bread, made with whatever you want and then eaten with jam or cream cheese with cucumbers or peanut butter. Strangely, I don't even like regular bread. I never buy it from the store, and until it occurred to me that I could make my own I never ate it. Loaves of bread accidentally purchased by visitors would grow moldy in my cupboard, despite my best efforts to eat them.

But this is different.



Everyone already knows of my love for quick breads (see banana bread, soda bread). This week I have moved on to yeast breads. First endeavor: black bread, which is basically a stronger version of pumpernickel. This bread is rather dense but still gives a nice crumb. I followed this recipe almost exactly, and was shocked by my success.

Update: I've made this bread about five times since, and I've adapted the original recipe enough to justify typing it up here. I use it so often that I keep the (modified) measurements posted on my fridge:

Recipe: black bread
(makes one loaf)
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
0.25 cup warm water
1 cup water
1/8 cup molasses
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp (28g) butter
0.5 oz (14g) unsweetened chocolate
0.5 tbsp instant coffee powder
0.5 cup all-purpose flour
1.25 cup whole wheat flour
1.5 cup rye flour
0.5 cup bran
1 tbsp caraway seeds
0.25 tsp fennel seeds
0.5 tbsp salt
0.5 to 1 tbsp minced shallot

• Stir the yeast, sugar and warm water together in a small bowl, and do not disturb until the mixture has about doubled in size and looks frothy.
• Sift together the all-purpose, rye and whole wheat flours.
  
• Melt the butter and chocolate, then mix with water, vinegar, molasses and coffee powder. Allow the liquid to cool off before proceeding to the next step.
• Add one cup of the flour mixture, along with the bran, caraway seeds, fennel seeds, salt, and shallots, to a large bowl. Add the liquid from the previous step, and the yeast. Mix.
• Continue by adding flour to the large bowl, one half cup at a time. Keep going until a cohesive mass is achieved, i.e. the dough begins to clear the sides of the bowl as you stir it. The dough should be pretty sticky, but firm.
• Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is springy/dense/until your hands are tired.
• Place the dough (should be in the shape of a ball) in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for about an hour until it has doubled in size.
  
• Gently deflate the dough, then form it into a loaf. Position your loaf in a greased loaf pan, then cover and allow it to rise (again) to twice its size. At this point you can preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  
• Bake the loaf in the center of the oven for about 45 minutes. It should have a deep brown crust. Be sure to check on it half-way and three-quarters through the baking time, just in case it's an early riser (HA).
  

I really encourage you all to try making your own bread--read these bread-making tips for solid advice. The one I found most helpful was placing a shallow dish of water on the bottom rack of the oven for the first 15 minutes of baking. Often I have problems with the crust hardening too soon (before the loaf fully expands), but the water adds extra moisture in the oven to prevent this.

I will continue to document my bread exploits here--in particular I'm hoping to develop some original recipes.

Bean cookies

I'll admit that when I first came across this recipe I was skeptical. Beans? In cookies? But here is the idea, and it's brilliant: instead of using one cup of butter per 24 cookies, we will use one can of beans as the source of fat. You have to admit it's intriguing.



Conveniently, my discovery of this recipe came just as I was re-evaluating how much oil and butter go into my food, and whether they are completely necessary. I have modified this recipe from the original, which came from CBC via this blog. In the past few weeks I've tried several different versions: one with orange zest and raisins, one with walnuts and chocolate chips, and Heidi's version with anise seeds. In the end I settled on an adaptation of my favorite-ever cookies, which were taken from a 1949 Brownsburg, Québec church cookbook I found in a used furniture store. They are called "dad's cookies." I'm not sure whose dad this refers to, but he had excellent taste. Additionally I've added in dates and walnuts. Feel free to modify the recipe even further.

Recipe: Dad's bean cookies with dates and walnuts

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp baking powder + 1 tsp baking soda (or 1 1/3 soda + 2/3 tartar)
1/4 tsp salt
one 540-mL (19 oz) can of white kidney beans or navy beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup applesauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg*
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
3 tbsp whole flax seeds (optional)

• Preheat oven to 350°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Combine the beans and applesauce in a food processor and mix until smooth. Add the egg, vanilla and brown sugar, and mix again.
• In a large bowl, combine the oats, flour, coconut, baking powder, baking soda, salt and flax seeds.
  
• Slowly pour the bean mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir until almost combined. Add the dates and walnuts and mix again until everything is evenly distributed.
  
• Form the cookies by scooping out large spoon-fulls of dough and placing them on the cookie sheet. The cookies don't spread much while baking, so you might want to flatten them a bit before putting them in the oven.
• Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown.

These were completely delicious, and I promise they taste nothing of beans.

* to make this vegan, replace the egg with one tablespoon ground flax seeds and three tablespoons water, as explained in this post. It works just absolutely fine.

Soup

So for about the 18th time since I've been in this God-forsaken, pestilential country, I'm sick. Stuffy nose, hacking cough, sinus headaches, sore throat, the whole works. I think I slept like three hours last night. Now as everyone knows, when you're sick, all you really want is for your mummy to come and take care of you, but my mummy is 6000 km away and I don't have the money to fly home for the weekend. Not to mention sinus headaches combined with cabin pressure changes = head explosions (aka the worst pain I've ever experienced). My parents aren't particularly sympathetic, either. It's all "You aren't washing your hands enough!" and "You're going to get swine flu and die!".  So I'm more or less on my own on this one.

So, two things make me feel better when I'm sick. The first one, for sore throats and stuffy noses is as simple as honey, lemon juice, ginger (dried or fresh, but I only have dried), and hot water. And stirring. So I did that a couple dozen times yesterday.

And the second one, I guess, is mainly due to my dad. Now, my dad isn't a superstitious person. In fact, he's probably one of the most rational people I know, but he insists, with evangelical fervor, that the only thing for a cold is chicken soup. I've never been particularly impressed by the fluids argument of colds (you know the one, flush it out by drinking 13 litres of fluids a day), and I'm a little skeptical of most cold remedies. I'm usually of the opinion that there's pretty much nothing you can do to help you cope with a cold other than just wait it out. In fact, my mum has always said that it takes three days to catch a cold, three days to have it and three days to get rid of it, and I've found this to be true no matter how many glasses of OJ or bottles of Robitussen I down. But, I think that good nutrition is important to keep your immune system in the fight and so that you don't get struck down with bronchitis (the horrors!) for the rest of the school year.

However, having said that, I must admit that I have approximately zero money right now and as such my cupboards are filled with rice, pasta, lentils a single onion and very little else. My fridge contains 2 very sad looking carrots and most of a packet of butter. So not a whole lot there on the vitamin C front.

However! I might have just lied a little because I do (actually did, because all this went down yesterday) have two chicken stock cubes and all my spices and an enigmatic package that I picked up in Sainsbury's labelled "Soup mix" which is actually a mixture of lentils, split peas, barley, oats and macaronis. So I had the makings for soup and, even though I usually roll my eyes whenever my dad mentions the words "cold" and "soup" within a minute and a half of each other, I decided to go for it.

My dad makes soup with a stock that he makes by boiling the carcass of a chicken we've previously roasted and eaten. He's old school like that. Elizabeth and I have done it with two frozen chicken thighs. But, as I mentioned, I don't have money and was in no mood to venture in to the wide world in search of meat, so I stuck with the stock cubes. Hey, lentils are protein too, right?

Soup is one of these amazing dishes that literally cannot and should not be made the same way twice. So I'm going to tell you how I did it, how I might do it again, how you could do it, etc. but you should really just follow your instinct (and your cupboards) when you do it yourself. So here goes:

Soup (this time)
One or two onions, chopped
A couple cloves of garlic, chopped
Some vegetable oil, or butter
Stock cubes of your choice (2-3)
A couple of carrots, chopped
Soup mix (see above), or else any combination of the following: lentils, split peas, pearl barley, regular barley (? not sure what the difference is), rolled oats, (pasta). (I usually really hate putting pasta in soup because it inevitably gets really soggy and disgusting, but if you really REALLY have to then I guess it's ok. I'll just pick it out.)
About a cup full of rice (oh yeah, I don't have any measuring utensils here, so a "cup full" literally means find a cup or mug and fill it with rice. Ditto "big spoon" and "little spoon" for future reference).
Some frozen corn
Some frozen peas
Any other frozen vegetables you would like/have in your freezer
Various herbs spices, optional (I used garam masala, cumin powder, whole cumin seeds, mustard seeds, kalonji (black onion seeds), dried ginger, paprika, turmeric, oregano, "mixed mediterranean herbs" and fresh thyme)

Now I'm not really going to do a blow-by-blow style recipe, but more of a story, because it's so changeable that things don't always have to happen in the same order. So be warned.

Usually I would fry the onion(s) and garlic in a little oil before adding the stock to that, but I forgot this time, mostly because I was foggy-cold-brained. So I filled my pot up with water and added the "soup mix" (you would add the lentils and split peas now if that's what you're using). I won't tell you the whole long story, but suffice it to say that in general I don't really like mushy foods, so I would save the rice for a bit later, and if you're using pasta, put it in right at the very end.

Notice how you (slash I) added the lentils to water, not to stock. This is because I think that when you add the stock too soon, the water boils off and leaves it too stock-y and then it's really hard to get the balance right again. So I boil the lentils and things in water and add the stock and spices closer to the end. Some people would argue that if you do this then the lentils don't soak up the flavour of the stock, but I've never noticed a difference doing it this way and I DO notice a difference when the end result is either too stock-y (because too much water boiled off and wasn't replenished) or too watery (because too much water was put back in).

So back to the story. Boil that soup mix until the lentils are starting to get soft, or you get impatient, which ever comes first (it was definitely the latter for me, resulting in a somewhat crunchy, but still edible soup). Add your stock now, or later, whatever. I think I did it at this point, but can't really remember. Anyways, I also added the onion and garlic which I had forgotten to fry, along with the carrots. And then I added the rice. Although, with hindsight, I probably should have put the rice in first and let it cook a bit before adding the vegetables (I ended up with slightly crunchy rice and slightly soggy carrots, but, again, it was still delicious). Also from now until the end, keep adjusting the spice/stock/water levels, until you are happy with the result. I just put about a shake or two of each kind of spice/herb and added more of whatever I felt was missing. I put some pepper in too, which I forgot to mention in the ingredients. And if you do add more water to top up the stock, you'll probably want to add a bit of salt too (I don't care about the evils of sodium, soup needs to be salty).

So! Now you've got a pot full of stock, pulses, rice, vegetables and spices. Keep it boiling until everything is the desired tenderness. When everything is juuuuuuuuust right, add your frozen vegetables. Bring the soup back to the boil and when that's done, the soup is ready.

My dad will leave his pot of soup on the back burner of the stove (or occasionally in the fridge if there's room) for days and bring it up to a boil everyday for about 10 minutes, thereby killing off any germs. I prefer just to portion mine out and freeze it, but different strokes for different folks. Here are my (ginormous) portions (I only had two clean tupperwares, ok?) ready to go in the freezer (with lids). Oh, I should mention that if you're freezing or even refrigerating this (or anything, really), you should let it cool down to room temperature first, because if you put hot things in the fridge or freezer, 1) it will heat up everything in there already, encouraging things to go off sooner and 2) it will heat up the air in the fridge/freezer, making the cooling device turn on and your electricity bill skyrocket. So I hope you don't get sick any time soon, but if you do, at least you'll be prepared now!

Applesauce

Last weekend I went apple-picking.



I decided to ride my bike to the apple farm, which is "conveniently" located at the extreme western tip of Montreal island, 55km from my apartment. I arrived at the farm in 3 hours, disoriented and sunburned, only to find it closed!

What else could I do but bike another 10km to the next farm? This one was on Île-Perrot, another island a bit southwest of Montreal. It was already dark by the time I gathered enough apples and headed home (on the train this time). The train came from nowhere, suddenly blinding us with light in an otherwise dark and undeveloped part of the island. I heaved my bike on-board with sticky, apple-scented hands and 15kg of apples on my back.

And then I made applesauce.



Be advised that you should use sweeter apples for applesauce (i.e. not Granny Smith). I used a combination of Cortland and Macintosh.

Recipe: applesauce
6-8 apples
1/4 to 1/2 cup water (or apple juice)
pinch cinnamon

• Peel the apples, then core and cut into pieces. (Hint: this is made easier with an apple-cutter).
• Place the apples in a large pot with the water and cinnamon. The water should not cover all the apples.
• Boil until the apples are extremely soft and you can mash them up with a fork. If you added too much water you can boil it off here (as I did), or you can add water if necessary.
  
• Blend the entire mixture using a food processor or blender, until it reaches the consistency of uh, applesauce. Alternatively (if you don't have either of these tools), you could use a potato masher or a fork.
• Ladle into a jar and refrigerate.

***** You should not need to add any sugar.
Your applesauce could be preserved by following the USDA food preservation guidelines. Or wait until next week when I will surely try it on my own.

Next project: apple butter.

Walnut-fig soda bread

Heavenly?

So admittedly I had nothing to do with this recipe. I happened to have walnuts, figs and buttermilk lying around in excess, so I found this recipe and followed the directions down to the last teaspoon. I wasn't expecting much. But then, this beautiful loaf manifested itself perfectly in my oven. It turned out so perfectly that I needed to share it with you.

Next time I might experiment with some other nuts or dried fruits, and maybe add flax seeds or other grains. Oh man, the possibilities are endless. I am so excited.

Here is the recipe, from Canadian Living. A few tips not mentioned in the article: (1) Be sure not to over-mix the dough. (2) After it's finished baking, don't cut into the loaf until it is totally cooled off!

Good bye, and good luck.

Mug Cake Update

So eggs are not one of the things that I usually have hanging around the house. Milk, yes. Butter, yes. Onions, potatoes, flour, sugar, yes, yes, yes, yes. But eggs, no. So when I had a late-night (ok 7:30 in the evening, but I didn't feel like going to the stores, ok?) chocolate craving, I had a conundrum. I had all the ingredients for chocolate mug cake, minus the eggs. Well, and the vanilla, but you can't have everything. However! Thanks to my vegan friends, I had heard tell of the mythic "egg substitute". I also knew it was possible, if a bit guess-work-y, to replace eggs with things you can find around the house. Things that aren't eggs. So. I had a potential solution. I did a quick google, and found that you can replace one egg with 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tbsp vinegar (plus some water). "Bingo!" I thought. So, I gave it a shot.

Well, the mug that I was using was a bit smaller than the one I used in Montreal, so I decided to use slightly less of each ingredient (well ok, except for the cocoa. and the sugar), and we don't have measuring utensils or a clean teaspoon, so I had to eyeball it. Anyways, my roommate and I had a brief moment of excitement when the vinegar went in on top of the baking powder and fizzed, then I mixed it all up and we were back down to business. I popped it in the microwave for a safe 2 and a half minutes (I'm not sure how British microwaves compare to Canadian ones, so I didn't want to overdo it) and sat back to watch the show.

All of a sudden it started growing. "Not to worry," thought I, "this is to be expected." But then I noticed that the part that was growing (rapidly) above the rim of the cup looked significantly more liquid than it should. As I watched, it started spilling over the side of the cup, and with the speed and agility of a panther on meth I popped open the microwave, grabbed the mug and rushed over to the dishes drawer (yes, drawer) where I carefully held it over a plate until it stopped spilling over. My roommate Naomi was there to catch the single wayward drip. So, as the batter was still, well, batter, I put the mug on the plate and put it back in the microwave.

Naomi and I spent the remaining two minutes and seven seconds watching the contents of the mug bubble and froth, spilling over the edges of the mug and on to the plate. When the microwave dinged and we opened the door, this is what greeted us:

Well, the moral of the story is this: if you're going to attempt to make this at home without eggs, go easy on the baking powder and vinegar (I used white, btw). In addition to the aesthetic problems associated with this particular experiment, there was a distinct taste of, well, baking powder and vinegar. There are probably a variety of factors that contributed to this: the lack of appropriate measuring utensils, my perhaps too enthusiastic use of this particular egg substitute recipe, the lack of vanilla... I could go on. The cake was definitely edible, but not as delicious as I have had it, which was disappointing.

Anyways, good luck in your egg-substituting endeavors. And learn from my mistakes!