Thirty Five Cents Every Other Day A forum of internet bakers I occasionally haunt recently went on a “daily bread” tangent. Specifically how much does it really cost to make your own ‘everyday’ bread? The original comment gave a fair estimate of US$0.25 but then a litany of know-it-all responses began to chime in with haphazard estimates for everything from the … Read More →
A Kitchen Bouquet That Doesn't Need Watering If you’re gearing up for holiday cooking, baking, and feasting, taking an hour to rethink your kitchen organization beforehand is a very a wise idea. Kitchens by their very nature are places of mayhem. Ingredients flying about and pots bubbling over with a circus sideshow of hot pan juggling out of the oven. Simplify and … Read More →
Rye Needs Extra Water Which Makes An Interesting Crumb I’ve been wanting to add to my “everyday loaf” repertoire where an oatmeal & molasses version has reigned supreme for quite a while. To measure up to that flavour I’ve had to resort to another grain in the mill, namely rye. Bread from rye flour can be tricky even when mixed in small proportion with … Read More →
Call Them Biscuits or Cookies. Either is Great With Tea. I’m still fairly certain that margarine is the spawn of the devil but I keep hearing about old-fashioned recipes that use it so I thought I’d give it a go where it seems to be most praised, a batch of quick afternoon tea biscuits. I’m aiming for the slightest snap and something that can hold … Read More →
Far Too Many Hands In a fit of reorganization, I finally got round to sorting out my kitchen space to accommodate better video shooting. I’ve been trying to make more visual fodder for the YouTube crowd since that’s what pays me a few desperately needed pennies but the ‘plan, shoot, edit, write, & post’ cycle is no small feat … Read More →
Cranberries Don't Come From A Tin I know the hilarious noises ready-made cranberry sauce emits while extracting itself from the tin next to the roast turkey might be your only glimmer of humour at the annual family feast. I realize that as a kid your only distraction in a time before i-gizmos was wobbling the tray while your whacky uncle in … Read More →
Spin Your Spuds A Different Direction Fresh heaps of potatoes are rolling in from the fields around here so what better time to wake up your ordinary mash with some bold flavours, namely cider vinegar and fresh dill just as the summer herbs are finishing. Anyone can love whipped potatoes with heaps of cream and butter mixed in – I certainly … Read More →
That Harvest Time Of Year The start of the holiday season for Canada is Thanksgiving in the second week of October. Not Halloween like the folks south of our border who don’t fill their tables with cranberries and roast birds until the end of November. No matter what the calendar says it’s (mostly) the same sort of menu with traditional … Read More →
Colonial Ingredients Meet Indian Technique If you’ve heard the term succotash but never knew what it was beyond Warner Brother’s favourite expletive, let me enlighten you. Native people of North America have long benefited from corn in their diet and likewise discovered both the gardening and culinary benefits of matching it with beans. Sure you could talk about complete essential … Read More →
Bread Twists By Hand Fair warning: Jump past my rant about television to the bread recipe & video if that’s all you want to see. I’m not a fan of food ‘competition’ shows. In fact, I find them somewhat distasteful and disturbing on many levels. Food and cooking are basic human needs that everyone should enjoy regardless of skill … Read More →
Flat is Corn Delicious Never heard of arepas? You must not hang out in Venezuela or Colombia very often. Simply put it’s a griddle-fried corn cake made from a special sort of cornmeal, aptly named masa de arepas. If you’re as obsessed with tamales as I am but hate the time investment they take, you owe it to yourself … Read More →
This week's permutation with coriander leaf & roast red pepper There are reasons I like hummus so much and have done for years before it became the hipster fad found in a zillion permutations at the ready-made counters of Whole Foods. First, it’s beans and you know my obsession there. Second, beyond infinitely pleasurable dipping, It can add a layer of protein and base flavour … Read More →
More Spoon-able Than Sour Cream Culturing dairy at home is delicious but seems to mystify people at times. To clear any confusion I’ve added a video tutorial for my favourite… crema, aka Mexican sour cream. My original post on the topic has any extra details you’ll need. More Spork Here
Handheld Huevos for Breakfast I’m still making my own tortillas as I detailed in an earlier post but got a few comments asking for a video tutorial on the ever-important ‘puff’ during cooking. It can be tricky but if you don’t get it right your tortillas are more akin to thick pancakes than delightfully fluffy taco holders. When you … Read More →
A Couch Surfing Feast I don’t watch much broadcast television. My homemade antenna gets me three channels for the occasional half hour of local news and a bit of background noise for the cats on rainy days. Yes, one of my girls actually watches characters on the screen like stalking a mouse, not that she’d know what to do … Read More →
Nothing but peanuts... for a change Am I really this excited about peanut butter? Yes I am. Why? Because it’s been a luxury for me over the last few years, not because of price alone but because I’m pretty picky about my peanut butter. Finally a big food corporation gets something right and I think it shows they can do things … Read More →
Don't Ignore The Bun Wrapped Around Your Burger Sometimes you just need a sandwich. For me it’s usually in the middle of the night during hot summer months and yesterday was a prime example. I had all the pieces of the puzzle just waiting in the fridge – my horseradish coleslaw, homemade mayo, habanero pepper jelly, and the choice bit of meat that … Read More →
The Fastest Way To Love Your Cabbage Any fan of Discworld knows that cabbage from the Sto Plains can power everything from flying stagecoaches to bank scandals. If that sentence makes no sense to you don’t worry, you can still use your own locally-grown cabbage to make coleslaw that rivals any you buy ready-made. And that includes the sea green version from … Read More →
You'll Have To Trust Me That It Was Pretty. And Delicious. (edit: I forgot to take better photos after it cooled and before I got hungry for pie. Which honestly is most of the time.) No one really knows how chess pie got its name. Late comers have tried to bend the southern accent into justification (“It’s jest pie, Uncle Jed”) but the bottom line is … Read More →
Mizuna, Romaine, & Bread Makes For Salad Days Mizuna is one of the odder greens I grow in abundance this time of year. Think of it as “Japanese mustard greens” for cooking purposes or a milder sort of rocket (arugula) for salad mixes. It’s a brassica so all the usual garden advice surrounding them applies but honestly it’s one of those greens that … Read More →
Eight Minutes Prep, Three Minutes Cook, $2 Ingredients. Done. Very few things please me more than a good pizza. Whether simply topped with cheese and basil or loaded with a farmer’s market full of veg, you can’t beat the universal appeal of flat bread with interesting things on top. The fact that it’s a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide tells me I’m not alone in … Read More →
Potent, Ugly, Best Grown At Home You want an edible plant that’s impossible to kill in most any climate? Horseradish is your answer. If you’ve ever used ‘prepared’ horseradish from jars at the supermarket in your coleslaw, tartar sauce, or to dress a bit of roast beef, you only know half of the flavour. Freshly made from home grown crops has … Read More →
My Usual Ratio, You Can Choose Your Own I’m a big fan of steel cut oats in the morning. Not the instant rolled oats parked in my pantry for cookies and bread but the chunky, chewy sort of which the local Scottish settlers would be proud.* Yes you have to tend a pot for fifteen minutes instead of pushing a few buttons on … Read More →
Control Your Sugar Destiny... Deliciously Sugar is a hard monkey to break, or camel to get off your back, or erm… something like that. “Experts” have been banging on about it for years now and politicians have discovered that it’s the perfect addiction upon which to tack another tax and line their coffers with a bit of loosely-veiled social engineering. … Read More →
