Brownies Without The Brown I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate. Sure I’ll take the odd piece from grand Swiss or French choclatiers and love a cocoa-laced red velvet cake at holiday but other flavours are more apt to tempt me. Vanilla for example. Or butterscotch. When the mood strikes for something like a brownie in texture and … Read More →
Be Different, Start From Seed I’m regularly asked ‘how do you personally start plants from seed?’ Having just gone through the annual ritual I thought I’d document the method I’ve developed over the years. During my busiest seasons I’ve had as many as a thousand seedlings at one time with my little plant factory approach. Lots of incremental changes and … Read More →
You don't have to raise them to make great cheese By request here’s some live-action cheese making using the method from my original “Discount Goat” post. Still just as good as before. I mention in the video my favourite use for chèvre is to stuff radicchio leaves and pan fry them in the vein of old Italian farmers. You can find that recipe below, simple … Read More →
Plenty Of Wind On My Most Recent Epic Across Alberta Hey Internet! You’ve likely noticed my absence of late in here but I’ve been pushing digits around behind the scenes aplenty and wanted to let everyone know that A) I’m still out here typing like a madman and B) things will look a bit different on these pages shortly. My ‘real world’ is getting slightly … Read More →
The Ultimate In Corn-Flavoured Flexibility If you’re not eating polenta because it takes too much time to cook the genuine, creamy article from scratch, I’ve got a tip for you. Old Italians to gluten warriors can all enjoy the delicious corn-y goodness in under half an hour. First to define polenta, it’s cornmeal. That’s it. Fancy gourmet packets of the … Read More →
Modern Poaching Science Bad news – I’m terrible at making poached eggs in a pan of water. Good news – I like egg drop soup. If you’ve ever struggled with the old fashioned method of poaching eggs, these handy gizmos might save your breakfast. I tried all the tips before I found these new-fangled gadgets. Salt the water. … Read More →
Half Price Dairy Math Below Milk and dairy are some of my most troublesome pantry staples when it comes to maintaining both fresh supply and budget integrity up here in market-price-controlled Canada. Tinned evaporated milk can occasionally take the edge off those needs (and makes for better Mac & Cheese anyway) but sometimes you need the genuine fresh article. Just … Read More →
This One Night In New Orleans... (ed. note: this is complete tinkering of the original posting on 6 December, 2016 to better address vegetarians and the finer points of roux making as well as a new video of my last batch) After reading about my bean obsession and gallo pinto theories, a viewer from the Googlytubes asked for more specifics on … Read More →
Homemade & Fluffy, Not Expensive & Dense You can find my original hummus recipe in this post but it was the array of hummus permutations at the grocery yesterday that prompted me to make a video of the process. How many times can I say it? Cook. Beans. From. Dry. The selection yesterday had a range of prices (and flavours which you … Read More →
It's Winter, You Need Comfort Food If you’ve ever been stuck for a winter comfort food menu idea, it’s likely you’ve landed on old-fashioned meat loaf a time or two. It’s about as homespun as food gets in North America and requires only basic ingredients to get dinner on the table without a lot of tending. Whack it in the oven … Read More →
Control What Goes In & What Comes Out Is Better Pre-ground meat, “mince” or simply “hamburger” as it’s known in various parts of the world, has become the default setting for a large majority of home cooking. It’s a cheap, flexible, and widely available protein. Problem is, it doesn’t usually taste very interesting when compared to other options. I had a laundry list of concerns … Read More →
Customize Your Own Blend I drink tea. I drink a LOT of tea. Black tea mostly but with green, oolong, and pu-erh tossed in for good measure when the mood hits. A cup of “builder’s Assam” with a touch of cream is on my desk more often than not. I’ve managed to ween myself off sugar there but occasionally … Read More →
With Cheese & Data You're Ready For Anything The encroaching weather this time of year always puts me in a disaster recovery mindset. I’ve got charcoal and gas for cookery, jugs of water reserve if power to the well pump goes out, a pantry full of beans and rice, candles galore, and an ever rotating stack of good books. I’m good for two … Read More →
New Year, New Blooms Another year has passed and I’m still in limbo to some extent but I can always count on my faithful orchids to come through. This little fellow bloomed recently for the first time just to brighten up the holidays. Bit of a grab bag colour-wise since it was from the lot of pots I literally … Read More →
Ham. Pineapple. Fresh Chiles. You Can't Go Wrong On New Year's Day. A celebration of any size on New Year’s can be difficult for the cook. Unlike the steeped-in-tradition Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, your guests rarely sit at one table simultaneously for this event. Add in the cocktails and countdowns and managing a menu to satisfy everyone can be a challenge. With a large ham for a … Read More →
Yes, That's To Scale. They're THAT Big. Rarely for this corner of Canada it looks like a nearly non-white Christmas this year. The temperature is running hot and cold (-12c on Wednesday night, +7c the next day) and the precipitation machine that is the Atlantic has its timing all wrong if it wants to blast us with the white stuff. I’ve not … Read More →
Today's Loaf. It really is automatic around my place nowadays. Ever skeptical, the internet needed a bit of convincing when it came to my claim of six-minute daily bread. So I timed it. See the results below and find the price analysis and recipe in the post right before this one. So there commercial bakeries and bread doubters of the world. But honestly, if you … Read More →
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 →
Like Trying To Find Waldo-Data in a Meadow Full of Internet Noise Warning: Techno-babble ahead this time. If you get to this site with a good old-fashioned bookmark in your browser, nothing should change for you and you’ve got no need to panic. If you’re one of the handful of readers using the RSS feed feature, either directly in your browser or via a separate RSS reader … 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 →
