High centered on hump day

For the last couple of weeks, I've been riding on a non-stop wave of summer's bounty and local food events. Now I'm perched on Wednesday, with a dayplanner spilling over with events, appointments and meetings, and I've barely had time to digest last week. There's still a huge load of canning to do and I'm contemplating a Mid-Autumn moon festival 100 mile feast. But all I want to do is sit on my porch and eat my tomatoes. I'm high centered on hump day!

Here are some highlights from this last week:

Last Thursday, I spoke at Duncan's Chamber of Commerce 100 Mile Diet Breakfast, hosted by the Equinox Cafe. Sean and Jessica at the Equinox Cafe have been local farm supporters from the very beginning. Their menu boasts produce, meats, cheeses, wine and other goodies from Cowichan Valley farms. I can't remember much of my talk. It was far too early and the coffee didn't kick in until I got home. I do remember that there was very good local bacon to be had ;)
That night, I had some friends over for dinner. I made a cioppino with local halibut, tomatoes from my garden and veggies from the produce box, and a glassful of Cherry Point's Coastal White. Cioppino is a traditional fish stew. I'll let the Italians, Portuguese and San Fransiscoans fight over who's tradition it is. Fishermen made this stew as their daily meal with their daily catch. It's recipe is written by whatever you happen to have on hand. It's about as easy-peasy as you can get. Saute a bunch of veggies in olive oil, dump in chopped tomatoes, chunks of fish or shellfish, wine/stock/broth, cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Sprinkle a bunch of herbs from the garden and you've got yourself a meal!
I've had to move my dining room table into the already cramped kitchen. My friends are too polite to say anything about the new eating arrangement.









I've had to relocate the dining table because my dining room area has been turned into a tomato refugee camp.









Friday. Well, something happened on Friday but I can't remember what.

Saturday was filled to the rim. My friend Dave and I headed over to the Errington Farmer's Market to pick up some fleece from a local sheep farmer, Elaine at Weaver's Rose Cottage.






All the fleece, roving and yarns at her stall were all from her own sheep. I picked up a few pounds of washed Romney wool at $8 a pound. What a deal! She also runs natural dyeing workshops. Elaine can be reached at (250) 248-1270 or just pop by the Errington's farmer's market. She's at stall 10.




The market is fabulous. Just what a farmer's market ought to be, a market that serves the community, not a tourist trap filled with trinket stalls . It's tucked in the local park and had wooden covered stalls and it a real friendly vibe. Part social hub, part local market, part community stage, it was a great place to spend a Saturday morning. There was a range of local produce from plums, to melons, greens and squashes. There was local seafood vendor and prepared foods and a few arts and craft stalls but the focus definitely was on local produce.

Afterwards, we headed over to Coombs market in search of more veggies and fruit for canning. They have island produce sold in cases. I also found one of my favorite foods, chantrelles. At $9/lb, I managed to find some wiggle room in my food budget to get a small bagful.
The less you do to chantrelles, the better. They have a mild, woodsy-nutty flavour that begs nothing but a saute in butter.







Here's one of my favorite things to do with these forest treasure: chantrelle and scrambled egg. Saute a bunch of chopped chantrelles in a couple plugs of butter for a few minutes. Add beaten eggs and scramble them up over medium heat. I like them soft and just a breath shy of runny. I topped the mushrooms and eggs with a few thin slices of Hilary's Belle Anne cheese. Steamed green beans rounded off the dish. So simple. So good. For heavens sake, don't skimp on the butter. If you're going to use factory farmed eggs you might as well throw the chantrelles into the trash. Better yet, pass 'em over to me, you obviously don't deserve chantrelles ;P




Saturday afternoon was spent navigating the pockmarked asphalt serpentine otherwise known as the Pacific Rim Highway as I ran off to the west coast to spend some time with DH, who has returned to his job as kayak jedi for the waning days of the season. Beachcombing black bears, burping sea lions, jumping salmon and hubcap sized sea stars made cameo appearances on our romantic-comedy-action adventure weekend.

On Tuesday, I returned to my 100 Mile Diet soapbox with an appearance on CHLY's Changes program. I ranted too much, forgot to mention a bunch of stuff that I had wanted to mention but otherwise, I think I did alright.

The folks at Changes had put a challenge out to all the restaurants to take on the 100 Mile Diet. Victoria boasts a growing list of restaurants that focus on local foods and Cowichan Valley has a 3 or 4 restaurants of the same goal, with one on a 20 mile diet (Yippee!). The last time I walked into one of the Nanaimo's finer restaurant's that boast they are making a local food a priority, I found out that their lamb was coming from Australia :(

Well, I'm proud to say that one Nanaimo establishment has stepped up to the 100 Mile Diet challenge and boy, they're doing it in style!
The Mermaid's Mug on Wesley Street has taken on the challenge. I popped over there yesterday to see how they were doing. They're bringing in local fruits and veggies from just down the road. They're using island meats and cheese. Their coffee is from a local roaster and is direct fair trade (of course). Michelle, the owner, has already squirrelled away a ton of local fruit for smoothies and is looking to can tomatoes to see them through the winter. There's also talk of building her own vegetable garden in the yard behind the restaurant. Music to my ears.

Finally, somebody who isn't just paying lip service! I'm just thrilled that I can finally go out to eat in Nanaimo and still be able to stay on my 100 mile diet.

Noodling around

In answer to Anon.'s question about cleaning chantrelles: I can't take all the credit for how spiffy and clean those mushrooms look. My friends who gifted me with them did a bit of cleaning before handing them over. I find a mushroom brush and any cleaning brush with stiff tooth brush is all you need. Chantrelles get waterlogged very easily so a dry approach is the best bet. If they are really dirty, a quick splash under running cold water should be all you need. Part of the solution is in the picking itself. Pick chantrelles that are already clean. I'm still seeing them out there on grocery shelves. Get them while you can!

Yesterday was a Novocain infused haze after an emergency dentist visit. Thanks to everyone at Dover View dental for making my ordeal as pleasant as possible. Dentist’s offices have really come a long way. They had a TV imbedded into the ceiling like my old dentist in Vancouver which was pretty much what sold me. Pretty cool except that when I first was lowered to start the session, there was some horribly, traumatic hospital soap opera scene that didn’t help much to calm me. They also had a pretty sweet LCD computer screen in front of the chair that flashed a slide show of postcard perfect scenes including some gorgeous shots of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, my new mountain crush. They even brought up my x-ray on it so I could check it out. I hope my maxillary molars never have to get yanked because those roots look pretty gnarly.

DH got washed up across the border and back home the night before. He insisted on driving me to the dentist and I’m glad he did. I got two shots of Novocain and that left me tired and wanting to simply curl up and hide from the world. Well, part of that was because I was doing a really drooly Jean Chrétien and just didn’t want to face the world ;)

Needless to say, I wasn’t in the mood of doing much except for knitting and zoning out with my DH. Knitting in itself was a bit of adventure. I’m coming close to the homestretch with my kimono-shrug-wrap and would be done expect for all the frogging I had to do thanks to my inability to count. Oh well.

Dinner was a chicken & roasted veggies in black bean sauce and pan-fried udon noodles. A pretty simply, peasant meal. Thank goodness I had the vat of roasted veggies to draw from. It certainly made things a whole lot easier. The chicken and all the the vegetables are all locally grown. Here’s the fast-& dirty recipe for that meal (recipe for 2)

½ chicken breast – in 2cm cubes (can substitute with firm tofu)

1-2 cups cabbage shredded – I used red but you can use any cabbage from green to any of the asian cabbages

2 cups roasted veggies

1-2 tsp grated ginger

1 tablespoon fermented black bean sauce – you can make your own, I just used stuff out of a jar

1 package udon noodles

½ cup liquid for deglazing – water or stock

peanut or veg. oil

In frying pan (I’m using a Teflon), add a teaspoon of oil, coat the bottom of the pan over medium heat. Once hot, add the noodles, arranging them in a single layer. You want as much of the noodle in contact with the bottom of the pan. Let cook for 3-4 mins. Do not move it around. You want the noodles to get crunchy and brown. Once they’re done you can just take the pan off the heat and put aside.

In a wok, heat up 1 tsp oil over medium-high heat. Place chicken in a single layer, uncrowded onto the bottom of the pan. Again, don’t be messing with it, you want it to brown. Let cook for 2-3 mins before turning the chicken pieces until their nice and golden brown and then turn over and brown the other side. Once cooked, removed to a bowl and keep covered.

Add a touch more oil if needed, return wok to heat and add ginger. Stir fry for a few seconds and then add the cabbage. Stir-fry for a minute, then add the roasted veggies and the chicken back in and cook for another 2-3 mins. Move the chicken & veggies to a side of the wok and dump in the black bean sauce. Let the sauce heat up for a minute before mixing with the veggies. This allows the sauce to cook and caramelize a bit and that helps bring out the fermented black bean yumminess. Deglazed with liquid and thicken with a cornstarch slurry if you want.

I like the serve the noodles and the veggies beside each other so that pan-fried noodles maintain their crunchiness. Even in a doped-up state, I made this in less than 20 mins.


Tah-dah...

Even though I could only chew and taste on one side of my mouth, it was so good. DH loved it. He loves anything in black bean sauce. I could serve cardboard in black bean sauce and he’d probably eat it.

This is a total yin-yang dish. The sweetness of the roasted veggies helped balance the saltiness of the fermented black beans. You had the different crunch factors of the cabbage and the pan-fried noodles play up nicely against the soft texture of the roasted vegetables and the meaty chicken. And of course, the darkly-sauced veggies and chicken visually play up nicely against the white udon noodles.

Now, if you wanted to, you could make a double batch of this and have some for a soup version of this dish the next day. When I say soup I mean nothing more than heating up a couple of cups of chicken stock, dumping in the leftovers and simmering for a few minutes. That's my idea of fast food ;)

Enjoy!

Jen

Happy Decapitated Pumpkin Day!

I never really understood this holiday. Now that it has become such a lucrative consumer free-for-all, it's simply an candy begging campaign to occupy the store displays during that lull between Thanksgiving gluttony and X'mas excess. A heathen like me is sorry to see how this solemn day of All Hallows Eve has been turned into sugar-rush marathon dressed up in a itchy, gaudy gorilla suit.

I know haven’t been a very good blog-mistress lately. I could tell you that it’s because we’ve had guests staying with us and a never-ending parade of family and friends coming by to visit. I could tell you that I’ve had the joy of celebrating the birthdays of both my DH and grandpa within a week of each other. I could tell you that work has been turned upside down and sideways. I could tell you that my final push of food preserving has left me so busy that I’m cross-eyed.

It would be true but really, all that wouldn’t make this past week any different than any other week.

The real reason why I haven’t been posting?

I’m obsessed with my new knitting project:

I’m making a kimono sleeved shrug wrap. Yes! It’s finally sweater season! Yippee!

For knit-geeks: The background colours are, of course, Noro yarn. I’m using a Silk Garden No. 34 and a Kureyon no. 178. I’m also using Marks & Kattens Feelings yarn leftover from a wedding afghan I did for my sis-in-law and her DH. You can’t really tell from these shots but the Feeling’s yarn pattern is based on a motif from a plant pot.

It took me a few days and several cathartic frogged attempts to finally figure out the pattern. Initially I was going to use the Noro for the motif and the Feelings yarn for the background but it just didn’t look right. Then I tinkered with the motif a bit. After a week of knitting, I finally managed to finish one sleeve and I’m ready to dive into the other sleeve. As usual, I’m doing it all on circular needles and I’m trying to get away with doing as little seaming as possible.

I still haven’t designed the collar yet but I figure the sweater will tell me what sort of collar it wants when I get to that point.

However, as obsessed as I am with my new project, I haven’t been starving. Especially since I am blessed with friends and family who show up at my door with local bounty. I have a couple packages of moose steaks and sausage in the freezer thanks to DH’s family’s generosity. I can’t wait to get into those.

Last week, we had friends show up with an armful of locally picked chantrelles!

I made a chantrelle chowder. I sautéd the sliced chantrelles in a little bit of smoked bacon dripping and butter. Remove the chantrelles and brown up some chopped local veggies (potatoes, carrots, corn, celery, onion) and added a litre of homemade chicken stock. I let it simmer for a few minutes and voila, a soup fit for a queen!

My friend, Karin, and I also made a batch of gnocchi this past week. Not just any gnocchi but purple Peruvian potato gnocchi and a batch of butternut squash gnocchi. The Peruvian purple ones look like Grimace turds but would assume they taste much better than that. Grimace turds probably taste like rancid McGrease.

My Fast and Dirty gnocchi recipe is as follows:

1-2 cups mashed veggie – starchy potato like Yukon gold, russet. Don’t use waxy potatoes like red potatoes. You can also use winter squash, yams, sweet potato. To the potato dough base you can also add roasted garlic, eggplant, pesto, spices, sundried tomato, spinach, tapenade, fermented black bean, miso, chickpeas. This is one of those recipes that is ripe for experimentation.

2-3 cups flour – I used locally milled organic Red Fife wheat flour.

1 egg

pinch of salt & pepper.

Mix the mashed vegetables and egg and salt in a big bowl. Add a cup of flour and mix well. Add more flour in 1/3 cup increments, mixing until the flour is incorporated into the dough. Basically add flour and knead until the dough isn’t sticky anymore.

Pull of a ball of dough and roll that into a ¾ inch snake. Cut it into 2cm pieces. Roll each piece against the tines of a fork so they get a grooved pattern. The grooves provide a place for the sauce to hang out.

Bring a pot of salted water to a hard boil. Drop in gnocchi individually so they don’t clump up. Boil for 2-3 minutes or until they float up to the surface. Remove from water and continue until all your gnocchi are cooked. They can be popped into pan and sautéd with some butter and other tasty goodies. I opted to serve it with a sauté of local veggies and chorizo sausage from the Nanaimo Sausage House.

Uncooked gnocchi can be frozen. Simply line a sheet pan with parchment paper and lay the gnocchi in a single layer. Once hard, they can be transferred to a Ziploc. I often make 2-3 batches of gnocchi since they freeze well and only need to be boiled before eating.

A shaving of aged manchego and some good company was the seasoning this dish needed.

To finish off, here’s what I had for lunch today:

It was leftovers from yesterday’s dinner of local striped shrimp curry. The shrimps were amazing. Unlike imported prawns and shrimps, these didn’t turn rubbery and tough after the initial cooking and then a subsequent ride in the nukebox to be reheated for lunch . They were super-sweet and juicy. Hands down they were better than any frozen imported prawn or shrimp I've had before. There were a pleasant reminded that 'Oh yeah, sea bugs are supposed to be flavourful and not nuggets of sea-tinged rubbery protein.' These are from West Coast Wild Pacific Seafoods and I got my batch from Shady Mile market.

That's it. I'm hiding out in the back room and knitting for the rest of the day.

Cheers!
Jen