And so begins the third year...

Wake up seedlings! It’s a bright, blustery day on the Rusty Coast.

If you look closely, you can see the mountains on the mainland:

What’s that infernal racket?

EEK! It’s the garbage truck!

I’ll be back in a minute.

(inaudible muttering and cursing, running down front steps in my Mashimoro jammies, garbage truck pulls up just as I get the garbage to the curb, smile sheepishly, realize what I'm wearing, blush and scamper back up the front steps, muttering and cursing some more.)

Excuse me while I battle the swarm of pollen that’s attacked my eyes and lungs

Who’s stinking idea was it to have all the trees in a mass orgy all at the same time? It’s a botanical bacchanalia out there. A girl can’t go to put out the trash without getting in the line of timber jizz. I'm constantly amazed at how much mucus my body is able to produce during allergy season. It's like Slimer has taken over my body. Next thing you know, Stay Puft Marshmallow man will take up shop in my brain.

On that note, we had our 2^nd wedding anniversary dinner last night. Supposedly the traditional gift for the 2^nd wedding anniversary is cotton. We opted for beer and wine instead ;)

Here’s the wall of empties from last night’s anniversary dinner:

We had our friend P. come over to help us celebrate. He, as usual, brought over a great selection of local brews to contribute to the meal.

Dinner was homemade grubs, otherwise known as gnocchi, with local chorizo and greens from the garden.

The gnocchi was made with russet potatoes from Saanich, True Grains’s sifted organic flour and a couple of Shady Mile’s free-range eggs. It was the first time P. had ever had gnocchi and I’m glad I was there to be part of this momentous gastronomic discovery for him. Gnocchi is such an easy and versatile pasta to make and one of our favorite comfort foods.

Our anniversary dinner stretched all the way to nearly midnight as we finished off the evening with a local cheese and fruit plate and enjoyed a few more bottles of beer and wine. P. is a fellow lover of local cheeses and we waxed poetic about the wonderful cheeses we’ve been trying. It’s gotten me yearning for a trip down to Cowichan Bay to pick up a wedge of Hilary’s Sacre Bleu and a small round of his version of Camembert.

BTW, there’s rumors of someone growing grain in the Campbell River region for scotch whiskey. If anyone has any idea who’s doing this, please send me a note via the comment box. I guess it can’t really be called scotch, since we’re not in Scotland. I don’t care as long as it’s good.

Enjoy the day!

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Good Morning Starshine

gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby

noopy

la la la - lo lo

sabba sibbi sabba nooby aba

naba

lee lee - lo lo

tooby ooby wala

nooby aba

naba

Early morning singing song...

I’m counting down the days before I see my loveliest of lovely friends, Abby. She’s taking moi to see Serena Ryder in Vancouver. SR does a great version ‘Good Morning Starshine’ that’ll shake the chill off of these winter mornings. I downloaded her newest CD “If you memory serves you well’ from iTunes and it’s on high rotation over here.

I heart Serena Ryder. Definitely one of my big girl crushes. She’s even wearing a crush worthy blue wool coat on her new website. Her new CD is a collection of covers. She takes an eclectic range of songs from Lenny’s “Sisters of Mercy” to Paul Anka’s “It doesn’t matter anymore”, twists them, punches them up, slows them down and caresses them until they fall down onto their knees and then rise to the rafters. I can’t wait for the concert!!!

As usual, my plans for the weekend for a simple few days of knitting and spinning and chilling didn’t quite work out that way. Saturday was a rush to meet work deadlines and messing with the 100 Mile Diet Nanaimo website. I might have to trash the site and start from scratch again. Oh well. It wasn’t all work. I managed to grab a few hours of sunshine that blessed our Rusty Coast while I did my errands on foot. With my Vitamin D tank full, I scurried back to my corner and began reassembling the website. Hopefully it’ll be up again soon. I have a bunch of 100 Mile Diet and local food issue events coming up soon.

After an aggressive treatment of mold pills, fistfuls of raw garlic, Cold-FX, Chinese satan spit and non-stop video game playing, DH is slowly rising from his mucus-lined state. He was feeling well enough to join and our friend Dave for a day of ice climbing a Mt. Arrowsmith on Sunday. The ice is definitely fattening up nicely. There was even ice gestating in areas that don’t normally see anything more than verglas.

Yes, that's me up there. You're just going to have to take my word for it ;)















So pretty!

Back at home, we let the day of climbing sink its good aching into our bodies. I managed to get the second sleeve of my MIL’s sweater started. I eventually pried myself out of my knitting chair and made us dinner:

Chorizo from Quist farms, local veggies and homemade grubs (a.k.a. gnocchi) made with russet potatoes from Saanich and flour from True Grain bakeries. The pesto is from a batch I made in the summer from Nanoose Edible’s basil and have squirreled away in the freezer. A respectable 100 mile diet post-climb dinner if I may say so myself. For dessert, I enjoyed a small glass of blackberry wine from Cowichan’s Cherry Point vineyard. Bursting with blackberry’s deep sweetness, it was like sipping summer.

All in all, it was a well played weekend.

Happy Eating!
Jen

Feed me!

(insert lame ethnic cooking comment or Dr. Seuss rip-off here)

Most chefs, professional or in-home, love getting invited to dinner at other’s people’s homes. This is different than going out for dinner at a restaurant, which is fun but not the same.

I relish being on the receiving end of a home cooked meal. Sometimes I’m just tired of cooking for everyone else, even for myself. Really, there are times when I’d rather sit back, read, knit, go for a paddle, join a friend for a climb, hang out, goof off and then show up at the dinner table and have a home-cooked meal waiting for me. I know it’s hard to believe but really, there are such times ;)

Sometimes I get tired of my own cooking and am hungry (pardon the pun) for someone’s spin on a dish. Recipes are a great vehicle into a family’s history and a culture. I learned to make many dishes by infiltrating friend’s kitchens, along with learning a great deal about them.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been invited to other people’s dinner table this year. Most of those times have been at my in-laws, who are great cooks.

This lack of dinner invitations is a common problem amongst kitchen savvy folks. It’s a pattern that a social circle falls into. The one kitchen compatible friend gets branded the ‘chef’ of the group and everyone just shows up at their place for dinner by default. Though a few of us are arrogant oafs, most chefs make lovely dinner guests. Just keep the wine bottle away from us ;)

I’ve been told by my culinary neophyte friends that they’re afraid to invite me over for fear of what I’d think about their cooking. They fear that I’d be dictating a scathing review in my head, silently nitpicking at their dishes, muttering to myself about how the carrots are bland and that the pasta is overcooked. I’m horrified that they would think I would behave so. Part of this inferiority complex is fed by the assumption that what I cook at home is complicated (it isn’t) and that I am privy to chef-jedi secrets (I wish). If anyone is going to appreciate a home cooked meal, it would be a chef. Who better to know what you went through to put together a meal than someone who has to do it every day?

To remedy this, I’ve been offering to teach my friends or family how to cook in hopes that they will feel confident enough to invite me over for dinner. I’ve had some great successes with my Vancouver circle with a trio of vegan ronins, the love child of Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson and a spatula-wielding knight who wooed his lady with 4-course meals. However, on the island I haven’t had much success with this plan.

This has all changed now that our dear friends Karin, Dave and the 5 furry kids have moved into Nanaimo. I’ve known Karin since our Squamish days and she’s been gleaning cooking lessons from the beginning. I spent this past weekend at their place, teaching her how to make everything from Pad Thai to sorbets to preserving. It’s finally paid off ;)

Last night, I got invited to their place for dinner. A real dinner invitation. We made plans earlier in the week and everything, as if we were grown-ups or something. DH was invited too but wasn’t feeling too social. I think his new SOCOM 4 game had more to do with his absence than any anti-social tendencies.

So off to their new home I went. I was greeted at the door by their 5 furry kids and the enticing aroma of dinner cooking. Dinner was a beautifully roasted local free-ranged chicken that they picked up from the Shady Mile market and some local veggies roasted right in the pan.

Dessert was a duo of sorbets, a coconut lime and a cranberry. The cranberries were made with a batch we picked up from Yellow Point cranberries. A simple and elegant way to end an equally simply and elegant meal. Bravo!
We even had dinner companions:











(the cat version of college kids all piling into a telephone booth)

For dinner, I picked up a bottle of Ortega wine from Zanatta vineyards in the Cowichan valley. All the grapes used for their wine are grown in their Glenora vineyard. It was a fruity and rich white wine that paired well with the chicken. I could see it going really well with a Thai green curry or the pan-fried halibut with pesto gnocchi we had last week

(Thanks Pete for the halibut. I was awesome!).

BTW, I picked up the wine at North Gate beer and wine store, across from Superstore. It’s got a great selection of local wines and ciders.

I also found Volume 2 of my favorite red wine, Bete Noire (Black Beast) by Cherry Point Vineyards. This local red is a bit rough and bloodthirsty, with a deep fruity finish. In other words, a great wine snob repellant ;) I think red wine ought to be a bit bloody and carry itself with a bit of a swagger. Anyways, how could you resist a name like Bete Noire?

Hosting a dinner party doesn’t have to be an ornate affair. You don’t have to make everything from scratch. Sometimes it’s just a matter of assembling a dinner. On the island we have a great selection of locally made cheeses. Everything water buffalo to cow milk cheeses to fill your cheese plate. Nanoose Edibles carries a great line of smoked albacore tuna and salmon for an appetizer and locally made dressings for your salad. There are prepared jams and jellies for folks to nibble with crackers. Check out Golden Maples Farm at a Christmas craft fair near you. She makes her products from fruits and veggies grown right on her own farm. She even has lemon and lime trees growing in her greenhouse!

For dessert, pick up a Grandma’s Country pie from the Nanaimo Sausage House on 3018 Ross Rd (behind the County Club mall). They have a sour cherry pie that is getting quite the following. Their blackberry pie is on the top of my list. They have a range of pies from berries to pumpkin to lemon meringue. You can contact them at Grandmascountrypies@shaw.ca and place your order. While you’re at the Nanaimo Sausage House, pick up some sausages. They make them right there on the premises and it shows. We’re fans of the hot pepperoni and their smokies are DH’s favorites and that’s saying a lot. They also carry local cheeses and free-ranged eggs.

The main course can simply be a simple soup, a roasted chicken or fish. Heck, I’ve served scrambled eggs and toast for a dinner party.

For larger dinner parties, hold it as a potluck. Better yet, host it as a 100 Mile Diet potluck and have folks bring in their favorite locally-grown dish. Before you start the meal, have everyone introduce their dish and where they got the ingredients. This is great way to share and learn who your local growers are.

Have a tasty day!

Jen

Gnocchi sans gluten

In response to Gina's comment from the previous past about gnocchi...

Gluten-free gnocchi can be made with 3 parts rice flour to 1 part cornstarch. I've made some really good fluffy GF gnocchi that I served up with sage butter and roasted veggies and walnuts.

Actually, now that I think about, GF gnocchi makes tons of sense since less gluten makes for a less rubbery gnocchi. I think this calls for more experimentation. There are other flours like buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, teft, besan to try out.

The key to a light gnocchi is to use as little flour as possible. The egg will help bind the potato together and allow you to use less flour. Since gnocchi only has three ingredients, it pays to use high quality ingredients since any mediocrity in the ingredients will be very apparent.

That's it for now.

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