Mountain & Market Jewels

Just got back from the Nanaimo Farmer's Market. Despite the soggy weather, it was a great shopping trips complete with a mini reunion with an old friend. Here's what treasures I found:
Free range eggs, chicken, tomatoes, peppers, chard, strawberries, new potatoes and artisan foccacia bread.

Each week, the variety of produce grows. I also saw spinach, beets, rhubarb, garlic chives, canned veggies and jams, veggie seedlings and bedding plants.

Along with locally grown food, I also found another source of locally grown fibre for all my 100 mile spinning and knitting project!

Island Fibre Friends sells locally raised alpaca yarns and fleeces. Their stall offers everything from handknit garments, to yarn to fleece. This small company is run by fleece gurus, Janet MacKenzie and Sylvia Gaunt. They can be found at the Nanaimo Farmer's Market in Fridays, the Qualicum Farmer's Market on Saturdays and the Campbell Rive Pier Street Market on Sundays. Here's more info about these other Vancouver Island farmer's markets.




Yesterday, my wonderful, darling DH came back from his top secret superhero mission with a pocketful of handpicked jewels:

I wonder how many jewels he was storing in his belly:)
So lovely! They're almost too beautiful to eat. Almost....






To celebrate his berry booty, I made a spring version of 100 Mile Diet Poutine with new potatoes. The potatoes were leftovers from a previous dinner. Whenever I make potatoes or rice, I usually make a double or triple batch since it doesn't take any more effort to cook extra and they have a gzillion uses. The cheese curds were from Natural Pastures and the gravy was made with homemade locally raised chicken stock and smoked bacon fat. Yep, I think my heart skipped a beat just writing that last sentence.

A quick ride under the broiler for the cheese curd topped potatoes and a ladle or two or three of the gravy and it was good to go.



To compliment the potatoes, I made a quick slaw with marinated pork and pesto dressing:



The pork was sliced thin and marinated in some local apple cider , a dollop of Gabriola Gourmet minced garlic and wildflower honey from the Jinglepot Apiaries for a few hours.

I stir fried it over high heat until there was no more pink meat and set it aside to cool as I assembled the slaw. When I say 'assembled' I mean chopped up a bunch of local veggies to thin slaw strips and throw on some dressing. I used my pesto dressing. here's the recipe.
Fast & Dirty Pesto Dressing:

3 parts olive oil
3 parts balsamic vinegar (I use Auld Alliance Farm's fig balsamic vinegar)
1 part homemade pesto (recipe at bottom)

Throw into a jar, squeeze bottle, bowl and shake, whip, stir, rattle and roll until it's all mixed up.
Really. That's it. There's a reason why these are called 'Fast & Dirty' recipes.

Have a great weekend!

Jen
Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Rhubarb Rhapsody

Rhubarb is popping up all over the island. Check out your local farm market and farmer’s market for this tart and yummy vegetable. Nanaimo’s Foodshare and Community Gardens is also hosting it’s Rhubarb Festival this Saturday. It’s being held at the Foodshare Centre on 271 Pine Street from 10am to 2pm on May 5. There will be fresh local rhubarb and other goodies for sale. Gardening experts will be available to answer your green thumb questions and tours of the community gardens will be given.

I adore rhubarb. I love it in pies, chutneys, jams, cakes, stewed, baked or simply dipped into a bit of sugar. I find that most recipes overwhelm this tangy veggie with way too much sugar in an effort to pummel its tart nature into submission. For shame! It’s charm is its tartness and it’s ability to add some zip into a dessert. Like cranberries, it also goes surprisingly well with some dark chocolate. I definitely have to experiment with a rhubarb chocolate chip sweet roll or muffin soon...

Usually I just chop up a couple pounds of rhubarb, along with a couple green apples and whatever else I have (plums, peaches, cranberries, blueberries), a pinch of cinnamon and couple tablespoons of local wildflower honey. I simply stew it up over low heat with a scant ½ cup of water. The fruit will also release quite a bit of water as well. Cook until the rhubarb is just softened. I usually wait until the end before adding softer fruit like plums and berries.

With my new bounty of rhubarb, I made a Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake. It’s a great fruity cake, perfect for tea time or a nice end to a meal. The recipe is a result of some kitchen experimentation and a craving for rhubarb baked treat.

Looks like the house elf got to the cake before I did ;P

Here’s the recipe:

2 lbs of rhubarb – fresh or frozen – washed and chopped into ½ inch pieces (you could also use other fruits like cranberries, apples, pears, plums, peaches, figs, grapes etc)

½ cup honey (or brown or cane sugar)

Group A - dry ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour ( I used a mix of True Grains bakery’s sifted flour and organic kamut flour)
½ cup polenta or corn meal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger

Group B

½ cup butter
¾ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Group C

1 cup whole milk yogurt

1-Mix fruit and honey together and let sit for about 1 hour to macerate. That’s fancy schmancy talk for suck the juices out of the fruit.
2- Preheat over 350F
3-In a medium sized bowl, combine together Group A (dry) ingredients
4-In a mixing bowl, cream together butter, sugar. Once creamed well, add eggs and vanilla = Group B
5-With a spatula or wooden spoon, mix in Group A & C into Group B(butter mixture) alternating between A & C. Combine until it almost just combined. Do NOT overmix
6-Add in macerated fruit and fold in. The batter will look like the dog’s breakfast. Don’t worry, it’ll bake up fine.
7-Pour into a prepared 9-10 inch round pan (I used a 10 inch springform pan) and bake for 40-50 minutes.
8- Check with toothpick for doneness.Let cool on rack and enjoy!

Last night, I had my Spinners’ and Weavers’ Guild meeting and DH had a Guys’ Night In with a friend so we were going to be eating dinner at different times. I whipped up a batch of bison chili in the slow cooker for when the guys surfaced from their video games for a bite and it was piping hot and waiting for me when I got home from my meeting.

At the meeting, I took the opportunity to beg for advice on plying my handspun yarn. I had a roomful of experts that were more than happy to offer their words of wooly wisdom and give me a quick plying tutorial.

With the support and tutelage of my spinning mentors, I managed to finished my first 2-ply 100 mile yarn:

Ain't it sweet? :)

I'm so proud. I have it drying right now. My silly little brain is dizzy with ideas of what I could knit up. For more spinning babble check out my 100 mile fiber blog.

Have a great day!

Jen

100 Mile Diet Nanaimo Challenge

I hate lawns

Monday was spent doing all the stuff that I didn't get to over the weekend. The usual patchwork of housework, offering of sacrifices to the garden gods, sending out rays of my sardonic sunshine to this mad, mad world and dogpaddling my way through my email box. I didn't get to all of this over the weekend because I was in a epic battle against my nemesis, or at least one of them, The Lawn.

I hate lawns. Lawns are stupid. Lawns are evidence that we are stupid.

We're renting our abode at the moment but when we do buy our bit of paradise, there won't be a speck of lawn. There may be grass, but no lawn.

The Lawn is North America's arrogant pronouncement that he has conquered and enslaved nature. It's his way of showing that he has tamed the wild and made it bend at his will. It is his totem of civilization.

Of course, NA, has it's head so far up its arse that it has caused an gastrointestinal traffic jam. In other words, North America is the source of its constipation but is too blind to see because no matter how much sunshine you blow up there, it's still pretty dark.

Yep, we da man. We da man so therefore we feed, medicate, groom and water something simply to chop off it's head once a week! I don't get it. You can't eat it. It doesn't look all that remarkable and thanks to all the herbicides that it needs, it's more enviromentally harmful than it is beneficial. All it seems to do is tell the whole world, 'I'm so wealthy that I can afford to blow all my time, money and energy on this absolutely useless symbol of affluence.'

I don't get it but I had to mow the lawn because it was getting at the length that it would start harboring snakes, wasp nests and pygmy tribes. If it got any longer, I would have to hire a crew of migrant workers with machetes to take it down. So Saturday morning I popped a couple of antihistamines (of course I'm highly allergic to grass pollen) and went out to tackle The Lawn.

The grass had gotten so long that the gas mower blade kept jamming up. It was a inane dance that went something like this:
...5,6,7,8... take 14 pulls to start up the mower, the mower farts out puff of black smoke and growls awake, take two steps forward and have it jam up, shake and rattle the jammed grass out the blades, sashay the mower to already cut area (because it wouldn't start in the tall grass), and back to the top...6,7,8

I soon figured out that it wouldn't jam as much if I pulled the lawnmower backwards over the grass but this also left swirls of uncut grass. So I pulled the dang lawnmower twice over each pass of lawn.

GRRRRRRRR

3 hours later, my right arm aching and sore from constantly trying the start the gas guzzling lawn beast and shoulders and back like pulverized jello from pulling the mower over the lawn twice, I crawled in the shower and washed away the grass pollen, sweat, grime and frustration.

I spent the rest of Saturday recovering from my lawn epic with a pot of tea and an healing afternoon of knitting and an restorative evening of spinning, which is why I was still doing weekend chores yesterday :P

Monday was a total weekend leftovers day. I even finished up some spinning that I had started on Saturday:
It's a Targhee wool that I picked up last summer at the Duncan fibre sale. It's colourway is called 'Active Pass' which is what totally sold me. The kayaker in me couldn't resist such a name. I'm thinking of plying it with a solid cream or chocolate brown.

Dinner was also an affair of leftovers. DH and I went to the gym around 7pm. He went to workout and maintain his jedi powers so he can heal up from his shoulder overhaul. I went to burn off all the extra Energizer Bunny energy I had pent up from a day of puttering.

We got home at half past 8, hungry and tired. From this weekend's leftovers I pulled together a gnocchi with chorizo, spaghetti squash, kale and spinach. The greens were from the garden, the rest was bits and pieces residing in the tupperware condo in the back of my fridge. All of it island grown, of course.

In less than ten minutes we had this:














Dessert was the last pieces of a rhubarb, apple and cranberry pie I made over the weekend.
The fruit is all island grown. Spring rhubarb is finally coming up! Yippee! It was a lovely ruby toned ending to our day.










It's a pie version of my Fast & Dirty Baked Fruit from a family of recipes known as the 'Coppolas' . Here's the pithy recipe for that:

Couple of pounds of rhubarb washed and chopped
Couple of green or other pie apples washed and chopped
Couple of cups of cranberry or other berries
Couple of tablespoons of organic cane sugar or local honey
Couple of teaspoons of cornstarch
Couple of pinches of cinnamon and ground ginger

Toss and mix in large corningware container. Throw into a 350F oven for 40-50 minutes. Let cool and enjoy.

I know you're thinking that there's not enough sugar for that much fruit. If it's not sweet enough, I just drizzle a bit of honey or some grated dark chocolate when it's still warm. I personally find most processed foods and store bought desserts way too sweet. I prefer to let the sunshine sweetness of fruit colour the dish.

This baked fruit is awesome for breakfast with a bit of yogurt and and granola. Or as a topping with some fruit sorbet or vanilla icecream or cake. In a pinch, it can be turned into a chutney with a drizzle of cider vinegar and some spices. I've also used it as a surprise filling in muffins.

Happy Eating!
Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Midweek Crumbs

Firstly, a few midweek tidbits to pass on:

-A reminder for all you green thumbs who can’t wait to start on this year’s backyard bounty, the 5th annual Qualicum Beach Seedy Saturday in Qualicum's beautiful Civic Centre on Saturday, February 3rd from 10am to 3pm. Admission by donation. -- Keith & Joy Smith, 2503 Island Highway West. Qualicum Beach, BC V9K 1G5 gwenmar@shaw.ca 250 752 8135

-Chopped and glued from my comments box for all you spinners: Distaff Day is on Saturday, February 3, in Duncan. It's a day for spinners hosted by the Tzouhalem Spinners & Weavers Guild and will be held in St. John's Church Hall (corner of First and Jubilee) from 10 til 3. Last year's event attracted 80-plus spinners from up and down the Island and from Salt Spring! Bring your wheel and something for show & tell (you've got some fabulous knitted projects). Pot luck lunch, $3 charge to help pay the rent. For more info give coordinator Barbara Dowd a call at (250) 743-4116.
Thanks Alison for passing on the info!

-From my email box: The Green Store at the Port Place Mall in downtown Nanaimo has just brought in a huge shipment of organic products. They have everything from freezer/cooler food products to beauty supplies. Many of the items have to go quick!

******

Secondly, I want to share a couple of recent local food finds. I found these at my local supermarket this week:

Yep, B.C. Kiwifruit. I don’t know where in B.C. they’re from but since almost all B.C. kiwi fruits are grown here on Vancouver Island, I’m going to assume they fall within my 100 mile diet radius. YIPPEEE!!! They’re a tad smaller than the ones that are shipped all the way from New Zealand but I got a whole big bag of them for $2.50! They’re also not as fuzzy and don’t need to be peeled. So not only do they take way less fuel to get here, there’s also less waste in the end.

In a recent trip to Piper’s Meats, I found canned smoked Vancouver Island salmon:

So good to see more local products in the stores. Piper’s Meats has always made an effort to bring in locally raised products from meats to eggs and now they’re bringing fish! Double yippee!!!

So today I’m making Chinese potstickers with locally raised pork and veggies in anticipation of Chinese New Year. It’s only fitting since it is the Year of the Pig ;)

Instead of one huge Chinese New Year feast, I’m going to host a few smaller 100 mile diet dinners through February. Chinese New Year officially begins February 18^th but I can’t wait so tonight, I’m hosting a pre-Chinese New Year dinner. We’re going to dig into some of those potstickers. I also have some locally grown gai lan (chinese broccoli) that I’m going to stir-fry up with moose sausage in a black bean sauce. Along with all that, I’m planning a 100 mile hot and sour soup with loads of local mushrooms, root veggies, local pork and chicken stock. I’ll post photos tomorrow.

For dessert, I’ve got homemade raspberry & rhubarb biscotti:

I know, they’re not very Chinese but the fruit adds a touch of festive red which is the main colour for Chinese celebrations.

Gotta get going on my one woman dumpling sweat factory. Have a great day everyone!

Happy Eating!

Jen

Stinking Rose Therapy

Now that the subzero temperatures and the snow has pretty much subsided, people are now complaining about the rain like it's something new here on the Rusty Coast.

I’m one of the sick puppies that actually likes the rain. Good thing I live here. Too bad, so many others here have WWW Syndrome, (Wicked Witch of the West syndrome) and act like it’s going to melt them. Hopefully, acid rain won’t get to that point. Considering that we’re a Gortex nation out here on the Rusty Coast there wouldn’t be so much bellyaching about the rain. Mind you, I’m learning that those that complain about the rain seem to celebrate the sunny weather by heading to the malls. Very odd, very odd indeed.

Unfortunately, all this damp and cold is not helping DH’s war against phlegm. Poor dear is battling a month-long bronchial infection. Yesterday, he downed 2 heads of garlic by way of nachos. Let’s just say that vampires won’t be bothering him anytime soon. He took a bath this morning and I swear, you could have used the bath water as soup base. Not that I would but I could.

On top of his deadly garlic therapy, he’s also taking penicillin, Cold-FX, ginger tea by the barrel, mega-vitamins and Chinese herbal medicine (Ho Yan Har cha). Probably a bit over the top and I’m wondering if maybe the mix of mold pills and the herbal stuff may simply be confusing his body. He’s been on a vigilant fight to get healthy so we can go bang on some ice this weekend. So far I think the score is Cooties:57, Kevin:2.

Oh well, the avalanche reports are heading up to ‘considerable’ and ‘high’ danger ratings for the backcountry.. Maybe it’s better that we stick around home for the weekend and watch endless hours of CSI, knit and spin up a storm, simmer up a big pot of soup and let the cooties run their course.

Here’s what I have worked up on the wheel right now. It’s a Romney-merino blend. Super soft and luxurious and totally over the top for a beginner’s spinning wool but it’s what I’ve got. I've also have a couple balls of Briggs & Little's Country Roving for practicing my treadling and simply getting some mileage under my belt. I've been experimenting lots and my little head is trying to process all this new information. I'm still overtwisting the yarn like most beginners but not as badly as I when I first started.

Here’s some more photos from our Winter Adventure trip. They’re of the Columbia Basin’s Banks Lake area in Washington State. There’s some amazing ice that forms up there and there’s little avalanche hazard. We’re hoping to get back down there in the coming months. Until then, we have the joy of subjecting all of our friends to an endless slideshow of the gzillion photos we took on our trip.

Have a great weekend!

Jen

Hail, the Great Parsnip!

I finally have my solarium back. Well, at least a corner of it back. Yesterday, DH and I brought all of our bottles and juice containers to the Return-It depot. We made a grand total of $22.35. Armed with our small fortune, we headed straight across the parking lot to the liquor store. LOL! Well, we have to replenish our empty bottle stash ;)

At the liquor store, I noticed that they’ve brought in Saturna Island wines and even a blackberry port from Thetis Island. Good to see locally grown wines at the government stores. As mentioned before, they also bring in Zanatta’s Damasco wine. They say they can’t bring in most of the local wines since they have to buy in big lots and the wineries can’t make enough to fill their orders. Thank goodness Nanaimo has a smattering of great beer and wine stores that carry most of the local wines and spirits.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working out a parsnip cake recipe. I based it on my carrot cake recipe. Instead of carrots, I used grated parsnips and in the place of crushed pineapples, I used some baked apples I had on hand. I also used spelt flour from True Grains bakery. The spelt gives the cake a lovely, loose crumb and the flavour works well with the spices and parsnips. I also used a dark honey from Jinglepot Apiaries. The dark honey has a very sexy, deep sweetness that makes other bee puke seem thin and bland. Be warned that the cake is delicate when it first comes out of the oven. I found out the hard way and tried to take the cake out of the pan to finish the cooling process. A chunk fell off. The house mice and monkeys finished off the fallen piece in no time ;) It would probably be best to let it cool in the pan before trying to remove it. I will post the recipe later.

I had my piece of parsnip cake with baked apple sorbet I had in the freezer. I made the sorbet from a batch of local elstar and jonagold apples, peeled and cut into chunks. I didn't add any sugar, just some cinnamon, nutmeg and green cardamon and baked the apples at 325F for about 30 minutes. Once cooled, I gave it a whirl with my hand blender, added a spoonful of local wildflower honey for sweetness and a half a bottle of Merridale's Scrumpy Cider. I tossed the lot into my gelato maker. It came out nice and smooth and the bit of alcohol helps keep it from turning into an applesicle.

I love parsnips. They are the most underrated vegetable. Roasting gives them an earthy sweetness that adds character to any dish. I like mashed parsnips with a good shaving of nutmeg or mushed up with some local goat feta. They even make a great creamy soup. Simply boil/steam cubes of parsnip then blend them with enough chicken or veggie stock to make it the right soup consistency. It’s a great base for a myriad of flavours. To it you can add everything from miso to pesto to curry to five-spice or simply a splash of cream or glug of olive oil. Whatever you use carrots in, you can also use parsnips.

As I grated the parsnip for the cake, it’s evocative, earthy fragrance rose from the bowl and brought some light to a grey, rusty day. I got my parsnips at the farmers market. Many stores and farm markets are carrying locally grown parsnips and probably will for much of the winter. They keep for months if stored properly.

Last night, Karin & I went to our monthly Arachne Guild meeting (aka Mid-Island Weavers and Spinners Guild). It was the Christmas potluck last night and so we went armed with locally-grown dishes. Karin had brought an arguta kiwi sorbet and a cranberry sorbet, both made with fruit from down the road. Her sorbets were a big hit! It was so cool to see her enjoy others enjoying her food.

I was so busy with my baking that I had not realized how late it was getting. With about a half an hour to spare, I made a pasta in moose meat & tomato sauce for the potluck and for DH's dinner. It was nothing harder than browning some of ground moose meat that we got from Kev’s uncle and dumping in some frozen tomato sauce and letting it all simmer and meld together as I boiled up some organic rotini. The tomato sauce was from a big cook-up I did a while ago. All the veggies came from farms just down the road. Even the herbs came from Hazelwood Herb farms. It certainly was tastier and cheaper than anything in a jar and just as convenient.

I scooped the pasta and sauce into my best casserole and topped it with a healthy sprinkling of grated cheese. I used Little Qualicum’s Raclette cheese. It’s a mild cheese that melts wonderfully. The piece I had was kinda hard but it melted fine and had a taste quite similar to a parma. I threw that under the broiler and by the time I had changed my clothes and dragged a brush through my hair, the cheese was bubbling and golden.

With a quick kiss for my DH, I was out the door. The potluck was so much fun. Good food and a room full of spirited ladies to share it with. There was also a silent auction. I’m a sucker for silent auctions. A good chunk of my wardrobe is from eBay, the biggest silent auction in the world. At least this silent auction was to help with the guild’s expenses.

This is what I came away with:

My first spinning wheel!!! It's an Ashford wheel and it’s obviously well used and much loved. I’ve been wanting a spinning wheel for ages. I have a small but growing stash of roving next to my not-so-small stash of yarn. My drop spindle skills are getting smoother but spindling doesn’t have the meditative quality that spinning or knitting does. I can still out-knit my spindling speed. I’ve been on the lookout for a wheel all summer. However, even a good used wheels cost between $100 to $250 and a new one would mean I would have to enslave myself to my own sweat factory to justify the costs.

You want to know how much I paid for my wheel?

I got it for…are you for this?

Drum roll please…

A grand sum of $25!!!

Woohoo!!!Yippee!!!

I get to give an old wheel a new home for a killer price and I get to take advantage of the great roving and fleece from the local sheep and alpaca farms. The super-sweet cherry on top deal is that the next Arachne meeting is going to be all about spinning. There’s going to be a spinning circle and I will have a roomful of spinners to teach me. I’m such a lucky kid!

Happy Eating!

Jen