Category for The sisters

There is a For Sale sign in my front yard. I was at home the afternoon it went up – a friendly guy stopped by to make sure we were indeed selling our home before he installed it. As we chatted back and forth for a minute, he said he hoped this was a happy occasion. As it turns out, it is! My husband, Sean, and I are selling our sweet home, leaving our workplace and heading out on an adventure. (Don’t fret, dear reader, Blaise is coming too!)

Adventures can be hard to come by these days, there are always more important things to do. Things to take care of and bills to pay. But for sometime now, I’ve been feeling the pull of something more creative. I’ve been so happy to have spots like this blog or Instagram to share some of my creative pursuits. Over time, I’ve come to wonder if I couldn’t find a way to incorporate more of that creativity into my daily life.

Which is where we come to the part of me jumping out of the boat – I decided to leave it all, the consistent routine, the house and steady job, and strike out with the intent of doing something new. We’re moving back to Canada to be close to family and to take a minute to just breathe and reorganize ourselves. We don’t know where we will end up, maybe around the corner from my childhood home, maybe on another continent. 

For many reasons, the uncertainty of my life at this moment brings me back to my garden. Most days when I find myself wondering about just what it is we are setting out to do, I go sit in the garden. Awhile back when I realized that I might not see a full growing season in this garden, I started to adapt my plan for just what I would plant. There seemed to be little point in devoting a good chunk of the garden to dahlias and tomatoes, both favorite garden additions, but always hitting their prime in the later part of the season. Instead, I wanted to play up the parts that I could likely enjoy in the early part of summer. In the midst of my sadness over leaving this garden, I have been steadfast in my plan to enjoy every single moment I am afforded there. 

There is no denying viagra without prescriptions uk that these meds work wonderfully to reduce stress and improve male’s ability to be hard in the bed. Keep all brand viagra 100mg medications far from scope of youngsters and pets. Yohimbe: Yohimbe, an evergreen tree, grows in the western find this link buy viagra in australia India. Sildenafil Citrate medicine like viagra buy cheap is the drug consumed by millions of male patients today. So, early in the spring, I started reading the seed packages, carefully calculating the number of days until harvest, Tomatoes take time to grow and mature, so most varieties were put aside for that reason. But a few hardy and early varieties have made it into my garden this year. I don’t know that I will be around to pick them, but these ones seem like the most likely candidates. Of course, there are peas. All of the shelling variety, but there are two different kinds, planted thickly so I have plenty of young greens to harvest. And plenty of pods for Blaise and I to feast on, right out in the midst of it all. Green beans, along with purple, romano and yellow, made the cut, but this time with fewer climbing varieties. The salad greens are out of control, as usual, with plantings of French sorrel, purslane, dark red lettuce and New Zealand spinach all elbowing in amongst each other. The early plantings of radishes have already come and gone for the season.

The newcomers to the garden this year include the okra and carrots, both planted with the younger generation in mind. And last but not least, the Padron peppers. These beauties are a hands-down favorite at our house. Lightly charred in oil and seasoned with flaky salt, we enjoy these peppers while seated in the garden, with cups of Cava in hand. This is the way the Spanish do it, I’m told, and I am not going to mess with that tradition. Fingers crossed I have at least one of those meals to come this summer.

Either way, I remind myself that there will be other gardens. Already, I have some ideas of what I might do differently in a future space. Just the other day, I optimistically bought some seeds to plant for a fall harvest of maché. But the location of that garden is still to be determined. I’ll find it one day – build, plant and harvest from it.

I recently attended a graduation ceremony, listening as attentively as I could after hours of ceremony, to the advice that was doled out on the graduates. It seemed somehow appropriate for me as well, starting out on my own new adventure. The snippet that stuck with me all of these days later was from someone sharing advice from a fortune cookie…”A thrilling adventure awaits you, be on your guard.”

So, here I go, with my jumble of jubilance and uncertainty, only knowing that out there, a new life awaits me. I’m ready!

It seem that it is virtually impossible to stay in Paris long enough. As the days slip away you find yourself crossing item after item off you list until you realize that all you have done is eat and people watch.

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And it was perfect.

A couple of months ago I received a message from ginger, she said it was my last chance. She had booked tickets to Paris and if I wanted in on the action I had better step up my game. Back in the fall she had told me of her plans and asked if I was interested. I had been non-committal, busy at work and all in all just not sure. But when my final warning came in I decided to give the trip some more serious thought.

Here we are about 2 months later and I’m sitting in seat 16F looking out my window, 35,000 feet in the air and halfway across Canada. To be exact, somewhere over Beausejour, where ever that is. For one reason or another Ginger and I always manage to make time for each other when it comes to Paris, although this time our visit is much overdue.

I have always enjoyed traveling with Ginger. We seem to have a similar idea of what it takes to have a good vacation. So far we have a Google map with some rough ideas of sites, food and general things that we want to do while we are in Paris. Unstructured is a good way to describe how we approach things. We often find ourselves gathered around a table with our sketchbooks and a couple of cups of tea, planning the area that we want to visit the next day. Most of our time is spent wandering streets, taking photos and I like to stop often for treats.
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In the days leading up to my departure, when I wasn’t making little stacks of items that needed to be packed on the living room floor, I was scanning the internet for all things French. That is when I came upon this recipe in Dorie Greenspan cookbook, Paris Sweets for World Peace/Korova Cookies. It was fate, they were french and I had to make them. We devoured them in record time and when the cookies were all finished I hopped on my plane for Paris.

Within certain circles, my mother has a bit reputation when it comes to cooking from a recipe. We like to tease her about her freewheeling approach to following directions. She doesn’t sweat the details – recipes are a starting place to her, not a set of directions that must be followed. Of course, this approach has advantages. Rare are the days when she passes on a recipe because she doesn’t have an ingredient – there is always a suitable substitute. However, when something goes wrong, it’s hard to fault the recipe. 

But, in the end, I love this carefree approach my mother brings to her cooking, mostly because it is in such contrast to my own tendencies. Once I see the recipe pictured, I want to reproduce it as closely as I can. I’ve written before about going out on shopping expeditions to find the right size pan for my cherry picnic cake. If my mom made the cake, she’d have been eating it for days before me, having roughly sized up an appropriate cake pan from the stack in the cupboard by the oven and carried on without missing a beat. 

But on to the granola – this recipe has been handed around and adapted within the family for a few years now. It is also one of Sean’s favorite breakfast items at my parents house. Knowing that he loves it, my mom often gives him a bag of it as a gift. While I have dabbled with other granola recipes over the years, this one remains his favorite. So, I decided I should try and make it at home.

When my mom gave me this recipe, I teased her that trying to reproduce it was a bit like translating a foreign language. The basics of the recipes were spelled out with my mom’s unique abbreviations, accompanied by notes, crossed out measurements and directions accumulated over several rounds of baking. There were notes about baking in a convection oven versus a food dryer. But one of the key things this made me realize is that the baking process is not so much about cooking the granola but drying it out. So, to keep things easy, I added directions on how to bake in a conventional oven. You’re on your own with the food dryer!

Rise and Shine Granola

The thing with granola is that it thrives on improvisation. This recipe comes from my aunt Georgia who shared it with my mother. And it is not lost on me that I’ve adapted it for you!

6 cups (700 g) thick oatmeal
1 cup (140 g) sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds
1 cup (145 g) coarsely chopped almonds
½ cup (70 g) sesame seeds
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1 cup (90 g) unsweetened coconut flakes
½ cup (85 g) candied ginger, chopped
1 cup (150 g) dried pineapple
½ cup (150 g) maple syrup or honey
⅓ cup (70 g) oil
¾ cup (170 g) unsalted butter
¼ cup (65 g) brown sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Prepare two large rimmed baking sheets and line with parchment paper. Set aside. Heat oven to 275 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the oatmeal though the dried pineapple. Stir gently to combine.

In a small sauce pan over medium heat, combine the maple syrup, oil, butter and brown sugar until the sugar dissolved. Remove from heat, whisk in the salt, cinnamon and vanilla extract.

Pour the warm liquid over the dry ingredients. Stir well to combine.

Spread the granola evenly between the two pans. Place in preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes. Turn the oven off and let the granola sit in the hot oven for 10 minutes. Rotate pans, then turn the oven back to 275 and bake for another 15 minutes. Turn oven off and let sit for 10 minutes with the door closed. At this point, the granola is done, but I like to open the oven door and let the granola cool in the oven.

Once cool, store in an airtight jar or container.

Winter is one of my favourite seasons. I love winter clothes, sweaters, boots, cozy jackets and woollen scarfs. I am always happy to be mucking around in the snow with my snowshoes on or out on a ski hill. Of course with the cold weather and winter outings comes all the delicious comfort foods and toasty warm drinks. Mmm, so good.

As kids Ginger and I could often be found bundled up and packing down the snow on the driveway with our toboggans, this was a non-sanctioned idea and if we were caught by our parents we were kindly asked to move along. One of our other favourite activities was making snow horses. Unlike most kids who make snowmen, Ginger and I liked making more useful snow creatures, you can actually ride a snow horse, where as a snowman can only be looked at. Our snow horses probable looked a lot like a haphazard or fallen down snowman with two big snowballs making up its body and some strange configuration of other snowballs that never seemed to actually resemble a horses head. But we tried non the less and spent many an hour out in the yard tending to our horses.

This years winter has been a little more green than it has been white. No snow horses for me. To be honest, I would have been happy to have a little more of the white stuff, but what can you do. Instead we have had to trade our snowshoe clad wanders, for rainy treks through the forest and around our local lakes. It only seemed fitting to also trade in the stews and comfort foods for something that matched our surrounds a little more. Greens.

I stumbled upon this recipe on Food52 a few weeks ago and knew straight away that I had to make it. It kind of reminded me of larb and that is about all that mattered to me. The original recipe serves 6 – 8 people as a side, but I halved the recipe and the two of us polished off most of it as a main.

Luang Prabang Fusion Salad
Recipe adapted from Food52

For the salad
2 large or extra-large eggs
1 medium head of lettuce, washed and dried
2 scallions, trimmed, smashed flat with the side of a cleaver, cut lengthwise in half or into quarters, and then cut crosswise into 2-inch lengths
1/2 cup cilantro sprigs
1/2 cup celery, sliced on the diagonal
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For the lime juice dressing and the cooked dressing
1/2 tablespoon minced ginger
1 serrano chiles, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 cloves garlic, minced (divided)
1 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
1/4 pound ground pork
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons hot water
1/4 cup rice or cider vinegar
2 tablespoons dry-roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and let eggs cool.

Tear lettuce into large pieces. Place all the greens in a salad bowl and set aside.

Peel the hard-boiled eggs and cut crosswise in half. Remove the yolks, place in a small bowl and mash; reserve for later. Cut the whites crosswise and set aside in a separate bowl.

In a medium bowl, mix together the ginger, chiles, fish sauce, lime juice, and 1 clove of minced garlic; set aside.

Put the remaining dressing ingredients near your stove. Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil and heat for 20 seconds, then add the remaining cloves of garlic. Stir-fry until the garlic starts to change colour, about 20 seconds, then add the pork. Break the pork up into small pieces as you stir-fry. Once the pork has changed colour completely, about 1 to 2 minutes, add the salt and sugar, then add the hot water and bring to a boil. Add the vinegar, add the reserved mashed egg yolks, and stir to blend.

Pour the hot liquid and pork over the prepared greens and toss. Add the lime juice dressing and toss. Transfer the salad to individual plates and mound. Sprinkle on the chopped roasted peanuts, arrange slices of egg white on top, and serve immediately.

Some days I find myself stumped on what to share here. I love sharing stories and photos of what I’ve been up to. But I’ve got to come up with all of that good stuff first! Some days I don’t feel like I have good stories to tell and nothing seems to be coming together. Like this post – I’ve been waiting to share it for at least a couple of weeks while I try to come up with some story to share with you. But this recipe is too good to keep to myself, so here it is.

I don’t know much about fika, but browsing through the January issue of Saveur, a photo of a sweet bread stopped me in my tracks. Reading more, it appears that fika is the Swedish concept of an afternoon coffee break, with snacks. I’m in! As a regular Instagrammer, I’ve seen people posting about their afternoon fika, so the concept is not foreign. But I’m no expert on all of the real details. So imagine my delight to find not only a recipe, but the mention of an upcoming book devoted to fika recipes. I may have even pre-ordered it!

Without even really planning it, I’ve spent most of the winter so far with my own little interpretation of fika. As the early grey gathers on weekend afternoons, we’ll gather in the kitchen with candles and snacks arranged on the table. We spend some time chatting, browsing magazines or better still, drawing. And since finding this recipe, a few of our weekend gatherings have been accompanied by the sweet warm waftings of cinnamon and cardamom. I hope it will inspire some gatherings of your own.

Swedish Cinnamon and Cardamom Bread

This recipe appeared in the January 2015 issue of Saveur and is ever so slightly adapted here.

Serves 8 to 10

FOR THE DOUGH

7 tbsp. unsalted butter
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2 tsp. active dry yeast
4½ cups flour, plus more for dusting
¼ cup sugar
1½ tsp. cardamom seeds, lightly crushed
½ tsp. kosher salt 

FOR THE FILLING AND TOPPING:

½ cup granulated sugar
7 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
1½ tsp. cardamom seeds, finely crushed
1 egg, beaten
Pearl sugar, for sprinkling

Make the dough: Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat and let cool just slightly. Stir in milk and yeast; let sit until yeast is foamy, about 10 minutes. Whisk flour, sugar, cardamom and salt in a bowl. Stir in yeast mixture until dough forms. Transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 3 minutes. Return dough to bowl and cover with a clean dish towel. Let rest in a warm place until dough is doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Make the filling: Mix granulated sugar, butter, cinnamon and cardamom in a bowl until smooth.

Assemble the bread: On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into an 11″ x 17″ rectangle, about ¼″ thick. Spread filling over dough, leaving a ½″ border along edges. Working from one long end, roll dough into a tight cylinder. Transfer seam side down to a parchment paper-lined  rimmed baking sheet. Cover with dish towel; let sit in a warm place until dough has doubled in size again, about 45 minutes.

Bake the bread: Heat oven to 375°. Starting 1″ from one end of the dough, make crosswise slices with a serrated knife, spaced 1″ apart, three-quarters of the way through dough. Gently fan dough slices away from the center, alternating left to right. Brush dough with egg and sprinkle with pearl sugar; bake until golden brown, about 22 minutes. Let bread cool completely before serving, if you can hold yourself back that long! Best enjoyed the day it is baked, it will reheat perfectly for breakfast the next morning.

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I wish that I could tell you that I baked this lovely loaf of bread, but I didn’t. Over the holidays our friend’s family stayed in our apartment while we were away in Kelowna and when we came home we found this bread waiting for us. Thanks guys!

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We enjoyed these little guys with a hot cup of coffee and then hit the road in search of adventure. When I say adventure I mean grocery shopping, buying a new door mat and picking up a few different varieties of green tea. So fun, so adventurous!

For the past several years, my mom has been taking me to an antique store in a little town called Summerland. It’s a great shop and an even better town, but I’ll save that story for another day. For the longest time, I haven’t had much of an interest in antiques. But somewhere in the midst of working on this blog, I decided I needed to add some items to my kitchen. New pans, old dishes – at this point, I’ve added a little of both. There is a satisfaction in heading into a kitchen store and coming out with just what I need. But I’ve learned the thrill of the unexpected treasure found while rummaging in some antique collection.

Back in the little antique shop in Summerland, I found a worn muffin pan tucked away on a dark shelf of baking odds and ends. How exciting can a muffin tin be, right? But this little pan looked like it would turn out cakes, not just standard issue muffins and that has to be worth something. It hasn’t been the most well used of some of my finds, but things are turning around for my little pan.

See, back when I was in Seattle a few months ago, I spent a little time tasting treats around town. I don’t think I can go downtown without stopping at Dahlia Bakery, part of the Tom Douglas megablock of dining establishments. This time around, I tasted a buckwheat cake with a whiskey glaze – a satisfying treat that feels wholesome and dessert-like at the same time. The cake was flecked with thick bits of oatmeal and drizzled with just enough of a sweet whiskey glaze. It was so good, I went back for a second one another day and this time I took notes.

I don’t really develop recipes – there is something about that process that sounds daunting. Probably because it is so precise and there is all this pressure to come up with a recipe that actually works for you. So when I came home, I had no plans to recreate it. I figured there would be a recipe out there for buckwheat cakes. As it turns out, that’s not really a thing and I couldn’t turn up a single recipe that looked right. So before that flavor memory faded in my mind, I decided I’d get baking on my own. Happily, these little cakes came together quite easily and we’ve been enjoying them most every weekend since.

Tom’s version was labelled “flourless” so it made me think that these cakes had the potential of being gluten free. The final version I’m sharing here is just that, but if you’re not worried about a little wheat flour, feel free to sub out the gluten-free flour for a regular all-purpose blend. But the buckwheat is what makes this recipe unique, so don’t be afraid to try that out.

I’ve made this recipe two ways – frosted with a whiskey glaze or sprinkled with a light dusting of powdered sugar. The original cakes I tasted included the whiskey glaze, but I wanted a kid-friendly option! Try them both and pick your favorite. They both seem fitting in this winter season!

Buckwheat Oatmeal Cakes with Whiskey Glaze

Inspired by Tom Douglas’s Dahlia Bakery in Seattle
Makes about 10 muffins

¾ cup (110g) buckwheat flour
¼ cup (35g) all-purpose flour or all-purpose gluten-free flour mix
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1 cup (255g) applesauce
½ cup (50g) thick oatmeal
⅓ cup (60g) vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon
¾ cup (165g) sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt

Glaze, optional
½ cup (75g) powdered sugar
2 tablespoons whiskey

Heat oven to 350 and prepare muffin pan.

In a small bowl, combine the buckwheat and all-purpose flours, and the baking powder.

In a large bowl, whisk together the applesauce, oatmeal, oil, eggs, spice, sugar, soda and salt. Add in the flour mixture and stir until just combined.

Divide the batter amongst the tins so they are about ¾ full. Bake until puffed and starting to darken, about 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle just comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their tins for a minute or two, then remove and allow to cool on a cooling rack.

If using, whisk the powdered sugar and whiskey together until smooth and just pourable. Drizzle the glaze over the cooled cakes and allow to set. Or sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar once the cakes have cooled. Any leftover cakes will keep in an airtight container for a couple of days.

One last weekend of summer. That has been the running joke this fall whenever we have a beautiful sunny day here in Vancouver. Although summer and basically fall have come and gone, we did have one last spell of summer this past weekend.

Our joke is more of a reminder to seize the moments and enjoy ever bit of sun that we see, rather than some delusion that pants are optional and maybe we can fit in a sunset swim later.

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We sat outside, wrapped in blankets, sipping hot coffee and eating breakfast; just a group of friends enjoying that one last weekend of summer. According to environment Canada we might have one last weekend of summer again this weekend before the snow comes. You can bet that I’ll be the first one out the door if the sun is shining.