Photo Friday: Microgreens Salad

the microgreens

microgreens • blueberry reduction chevre • egg

Kitchen Sink Stew

There is a movement in the blogosphere for people to clean out their fridge and pantry this January, to resist the urge to constantly purchase new groceries, which allows great food to go bad. There is so much you can do with just a little creativity and as a food blogger, isn’t this what we should be inspiring? I rarely follow a recipe and if you ask anyone with basic cooking skill they will tell you the same thing. Do you want to know why? We’re creative out of necessity. If I was to purchase new ingredients for one recipe every single night I’d be broke; well, significantly more broke than I already am. Ours is a family without a lot of money but Mr. and I always ensure our children have good food and one of the ways we have been able to accomplish this is through our CSA share (community supported agriculture) in the Hutten Family Farm; for $20 a week we receive an incredible amount of vegetables (and fruit) that is local, spray-free and grown by a man we consider our friend. It would be an insult to Ted if we allowed those vegetables to rot in any way.

All these thoughts were swirling in my head yesterday morning when I opened the refrigerator door to find it absolutely full of vegetables. If you looked in our pantry, potato box and refrigerator you might begin to doubt that I actually feed my family, but I do. I really, really do. It was in this spirit that I began chopping parsnip and carrots, an entire leek and tearing apart a bag of kale to throw into the slow cooker. It didn’t take long before it was absolutely packed, including a can of corn because not only do I need to clean out the fridge, I need to attack the pantry.

I don’t use the slow cooker very often, even though I intend to do so which means that my slow cooker recipe skills are a little shaky. I was fairly confident about all the veggies and lentils swirling around in there but Mr. was not. Upon coming home Mr. discovered that my overzealous amount of kale had entirely overpowered the whole dish and if you are not careful, kale can be quite bitter. I had laid down for a rest so he was given free reign to do as he wished with what I intended to be a vegetarian dish. I was so serious about this vegetarian dish that I emptied what little I had in the way of lentils – note, usually a good idea to check you have the ingredients for a dish, resorted to one of those dried soup mixes of green and orange lentils and alphabet noodles and went on my merry way. Mr., so unimpressed with the mess of vegetables and lentils added a can of pulverized tomatoes and pork. Just your classic vegetarian dish with a smattering of pork.

I may have mentioned that I was a vegetarian for an extended period of time and Mr. joined me in that endeavor but that was before we were married and I’m not entirely sure how true his devotion was; he was the one who bought the lamb when we gave it up.

The dish, which Mr. calls chili and I think he is basing this on the presence of the crushed tomatoes turned out beautifully. If he hadn’t made the adjustments I think my moniker of “mean Mommy” might have stuck. I’m not really that mean but he’s definitely more fun for the kids. I make them bathe and pick up their toys. All that kale was toned down and the five spice he used on the pork added this unexpected depth to the whole dish even though he used very little of it. It’s an incredibly healthy dish based on the number of vegetables used and because I used just about everything I could get my little paws on, it’s open to all kinds of interpretations.

The recipe isn’t going to be exact for two reasons. First, my parents bought me this incredible slow cooker for me for Christmas and it is massive, seven liters massive. Second, the whole point of this stew was to use up as many vegetables as I could so it depends on the state of your own refrigerator, do, as your tummy desires. I’m really just trying to apologize for the disorganized state of this recipe but I’m doing this for you, novice cook (remember how I bathe my kids and make them pick up their toys?): I’m forcing you to be creative. You’ll thank me later.

Quick note: I’d like to list this recipe as gluten free but the only thing that is making me nervous is the 5 spice. Mr. picked up our (huge) bag at Tian Phat, an Asian grocer in Halifax and he is sure that is gluten free. It should be considering it is only 5 spices (heh) but you never know and if you are on a gluten free diet I don’t really have to tell you to read the label carefully.

The Stew

3-5 carrots, sliced thick

1-2 sweet potatoes, sliced into medallions

1-2 parsnips

leeks, minced – I used 4 inch knob, about 1 inch diamter

1 onion

bag of kale, roughly torn apart off of stem

1 can corn kernels

4 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup white wine

1 ½ cup water

8 oz pork, cubed

1 can diced tomatoes

5 spice

S & P to taste

1. Add all of the ingredients expect the pork and tomatoes (this includes the liquid), salt and pepper to taste. Cover the slow cooker and cook on high for 2 hours. After the 2 hours, reduce to low for about 6 hours.

2. At the 6 hour mark, toss the cubed pork in the 5 spice and sear in a pan with a bit of oil. Add the pork and tomatoes to the slow cooker. Stir and cover. Keep on low heat for another hour.

You could serve this over brown rice to round out the meal, perhaps with a salad but in all honesty it’s very filling and you could do with just a bowl of it.

The Gift Project and Cookies!

I love to make gifts for the people in my life; whether it is a bit of baking, a knit or crochet project or a series of photographs, the gifts under my Christmas tree featured many a homemade one. Earlier in December as I frantically set about to crochet a scarf for my father-in-law, finish Mr.’s wrist warmers and bake a box of muffins for Bubs’ daycare I began to lament the lack of homemade gifts through the year. Christmas is not just about gifts to loved ones. Just ask the little girl who unexpectedly received her very own desk and easel on Christmas, a day when her daddy was working and she would be spending the day mostly wither her mommy, all because I listed it on Freecycle, tired of tripping over it. I played just a small part in that little girl’s Christmas but the feeling I had was an inspiration.

What if I made a gift for someone in my life, a loved one or a neighbour, Miss N’s very kind and cautious crossing guard and spontaneously gave it to them?

As a food blogger it wouldn’t be enough to just make the gift but to also write about it, a push to develop a new recipe. I’ve been excitedly thinking – read: obsessing over, the first person to receive the gift. It needn’t be big; in fact some of the smallest gestures can mean the most. It is at this point I want to invite every one who reads this blog to join me in this endeavor.

Each month I will post a theme and you will have two weeks to develop your recipe (if you are not a cook, don’t stop reading!) and write up a post on your own blog. Send an email to thegiftprojectblog@gmail.com (It’s different than the regular blog address to cut down on confusion) I will post a link up of all you inspiring people. I aim to post the theme at the beginning of the month, ideally the 3 or 4 and them two weeks later the link up, so the 19 or 20. If you are on Twitter, (you should follow me!) and I will be using the hashtag “thegiftproject” and you will always be able to find information there. Thank you for helping me do this, it really does mean so much to me

After various conversations with some friends, mostly the lovely Liz Lemon (no, not that one, she’s better) and Karen from Notes from the cookie jar that I felt this month’s theme should be “comfort”. Karen suggested something healthy would no doubt be ideal since we’re just getting out of that tummy-expanding season. So, my friends do as you see fit to bring a bit of comfort to someone in your life.

Theme: Comfort

Post up: January 19 (you have until this date)

Link up post: January 20 (I’m not mean, I can always add you if you are a few days late.)

A note: If you do not have a blog but do have a flickr account, feel free to take part send any of your photos over to The Gift Project group. Also, if you are not a food blogger, don’t fret. I will also reserve a special section for not foodie gifts It would not be fair of me not to since the point of this project is kindness and inclusiveness.

Since you have taken the time to read all of this, I shall reward you with cookies! I made these cookies for our big Christmas Eve get-together. These are my mother-in-law’s favourite cookies from when Mr. and I baked for the market, along with a number of lovely Haligonians. These poppyseed pinwheel cookies are based on the Eastern European cookies Lebkuchen and despite my notorious sweet tooth, I love them.

The recipe is a serious adaptation of Black and White Linz Dough from my dad’s 1965 copy of The Czechoslovak Cookbook. It is sturdy cookie dough that holds up to all of the chilling, rolling, chilling and cutting of the pinwheel cookies. The poppy seed mixture is totally my own concoction. Do not be surprised at how wet it is, surprisingly it creates a slight glaze on the cookies. I meant to do that, really I did. Also, these delicious specimens of baked goodness feature very little sugar because of the spice so with moderate tweaking a bet you can make this sugar-free friendly.

Enjoy.

Linz Dough

2 ¼ cups flour

1 tsp cinnamon

½ cup sugar

¾ cup butter

1-2 egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla

1-2 egg whites

1. Whisk flour with cinnamon.

2. In a separate bowl, cream sugar and butter until fluffy, add vanilla

3. Add one egg yolk. Slowly start adding the flour mixed with cinnamon, ¼ cup at a time.

4 .As it becomes dry alternate between the egg white, yolk and flour. This is to be fairly firm dough.

Chill in refrigerator while you prepare the poppy seed mixture.

Poppy seed Mixture

2 cups poppy seeds

zest of two oranges

one egg yolk

1/3 cup white sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp orange juice

Mix together until smooth in a bowl.

The Cookies

1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to a ½ inch thickness. Carefully transfer to a flat sheet of saran wrap. Be careful, I found my firm but sticky.

2. Spread the poppy seed mix across the surface. For a tidy look, leave a space of about a centimeter around the edge.

3. Using the plastic as an aid (but don’t roll into the cookies) roll into one long tube. Pinch the ends.

4. Chill for one hour. Cut into centimeter thick rings. Despite lacking baking soda these babies rise.

5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for 12 minutes.

The Last Post of 2010

This year has been an extraordinarily long one, filled with some ups and a lot of downs. It is easy to focus on those downs when it feels like we are faced with so many so while I am happy to let go of this year and all of its difficulties I am most definitely looking forward to what 2011 can possibly be. I haven't properly prepared to write this post and I feel a touch fragile about it, mostly because an ending makes me feel prickly and touchy, disoriented in my own skin and so with that, some of my favourite food photos from 2010:

An extravagant caesar salad.

The beginning of wasabi aioli.

Pre-baked gluten-free chocolate chip cookies.

In the new year I will broach the subject of gluten, it disappeared from my life for a while and after things fell apart (remember how 2010 wasn't that great?) it came back with full force. And that's okay.

A Homemade Project for 2011

This Christmas my presents have come from local stores, book fairs or I have made them and while this has been necessary because we do not have a lot of money, it was also a lot of fun. When you make a gift for someone you can take the time to really think on what they like then create your vision. The mall won't offer you that.

I began to wonder, what if every month I made something, whether it was a few jars of jam, a casserole or even a favourite plate of cookies and gave it to someone in my life. Spontaneously pass on just a piece of kindness to anyone at all, even the couple next door who are tremendously quiet against my raucous family. Perhaps, especially that couple. As a whole, society is very concerned with giving at this time of year, definitely to family and maybe to a charity; come January life settles back into normal and that giving seems to end. I'm not asking for altruism here but there have been a number of "pay it forward" hashtags on Twitter recently but most are consumer based: "I bought Starbucks for the person in line behind me!" was common. That's kind but what if you made a jar of hot chocolate with homemade peppermint marshmallows and gave it to the shivering postal worker on your doorstep one morning?

What I am proposing is that each month I (or another terrific blogger) will choose a theme and make something for someone in my (and your) life then blog about the experience of being the nut who gives loved or peripheral people in her life food gifts. I'm thinking that I will announce (that makes me sound so official) the theme at the beginning of the month and then about two weeks later blog the recipe and what happened. Feel free to join me in doing this random act of foodie kindness and I will link to your post on a designated date. I think this could work.

Spinach and Egg Crisps

The other day I was seriously craving hummus but the only chickpeas in the pantry were dried and seeing how it was already lunchtime, I couldn't really make Bubs wait 2 hours for chickpeas to hydrate. Instead, I start washing, chopping and throwing things into a pan without one clue as to what I was doing. The tastiest meals can come out spontaneity. This plate of crisps was perfect for Bubs and me as a light lunch, add in a glass of milk and a piece of fruit for lunch and it's a surprisingly healthy lunch. It is also a potential party food, spiced up a bit with slivers of smoked salmon and a bright drizzle of olive oil.

The recipe

bag on spinach, washed

half onion, diced

3 tbsp. apple cider

salt

2-3 tbsp. soy milk

S&P to taste

2 eggs

15 stoned wheat crackers (mine had caraway seeds and I strongly urge you to do the same)

1. Bring water to boil. Gently lay (with a spoon) two eggs in the water. Set the timer for 10 minutes.

2. In a pan heat a tablespoon of olive oil until it slips easily across the pan. Add the onion and cook until translucent.

3. Add the spinach and the apple cider, cover. It should take just a few minutes for the spinach to wilt, even though you will be blending it and breaking it down you do not want the spinach cooked to mush as it will destroy the flavour.

4. The eggs should be finished at this point. Dump out the water and run under cold water. Leave to sit in the water, you could even add a few ice cubes to speed up the process. Once cool, peel and slice.

5. In a blender add the cooked spinach and the soy milk. Pulse - I didn't make mine into a smooth purée because I wanted the texture. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.

6. With a spoon, drop a spoonful of the spinach mix onto a cracker and flatten with the back of the spoon. Top with a slice of egg. Salt and pepper if you think it needs it.

Enjoy.

Orange Shortbread Cookies

A month and a bit ago I inherited a lot of cookbooks from my father. I knew that he liked to cook and I think everyone who knew him knew that he loved food but I didn't realize that he had amassed a pile of cookbooks. Flipping through the Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook I found my dad's name and the date in his precise cursive on the title page, 1973, I think this particular cookbook is my favourite. Through his travels, his storytelling and his search for the new, Dad kept testaments to his past hidden on the bookshelf. What we know of ourselves and how we reveal it is in the titles on our bookshelves and standing in my father's quiet bedroom, this nearly 40 year old volume of recipes in my hands, these thoughts swirled in my mind. The cookbook, with its wide array of traditional recipes that border on the quintessentially wacky (Pink Snow Bars - which I want to make purely out of a sense of homage) are my father. The other cookbooks are too, but he held on to this one for 37 years, through all the changes, the moves within the city and out of the country, when he was no longer a teacher and once again a student, all of it; this little cookbook sat on the shelf.

The recipe I used was actually called "Lemon Biscuits" and was a lovely basic recipe for lemon shortbread but since I had neither lemons or a love for following a recipe I made mine with orange. I know I have orange extract somewhere but whenever it is needed it always disappears so I had to rely on orange juice and if you plan on making these, I'd ensure you have orange extract. The zest and juice do add a lovely flavour but it's not enough to explode orange, it's more of a persistent and gentle murmur. I had originally intended these cookies for Christmas but I have been promising Miss N the chance to decorate some cookies and we have all the icings and sprinkles but not the time. It took her about three seconds of turning her big (and gorgeous) brown eyes on her Daddy and they broke into the tin of cookies. It was completely worth it. Not only that, but the bold splashes of colour across cookies was an even more perfect homage to my father.

Enjoy.

The Recipe

Adapted from "Lemon Biscuits", Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook.

Preheat oven to 375º.

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

pinch of salt

3/4 cup butter or shortening, room temperature

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

zest and juice of one orange, medium sized

2 eggs, room temperature

1. Sift together the dry ingredients.

2. In a separate bowl cream the butter or shortening. Slowly add the sugar and mix until fluffy. At this point add the zest and juice of the orange.

3. Add the eggs and mix well.

4. Ad the flour and blend together until it is a stiff dough.

5. Roll out on a lightly floured surface and cut into squares or use cookie cutters. This is the time to break out the Christmas tree cutters!

6. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. The directions call to lightly grease the cookie sheet, I lined mine with silicone baking sheets which keeps the bottoms significantly lighter than parchment paper.

If you are so inclined you can ice these babies with some fantastic icings. I'm looking forward to working with some royal icing; this time I used packaged icing scribbles which were great for small details but still had a bit of a weird flavour from the colouring.